Assessing the Elections
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

The Gathering Storm
Naomi Ragen

The Paradoxical Jewish Vote
Michel Gurfinkiel

Why the European Union Must be Dismantled
Fjordman

The Abandonment of the Brave
Melanie Phillips

Hold the Rice
Joseph Farah

U.S. Trains Fatah
David Frankfurter

A Voice From Ireland: Israel Deserves Our Sympathy, Not Knee-Jerk Anthems Of Hatred
Kevin Myers

When All Else Fails...Take Israel Please
Ruth King

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

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Herbert Zweibon

The Democratic victories in House and Senate bode ill for Israel. Most serious of all is the message sent to Islamic enemies of both Israel and the United States: Bin Laden was right that when the going gets rough, the United States lacks staying power. That the President would promptly fire Donald Rumsfeld, the man most firmly associated with pursuit of the war, and Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi would then back John Murtha, the most outspoken supporter of immediate withdrawal for party leader, reinforces the message that leaving Iraq is the party’s top priority. (Fortunately, thanks to his association with the Abscam corruption scandal, Murtha lost.)

When the House voted on the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act (to cut off aid to the Hamas government until it recognized Israel) it passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 361-17. Five of those seventeen enemies of Israel are slated to become chairmen of important House committees: David Obey (Appropriations), John Conyers (Judiciary) – a voice for Islamists, he represents Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Arab population in the country -- John Dingell (Energy and Commerce), George Miller (Education and Work Force) and Nick Rahall (Resources).

The Democratic victory will strengthen the hand of both George Soros and CAIR – it’s hard to know which is worse. Soros, fresh from pouring millions into the far left Moveon.Org (whose website overflows with the most vicious anti-Semitism) now plans to launch an American Jewish anti-Israel lobby. It will bring together a few fellow billionaires and left wing Jewish outfits including American Friends for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (that’s both Justice and Peace in one title, a sure sign they’ll contribute to neither). These three groups, in tune with Israel’s worst enemies in Congress, take credit for killing the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act. They vigorously lobbied the Senate for provisions to neutralize it, and in the end, because there was no way to reconcile the two versions of the bill, it never went to the President for signature. In a Democratic Congress, looking to Soros to bankroll campaigns, his anti-Israel lobby may well become ascendant over AIPAC.

CAIR, which expert on terrorism Steven Emerson describes as “a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas,” also emerges as a big winner. As Robert Spencer points out in Frontpage, while it is true CAIR officials have met with Presidents Clinton and Bush, and have the ear of the mainstream media, now, “instead of being subjected to increasing public scrutiny as it should be, CAIR will be able to use the new Congress to expand its reach and influence.”

In the wake of the Democratic victory, the impact of the Iraq Study Group Report chaired by long time Israel foe James Baker and Lee Hamilton, will undoubtedly be much greater. And while at this writing the report has not been released, enough has been leaked to arouse serious misgivings that it will end up only as cover for retreat and defeat. There is talk of negotiating with Syria and Iran to “stabilize” Iraq. How can involving the most committed enemies of the U.S. and Israel – this while Iran pursues its nuclear ambitions and promises to wipe out Israel -- do anything but encourage these regimes in their defiance of the United States? Do anything but increase Ahmadinejad’s confidence that nothing will be done to prevent him from pursuing his apocalyptic dreams? Compounding the disaster, there is talk of solving the “broader issues” in the Middle East, i.e. a conference to tackle the alleged “root cause” of the endless dysfunction in the Middle East, the Arab-Israel conflict.

That’s when you know the bankruptcy of policy is total – when our politicians set out, yet again, full steam, to solve the Arab-Israel conflict!

Rael Jean Isaac

Our New Judiciary Chairman

Michigan’s John Conyers, whose district comprises Islamic Dearbornistan, and who is slated to become chairman of the important House Judiciary Committee, ranks as much anti-American as anti-Israel. His platform, in addition to calling for the impeachment of President Bush, promises to repeal the Patriot Act and make it a criminal act to “profile” Moslem terror suspects. Over these many years, Conyers has been an eclectic champion of the notion of America-the-enemy. In 1979 he addressed the inaugural conference of the U.S. Peace Council, an offshoot of the World Peace Conference, an international Soviet front. He told the assembled Communists and far leftists (who passed a series of resolutions conforming to major Soviet objectives at the time, including one “In Solidarity with the People of Palestine”): It’s people like you who should be members of Congress” and “From you I can see the future of America.” (See Rael Jean and Erich Isaac, The Coercive Utopians, p. 152) Recently Conyers has associated himself with pro-North Korean front groups and even spoke at a rally raising money for the anti-Semitic and generally off-the-wall Lyndon LaRouche.

Defeated by Evil

Criticizing the critics of the war in Iraq, Dennis Prager (World Net Daily, Nov. 14) makes an important point: “We have not won the war in Iraq because of something completely unforeseeable: widespread massacres of Iraqi civilians by other Iraqis and Muslims....No Japanese blew up Japanese temples to rid Japan of the American occupier. No Germans mass murdered German schoolchildren and teachers to rid Germany of the American, British, French and Soviet occupiers. The level of cruelty and evil exhibited by those America is fighting in Iraq is new….It may just be impossible, if one is morally bound not to kill large numbers of civilians, to fight those who target their own civilians and hide among them….Based on what was known at the time, George Bush made a moral choice. And he would have won were it not for something new in the annals of human depravity.”

At Stake in Iraq

Military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson notes that much of the debate about the dangers of the U.S. withdrawing from Iraq under fire centers on its impact on fostering “perceptions” of American weakness. In fact, writes Hanson, it would be “the reality of power that would be gone” and legitimate questions would be raised “whether the U.S. military could win any future war – given the knowledge that barring some instantaneous victory, the American public would not allow it the time or the latitude to destroy its enemies.” [Editor’s note: “latitude” may be more important than “time.” Military columnist Ralph Peters notes that insurgents are “arrested” rather than killed on the spot with the result that Iraq’s terrified and/or partisan judges promptly release them to resume their activities.]

Writes Hanson: “When Mr. Bush contemplates what to do about Iran, he knows – and he knows Iran knows — that we are on the verge right now of a tired American public that winces at the very thought of the media storm, political fury, and wild partisan charges that would accompany any more military reactions. But the next step would be the complete loss of public confidence, in the fashion of the French, that we even could win a war if we had to. And then watch out. Great powers, like the largest animals, have a small central nervous system that directs their enormous limbs and sinews. And when it goes – call it public confidence in one’s civilization—then armies tremor, enervate, and, Europe-like, wither away.”

He Who Learns Nothing

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Dhimmi-in-chief, was in Washington in November singing the praises of wily enemy Mahmoud Abbas (“upfront, decent and against terror”) and proclaiming his eagerness to “find the best partner [for peace].” (Never mind there are none.) Grotesquely aping an American politician (and apparently forgetting the political fate of the man who made the words famous) Olmert proclaimed: “You can read my lips. I’m ready for territorial compromises, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

What mind? Since the uprooting of the Gaza settlements, rockets have rained on Israeli communities and the consensus of politicians and military men is there is nothing to be done – those on the receiving end have been told they must learn to live with it. Olmert’s fondest hope is to open up to Arab attack any part of Israel not yet in immediate rocket range.

Conniving in Self-Destruction

Since Oslo, the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick observes, “Israel’s leftist governments have consistently followed a strategy of transferringresponsibility for our national security to our enemies.” First it was Yasser Arafat, more recently Mahmoud Abbas, UNIFIL and Mubarak. The results are all too predictable. In the north UNIFIL forces are enabling Hezbollah’s rearmament (while threatening and provoking Israel). In the south Egypt has announced it is deploying 5,000 troops along its border with Gaza, as it openly declares, to prevent Israel mounting a serious operation against the massive weapons smuggling that is transforming Gaza into a second south Lebanon. (Those are the weapons Egypt was supposed to be cutting off.) While the Israeli government incredibly expresses “satisfaction” with the Egyptian move, it is left to Member of the Knesset Yuval Steinitz (former chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee) to say the obvious: this is a strategic threat to Israel of the first magnitude, with Egypt “taking advantage of the weakness and incompetence of the government.”

Not content with all this, The New York Sun (November 15) reports that, under pressure from President Bush, Israel is on the brink of permitting 1500 armed soldiers of the Badr Brigade (formed from Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan) to move into Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Israel has never allowed the Badr Brigade into this territory because it regarded it, quite rightly, as an enemy force. Now Israel expects the Badr Brigade to protect it from Hamas!
The tragic farce moves forward on its dizzying path.

The Iraqi Anthem

Thanks to Peter Metzger for bringing this to our attention. Metzger came across an online site with all the national anthems, most of which stressed the beauty of the land and longing for the homeland. Iraq’s stood out (not even North Korea, whose anthem Metzger expected to be bizarre, had anything like it.) Written by a Palestinian Arab, the verses also serve as the “unofficial” anthem of the PLO: as Metzger notes, no sign of Western values here. This is the second stanza:

“The youth will not get tired
Their goal is your independence
Or they die
We will drink from death
But we will not be slaves to our enemies
We do not want
An eternal humiliation
Nor a miserable life
We do not want
But we will return
Our great glory
My homeland
My homeland.”

From Salman Rushdie

“Meanwhile, the BBC has been instructed, we are told, that the term ‘Islamic terrorist’ can’t be used because it discriminates against Muslims. Never mind that all the terrorists who claim to be acting in the name of Islam tell us that it is Islam that is their motivation, the BBC can’t say that they’re Islamic terrorists because that’s now this new crime of what’s called ‘Islamophobia.’ I mean I just have some problem with the word because it seems to me if you have a set of ideas which I don’t like, it’s perfectly OK for me to be phobic about them. There were plenty of people who seemed to have no problem being phobic about mine but, you know, ‘Salmanophobia’ didn’t enter the language somehow...”

Naomi Ragen

As I sit in my little study in Jerusalem, overlooking the rolling hills where David once fought Goliath, I feel overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness as day after day the news gets worse and worse. There is a line from I, Claudius, the mini-series on ancient Rome based on Robert Graves’ wonderful book that keeps going through my head. It is spoken by Claudius, the reluctant emperor who wishes to bring back the Republic and end the corrupt monarchy. He says: "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." What Claudius means, is let the horrors brought about by perversions and lies and corruption come to fruition so that people will clearly see what a state their world is in, and work for change.

We are definitely in the mud. Israeli leadership is the most incompetent and corrupt in her history. Everyone from our Prime Minister to our President is under investigation for everything from bribe-taking to rape. After all the bitter lessons of the fake Oslo Accords, that had our children dying in the streets, we have learned nothing, as Olmert goes once again to the Americans with yet another deadly plan to give our enemies more land, and with it, more opportunity, to kill us.

It's not that Israelis don't know what is going on. They do. But people are overwhelmed by the sheer pace of events that unfold with frightening speed from month to month. Still reeling from the rocket attacks on the North, we must deal with daily rocket attacks on our South and the huge weapons influx from the Philadelphi Corridor, once closely guarded by the IDF, which is now open to endless weapons imports from Egypt, thanks to a decision made by people like Mofaz and Halutz to withdraw. Every day, some other suicide bomber is apprehended. You don't hear about it, because we don't die, but that doesn't mean our enemies have stopped trying to kill us.

Some people — the reserve officers whose lives were risked in the last debacle in Lebanon — have had the gumption to rally to bring down the corrupt government, but most of us are mired in confusion and simple fatigue. We get sidetracked by foolishness, like the decision to turn Jerusalem into a world-wide venue for gay rights activism, an idea that backfired, exposing fanaticism and hatred on all sides. No, I didn't think the parade was a good idea, but I was equally appalled by the violence and destruction wreaked on Jerusalem by the parade's opponents. I also found the activism against gay rights by the Chief Rabbinate to be the height of hypocrisy. So concerned are they with Jewish law and the holiness of the Jewish people that Chief Rabbi Amar (whose own family was arrested not long ago for assault and battery on his daughter's suitor) cancelled the much anticipated Agunah Conference. The Conference would have brought together Orthodox rabbis from all over the world in a historic effort to come up with halachic solutions to Jewish laws that encourage the blackmail and extortion of Jewish women seeking a divorce, laws which have turned the Jewish marriage ceremony into a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

And while we focus all our time and energy on these ridiculous little tempests in teapots, Iran goes on building her atom bomb unimpeded, a bomb with our name on it. Olmert smiles at us from the front page of newspapers as he shakes the hand of a smiling lame duck president, confident that the U.S. is going to stop Iran and save us. His own sons already live in America, so I guess he isn't very worried. But mine live here in Israel, and I am.

The world seems mired in the same kind of lethargy and Jew-hatred which preceded the Holocaust. Open any news channel, read any newspaper, and the story line continues to be the poor Palestinians, even though they continue to support the most corrupt, violent and dysfunctional regime on earth. The lies covering up Islamic extremism and its agenda worldwide continue to be flaunted by trendy films, TV shows, Hollywood "stars", once-respectable newspapers, public-funded radio shows. The victory of the Democrats over the Republicans while certainly in response to the Bush administration's many failures, also no doubt shows a weakening of the resolve to face the terrorist threat head-on, and a desire to believe that there is another, easier way to secure our freedoms, the way of negotiation, of easing the "grievances" that the Muslims have against the West. As Brigitte Gabriel writes in her amazing book Because They Hate: "Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our democratic process.''

The Jews of America, who could do so much to strengthen their sisters and brothers in Israel, continue to be influenced by the anti-Israel propaganda. That a portion of funds raised for the Israeli victims of the war in Lebanon by the United Jewish Communities were earmarked for Israeli Arabs, who openly sided with Nasrallah, is one symptom. The complete abandonment of the Jews of Gush Katif by American Jewry, so eager to help Arabs, is another. The government is supposedly helping them, you'll hear these people say. It's their own fault for not signing on the dotted line in time, for resisting government policy. The fact that everyone, even those who did sign, remain jobless, homeless and poverty-stricken because of their crime of living in an area that defended Israel's south from terrorist bombardment for many years, is unforgivable. It's as if we Jews have adopted the "hate the settler" philosophy of our enemies, and wish to join the forces that want them punished for their crime of being Zionists, and patriots, and self-sacrificing, and loyal.

Jonathan Pollard, the spy who did not harm anyone, or any American interest, remains behind bars because he is a Jew who helped Israel, having long ago paid for any wrong doing, serving more time than spies who gave information to America's worst enemies and caused irreparable damage to her security. And Jews are afraid to stand up for him. That is another sign.

The rockets continue to fall on Sderot and the Negev from Gaza. Each time we try to stop it, the world press gathers like jackals to condemn us. Misinformation, outright propaganda abounds. I'm sick of it. It's like emptying a flooded cruise liner with a teaspoon.

In his book The Gathering Storm Churchill wrote: "How easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented: how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous; how the structure and habits of democratic States.... lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to humble masses; how, even, in matters of self-preservation, no policy is pursued for even ten or fifteen years at a time. We shall see how the counsel of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger; how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull's-eye of disaster."

Perhaps we have passed the point of no return. Perhaps our accumulated mistakes and crimes have created a downhill momentum that can no longer be stopped by human effort, but only Godly intervention, i.e. a miracle. Churchill wrote that he gained comfort from the fact that when Nazi Germany finally showed her true face, in a way that even the most naive could not ignore, "my warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me....I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams."

I doubt that the storm that is gathering, threatening all we love, and cherish and believe in, will allow us even that scant comfort. I do not want to be "terribly vindicated." I want to live out my life, and die in a good old age, my children and grandchildren safe and healthy around me, free citizens in the land of their forefathers. This is my dream. May God help us.

Naomi Ragen is a novelist and essayist living in Jerusalem.

Michel Gurfinkiel

In voting overwhelmingly for the Democrats on November 7, Jewish American voters rejected the administration of George W. Bush, the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel team that has ever been established in Washington.

Experts discuss the exact size of the vote. The number given by the National Jewish Democratic Council -- 87% of votes for the Democrats, only 12% for the Republicans -- isn't credible. That given by the Republican Jewish Coalition, based on exit polls — more than 70% for the Democrats, 27% for the Republicans — seems closer to reality. But the overall result in both cases is the same: at least two thirds of Jewish Americans refused to support the President. They preferred a Democratic Party of whose members only 43%, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll published in July, describe themselves as more favorable to Israel than to the Arabs, compared to a Republican Party in which support for the Jewish state, according to the same poll, was 84%.

How do we explain this behavior?

First the weight of habit. Jews have been voting Democratic for a hundred years. It is sometimes more difficult to change your political opinion than to change your sex.

But another factor is important: the religious affiliation of American Jews. The more they are liberal in religious matters, the more they support the Democrats. The more they are Orthodox or Conservative, the more they lean toward the Republicans. Twenty three percent of liberal or Reform Jews vote Republican. Among Jews who call themselves "Conservative" it was 25%. Among Orthodox Jews 42%. The problem is that 80% of Jewish Americans are Reform or Conservative.

A third factor: age and sex. The younger they are, the more Jewish Americans vote on the right. But the whole community is so old that the polls count as youthful voters people under 55! As for sex, female Jewish Americans are almost all Democrats, the men more responsive to Republican principles.

The only consolation is that the voting results run counter to current fashionable lucubrations (more or less derived from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) about the alleged Jewish American lobby. This fine lobby, in truth, and this great conspiracy, consists of shooting yourself in the foot. •

Michel Gurfinkiel is editor in chief of Valeurs Actuelles, France's leading conservative weekly newsmagazine

Fjordman

I have heard a number of people say that "Europe is already lost." I do agree with them that if the political situation remains as it is today, then yes, Europe is lost to Islam, or at least significant parts of Western Europe, maybe not all of Eastern Europe. But I'm not so sure whether the political situation will, or has to, remain as it is today.

Tens of millions of ordinary citizens are now rapidly waking up to the full scale of the Islamic threat. The problem is that many Western Europeans have a sense of hopelessness because they need to confront so many enemies at the same time. Let's call them Enemy 1, 2 and 3. Enemy 1 is Islam and Muslim immigration. Enemy 2 is the anti-Western bias of our media and academia. Enemy 3 consists of Eurabians and EU federalists, who are unique to Europe and make the situation more critical here than it is in North America or Australia.

The feeling among many of those Europeans who now understand the threat is that we can face down and defeat one of these enemies, maybe two, but not all three at the same time. We need a major shake-up in the political situation, something that is visible to everybody, to demonstrate that change is possible. The downfall of the European Union could do the trick.

Muslims may actually have done us a favor. The massive infiltration of Leftist and anti-Western rhetoric that now permeates our media and academia predates Islam, but the failure to identify the threat posed by Muslim immigration has exposed it. Many ordinary citizens still remember that our so-called academic experts and media columnists hailed multiculturalism and Muslim immigration, which are turning out to be the most massive mistakes in modern Western history. This will sooner or later trigger a backlash.

The bad news is that all our various enemies are closely tied together. The good news is also that all our various enemies are closely tied together, and may all go down if one of them falls.

We can start with the Muslims. Their greatest flaw is that they are insanely aggressive and can't handle criticism or mockery at all. A smart move would be to deliberately provoke Muslims as much as humanly possible. The more they rage and rant and threaten, the more they will discredit the ones who said it was a good idea to let them into our countries and that everybody who said otherwise were "racists."

One possibility is to simply demonstrate that the welfare state is no longer able to provide "security" to non-Muslim citizens. Every time somebody gets death threats from Islamic Jihadists, or Muslims burn cars and tires in the streets, it displays the utter failure of the authorities to protect us, and thus the futility of paying high tax rates in order to prop up a system that is in reality already dead.

The welfare state is now just a big pyramid scheme where Leftist parties take our money and give it to Muslim immigrants in return for voter support. The welfare state in fact provides insecurity, since it is used to fund the Muslim colonization of the continent.

I want European citizens to hear our politicians say that we need Muslim immigration to fund the welfare state, and then in the next second see "multicultural youths" shouting Allahu akbar! and throwing Molotov cocktails at the fire brigades in Paris, Birmingham, Rotterdam or wherever. There you go: Your future pensions, ladies and gentlemen.

Our most serious underlying problems cannot be solved by immigration. Immigration may actually worsen the low indigenous birth rates, because it breaks down cultural confidence and thus the desire to have children if it feels like our countries don't have a future.

I've heard the term "Europhobe" being used of those who criticize the European Union. EU officials are busy rewriting our history books to insert Islam as a "natural part of European culture," despite the fact much of the history of Europe since Charles Martel in the 8th century has been about defending the continent against Islam. The real "Europhobes," those who hate or fear Europe, are those who run the EU, not those who are against it.

I've heard people say they are afraid that if the EU collapses, we might see a resurgence of aggressive nationalism. Frankly, I can't totally discount the possibility. But we can't think like that right now. This is now a matter of survival.

It's like saying that you won't have surgery that is needed to save your life because there's a possibility that you may get an infection later. In the choice between certain death now and possible problems at some point in the future, I take possible problems later.

A period of turbulence can be reversed. Islamization never can, or at least only with extreme difficulty. And frankly, it's ridiculous to worry that the collapse of the EU might lead to fanaticism. The EU is facilitating fanaticism in the form of sharia and neo-barbarism in Europe right now.

The EU is bad for at least three reasons. First, because many of the EU elites are deliberately trying to create a common entity with the Arab world. Second, because the process of creating a pan-European federation has led to suppressing all traditional cultural, religious and national instincts that protected Europe from Islam before. And third, because the borderless nature of the EU makes both legal and illegal migration of Muslims more difficult to control from a practical point of view.

We could perhaps use NATO to control potential nationalist extremists. During the Cold War, Western European countries had a common enemy, which helped curtail national rivalries. Maybe we could do the same now, by creating a common front against Islamic aggression. But Americans should insist that Europeans ditch the welfare state to pay for decent militaries. The Americans have succeeded almost too well in pacifying parts of Europe after World War II, and may have killed Western Europe with kindness.

Unfortunately, most Europeans have never even heard of the term Eurabia. That's why I decided to write the Eurabia Code and post it online, to give my small contribution towards exposing this betrayal. I simply refuse to accept that the battle is already lost. Individuals matter. Willpower wins wars.

We are dealing with psychological warfare, first and foremost. Relatively few people have actually been killed so far. Muslims are adept at psychological warfare, let's give them credit for that. And right now the momentum is in their favor. That's why we need some symbolic event that signals that the tide is turning, and we need to create a positive vision of how this post-Eurabian Europe will look like. Hope is important, and Europe now suffers from a lack of hope. Yes, the current political paradigm of über-liberalism and the multicultural welfare state is dead, it just hasn't been officially announced yet. But that doesn't have to mean that Europe is dead.

I'm tired of hearing about how something is inevitable. That's why we ended up in this mess in the first place, by listening to the mantra that multiculturalism was inevitable, that mass immigration was inevitable, that Euro-integration was inevitable etc. It was all lies. Europe still has the means to win this, the question is whether she has the will.

We have grown weak, complacent and pathetic and will have to reassert own identity if we want to survive. Maybe, in some strange way, Western Europe needs to go through her own period of colonization and de-colonization to move on and leave the colonial period behind. There are now probably more Algerians in France than there ever were Frenchmen in Algeria. Surely, if it could be called "national liberation" and "de-colonization" when the French were kicked out of Algeria, the same rules should apply if the French were to kick Algerians out of France? Or what about Pakistanis out of Britain?

Is that racist, you say? Well, Leftists always hail any struggle for self-determination for indigenous people against colonialist aggression. Then they wouldn't mind if Europeans were to exercise this right, too? Or do we detect a double standard saying that indigenous people have the right to self-preservation, unless the indigenous people happen to be white? That would be racist, wouldn't it? •

Fjordman is an intrepid Nordic blogger.

Melanie Phillips

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is the immensely courageous Muslim editor of the Bangladeshi paper The Weekly Blitz, who condemned the power of radical Islam in his country and sought to provide his readers with unbiased news about the Middle East. He wrote: “Today, I stand before you perhaps as a living contradiction: a Zionist, a defender of Israel, and a devout, practicing Muslim living in a Muslim country. Like you I believe in the justice of the Zionist dream. I also acknowledge this historical reality: that the world has endeavored to crush that dream and, yes, even destroy the viability of the Jewish people.”

For his pains, nearly three years ago he was arrested as he prepared to address the Hebrew Writers’ Conference in Tel Aviv on ‘The Role of Media in Creating a Culture of Peace’ and thrown into jail. His family was threatened and attacked. The government said he was ‘spying for the interests of Israel against the interests of Bangladesh’.

In May 2005, after 17 months in prison he was freed on bail after agitation by a couple of stalwart campaigners. But since then things have taken a turn for the worse. In July, the offices of The Weekly Blitz were attacked by Islamic militants. In September — as Bret Stephens reported in The Wall Street Journal on October 10 —a judge with Islamist ties ordered the case against him to continue, despite the government’s reluctance to prosecute, on the grounds that Choudhury had hurt the sentiments of Muslims by praising Christians and Jews and spoiling the image of Bangladesh world-wide.

The next day the newspaper offices were ransacked and Choudhury was badly beaten by a mob of 40 or so people who broke his ankle and called him an ‘agent of the Jews’. The police then issued an arrest warrant for him. If he is jailed and tried, he faces torture and death by hanging — all for standing up for freedom, truth and justice, and against hatred, violence and bigotry.

His fate is a paradigm of the threat to all who stand in defense of those virtues. But from the governments prosecuting the so-called ‘war on terror’, and who constantly talk about promoting and defending moderate Muslims, there is only a shameful silence, Bret Stephens observed:

“The U.S. Embassy in Dhaka has kept track of Mr. Choudhury and plans to send an observer to his trial. But mainly America’s diplomats seem to have treated him as a nuisance. “Their thinking,” says a source familiar with the case, “is that this is the story of one man, and why should the U.S. base its entire relationship with Bangladesh on this one man?”

So much for principle and consistency. The so-called liberal newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are silent about the fate of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. So too, as far as I know, have been the so-called human rights NGOs. There is, in short, widespread indifference to the persecution of a decent, truly moderate Muslim by the Islamist fascists who threaten all of us. When push comes to shove, therefore, all the pious talk about supporting Muslim reformers in their heroic stand against Islamic extremists is the purest cant and humbug. For western governments, Choudhury is too marginal, too inconvenient. For so-called western ‘multicultural’ liberals, he can’t be a cause to champion because he does not fit the stereotype — he actually supports Israel and Zionism, for heaven’s sake, and thus puts such ‘anti-racists’ to shame by exposing their own indefensible prejudice against Jewish self-determination.

Above all, how can they condemn Bangladesh and hold it to account? Only western countries can be guilty of terrible deeds, after all; the third world is by definition the blameless victim of western imperialism. So there will be no marches on Bangladesh High Commissions, no boycott calls from humbugging academics, no impassioned leading articles or op-eds in the posh papers in solidarity with one of their own profession who is being persecuted for telling the truth.

Shameful — and short-sighted. For the fate of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is our own.

Editor’s Update: The trial opened on November 13. Interviewed by The Wall Street Journal several days earlier, Choudhury says the judge aims for a death sentence and is not even allowing him to present witnesses in his own defense. Asked why he did not flee Bangladesh prior to the trial, Choudhury replied ”If I leave I will be proved to be a coward...There is no pride, no honor and no dignity in retreating.”

Congress is finally paying attention: Illinois Republican Mark Kirk and New York Democrat Nita Lowey have introduced a resolution demanding the charges be dropped. Rep. Kirk is one of the “stalwart campaigners” to whom Phillips refers (the other is Chicago based analyst Richard L. Benkin). The Wall Street Journal reports that Kirk demanded a meeting with the Bangladeshi ambassador in 2005 which led to Choudhury’s release after 17 months in jail without trial. The ambassador admitted at the time the charges were false, but while the government promised they would be dropped, they never were: the government feared the reactions of radical Islamists who were coalition partners.

Melanie Philips is author of Londonistan

Joseph Farah

I've waited to deal with the following news development because it is so disturbing to me personally, I needed to let my rage subside.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said America could have no greater legacy than to divide the land of Israel and establish a Palestinian Arab terrorist state to end what she called the "humiliation of occupation." She made the statement at a dinner celebrating the third anniversary of the American Task Force on Palestine.

"The Palestinian people deserve a better life, a life that is rooted in liberty, democracy, uncompromised by violence and terrorism, unburdened by corruption and misrule and forever free of the daily humiliation of occupation," she said. "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal."

Of course, no one can argue that Arabs deserve a better life. As a matter of fact, as an Arab-American who covered the region as a journalist for many years, I can tell you they had one - when they were living under Israeli control. Since they have been living under autonomy and under the control of terrorists, life has indeed been miserable.

What chance is there for democracy or liberty or a life uncompromised by violence and terrorism or unburdened by corruption and misrule under leaders sworn to destroy their neighbors and committed to unending war?

It's worth mentioning that these leaders, the ones who are going to usher into existence Rice's fantasy of democracy, liberty and an end to terrorism and corruption, consider all the Jews of the Middle East as occupiers. The only way that occupation will end is by their annihilation. And when Rice feeds their passions with this kind of talk, she is in reality paving the way for a future holocaust.

But she wasn't finished with those insensitive, misguided words.

"I believe there could be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state for people who have suffered too long, have been humiliated too long," she said.

What on earth is she talking about? No greater legacy for America than to create a new terrorist state during a so-called war on terrorism? Is she really suggesting that the Arabs in the region have suffered at the hands of Israel? Or have they suffered at the hands of their own leaders?

"I know that, sometimes, a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel must seem like a very distant dream but I know, too, that there are so many things that once seemed impossible that after they happened they simply seemed inevitable," she continued.

The only thing that seems inevitable to me is that the Bush administration will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again -- never learning from them. No matter how many promises Israel's enemies betray we will continue to give them every benefit of every doubt.

I keep hearing that Condoleezza Rice is a smart woman. If indeed she is smart and understands the complexities of the Middle East, she has deliberately chosen to side with evil — the kind of people with whom we are supposed to be at war. It means that her boss, President Bush, is committed to this evil path as well.

Just so you understand what is at stake: Your tax dollars are going to subsidize this new terrorist state of Palestine. This will be a state that, just as it does today as an autonomous territory, indoctrinates children from the earliest ages to hate Jews, to embrace jihad, to consider "martyrdom" -- the homicidal desire to kill as many innocent civilian Israelis as possible -- as the highest calling one can have in life.

What is she thinking about? What is Bush thinking about? Why do they continue to pursue policies of appeasement with regard to the Islamic terrorists of the Israeli-Arab conflict while pursuing their own war against the Islamic terrorists in Iraq?
Can someone explain the difference? •

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com on which this article appeared.

Kevin Myers

How does Israel choose its ambassador to Ireland? If he was struck by lightning two minutes after he was born; if his mother had inverted nipples so he could suck no milk; if the rabbi's scalpel was rusty and blunt, leading to full amputation of the organ in question; if his school was infected by scabies and he spent his childhood scratching himself almost to death; if he went bald at the age of 14, and lost his teeth at the age of 18—well, then clearly he is a chap who is used to misfortune, and is thoroughly qualified to be Israeli ambassador to Ireland.

For this appointment would wipe the smile off the face of the happiest Jew in the world. Indeed, when Danny Kaye was offered the job, he promptly became a Mormon, and grew a foreskin. Because, there is in this country almost no popular sympathy whatever for the plight of the Israeli people, and wherever the wretched Israeli ambassador goes, he'll be met by renta-mobs of ignorant hullabalooing know-alls, howling their anthems of hatred.

The apex of this anti-Israeli pathology is in the Seanad - surely the most redundant, conceited and dim-witted upper chamber of any state in Europe. This is the home of that grisly and self-congratulatory Michael D Norris-tendency, with their regular, shrill peacock-screeches of denunciations of anything to do with Israel (usually after some disingenuous declarations about their love of Jews). University campuses, in their more modest undergraduate way, tend to follow senatorial example, typically with their banners proclaiming, "Lesbians, Gays & Trans-Sexuals Against Israel."

What welcome would the Seanad or our university campuses extend to Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose forces have ruthlessly showered Israeli civilian areas with rockets? What greeting would they give the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, or the Hamas political leader, Khalid Mashaal? These fine fellows want to introduce full-blown Islamic law to the entire area of Palestine, including Israel. Would they howl these creatures down, as they do the Israeli ambassador every time that gallant tries to speak in public? Do you know, I rather doubt it.

The truth is that any anti-Zionist Arab who comes to Ireland, regardless of the vileness of his general opinions, will be greeted as if he were the recently discovered love-child of Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa. No inconvenient questions for him about by which manner he prefers to execute homosexuals -- by pushing walls on them with bulldozers, as Taliban did, or the rather more existentially satisfying one of the crowd being allowed to stone them to death, as in Iran and Saudi. Ditto harlots. Ditto women who have been raped and can't prove they didn't give assent.

It is not merely the sheer stupidity of the reflexive anti-Israeli attitude in Ireland, but its counter-emotionalism which is so stunning. If most people judge an issue by consulting their feelings -- which, regrettably, is usually the case in this country -- then surely some hearts, if only out of sentiment alone, should be moved by Israel's dilemma. After all, the Jewish state is smaller in area than Munster, and is surrounded by a hostile Arab landmass the size of the continental United States. It has not known general peace in 60 years.

Instead, almost all traditions of supporting the underdog, of siding with the weakest, of sympathising with those who have been oppressed for hundreds of years, vanish completely when the weak, oppressed underdog is Jewish and Israeli. And please, please spare me talk about the powerlessness of the Palestinians compared to the military might of Israel.

Both are meaningless illusions when confronted by the demographics of the region and the cult of the suicide bomber. Laser-guided missiles can do nothing to prevent the Arabs of the region dramatically out-breeding Jews in the next half a century: smart technology cannot thwart the smarter suicide-bomber, who in a heterogeneous and open society like Israel will sooner or later blow apart the school bus or the bar-mitzvah.

The generalized Arab intifada against Israel took a new shape this year, with the ceaseless rocket bombardment of Israeli cities—from the very areas which the Israelis had, under international pressure, obligingly just vacated. The Israeli response was exactly in line with the expectations of Hizbollah. The latter's men used civilian areas to attack Israeli towns, largely inaccurately, and imbecilic; but largely accurate Israeli counter-fire then killed sleeping civilians, as intended. Both sides were obediently following some abominable master-plan in which Hizbollah behaved with diabolical cunning, and the Israelis with abysmal stupidity. The result? Thousands dead, and Israel's international reputation even lower then before. Hizbollah is now the great political and military force of Lebanon, just as Hamas is amongst Palestinians.

I write this today because I have just read-- with weary predictability: and I say that with some justification, because I did, with great weariness, predict it -- that Hizbollah are back in business on the Israeli border. Armed militants are re-establishing themselves in bunkers there, and Israeli intelligence reports they have 20,000 rockets. Their leader, Sheikh Nasrallah, disagrees. He says they actually have 30,000.

We'll see who's right over the coming months.

Kevin Myers is a prominent Irish columnist. This appeared in the Irish Independent of November 15.

David Frankfurter

It's now out that the American security coordinator in the territories, General Keith Dayton, has been giving secret training to the Palestinian Presidential Guard. It's part of his program to provide "support" to the Palestinian Fatah faction in its internal struggle with Hamas.

The initial training was conducted by American military instructors in a military camp near Jericho, for some 400 men. And now Dayton has asked the Quartet to put in place a program that will have Egyptian, British and perhaps even Jordanian instructors to train the force loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, helping it to grow to some 6,000 men.

Dayton seems to have managed to help his masters forget the history of the Presidential Guard and its elite Force 17 unit, and is probably hoping that the Quartet will also have a spot of amnesia.

He has also sidestepped the conclusions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that, before the addition of more than 35,000 troops in the last three years, the Palestinian Security Services were overstaffed, out of control, and an insurmountable burden on the Palestinian economy. Of greater concern, though, is that Force 17 is well known for its involvement in terror activities.

In this context, the experience of previous US training efforts is of interest. Journalist Mathew Kalman revealed in The San Francisco Chronicle in early 2005 that as far back as 1998, the CIA spent tens of millions of dollars, contracting secret training for hundreds of Palestinian Security Service personnel, including members of Force 17. Kalman managed to get hold of this "graduation picture" of one of those courses. Look at the fellow kneeling fourth from the left in the front row. Kalman identified him as Raafat Bajali – a member of the terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who was killed in a "work accident" while making a bomb. Fortunately, he took fellow Al-Aksa terrorist Nedal Zedok with him

And standing in the back row is Khaled Abu Nijmeh. He was one of Bethlehem's most-wanted Palestinian militants in the city, suspected of involvement in a string of suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis. In May 2002, he was one of 13 gunmen escorted from the Church of the Nativity siege in Bethlehem, flown to Cyprus and then to exile in Europe. Several of his fellow deportees received their salaries from the Palestinian Security Service payroll. Nijmeh proudly told Kalman of his membership in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades alongside his job as first sergeant in Palestinian General Intelligence. He was very pleased with the CIA training that helped him learn the trade. "I was not alone. Many Palestinian security people were trained by the Americans. We hope they will continue helping us."

Well, now that our memories have faded a little, it seems that Nijmeh's prayers are being answered. The Americans are once again training tomorrow's terrorists.

David Frankfurter is an Israeli blogger. His site is:
http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com.

Ruth King

Here is a brief quiz. Who said the following and when?

"Peace will require compromises by all. The solution is the return of occupied lands in exchange for security and recognition of Israel’s right to exist….”

Secretary of State Richard Rogers said it first on December 9, 1969 while President Nixon was bedeviled in his efforts to end the Vietnam War.

It became a mantra repeated by every consecutive administration…invoked especially when other policy initiatives failed.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, flush with betrayal of Vietnam, the Kurds and Israel, whose victory in the 1973 war he aborted, repeated it often. During the brief administration of Gerald Ford, Kissinger threw in crude threats about “reassessing” the America-Israel relationship.

Jimmy Carter whose presidency was a shambles due to the Iran hostage crisis and the failure of his tragic-comic opera military operation to free them, put all his efforts into cementing Camp David on Sadat’s terms.

Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State Schultz repeated the magic formula in 1982, naming it “The Reagan Plan,” which they announced to great fanfare while James Baker was chief of staff. They vainly scrambled to implement the plan after the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon to cover over the undignified and cowardly American exit from Beirut.

In 1992, with James Baker as secretary of State, George Bush Sr. made the mantra the cornerstone of his heavy handed demands on Israel following America's withdrawal from Iraq following Gulf War I and the embarrassing slaughter of those who responded to what President Bush would later claim was an "ad lib" invitation to rise against Saddam — which he never thought Shiites and Kurds would take seriously.

Bill Clinton restated this policy in the “Parameters for Peace” drawn up in 2000 when the Oslo Accords were flouted by Arafat and his legacy was clouded by scandal.

We have here true bipartisan idiocy. Madeleine Albright, Dennis Ross, Sandy Berger, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell have all repeated the axiom ad nauseum and Thomas Friedman has been reciting it since his birth on July 20, 1953.

And now, James Baker, stuffed shirt and pomaded hair intact, fresh from his “Iraq Study Group” fact finding mission, has let it be known that his recommendations will also “explore” a broader U.S. initiative for tackling the Middle East conflict. Anyone fail to know what that means? As a senior observer of Baker during the presidency of the first President Bush notes: "There is no Arab dictator or terrorist that James Baker will not talk to. The only country he will never have a reasonable discussion with is Israel."

Never mind the chaos in Iraq; never mind a militant, nuclear and mad North Korean dictator; never mind an even madder Iranian apocalyptic disciple of the 12th Imam; never mind the strife in Africa which has killed, injured and dislocated millions; never mind Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega; never mind the growing bellicosity of Putin; never mind that a Chinese sub has been stalking our navy in the Pacific.

Faced with the abject failure of the President to pursue victory (dissipated in the effort to achieve a delusory "democracy" in Iraq) and stymied by the intractable problems listed above, Jim Baker is dusting off the “do it yourself peace kit”-- solve the world's problems through Israel's surrender. Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, this is being touted as a “new” initiative.

Doctors, scientists, businessmen, even lawyers, are all expected to retool and change strategy when old theories and modalities fail. So called statesmen, when it comes to the Middle East, no matter how often the plan fails, are incapable of entertaining any alternative other then territorial withdrawal.

What makes it more frustrating is the fact that no Israeli leader, not a single one, has had the courage and the principles to say that the Rogers Plan and all its subsequent clones reside in cloud cuckoo land.

To his credit Prime Minister Menachem Begin initially tried (he was accused of lecturing to his hosts for his pains), but his efforts were upended by the international romance with Anwar Sadat whose “peace” initiative with respect to the Arab Palestinians can only be likened to Admiral Tojo and the architects of Pearl Harbor demanding autonomy for Samoa after World War II. Nonetheless, Sadat got every concession he demanded from a bedazzled Israel and American public and an insistent Jimmy Carter.

Since that time, Israel has agreed in both principle and practice to the territorial surrender mantra. Her leaders have scuttled Israel's historical, religious and strategic rights, endlessly recycling the “land for peace” nonsense. Now it is called a two state solution when, in fact, it is a three state solution: Jewish Palestine, Arab Palestine aka Jordan, and a putative Palestinian Arab terrorist state between them.

And what did Israelis gain for their acquiescence in Camp David, Oslo, Wye, the removal from Gaza? Terrorism, death, destruction, escalating demands and the terrible knowledge that they must face the same enemies all over again.

Emboldened by Western acquiescence, Arabs are spreading jihad and barbarity in the Middle East and Africa. But the media only announce “breaking news,” which turns out to be the same old “broken news,” of a new initiative which is always an old initiative….almost four decades old. Even the headlines are the same: “signs of moderation” mixed in with reports of Arab nations “exploring ways to break the impasse; stop the cycle of violence; end the occupation; form a unity government…blah, blah, blah…”

Most ridiculous of all, pundits, statesmen, academics, media all agree on one thing: If Israel commits suicide, Arabs will recognize Israel’s right to exist. It is actually hilarious.

Well, as a member of the executive committee of Americans for a Safe Israel, I declare herewith we will not recognize France’s right to exist unless and until France agrees to make Provence an independent Sharia Moslem state, with Paris as its capital, in the interest of bringing stability to Europe as it faces the increasing threat of Islamic jihad.

Just kidding folks…. but think….Israel is as legitimate a state as India, Pakistan, Burkina Faso, and a host of other post-colonial states whose “right to exist” is never questioned. It is a democracy with advanced institutions and a staunch ally of the very nation which sought to bring democracy to Iraq….but seems determined to weaken the only real democracy in the entire Middle East.

All this in the name of a failed, outmoded and dangerous policy which gets dusted off and trotted out every time an administration’s other policies falter.

It is astonishing that this endlessly resuscitated "plan" is not met with contemptuous belly -laughs, but no, here we go again, and again, and again.