In This Issue:

SAUDIS OUTBID IRAN
Herbrt Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR
Rael Jean Isaac

ONLY THE LEFT MAY INTERFERE
William Mehlman

SPLITTING EVANGELICALS FROM ISRAEL
Ed Lasky

DR. PIPES GOES TO LONDON
Melanie Phillips

KNOW THY ENEMY
Martin Kramer

INDEFENSIBLE ASSUMPTIONS
Ruth King

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

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Herbert Zweibon

Last month in this column I argued that our policy in the Middle East is increasingly shaped by Saudi Arabia. Military columnist Ralph Peters has described Baker’s Iraq Study Group Report as chiefly “the Sunni-Arab-Wahhabist view from Riyadh.” While the Bush administration has rejected the call for negotiations with Iran and Syria, it shows signs of embracing what Peters aptly terms its “lunatic suggestion to tie Iraq to solving the (unsolvable) Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Thus Condoleeza Rice hastened to the Middle East to “accelerate progress on the Road Map,” i.e. to skip the awkward first phase (dismantling terrorist infrastructure) and jump to the final stage (“a permanent status agreement”). The notion behind this foolish (for the U.S.) and suicidal (for Israel) policy was that this would strengthen the position of the “moderate” Abbas among Palestinian Arabs (look what I can achieve for you) vis a vis Hamas (which even the State Department cannot yet bring itself to define as “moderate”).

But Saudi Arabia had other ideas, i.e. proving that it could do more for Hamas than Iran, up to now its chief patron. By erasing the supposed gap between the Abbas-led Fatah and Hamas, King Abdullah sought to force the U.S. to accept the “democratically elected” Hamas government without Hamas meeting the “preconditions” the “Quartet” had set in the Road Map. Not only would Saudi Arabia provide the political cover Ahmadinejad could not hope to offer Hamas, it would outbid Iran financially. Iran had offered to provide funds for Hamas when the West initially cut them off, but Saudi Arabia now promised a cool billion.

And so Abdullah summoned Fatah and Hamas to Mecca to fashion an agreement that would stop the violence between the rival factions, allowing them to focus their energies against Israel, or in the words of the agreement “liberation from the burden of the occupation…first and foremost in matters concerning Jerusalem, the refugees, Al-Aqsa mosque [the Arabs have whipped up hysteria with trumped up charges that Israel is undermining the mosque], the prisoners and detainees, the fence and the settlements.” Under heavy Saudi pressure Fatah was forced to pay the chief price. Khaled Abu Toameh in The Jerusalem Post quotes a Fatah official, “On Thursday evening the Saudis told us that we had only two hours to sign an agreement and they wouldn’t accept any excuses.”

A Hamas official said Fatah had made 90% of the concessions. Abbas agreed to bring Hamas into the PLO, thus facilitating its objective of taking control of the organization. And he agreed to incorporate Hamas’s 4,000 man paramilitary Executive Force into the Palestinian security forces, which means they will be paid with the $84.5 million the U.S. has designated for the PA security forces. Abu Toameh points out that prior to signing the Mecca Accord, Abbas had outlawed that same Executive Force which was condemned by his aides as a “bunch of murderers and gangsters.” As for Israel, in the Mecca Accord the word is not even mentioned: Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan declared: “Hamas’s position remains firm and unchanged: we will never recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.”

Will the agreement hold? Despite the billion dollar bribe, one suspects not long. It is a recipe for Fatah to be swallowed up and Fatah’s gangsters are unlikely to submit quietly to the gunmen of Hamas. The question is whether it will last long enough to enable Hamas to win international legitimacy – and Abbas immediately embarked on a diplomatic offensive in Europe to sell the “unity government.”

The chief significance of the Mecca Accord is in once again revealing the extent to which Saudi Arabia is prepared to undercut U.S. policies and to foster the most extreme elements in the radical Arab world.

Rael Jean Isaac

A NEW LOW AT BRANDEIS

Brandeis’s President Jehuda Reinharz, smarting from the defection of major donors in the wake of the university’s welcoming of Jimmy Carter, now lashes out – against Daniel Pipes!

Here’s the background. Flush with the “success” of the Carter speech (students gave him several standing ovations), left-wing students want to bring Norman Finkelstein to the campus. Finkelstein, a prominent figure on the anti-Israel lecture circuit, never misses the chance to identify Jews with Nazis. Paul Bogdanor, who titles his chapter on Finkelstein (in The Jewish Divide Over Israel, Transaction Publishers) “Chomsky for Nazis,” provides a cornucopia of samples, of which space permits only one: “I can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo. I would think that, for them, it is like Lee Iacocca being told that Chrysler is using Toyota tactics.”

A group of students supportive of Israel decided to invite Daniel Pipes, the respected (and courageous) Arabist and policy analyst, director of the Middle East Forum and founder of Campus Watch, which monitors the growing anti-Israel onslaught on U.S. campuses.

Reinharz, in what is described in The Jewish Week (Feb. 16) as “a contentious meeting with faculty” denounced both Finkelstein and Pipes as “weapons of mass destruction.” Now there’s a breathtaking moral equivalence. Reinharz actually equates distinguished scholar and staunch friend of Israel Daniel Pipes with Finkelstein, the vicious ignoramus celebrated by neo-Nazis around the world.

If there are any donors who did not drop out as a result of the Carter affair, surely they should shut their wallets now.

BETHLEHEM'S CHRISTIANS

While the likes of Robert Novak and Jimmy Carter hold Israel responsible for the plight of Christians in the Holy Land, more and more Christians are identifying the real culprits. In The Jerusalem Post (Jan. 25) journalist Khaled Abu Toameh describes how Fuad and Georgette Lama of Bethlehem woke up one morning to discover that Moslems from a nearby village had seized their six dunam plot south of the city. Senior PA security officers offered to help them kick out the intruders. Says Mrs. Lama: “We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land. Instead…they simply decided to keep it for themselves.” When her 72 year old husband went to his land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns.

Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station, who has been the subject of numerous death threats and whose house was recently fire-bombed, has documented more than 160 incidents of attacks on Christians in the area. “The situation is very dangerous,” he says. “I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem.”

Already Christians, in 1967 a large majority, make up less than 15% of Bethlehem’s population.

BAKER ADVISERS "SURPRISED"

The Jewish Daily Forward (Jan. 30) reveals that advisers to the Iraq Study Group complain they were blindsided by the Report’s claim that success in Iraq depended on solving the Israel-Arab conflict. Indeed, several said they were shocked the issue made it into the final report, since they had been specifically told not to address the conflict..

The modus operandi of the Iraq Study Group was to divide the expert advisers into four working groups, with different areas of expertise. They offered their recommendations to the panel’s professional staffers, who wrote the final report. Any recommendations on the Arab-Israel conflict should have come from the “strategic environment working group.” But a member said that group was never asked to deal with the issue. And a staff member of the United States Institute of Peace, under whose auspices the Iraq Study Group operated, told the Forward “We were as surprised as anyone else [at the Iraq-Israel linkage].”

So what happened? As many have suspected, it appears Baker was behind it (and behind him, Saudi Arabia). Baker’s front man seems to have been Edward Djerejian (director of the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice) whom staff members identified as the person who inserted the language regarding Israel. Djerejian is a State Department Arabist, a former ambassador to Syria with stints in Beirut, Morocco, Jordan, and one year in Israel.

And so, it would appear, the major policy plank in the Iraq Study Group Report was planted at the last minute by James Baker. One staffer told the Forward that one disgusted adviser quipped “Does anyone think that if we solve the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict the insurgent in Fallujah will say, ‘Great, now I can put back my AK-47 and go home.’”

TZIPI AT DAVOS

One of the more discouraging revelations from Israeli opinion polls is the soaring popularity of Tzipi Livni, the shallow creature who fills the shoes of long time (and equally preposterous) Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Livni declared: “Gaza now is a terrorist nest, controlled by Hamas, by terrorist organizations…Nevertheless, I still believe that this [destroying the Gaza settlements and turning them over to Hamas] was the right thing to do. I do not regret it….The vast majority of Israelis believe in the two state solution, in the fullest sense of the term. I need to convince them that this is not a risk for Israel and that this is the true and right vision.”

The implications of this are breathtaking. Leaving Gaza was a failure – but no regrets. Clearly Livni does not believe in assessing policy in terms of its impact on Israeli security. Now her task is to convince Israelis that leaving Judea and Samaria is “not a risk for Israel.” Why should it not be a huge risk, indeed, based on experience, a certain catastrophe? Apparently because it’s “the true and right vision.”

Peres could not have said it better (or worse,
if you value Israel’s survival). Israel is to pursue “visions,” no matter how divorced from reality and how disastrous their impact on the future of her people.

U.S. FUNDS TERRORO TRIBUTES

“A Palestinian street named for Saddam Hussein was paved with USAID money.” So write Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook in Palestinian Media Watch. The Palestinian Municipality of Yaabid decided to name both a school and its main street “to immortalize Saddam’s memory and to emphasize the values of Arabness and Jihad which he represented.” The authors note that there are plenty of similar examples. After the U.S. gave the Jenin municipality money for road works, a block in the center of town was named for the first Iraqi suicide terrorist who killed four American soldiers in Fallujah. USAID also funded the building of the Salaf Khalef Sports Center in honor of the man better known as Abu Iyad, the head of the Black September terror organization, who was behind the killing of U.S. diplomats Cleo Noel and George Moore in Sudan and of the 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. And USAID financed renovations of the Dalal Mughrabi School, named in honor of the terrorist responsible for the death of American photographer Gail Rubin and 16 Israelis. •

William Mehlman

The next time some know-it-all tries to disqualify you from voicing your objection to the policies of this or any other Israeli government on the grounds that you don’t live in Israel, be sure to check your wallet. You’re being targeted by the most transparent shell game of the past half century.

The “if you don’t live there, you better shut up” scam is two-dimensional -- historical and political. Israel is the shared legacy of the entire Jewish people. With all due respect to the percentage of that number residing there at any moment in time, their right to decide its destiny, even within the most idyllic democratic context, is mitigated by the impact of that decision on a global Jewish constituency to whom Israel may represent anything from a dream waiting to be fulfilled to a critical lifeline in a world becoming increasingly inhospitable to Jews.

From flag-waving idealists to the frightened Jewish escapees from Paris and Strasbourg to the impoverished Falasha of Ethiopia, the “ingathering” of which Herzl dreamt remains an ongoing process, a stream that could burst into a floodtide with one twist of tomorrow’s headlines,

From Day One of its reestablishment, the Jewish state and its governments have been vested with two categorical imperatives---guardianship of the global Jewish lifeline and its assets and custodianship of the dream of national Jewish renewal. They are embodied in Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the Law of Return, which vouchsafes to any Jew seeking it, automatic citizenship with rights equal to his compatriots. Any Israeli government that breaks faith with either of those precepts can and should be held answerable to the heirs to the universal Jewish legacy Israel represents.

From a political perspective the “if you don’t live there, you better shut up” put-down is an even bigger scam. First and foremost, it is extremely selective; it is almost never applied to Diaspora Jewry’s liberal-left. Those who were in fullest cry against any exception taken to the Sharon-Olmert government’s catastrophic destruction of 25 Jewish communities in Gaza and northern Samaria knew exactly who their target was---the national Zionist camp in America and throughout the world. Contrast that uproar over “outside meddling” in Israel’s internal affairs with the indifference that has greeted the efforts of leftist billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis and their assorted hangers-on to create a new lobbying organization, certain to weaken an already wounded AIPAC, and clearly aimed at increasing State Department pressure on Israel for whatever concessions may be deemed necessary to the realization of a “two-state solution” to the Arab-Israel conflict. Soros, whose MoveOn.org website has pilloried President Bush for his support of Israel’s refusal to deal with Hamas, has yet to set foot in the Jewish state, but his still unnamed lobby’s perspective is spot-on with his stated conviction that Israel must bear at least partial responsibility for the rising tide of European anti-Semitism because of its allegedly overly harsh reaction to Palestinian terrorism.

To the noble cause of ensconcing a sovereign Palestinian entity along Israel’s southern and eastern flanks, Soros & Co. have rallied the usual gallery of far-left organizational elites, including American Friends of Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and the Jewish Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center. Individually and as a group they are well documented case studies of blatant offshore interference in Israel’s policy-making decisions. It was the Israel Policy Forum, commandeered by David Elcott, an advocate of erasing the “illegal” Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, that convinced Condoleezza Rice of the wisdom of pressuring Israel to effectively relinquish control of the Gaza Strip border crossings at Rafah and Karni. The predictable result was the influx of vast quantities of advanced weaponry into the hands of Hamas. Seymour Reich, past president of B’nai Brith International and a founding member of IPF, remarked of this diplomatic guerilla operation that “I have no doubt that we bolstered the secretary of state’s instincts and strengthened her opinion that aggressive involvement was needed to achieve practical results.”

The precedent for such offshore interference in Israel’s strategic affairs by the hypocritical left goes back a long way. Its employment captured headlines in the summer of 2003 when ultra liberal philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, in his capacity as president of the World Jewish Congress, co-authored with former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger a letter to President Bush denouncing Israel’s security barrier as an obstacle to peace and urging the president, on the eve of a meeting with Ariel Sharon, to treat with the Israeli prime minister no differently than with Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas. It was the same Mr. Bronfman, as reported by Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, who took the Palestinians to task for failing to confine their activities to Judea, Samaria and Gaza . “If the Palestinian suicide bombers only went to the settlements and told the world they were wrong,” he is cited as declaring, “then the whole world would have had a case against Israel and there would be a two-state solution by now. Instead, they sent them into Israel proper (emphasis added), which is ghastly.” Were we to infer from this that the murder of Jews beyond the borders of “Israel proper” is less “ghastly,” or perhaps not “ghastly” at all?”

American Friends of Peace Now and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom are particularly noted for their offshore involvement in issues affecting Israel’s security. AFPN makes no secret of its generous funding of Peace Now (its Israeli parent organization) and the latter’s endless lawsuits against Jewish hilltop communities in Judea and Samaria. One of those legal vendettas led to the vicious police assault--captured on video and viewed throughout the world--on teenagers and members of the Knesset defending the Jewish residents of Amona against an Olmert government evacuation order.

More recently, the PN-AFPN partnership persuaded The New York Times to devote a full page to the claim that the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, plus entire Jewish neighborhoods in the Jerusalem metro area, are built on “usurped Arab private property.” The allegation, as The Jerusalem Post’s Sarah Honig observed in a recent column, is “brazenly fraudulent, in part relying on the fact that the Arabs continue to claim lands they sold the Jews for exorbitant prices.” It should come as no surprise that the Times’ knee-jerk coddling of the self-loathing Jewish left again trumped any bothersome checking of the facts.

In terms of negative impact on Israeli fortunes, nothing matches the “victory” AFPN, in league with the Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek, achieved last fall in scuttling an AIPAC-backed “Palestinian Anti-Terrorist Act” that enjoyed the warm support of both houses of Congress. The bill would have cut off U.S. direct aid to the Palestinian Authority as well as assistance to any NGO or UN agency with connections to Hamas operating within the PA structure. Defining the PA as a “terrorist sanctuary,” the measure would have additionally hung padlocks on PA offices in the U.S. and placed restrictions on the travel of PA and PLO representatives within the U.S. Finally, it would have prohibited contacts by American personnel with officials of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine..

Despite huge majority approval in the House of Representatives, an AFPN-IPF-Brit Zedek steamroller, one of the more intensive lobbying campaigns the Senate has recently witnessed, flattened AIPAC and succeeded in watering the bill down to such a degree as to leave virtually no room for compromise between the House and Senate versions. In the end, with the echoes of an anti-bill telephone campaign that outnumbered supporting calls 3 to 1 ringing in their ears, the legislators decided to drop the whole matter.

The Olmert government, trigger-quick to condemn any imagined interference in Israel’s vital interests by U.S. Jewry’s national Zionist camp, stood mute before this mugging of its own AIPAC lobby and the embarrassment of scores of Israel’s most dedicated supporters in the House and Senate. That probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Olmert and Sharon before him have for years stood in worshipful admiration of the machers of the American Jewish left and their multimillionaire enablers. After all, it was an Israel Policy Forum dinner in 2005 that provided the venue for Mr. Olmert’s famous assertion that Israel had become “tired of fighting…tired of being courageous...tired of winning…tired of defeating our enemies.”

Almost on a par with the prime minister’s acquiescence to the Jewish left’s vaporization of the Palestinian Anti-Terrorist Act, was the relative silence of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which American Friends of Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum are a part. While the Presidents Conference is not, per se, a Zionist construct, it is difficult to see, Glick argues, how it can justify sheltering under its umbrella, groups whose apparent goal is “to weaken Israel, to weaken Israel’s alliance with the U.S. and to strengthen Israel’s enemies.”

Obviously emboldened by its success in crushing the Palestinian Anti-Terrorist Act, AFPN has embarked on yet another spate of offshore meddling in Israel’s internal affairs – this time in collusion with a group of Israeli leftists orgasmically aroused over the prospect of making Syria’s Bashar Assad a gift of the Golan Heights. There are any number of possible explanations for the “peace” gestures Syria’s puppet dictator has added of late to a policy mix that includes periodic threats of war, the rearming of Hezbollah, a firm alliance with Ahmadinejad’s Iran and continued hospitality to Hamas boss-man Khaled Mashaal. He might believe a deal with Israel would relieve the American political and economic pressure being exerted on him, compensate for his waning influence in Lebanon or simply enable him to cash in on an Olmert government so dislocated by last summer’s Lebanese debacle that it would be willing to trade the Golan Heights for any flim-flam agreement that could be construed as “peace.”

The fact remains, however, that more than 70 percent of the Israeli public, across the political spectrum, is dead set against any surrender of the Golan Heights with its strategic link to the defense of the nation, its critical water sources and its unique economic and tourist values. The Bush Administration’s corresponding aversion to any deal that would enhance the Assad regime’s strategic posture might have been regarded as of secondary concern in a Middle East not seething with Syrian-aided terrorist insurgency, but that was precisely AFPN’s cue to weigh in on the issue. Demanding a public pronouncement from President Bush that he does not oppose Israeli “peace talks” with Syria. AFPN, in a co-sponsored letter to the president, lamented that “unfortunately many in Israel and the U.S. believe that your administration is standing in the way of renewed Israeli-Syrian contacts. We urge you to clarify publicly and expeditiously that this is not the case.”

The stentorian tone of the letter was far more explicit in AFPN’s follow-up action. Irked by reports in the Israeli media that Bush was pressuring Israel to reject Bashar’s “peace” overtures, AFPN president Debra DeLee labeled the alleged pressure “outrageous.” “It takes a lot of hutzpa,” she railed, “to tell Israel not to even talk about peace with its neighbor.”

In the face of this mounting intervention in its policy decisions by the American Jewish left, what pretext of non-interference in Israel’s affairs could justify further silence on the part of the national Zionist camp and its Christian Zionist allies? Even as the forces arrayed against the Jewish state gather renewed strength and confidence in their ability to terminate its existence, rumors of the formulation of a plan involving high-ranking representatives of the Israeli Foreign and Defense ministries for the withdrawal of Israel from most of Judea and Samaria and the dispossession of up to 150,000 of their Jewish residents are gathering increasing resonance. The reported appointment of Yossi Amirani, former Israeli Consul General in San Francisco and fundraiser for far-left Meretz party chairman Yossi Beilin to coordinate the effort, adds small comfort to the picture. It was Beilin’s 2003 “Geneva Initiative,” calling for the establishment of a Palestinian entity within “temporary borders,” that some believe so spooked Ariel Sharon that he succumbed to the architects of the Gaza evacuation. Ominously, the establishment of just such a “temporary” PLO entity as a prelude to a permanent “two-state solution”--the “political horizon” the Olmert government is so eager to lay at the feet of the Fatah-Hamas newlyweds--is precisely what Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been beating the drums about in her relentless march up and down the diplomatic circuit.

If such a scenario is unthinkable to those who hold Israel’s security, the Zionist dream and God’s promise to the Jewish people in sacred regard, then Israel’s friends--Jews and Christians in America and throughout the world–had better make their voices heard, loud and clear.

William Mehlman represents AFSI in Israel and is co-editor of the internet magazine ZionNet.

Ed Lasky

While there has been much attention given to challenges Israel faces on college campuses, in the media, and increasingly in the halls of Congress, the historically solid and vitally important support given by Evangelical Christians towards Israel is now being threatened. How is this happening and who are the actors?

Evangelicals support Israel for a variety of reasons, among them a belief that Israel is a fellow democracy with which we share a common Western culture and that we value as a friend. Israel has been victimized by Islamic terrorism, as have we. Israel is also a strategic ally in the war against Islamic radicalism— a lone Western outpost in a faraway land that gave birth to two major religions, Judaism and Christianity, the foundation of Western civilization. However, the core reason that Evangelicals have an affection for the Jewish people and a strong desire to protect Israel is found, unsurprisingly, in the Bible.

What may surprise people is that the foundation of this support has nothing to do with end-of-days scenarios or the desire to convert the Jews. Instead, there is a belief that God has a covenant with the Jewish people and with Israel. Christians have a religious mandate to support Israel. The promise of Genesis 12:3 is that "he who blesses Israel will be blessed, and he who curses Israel will be cursed."

To people who interpret Israel to mean the Jews—such as evangelical Christians--Genesis becomes an exhortation to both Zionism and philo-Semitism.

Efforts are now underway to erode this base of support. The tactics seem to rely on a few simple but potentially perilous ideas. One avenue of attack is to question the theology behind the Biblical mandate to "bless the Jews." Another is to portray Israelis as oppressing Christians in an attempt to evoke imagery from the Bible regarding the trials and tribulations of Jesus. Those who do this are attempting to weaken the sympathy that is one of the hallmarks of Christian Zionism.

The theological argument that a bond no longer exists between God and the Jews (and by extension Israel) is known as "replacement" theology. The Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an anti-Israel Palestinian Christian group, has been among those groups most actively promoting this spurious doctrine. Adherents believe that Jews fell from divine favor when they refused to accept Christ and that God chose the Church (Christians) to replace them. Therefore Christians have no religious obligation to support the Jewish people. Sabeel has at times gone to the next "step" and cast Israel as the new "Rome" whose government is a "crucifixion system." The head of Sabeel has called Israelis "Herods" and has linked their behavior to the acts of the Romans that killed Jesus. The Anglican Church in England seems sympathetic to this view. This might be expected since "replacement "theology has taken hold in Europe while it has been rejected so far by most American churches.

However, there are disconcerting signs that this favorable state of affairs may be changing. The old "mainline" churches such as the Presbyterians have leaders who support the Palestinian narrative. As Hugh Hewitt has noted about his own Presbyterian Church, whose leadership has been very receptive to proposals to disinvest from companies doing business with Israel, the governing body seems to be heavily influenced by key leaders who are either Palestinian Christians or have close ties to Palestinian Arabs.

Sabeel periodically gives road shows to propagate this view. The group has had some success: at a recent conference in Chicago, attendees included representatives from a clutch of organizations: Churches for Middle East Peace, American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Wheat Ridge Ministries. Their efforts have begun to transcend trying to spread their "gospel" beyond Church groups to lobbying Congress. An upcoming Sabeel conference will feature Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a former Democrat candidate for President.

Jimmy Carter also wants a role in trying to divide Evangelicals. His recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, is indeed replete with factual errors, misrepresentations, plagiarism, and outright fabrication. But what seems to have escaped the critics is that Carter is primarily speaking to a Christian audience. His narrative may resonate with them in a way that reviewers do not appreciate. For, in attacking Israel the way he chose to do, he is promoting a view that there is no longer a covenant between Jews and God that Christians are bound to honor. His book, in short, is a brief in support of "replacement theology."

How can this be so? In Carter's view, Israel fails a "religious test": it is no longer a nation of Jews. In his book, Carter describes visits to several kibbutzim and found that on the Sabbath only two worshippers appeared at the synagogue. When he asked if this was typical, the "guide gave a wry smile and shrugged his shoulders as if it was not important either way." When Carter participated in a graduation ceremony at an Israel Defense Forces training camp, he presented a Hebrew bible to each graduate, "which was one of the few indications of a religious commitment that I observed during our visit." At the end of his visit, he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. He told her that he had taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government." Not only does Carter seem to castigate Israel for losing its religious bearings but also he seems to call upon the wrath of God to punish her for her transgressions.

Michael Jacobs, writing in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that Carter seems to take the same tack as the Sabeel in trying to depict Israelis as oppressors of Christians. He writes that Carter "repeatedly refers to Israeli oppression of Christians, destruction of Christian holy sites and the imprisonment of Bethlehem."

That Christians are fleeing the Holy Land should not be surprising. Tony Pearce, pastor of the Bridge Christian Fellowship, notes “the Christian Arab population within the pre-1967 borders of Israel has grown from 34,000 in 1948 to 130,000 in 2005. Ironically this is the only part of the Middle East where the Christian population is growing The main reason for the departure of Christians from PA administered territories is the religious persecution, murder and land grabs which stem from the increased Islamization of the region. This is the result of the PA adopting Muslim religious law in the territories in contrast to Israel which safeguards the religious freedom of its citizens."

Lest we forget, it was Muslim terrorists who defiled the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002. While fleeing Israeli Defense Forces, they forced their way into the Church and held clerics hostage. They knew Israel respected religious buildings more than they themselves did, and they were right. Israel eventually agreed to let these terrorists leave the Church and travel to Europe in order to avoid harm to the Church. Regardless of the deal reached with Israelis and church officials, the Church itself had been ransacked and damaged by the terrorists.

Even within Israel's pre-1967 borders, Muslims have been attacking Christians so there can be no claim that Israel's security fence is the cause of the conflict. In Nazareth, the home of Jesus and the site of many Christian shrines, Muslims have held large militant marches through the main street, shouting, "Islam will dominate the world" and exclaiming "Allah is great." Christians report attacks against Christian shops and have told stories of violence against women and men perpetrated by Muslim residents.

This pattern of oppression of Christians at the hands of Muslims is part of a widespread Middle Eastern phenomenon and has a long history which people such as Jimmy Carter and columnist Robert Novak ignore. Conversely, Christians have found Israel to be a very comforting and congenial place to live. Former Congressman Jack Kemp wrote in response to a Robert Novak column criticizing Israel for the purported effects of the security fence on Christians: “In planning the route of the barrier, particularly in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where population density, religious and international interests intersect, Israel has demonstrated particular sensitivity to Christian concerns. The route was determined and in several cases altered, after a comprehensive dialogue with representatives of the various Church denominations. The ongoing consultations and effort to accommodate denominational interests put the lie to the notion that Israel supposedly seeks to ‘destroy’ or ‘shatter’ these communities.”

All this was of little interest to Jimmy Carter, Sabeel supporters, or their allies in trying to turn Christians against Israel. Nor have they been satisfied with mere written and verbal attacks. A new front has been opened in the battle for the hearts and minds of evangelical Christians with the goal of supplanting the leaders of the evangelical community who have been strongly pro-Israel with leaders and groups who are noticeably less supportive of Israel.

For example, Jim Wallis has enjoyed a blaze of publicity lately as an Evangelical leader that Democrats in particular have tried to enlist. Wallis, who is on the left-wing of the evangelical movement, has a clearly anti-Israel history. He has written: "It's time to challenge the theology of Christian Zionism advanced by many of the American Religious Right, who are completely uncritical of Israel's behavior and totally oblivious to the sufferings (or even the existence) of Arab Christians in the Middle East." He writes in an article highly critical of Israel's activity in Lebanon (titled "The Body of Christ in Lebanon" — clearly intended to evoke the sufferings of Christ) of Arab Christians who are "certainly not supportive of the highly disproportionate military responses of Israel which now target their own families and fellow Arab Christians."

Israel "targets" Christians? Not true. Israel takes great pains to avoid harming civilians. Wallis's silence regarding Hezbollah-Muslim-oppression of these Lebanese Christians is deafening. His magazine Sojourners has long been a forum for anti-Israel voices: one article was entitled "Inside Israeli Apartheid".

The sudden prominence of Wallis is just one indication that forces are at work to shift the allegiance of Evangelicals. Recently, Jimmy Carter (along with Bill Clinton) has announced a new effort to bring together moderate Baptists in a "robust coalition" that would serve as a counterweight to the conservative Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). It had its springboard launch at the Carter Center in Atlanta. (The Carter Center is heavily-funded by Arab Muslims: will Arab oil wealth be used to influence evangelicals against Israel?) The invited churches have a combined membership of more than 20 million, outnumbering the SBC. Dr. Richard Land, head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, probably spotted Carter’s goal in forming the coalition. In noting that there would be areas of disagreement with the group being assembled by Carter and the Southern Baptist Convention, he wrote in a Washington Post article "...one of the areas where there would be significant disagreement would be our view towards Israel, as highlighted by President Carter's new book." That certainly is a prophetic comment.

Is it a coincidence, given the deliberately provocative use of the word "Apartheid" in the title of his book, that many of the church groups behind Carter’s coalition are historically black churches (among the fastest-growing evangelical populations in America and the world)? Did Carter hope by charging Israel with "apartheid" to turn African-Americans against Israel? Will he attempt to lobby against Israel among the evangelicals in his new coalition? Why not? He has everywhere else.

Clearly, Israel enjoys strong support within the evangelical movement. Groups such as the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (founded by pioneered in fostering close ties between the Jewish community, Israel and the evangelicals. Former Presidential candidate Gary Bauer has also been a leader in mobilizing evangelicals to support Israel. More recently, Pastor John Hagee formed Christians United for Israel to serve as a lobbying group for Israel. The superb recent book by Michael Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy; America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present, illuminates the fact that affection for the Jewish people is part of the DNA of America's religious and civic culture, and predates the rise of evangelicals.

However, history has taught the Jewish people that complacency is perilous. The belief that there is a covenant between God and the Jews that must be honored by Christians has only recently (when considering the grand scope of Christian history) enjoyed the prominence that it does now. Efforts to convince Christians that this covenant has been broken will erode Christian support for Jews and for Israel, as will spurious accusations that Israel harms Christians in the Middle East.

What can we do to help ensure that the evangelical and Jewish communities remain friends during this time of worldwide anti-Semitism and existential threats to Israel?

Friendships need to be appreciated and nurtured. Yet there are still many Jews who are wary of this embrace by Christians. The reasons commonly given for this reluctance are fear of Christian anti-Semitism, a misunderstanding regarding the motives for Christian support, and differing domestic agendas.

In fact, Christian anti-Semitism has been a primarily European phenomenon. Evangelical Christians are probably the most philo-Semitic group in the world today. Evangelicals do not support Israel for end-of-days or for conversionary motives. .

Lastly the differing domestic agendas should not unduly bother American Jews. We are both heirs to a grand Western Judeo-Christian heritage and share many common values. We are both groups under attack from the forces of Islamic extremism. In the words of Pastor Hagee, "...what we have in common is far greater than the differences we have allowed to divide us."

Evangelicals have not asked Jews to promote their policies; there is no quid pro quo (or political trading of favors) involved in their support for Israel which, for them, is a biblical mandate that predates the concept of democracy. Perhaps the best prescription to reduce anxiety might be to remember this phrase: be not afraid.

Zev Chafets (a Jewish American who made aliyah to Israel years ago) has written a new book on the relationship between American Evangelicals, Jews and Israel, A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance. He also is mindful of their different domestic agendas.

His response? So what? In a time of turmoil when Israel faces peril as never before, the affection and support that evangelicals extend to Jews and to Israel should be cherished and appreciated for what it is: a gift from God.

Will Jimmy Carter and his allies rend asunder what God hath joined together? Only time will tell.

Ed Lasky is the news editor of The American Thinker. This is an edited version of an article that appeared there on January 30, 2007.

Melanie Phillips

Like bookends at the beginning and end of a week, two significant events occurred recently which, because they conflicted with the received unwisdom, were simply ignored by the mainstream media. The first was the Dispatches TV documentary about Britain’s radical mosques. This provoked virtually no comment from either the media or politicians. The second was the encounter between the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, and the American scholar of Islam and director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, at a day-long event organised by the Mayor to discuss whether or not there was a clash of civilisations. Since this was an enormous left-fest on Livingstone’s home turf, with virtually no speakers other than Pipes and his seconder Douglas Murray (and elsewhere in this jamboree, Oliver Kamm) to put up any opposition, and with an audience overwhelmingly composed of people who thought that American neoconservatives had horns and a tail, it was assumed that Pipes would be disembowelled and his head stuck on a Greater London Authority turnpike. So great was this certainty that Pipes was advised of his terminal foolishness in accepting Livingstone’s deadly invitation.

How wrong everyone was. By all accounts, it was Livingstone and his seconder, Birmingham councillor Salma Yaqoob, who were eviscerated by Pipes and Murray. Pipes, with his gentle, scholarly demeanour and authoritative learning, would doubtless have disarmed his audience by his steadfast refusal to demonise Islam and all Muslims; not at all what would have been expected by those who had previously been fed the ludicrous propaganda caricature of the ‘Islamophobic’ anti-jihadi. Murray, meanwhile, went straight onto the attack and in a series of devastating blows apparently took apart both Livingstone and Yaqoob and brought the audience cheering to its feet.

The blogosphere has duly recorded this victory; you can see the links on Pipes’s website, as well as his own take on the event. But although, as he writes, some 150 journalists attended the day, not a single word has been written about this in the British press. To read a mainstream press account by a British writer of this British event, you have to go to America. In The New York Sun, Daniel Johnson entertainingly notes:

“The audience—eccentrically attired and coiffed, sporting cranky badges and sandals—were atypical political activists, and to judge from their questions, heavily inclined to the left. ‘This is liberal hell!’ muttered one New Yorker, contemplating the ‘Free Palestine’ and anti-racism stalls to which the mayor was giving house room. Yet the loudest cheers were not for him, but for the Daniel who had ventured into this lions’ den. As soon as the self-styled ‘young British mom’ in a hijab who was seconding the mayor, Salma Yaqoob, referred to the July 7 London suicide bombings as ‘reprisal events,’ I felt the audience shudder. There was another shudder when Ms. Yaqoob refused to utter the word ‘Israel.’”

The victory by Pipes and Murray was surely a development of no small significance in these savage and degraded times. Here were two neoconservatives, both staunch anti-jihadis and robust supporters of Israel and America, making the case to thousands of progressives in a left-wing bear-pit that London’s very own version of Che Guevara was helping promote and endorse an evil ideology—and the audience, which might have been assumed to be viscerally anti-America, anti-neocon and anti-Israel (which interestingly, and hearteningly, was never mentioned) duly turned not on them but on Livingstone.

This remarkable reaction provokes two reflections. First, the reason why Livingstone has got away with it for so long is simply because he has been allowed to do so. Thanks to a media that slavishly laps up his every utterance and largely supports his odious world-view, and opponents who tend to be intellectually spineless (think of the Tories, who can’t find one single candidate able enough to stand against him) he has never effectively been held to account. Faced with opponents who are formidably well-informed and intellectually fearless, he is promptly exposed for the empty ideologue that he is and duly crumples.

The second reflection is that, despite all the opprobrium that fashionable opinion generally heaps upon the Pipes/Murray view of the world, despite all the name-calling of ‘Islamophobe’ and all the rest of it, below the surface at least some people have clearly been listening hard and thinking for themselves. They have undoubtedly noted that the Islamists are not exactly committed to fundamental human rights, and that the alliance between sections of the left and those committed to the genocide of the Jews, the killing of homosexuals, the beating of women and the extinction of individual liberty is as loathsome as it is lethal. In other words, opinion has shifted. That’s why they cheered. And that is immensely cheering.

It was a defeat for the totalitarian left and a move towards sanity and decency. And that, no doubt, is why it has not been reported.

Melanie Phillips is author of Londonistan. This article came from www.melaniephillips.com.

Martin Kramer
(This speech was given at Israel’s annual Herzliya Conference on January 23.)

My role here this morning is to serve as a proxy for "the enemy." Now it might have been more interesting to invite "the enemy" and have him speak for himself. But Israel has so many enemies that one wouldn't know quite where to start. In a mere ten minutes all I can do is give you a flavor of how Israel and the United States might look to a composite enemy. I know it's hard, but imagine me as some sort of composite of Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, Osama bin Laden, Bashar Assad, Muqtada as-Sadr, and Khalid Mash'al.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. I'm flattered that you wish to know me better. As it happens, the phrase "know thy enemy" isn't in our Holy Quran, but comes from the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu. The full quote is this: "Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle."

Now it's true that your societies are self-critical. The purpose of your conference is to look hard at yourselves. We follow it closely for what it tells us of your strengths and weaknesses. This self-knowledge works in your favor. But fortunately for us, your knowledge of us is deeply flawed. That's the prime reason why you've been losing every other battle.

It's not that you don't understand our decision-making processes. Your intelligence agencies probably have a good idea of who answers to whom in Damascus and Tehran, and among our brothers in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni mujahadeen in Iraq, and Al-Qaeda. What you don't begin to understand is how we see the world.

To summarize your problem in a sentence: you don't give us credit for having what you have, which is vision. In America and Israel, you keep your greatest thinkers in tanks, where they come up with grand visions and strategies. These minds produce fresh ideas of how to engineer a "new Middle East" to your liking. Then you give these ideas imposing names: the peace process, globalization, democratization. Your ideas usually fail, but you keep generating them, because you have a sense of destiny. And your destiny, so you think, is to remake the world in your image.

Too often, you aren't prepared to give us credit for having visions of our own. And when you overhear snippets of our own big ideas—a map without Israel, a resurrected caliphate, and so on—you say: oh, that's not really serious. No, you assure yourselves, all that the Muslims want is that we address some of their grievances and accommodate a few of their interests. A gesture by you here, a concession by you there, and before you know it, you think you've turned us into your servants.

We find it amusing how you persuade yourselves that just one more gesture, just one more concession, is all that's needed to impose your will.

Here are some examples we've collected from your press, mostly from Haaretz. If only Israel would give up the Shebaa Farms, our brethren in Hezbollah would surrender their weapons. If only our imprisoned fighters were released by Israel, we would allow your "peace process" to be renewed. If only the United States would wink at Syria over the Golan, our brother Assad would ditch Iran. If only Iran were given economic incentives, it would ditch its nuclear program. If only Hamas were recognized, it would recognize Israel in return. If only Israel acknowledged responsibility for the plight of the refugees, the Palestinians would shelve the "right of return."

And on and on. There's even someone at Harvard who claims that Al-Qaeda "is likely to bring an end to the war it declared in return for some degree of satisfaction regarding its grievances." Our brothers in Al-Qaeda felt insulted: just what do they have to do to be regarded as visionaries, and not as angry Arabs with so-called "grievances"?

Not a single one of these "if-thens" is true; time and again, we've told you so. Yet still you're disappointed when your "generous offers" are spurned. The offers are generous, so you think; but to us, such "generosity" is a mark of weakness, a signpost reassuring us that we're on the road to realizing our grand vision.

And we do have a grand vision. It's as deeply rooted in our hearts as the idea of liberty and freedom is rooted in yours. Our leaders, thinkers, intellectuals, and clerics have spread it to millions of people. Untold numbers are prepared to fight for it. It exists in several versions—Islamist, Arabist, nationalist. But in the end, all of these versions revolve around the same idea, and it's this:

We Arabs and Muslims can and must seize control of our destiny. This means wresting the Middle East away from America and its extension, Israel. Every move we make thus has the ultimate purpose of pushing you back, out, and away. We have no interest whatsoever in "final settlements" or a "new Middle East" that would fortify the status quo. We're out to defeat you—and to replace your vision with our own.

You may think this is impossible. We admit it: the Arab and Muslim world isn't a seat of great technological achievement. It struggles with poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance on a daunting scale. But our cadres have taken Sun Tzu to heart. We know ourselves, and we've made a careful study of you, from Bint Jbeil to Baghdad. We demand of our followers sacrifice, but we promise them victory, and we prepare for it. Of course we make mistakes; we're human too. But on balance, we've played a weak hand with skill, while you've played a strong hand ineptly.

Now you may enjoy a brief respite from us, because Sunnis and Shia are regrettably at each other's throats. Your diplomats whisper to you that this is an opportunity. Don't rejoice. If Sunnis and Shia can demonize and massacre one another—fellow Muslims who profess the same faith, speak the same language, share the same culture—what does this portend for you? The Sunni-Shia strife is a warning to you: our visions, our history don't ever go away, they always come back.

Let's set aside the Chinese general, and end with a quote from our own Bin Laden. "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." He's right. We sense, not that you're weak, but that you're weakening. We see America's "wise men" produce an alternative plan for Iraq comprised of gestures to us, disguised under the thin euphemism of a "new diplomatic offensive." We hear America's best-placed foreign policy analyst declare that "the American era in the Middle East has ended." And Israel, defeated in the summer, now debates concessions and initiatives toward us, all of which suggest that Israel is anxious to forestall further defeats.

We know you will launch more offensives, to reverse your decline, or at least create the illusion of its reversal. We expect many "surges." We can't defeat you yet in a straight confrontation. But you are already defeating yourselves, in your think tanks, in your universities, in your editorial boardrooms, in the conclaves of your "wise men."

Finally, you ask us about the place of Iran's nuclear program in our vision. It's an excellent question. Unfortunately for you, Martin Kramer's time is up. We return him to you—unharmed.

Martin Kramer is an authority on contemporary Islam.

Ruth King

Two days after President Bush reiterated his vision of “the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security," former CIA director James Woolsey, speaking in Israel, called the Israeli-Palestinian peace process a “scam”, adding “Washington should not be pushing Israel to make a "land for peace deal now.”

We welcome Jim Woolsey to the club. Scam or swindle or wishful thinking….regardless of what you call it, Israel within defensible borders and Arab sovereignty in any part of Judea, Samaria and Gaza are incompatible. Just look at a map. End of story. Nonetheless, this oxymoronic (emphasis on second half of the word) policy is now the enshrined paradigm for solving the Israel-Arab conflict. James Woolsey is right: the whole thing is a scam but the “scamees” are willing participants.

It was not always so. In the aftermath of Israel’s victory in 1967, Defense Secretary McNamara and the United States Joint chiefs of Staff concluded: "From a strictly military point of view, Israel would require the retention of some captured Arab territory in order to provide militarily defensible borders....to be determined according to accepted tactical principles such as control of commanding terrain, use of natural obstacles, elimination of enemy-held salients, and provision of defense in depth for important facilities and installations." In 1974, another study undertaken by the U.S. Army's Command and Staff College reached the same conclusion..

President Lyndon Johnson only a few days after the end of the war said: ”… a return to the status before the outbreak of hostilities is not a prescription for peace, but for renewed hostilities. What is needed are recognized boundaries that would provide security against terror, destruction and war."

Shimon Peres, before he became a serial appeaser, often reiterated his opposition to the pre-1967 lines and Abba Eban, hardly a hard-liner, dramatically referred to the pre-1967 boundaries as the “Auschwitz Borders.”

Even after Oslo, Yitzhak Rabin, in his last appearance in the Knesset, said: "We will not return to the lines of June 4, 1967 – the security border for defending the State of Israel will be in the Jordan Valley, in the widest sense of that concept."

How did these cogent arguments morph into a “two state solution?” What assumptions altered Israel’s view of its own security?

First is the false premise that moral high ground is achieved by capitulating to one’s enemies. No claim was sustained for Israel’s historic or religious or strategic rights. No case was made for legal alteration of boundaries by the victims of illegal aggression. No one emphasized that after World War II the victorious allies adjusted borders and transferred millions of ethnic Germans to punish the Nazi aggressors. Instead, Israel adopted and practices a double standard on itself.

Second, we heard the theory of the “demographic time bomb,” a scare scenario of burgeoning Arab population growth in Judea and Samaria. Thanks to Yoram Ettinger’s actual census study, and the stubborn Zionism of the settlers of the areas, the whole concept has been debunked. In fact an increasing number of Arabs are leaving the area, and given a minimum promise pf permanence, the size of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria would double.

Third, Israel has been willing to take “risks for peace” based on American guarantees. Yet according to Israel’s retired Major General Yaakov Amidror’s account of a private conversation: “Henry Kissinger…, when asked for American guarantees in exchange for Israeli territorial concessions….explained that South Vietnam had international guarantees from twenty countries. Yet when North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam, no country took Kissinger's telephone calls. His implication was clear: do not rely on guarantees and risk withdrawing to the 1967 lines.”

Fourth is the dangerous assumption that in view of advanced military equipment, strategic depth is no longer relevant. Amidror explains :”…. missiles in flight cannot be stopped at a country's borders. In the face of such a threat, the dispersal of infrastructure installations and weapons systems, as well as command and control mechanisms, becomes critical. Without Israeli control of the relevant territory east of the 1967 line, there is no way the Israel Defense Forces can prevent the firing of rockets and mortars from the hills dominating Ben-Gurion International Airport. One mortar shell per week in its vicinity will be enough to stop air transport completely.”

Fifth is the outright silly notion that Arabs will choose peaceful coexistence when given the opportunity for elections and independence. See Gaza and Hamas and laugh. It is also a fact that as Hugh Fitzgerald astutely claims, the Arab-Israel conflict is a “little jihad” with goals identical to the “big jihad” and this imperative is far stronger than the desire to rule by the ballot.

Finally, Israel’s present rulers remain unwilling to insist that the only viable borders for Israel are from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Missiles rain on Israel from Gaza, the purported area of Palestinian Arab “independence.” Only months ago they hit Haifa from Lebanon. And now Iran is preparing nuclear capability to strike Israel. And what do those auditioning for the Prime Minister’s role say about all this?

Benjamin Netanyahu, the so called “hardliner” who gave up Hebron and collapsed at Wye, offers “Allon Plus.” The Allon plan envisaged the return of territories not annexed by Israel to Jordan. Perhaps he has not noticed that Jordan no longer controls the area. So what exactly is his strategy? To make an “independent Arab state” out of territory roughly thesize of Central Park?

The ludicrous Tzipi Livni babbles of an “Oslo plus.” Avigdor Lieberman? Uzi Landau? Anybody there?

The “A” word in Israel stands not for “annexation” but for “Arab Rights” including all the outrageous and escalating demands Arabs make. The effort is, as Saul Singer, usually a thoughtful journalist, declared in a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed “how to make the Arabs say yes to peace.”

Well how about saying no to the Arabs, no to another terrorist state; no to national suicide and finally a big resounding no to the indefensible assumptions that make defensible borders impossible?