Imagine This: Ruth King

From the Editor: Rael Jean Isaac

Ein Breira: Rael Jean Isaac

A Guide To Bazaar Negotiations: Moshe Sharon

On The Jewish Mother: David Isaac

Let’s Make More Global Warming: Steven Plaut

Tissue of Lies..The Jihad Against History: Richard Cravatts

The Ulpan: Ruth King

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

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

Americans For a Safe Israel
1751 Second Ave. (at 91st St.)
New York, NY 10128
tel (212) 828-2424 / fax (212) 828-1717
E-mail: afsi @rcn.com web site: http://www.afsi.org

Ruth S. King

Israel’s Prime Minister, flanked by government officials and leaders of all Israel’s Jewish parties, announced that Israel will skip the summit in Annapolis. Citing the failures of all previous “peace” parleys, Mr. Olmert declared: “Oslo and the Gaza disengagement led to riots, looting, desecration of holy sites, rocket attacks and terror.” In a calculated slap at Bibi Netanyahu, standing at his side, Olmert added: “At Wye we gave away Hebron, the cradle of our faith, even as we watched the destruction and defiling of Joseph’s Tomb in Jericho.”

“UN Resolution 242 is null and void,” said Olmert. “Instead of endless fatuous parsing of the omissions of articles ‘the’ and ‘all’ before ‘territories’ we should have scoffed at the hypocritical notion that it is ‘inadmissible to acquire territory by force.’ Thousands upon thousands of borders have been altered by wars. Why should Israel reward the aggressors?”

Olmert continued: “The second amendment of 242 written in November 1967 calls for an end to belligerency and the ‘right of all states to live within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force’….Does it suffer in translation to Arabic or did the PLO, Syria, Egypt and the entire Arab League miss that paragraph entirely?”

Speaking of secure and defensible borders for Israel, Israel’s Prime Minister scoffed: “Who will decide where they are? The honorable dictator from Egypt where Mein Kampf is a best seller and where the media, the sermons, the editorials and ‘the street’ indulge in the most primitive anti-Semitism? Or will the borders be drawn by the honorable kinglet of Jordan whose Hashemite clan already rules over 82% of Palestine? And, if, as Madame Rice has indicated, the Saudis and the Syrians plan to show up for this kangaroo court, where do they think Israel’s defensible borders are?”

“As for Mr. Abbas, the latest poster boy of the peace processors, I invite him to work out a modus vivendi with Israel that insures maximum civil rights for the Palestinian Arabs which are compatible with maximum security for Palestinian Jews.”

Bibi Netanyahu chimed in: “We are in total agreement here. Three of our soldiers—Israel’s treasure— are still not released.” Striking a military pose, he paraphrased a famous Patton quote: “Sure we want peace with our neighbors and an end to war. The quickest way to get this is to get the bastards who promote terrorism and jihad. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can talk and they will finally understand we are here to stay within our present borders. The shortest way to peace is through strength and determination. And, when we free our captured soldiers, I personally will shoot their tormentors....just like I would shoot a snake.”

In a dig at Olmert who dodged military service (even in unanimity, there is backbiting in Israeli politics) Ehud Barak reminded the press: “As one who has actually been in combat with our enemies, I second the decision to boycott Annapolis.” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni closed the meeting with: “Read my lips. No more concessions.”

What would happen? Condoleezza Rice/Powell/Albright could turn her attention to escalating international jihad, Russian saber rattling, North Korea’s mockery of the U.S., crude threats from a nuclear Iran, a crisis in Burma and a costly war to contain terror in Iraq.

The UN would pass 270 resolutions condemning Israel, the New York Times would publish an equal number of editorials, Jimmy Carter would have apoplexy and by far the most important, international jihadists would get a clear message.

Herbert Zweibon is in Israel.

Rael Jean Isaac

BOYCOTTERS DON'T GIVE UP

Confronted with a legal opinion that an academic boycott of Israel was illegal in Britain, the British Association of University Teachers announced it was halting the boycott. That hasn’t stopped the boycott’s sponsors who met in London with 150 hard core supporters, mostly senior lecturers from across the country (with a sprinkling of the usual hard core Israelis, including Ilan Pappe, recently of Haifa University, now spewing poison at Exeter). Boycott leader Sue Blackwell announced the third Intifada would involve an academic boycott. As for the legal opinion, Blackwell said it doesn’t include restrictions about talking about a boycott and in any case they would fight the ruling.

COUNT ON THE NCC

The National Council of Churches, which has been passing anti-American (and, of course, anti-Israel) resolutions regularly for fifty years does not disappoint. The NCC’s Associate General Secretary for Interfaith Relations sent a letter to President Bush urging him to meet with Ahmadinejad. Perhaps he had in mind the findings of the NCC delegation to the Middle East which had found Ahmadinejad “a very religious man” and “witty” to boot. The NCC’s cozying up to yet another dangerous tyrant has not gone wholly unremarked. Jan Markell, founder of Olive Tree Ministries, has complained forcefully of the NCC’s behavior.

IN "FREE" BASRA

Journalists Jay Price and Ali Omar Al Basri, writing for McClatchy newspapers, report that police officers in Basra say more than 15 female bodies are found scattered around the city each month, victims of religious extremists, and a great many more are threatened and beaten. Often, according to Major General Abdel Jalil Khalaf, the commander of Basra’s police, their “crime” is no more than wearing Western clothing or not wearing a headscarf. According to Gen. Khalaf “This is a new type of terror that Basra is not familiar with. These gangs represent only themselves, and they are far outside the religious, forgiving instructions of Islam.”

In the January 2006 Outpost we wrote of the murder of American journalist Stephen Vincent and the near-murder of his female translator in Basra. Vincent reported the once free-wheeling port city (60% Shia, 35% Sunni) was like Florence under Savonarola, with religious gangs roaming the streets forcing women to cover their hair and ankles. Vincent also wrote that off duty police officers in the pay of religious militias went through the city in a white Toyota, assassinating hundreds of former Baath party members each month. It would be such a “death car” according to witnesses, that kidnapped Vincent and his translator.

In short these “gangs” have been terrorizing Basra for years with no effective intervention by British occupiers or local police, not surprising given that a goodly number of police themselves belong to the gangs.

MORE PERES BABBLE

We mentioned last month that in a Yom Kippur eve message Israel’s buffoon-in-chief had identified “Global Warming” as one of the two great “Terrors” facing Israel. Seems that Shimon is so enamored of this notion that it’s replacing his former favorite profundity, namely that there is nothing to learn from history. In his Presidential speech on the opening of the Knesset on October 8, Peres describes, in his usual fuddled rhetoric, the glorious technological future that beckons, but ah, “two heavy shadows” loom “threatening all the inhabitants of the globe”—global terror and global warming.

The speech is too rich in idiocies for this small space. One delicious sample: he praises the demographic migration from countries with “a surfeit of workers to countries which have a surfeit of work,” because “this migration lessens, perhaps even abolishes, prejudices.” Tell that to Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And what does Peres think are the real feelings of the inhabitants of Paris toward the inhabitants of the banlieus who demonstrated the warm feelings migration has produced in them by rioting and burning some 5,000 cars?

NO DEFAMERS OF ISRAEL?

The New York Sun (Oct. 19-21) reported on a CAMERA conference in Manhattan entitled “Israel’s Jewish Defamers.” The article quotes CAMERA Associate Director Alex Safian who mentions former American Jewish Congress director Henry Siegman and former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis as among the growing number of Jewish journalists, writers and intellectuals who use their faith to “give cover to what would otherwise be called anti-Semitism—and may be anti-Semitism.” Asked to comment, Anthony (continued on page 12)
Lewis responded: “This is a conference about a nonexistent phenomenon. I don’t know any Jewish defamers of Israel.”

It is true that Lewis, with his obsessive attacks on Israel, was small beer compared to such giants in the field as Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and Illan Pappe. Given the performance of these three, one can only assume Lewis considers Israel as libel-proof: so evil that it is impossible to defame her.

FROM LONDONISTAN

In The Washington Post (September 4) Denis MacShane describes the report issued by his blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians on anti-Semitism in Britain. None of those on the committee were Jewish. MacShane says what they found most worrisome was “what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produced denunciation, even contempt.”

The report further found a pattern of fear among Britain’s 300,000 Jews, to the point that they felt compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their wedding and community events.

Case in point: a Jewish blogger described a demonstration in London in early October by the Orwellian titled Islamic Human Rights Commission (an Iranian government front) which marched through central London waving Hezbollah flags and calling for “death to Israel.” When he and a friend held up an Israeli flag the police told him to put it away “for fear of inciting them.”

The two lone Israeli flag holders were allowed to join the counter-demonstration, but the blogger notes that while the Iranian-government backed demonstration’s sole message was anti-Israel, the counter demonstration was merely anti-Iranian government. Except for these two courageous young men, there were no Jews present although the blogger notes that “if ever there was a cause for the entire Jewish community to be out in force it was this one.” He concludes: “The fact that a march like this (focusing uniquely on the destruction of Israel) can take place with a total absence of any organized Jewish opposition [is disturbing]. Nothing from the Zionist Federation; nothing from any of the youth groups or students; not even a mention in The Jewish Chronicle that it was happening. At the end of it all I was very pleased we went. We actually made a difference because we made sure that our Israeli flags were seen.”

PASTOR HAGEE HONORS ISRAEL

As the international harpies relentlessly torment Israel, it is especially heartwarming that 6,000 evangelical Christians gathered in October for Pastor John Hagee’s 26th annual Night to Honor Israel. Hagee initiated these “nights” in 1981, convinced he had to speak out for Israel after her attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor met almost universal condemnation.
On this occasion there were songs, prayers for Israel, skits, speeches, dance, all broadcast live throughout the world. And John Hagee Ministries gave more than $8.5 million to Israeli causes from the Israel National Autism Foundation to the city of Ariel’s Development Fund.

Rael Jean Isaac

For the first two decades of Israel’s existence, her strategy toward her Arab neighbors was summed up in two words endlessly repeated by her leaders: ein breira (there is no choice). Israel had no choice but deterrence. If deterrence failed, there was war, in which case victory would restore Israel’s deterrent power, i.e. her ability to dissuade the enemy from attacking her by making him feel the cost of aggression outweighed the benefits..

In time, it will be recognized that the most harmful consequence of the Six Day War of 1967 was in making Israelis falsely believe there was an alternative to ein breira, namely “peace” with her Arab neighbors. The pursuit of this will o’ the wisp, and a concomitant, reinforcing belief that Israel’s security could be entrusted to the good will of outside powers (who else would stand behind the peace borders and associated “arrangements”?) would fatally undermine the state.

From the beginning Israel’s government did not see the state’s vastly improved borders as reinforcing her deterrence but rather saw Israel’s stunning victory as an opportunity to trade “territories for peace.” Making this trade was the immediate across-the-board reaction of the national unity government, even including Menachem Begin, whose party’s slogan called for Israel on both sides of the Jordan. When the Arab states responded with the three “nos” of Khartoum--no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no peace with Israel—government leaders like Abba Eban kept reiterating that it was just a matter of time before the Arabs would come round.

The situation has become steadily worse over time. The pursuit of “peace” has become sacrosanct, no serious contender for political office daring to dispel the destructive delusion that peace is within reach – if only Israel comes up with the right plan, the right partner. In yet another Israeli triumph in learning nothing from experience, Olmert now repeats Barak’s disastrous offer to Arafat at Camp David in 2000 (the “leaks” confirm that Israel would redivide Jerusalem and essentially return to the cease fire lines of 1949) which led directly to the second, more lethal intifada. Yet look at Netanyahu, Olmert’s chief challenger. In his successful 1996 campaign for Prime Minister, Netanyahu dropped his previous all-out opposition to Oslo to promise he would bring “peace and security,” and now, again, as front-running challenger, he continues to foster the same illusions.

In his speech to the Knesset on October 8, Netanyahu recites a litany of fully justified criticisms of Israeli government actions going back to the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 under the Barak government. Netanyahu attacks the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which, he says “created a second Iranian base in the south—Hamastan—from which Iranian financed terror groups attack Sderot, Ashkelon and the Western Negev. (To be sure Netanyahu fails to note his support of the Sharon government while it was implementing this policy and hisresignation from the cabinet literally at the last minute, when it was too late to be of any use.) Netanyahu points out that the Olmert government’s plan for more withdrawals “will inevitably create in the center of the country a third Iranian base that will threaten Jerusalem and the entire coastal plain.” Handing over half of Jerusalem will make life unbearable in the city’s other half. As Jewish communities become enclaves in a Hamas sea, their inhabitants will abandon them. As for the coastal plain, Israel’s dense urban centers will come under Arab missile fire from Judea and Samaria. “This is not how you make peace,” said Netanyahu, “This is how you strengthen terror and bring it nearer.” Netanyahu argues that “instead of the government’s blind policy, Israel needs a different policy, one that is based on an accurate assessment of reality.”

It is impossible to fault any of this. But when Netanyahu articulates his notion of that “different” policy, it turns out to be not so different after all. He, Netanyahu, will bring peace, “a genuine peace” with “a genuine partner.” In his speech he offers not a word that conveys to Israelis an accurate assessment of reality -- the reality of Islamic determination to destroy Israel, the reality that peace in the foreseeable future is a mirage luring the unwary to destruction, the reality that what Israel desperately needs is to restore its badly eroded deterrent. Far from pointing out how Israel had already been deceived by Egypt, how it had returned the economically and militarily vital territory of the Sinai for an empty peace treaty (whose every clause Egypt has violated), Netanyahu actually praises the treaty with Egypt, singling out Egypt’s Anwar Sadat as a model peace partner. (On October 10 even the supine Olmert government sent a strongly worded complaint to the U.S. that Egypt was flooding Gaza with heavy weaponry and Islamic Jihad terrorists and working diplomatically to strengthen Hamas.)

Along with the comforting belief that amity can be conjured out of creative “peace plans” (when Arab plans only differ on the details of how best to eliminate Israel) goes a conviction that (contrary to the prophetic warning) Israel can put her trust in princes, i.e. on the governments of supposedly friendly or “neutral” powers for her security. The most recent example is Israel‘s reliance on a United Nations force in the wake of her recent failed effort to dislodge Hezbollah from the Lebanese border. Resolution 1701, calling for Hezbollah’s disarmament and deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in the south was a dead letter from the day it was signed. As Ariel Cohen points out in Policy Review, Hezbollah announced it refused to disarm, Syria and Iran openly defy the UN by continuing to send arms with no sanctions or even calls for sanctions. Cohen notes that “those U.S. and Israeli decision-makers who actively lobbied for Resolution 1701 as the solution for the conflict now look naïve at best, and possibly worse than that.”

This naïve faith is not confined to Israelis. A particularly dramatic example of such misplaced confidence was exhibited by Norman Podhoretz, a staunch friend of Israel normally known for his clear-headed analysis. Given his trenchant criticism of Oslo (from the very beginning, not in hindsight), his readers assumed he would be a strong opponent of Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. But in an April 2005 article in Commentary “Bush, Sharon, My Daughter and Me,” Podhoretz makes a 180 degree turn. He supports the “disengagement:” he even supports “the road map” for a Palestinian state. The departure from his previous positions was so marked that his daughter in Israel, who embraced his “old” ideas, insisted he had been taken over by aliens—Podhoretz says this antic idea helped them sustain their warm relationship.

Podhoretz makes no bones about the reason for his “conversion.” “It was because I had come to place so much faith in Bush that I was able to overcome my misgivings about the road map. And it was partly because Sharon was also putting his money on Bush that I was ready to bet on Sharon.” It was not only his daughter who was dismayed: some Commentary readers wrote to protest. And in the letters to the editor section in the July-August 2005 issue, Podhoretz responded to a reader who asked what could convince him that he was wrong. Podhoretz writes: “I will admit to having been wrong the moment Bush goes along with—and Sharon acquiesces in—Abbas’s wish to skip the first two phases of the ‘road map’ and to jump immediately into the third and final phase.” After detailing the requirements of phase I and phase II of the road map, Podhoretz reemphasizes the same point: “I would also admit to having been wrong if they [Bush and Sharon] were to endorse the characteristically cynical preference of the ‘international community’ for a ‘fast-track’ approach (i.e., jumping into the third phase even though the requirements of the first two admittedly remain unmet by the Palestinians).”

And what is the position of the Bush administration today? Rick Richman sums it up well in the The New York Sun of October 10. “Under the Roadmap, final status negotiations were to occur only after a sustained and effective effort by the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure, Phase I, and then only after the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders and limited sovereignty, Phase II. With respect to Phase I, the PA has yet to dismantle a single terrorist organization, or arrest a terrorist leader, in the four years since the Palestinians accepted the Roadmap….In 2006 the Palestinians elected their premier terrorist organization to control their legislature. In 2007, half the putative Palestinian state was taken over in a coup. With respect to Phase II, in January Mahmoud Abbas rejected a provisional state, and Ms. Rice then suggested that Phase II might be skipped, since it could be easier ‘just to go to the end game.’ Thus despite the PA’s inability to execute Phase I and its unwillingness to consider Phase II, the Bush administration is now devoting maximum effort to negotiate a Palestinian state ‘as soon as possible.’”

Richman notes that what the U.S. is doing is the more inappropriate given President Bush’s formal promise to Israel, set forth in his letter of April 14, 2004, that America would prevent “any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan” than the Roadmap. A few days after Richman’s article, at a news conference with Abbas, Rice announced the Bush administration’s determination to be done with phases altogether. “Frankly it’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” a state, she went on, the U.S. considered “absolutely essential” to her interests. How the administration, which is pouring so much effort in preventing Iraq from becoming a terror base, can think it is in U.S. interest to establish another sovereign terror base in the Middle East boggles the mind. But the short-term rationale is clear. The administration is following the Iraq Study Group recommendation that Israel be thrown to Arab wolves in hopes of shoring up support among neighboring states for the present Iraqi government.

Whether or not Podhoretz issues a formal mea culpa, he has been unequivocally proven wrong. And if Israel cannot rely on the word of well-intentioned princes like George W. Bush, what possible reliance can it put on the enemies who make up the rest of the Quartet (Russia, the UN, the EU)?

There are many Jews who insist it is necessary to go the last mile for peace and if the enemy refuses any reasonable terms, one can always walk away, no damage done. Churchill knew better. In Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-41, Ian Kershaw examines Churchill’s refusal of French pleas to seek negotiations with Hitler through Mussolini as Hitler was overrunning France. Within the cabinet Lord Halifax was the chief proponent of testing the waters, arguing Britain could withdraw from negotiations if Hitler’s demands were excessive. But Churchill responded that irreparable damage would have been done even by the readiness to contemplate the concessions which entry into negotiations meant. It would be almost impossible to resuscitate fighting morale in the public once it realized the government was prepared for concessions, and even if Britain kept nominal independence, the concessions demanded would leave Britain at Germany’s mercy.

Already the endless concessions (from territory to prisoner releases) to advance “the peace process” have seriously undermined Israeli morale. Draft dodging, once virtually unknown in Israel, is common: deeply worrying to IDF commanders, young Israelis are avoiding the military in record numbers.

And yet, where is the leader who will seek to rally Israel with a policy based on an accurate assessment of reality? As Daniel Pipes has pointed out “seven years of Oslo diplomacy undid 45 years success in warfare” as “each Oslo-negotiated gesture by Israel further exhilarated, radicalized and mobilized the Palestinian body politic.” The damage that has already been done is incalculable. As Professor of Islamic History Moshe Sharon puts it: “The enemies of Israel, comprising all of the Arab countries in the Middle East (including Egypt and Jordan) as well as the rest of the Islamic world, are now convinced that Israel is a temporary entity that can be defeated and destroyed and that its Jewish population can be exterminated.”

Rebuilding Israel’s deterrent, now that Israel has forfeited it, will be immensely costly and difficult. Nonetheless Israel’s only hope for survival rests in deterring her enemies by her strength, determination and toughness. Ein breira.

Dedicated to Those Obsessed With Peace
Moshe Sharon

Everybody says that his donkey is a horse.
There is no tax on words.
(Two Arab proverbs)

On December 25th 1977, at the very beginning of the negotiations between Israel and Egypt in Ismailia, I had the opportunity to have a short discussion with Muhammad Anwar Sadat the president of Egypt. “Tell your Prime Minister, he said, that this is a bazaar; the merchandise is expensive.” I told my Prime Minister but he failed to abide by the rules of the bazaar. The failure was not unique to him. It is the failure of all the Israeli governments and the media.
On March 4, 1994, I published an article in The Jerusalem Post called “Novices in Negotiations.” The occasion was the conclusion of the Cairo Agreement. A short time later Yasser Arafat proved yet again that his signature was not worth the ink of his pen let alone the paper it was written on, and his word was worth even less. Then, as in every subsequent agreement, Israel was taken aback when her concessions became the basis for fresh Arab demands.
In Middle Eastern bazaar diplomacy, agreements are kept not because they are signed but because they are imposed. Besides, in the bazaar of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the two sides are not discussing the same merchandise. The Israelis wish to acquire peace based on the Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. The objective of the Arabs is to annihilate the Jewish state, replace it with an Arab state, and get rid of the Jews.
To achieve their goal, the Arabs took to the battlefield and to bazaar diplomacy. The most important rule in the bazaar is that if the vendor knows that you desire to purchase a certain piece of merchandise, he will raise its price. The merchandise in question is “peace” and the Arabs give the impression that they actually have this merchandise and inflate its price, when in truth they do not have it at all.
This is the wisdom of the bazaar: if you are clever enough, you can sell nothing at a price. The Arabs sell words, they sign agreements, and they trade with vague promises, but are sure to receive generous down payments from eager buyers. In the bazaar only a foolish buyer pays for something he has never seen.

There is another rule in the market as well as across the negotiating table: the side that first presents his terms is bound to lose; the other side builds his next move using the open cards of his opponent as the starting point.
In all her negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs, Israel has rushed to offer plans, and was surprised to discover that after an agreement had been “concluded” it had become the basis for further demands.
Most amazing is the reaction in such cases. Israeli politicians, “experts” and the media eagerly provide “explanations” for the Arabs’ behavior. One of the most popular explanations is that these or other Arab pronouncements are “for internal use,” as if “internal use” does not count. Other explanations invoke “the Arab sensitivity to symbols,” “honor,” “matters of emotion” and other more patronizing sayings of this nature. Does Israel possess no “sensitivities” or does it have no honor? What does all this have to do with political encounters?
It is therefore essential, as the late President Sadat advised, to learn the rules of the oriental bazaar before venturing into the arena of bazaar diplomacy. The most important rule is the Roman saying: “If you want peace – prepare for war.” Never come to the negotiating table from a position of weakness. Your adversary should always know that you are strong and ready for war even more than you are ready for peace.
In the present situation in the Middle East and in the foreseeable future “peace” is an empty word. Israel should delete the word “peace” from its vocabulary together along with such phrases as “the price of peace” or “territory for peace.” For a hundred years the Jews have been begging the Arabs to sell them peace, ready to pay any price. They have received nothing, because the Arabs have no peace to sell, but they have still paid dearly. It must be said in all fairness that the Arabs have not made a secret of the fact that what they meant by the word “peace” was nothing more than a limited ceasefire for a limited period.
Since this is the situation, Israel should openly declare that it has decided to create a new state of affairs in the Middle East, compelling the Arab side to ask for peace and pay for it. Unlike the Arabs, Israel has this merchandise for sale.
From now on Israel should be the side demanding payment for peace. If the Arabs want peace, Israel should fix its price in real terms. The Arabs will pay if they reach the conclusion that Israel is so strong that they cannot destroy it. Because of this, Israel’s deterrent power is essential.
Therefore, if anyone asks Israel for plans, the answer should be: no “plans,” no “suggestions,” no “constructive ideas,” in fact no negotiations at all. If the Arab side wants to negotiate, let it present its plans and its “ideas.” If and when it does, the first Israeli reaction should always be “Unacceptable! Come up with better ones.”

If and when the time comes for serious negotiations, after the Arabs have lost all hope of annihilating the Jewish state, here are ten rules for bargaining in the Middle Eastern bazaar:
1. Never be the first to suggest anything to the other side. Never show any eagerness “to conclude a deal.” Let the opponent present his suggestions first.
2. Always reject, always disagree. Use the phrase: “Not meeting the minimum demands” and walk away, even a hundred times. A tough customer gets good prices.
3. Don’t rush to come up with counter-offers. There will always be time for that. Let the other side make amendments under the pressure of your total “disappointment.” Patience is the name of the game. “Haste is from Satan!”
4. Have your own plan ready in full, as detailed as possible, with the red lines completely defined. However, never show this or any other plan to a third party. It will reach your opponent quicker than you think. Weigh the other side’s suggestions against this plan.
5. Never change your detailed plan to meet the other side “half way.” Remember, there is no “half way.” The other side also has a master plan. Be ready to quit negotiations when you encounter stubbornness on the other side.
6. Never leave things unclear. Always avoid “creative phrasing” and “creative ideas” which are exactly what your Arab opponent wants. Remember the Arabs are masters of language. Playing with words is the Arab national sport. As in the market, so also at the negotiating table, always talk dollars and cents.
7. Always bear in mind that the other side will try to outsmart you by presenting major issues as unimportant details. Regard every detail as a vitally important issue. Never postpone any problem “for a later occasion.” If you do so, you will lose. Remember that your opponent is always looking for a reason to avoid honoring agreements.
8. Emotion belongs neither in the marketplace nor at the negotiating table. Friendly words as well as outbursts of anger, holding hands, kissing, touching cheeks and embracing should not be interpreted as representing policy.
9. Beware of popular beliefs about the Arabs and the Middle East – “Arab honor” for example. Remember, you have honor too, but this has nothing to do with the issues under negotiation. Never do or say anything because somebody has told you that it is “the custom.” If the Arab side finds out that you are playing the anthropologist he will take advantage of it.
10. Always remember that the goal of all negotiations is to make a profit. You should aim at making the highest profit in real terms. Remember that every gain is an asset for the future because there is always going to be “another round.”
The Arabs have been practicing negotiation tactics for more than 2000 years. They are the masters of words, and a mine of endless patience. In contrast, Israelis (and Westerners in general) want “quick results.” In this part of the world there are no quick results; the impatient one always loses.

Moshe Sharon is professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

David Isaac

In Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth wrote "a Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until the day he (or his parents) dies."

Roth refers to that well-worn stereotype of the Jewish mother—overbearing, overprotective and through a clever manipulation of good food and guilt, a woman who holds her children on a short leash long after they’ve reached adulthood.

In exile, the Jewish mother can be endearing. For all her faults she is warm and loving. The harm she does, more acute in sons than daughters, is limited. Her smothering love produces at worst a child with complexes, one who seeks therapy, has difficulty connecting with the opposite sex and lacks physical courage. As Woody Allen, who plays the type so well, would say, “A bleeder.”

In Israel, the Jewish mother is not so endearing and the harm she does far-reaching. Just as having a mother who persistently nags you to get married, constantly cajoles you to eat more chicken soup, and daily calls you to demand to know why you haven’t called her creates a nervous nebbish, so, too, having a nation that relies on an army and government made up of mama’s boys creates a country that makes less than rational decisions.

This is not to say that Jewish mothers alone bear the guilt for Oslo, the retreat from Lebanon, the destruction of Gush Katif, the non-reaction to the bombing of Sderot and on and on. All that poor Jewish mothers want is to keep their boychiks safe. Alas, keeping boychik safe makes a poor foundation for nation-building.

A recent example is the reaction to the Arab mortar that fell in the middle of an Israeli army training camp on September 11. Over 60 soldiers were wounded. The mothers of the young cadets criticized the location of the base, which they said was too close to Gaza. Some openly called for it to be moved somewhere safer or closed altogether.

The mothers could have criticized the Arabs for dropping the bomb in the first place. There’s a reason they didn’t. If they blamed the Arabs, the rational response would be to go after the Arabs. That would mean putting their children in harm’s way yet again. The whole appeal of getting out of Gaza in the first place was to get their sons away from all that meshugas.

Mothers groups in Israel have a history of influencing important state decisions. The “Four Mothers,” a group started by four mothers who had sons killed or wounded in Lebanon, is credited with introducing and legitimizing the idea of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. A decade prior, when the first intifada broke out, a group of Israeli women calling themselves “Women in Black” began to protest. They donned black clothing and stood at an intersection once a week with signs reading “Stop the Occupation.” Prime Minister Rabin all but admitted he felt constrained by such outfits.

These sort of groups exist in every country. The Committee of Soldier’s Mothers in Russia wants to end the Chechen war. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo want to reunite with their children who vanished under the Argentine dictatorship. And in this country, Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed, wants an immediate pullout from Iraq and President Bush’s impeachment. None of these have had anything like the success of Israel’s mothers.

Part of the reason may be the iconic status of the mother in Jewish culture. Dating as far back as Rebecca, the Jewish mother has played a pivotal role in Israel’s history. We’re still feeling the effects of her decision to help the more peaceable Jacob win the birthright over his elder brother, the hunter Esau. Not to say she made the wrong decision. It’s just that Esau wasn’t all bad. In fact, he had certain qualities that would serve Israel well today.

But it’s not so much Jewish men who need to look to different models of manhood. Israeli Jews have guts. Anyone who has sat in on a talk of just one of Israel’s many war heroes must acknowledge that. No, what needs to change is the model of the Jewish mother. The chicken soup making, guilt inducing, overprotecting mother of yesteryear has got to go.

But to be replaced with what?

After considerable thought, I have concluded that, given Israel’s existential threat, the Jews would best be served if their mothers modeled themselves after those of…Sparta.

The ideal Spartan mother is Queen Gorgo, daughter of a king, wife of a king and mother of a king. Her husband, King Leonidas, who fought against the invading Persian army at Thermopylae, was a man among men. And as the saying goes, behind every great man there lies a great woman. Herodotus, who often left out the names of the female characters in his histories, mentions her three times.

If Jewish mothers want a quick video tutorial on how to act like Queen Gorgo, they should rent the film “300” and pay particularly close attention as she stabs the traitor Theron right through the kishkes.

We do not condone such an approach in the Knesset. The number of Therons are simply too high. But the Greek model still holds. Look to their marvelous tradition of banishment.

David Isaac is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles

Steven Plaut

For years most of us have believed that the Nobel Peace Prize could not possibly be debased any worse than it has been. Shimon Peres and mass murderer Yasser Arafat were granted a Nobel Peace Prize for plunging the Middle East into an endless cycle of terrorist aggression against Israel and for putting Israel's very survival into jeopardy. Arafat's share of the loot was used to buy weapons. True, the decision to elect Peres as President of Israel is so much more absurd that the Nobel Committee looks lucid in comparison. The only "peace" the Prize really celebrates is that where Arafat now rests In.

And theirs wasn't even the only Orwellian award of the Peace Prize. Bishop Desmond Tutu, who thinks the Israel Lobby is a manifestation of Nazism and supports anti-Jewish terror, also got the award.

But the decision to grant a Nobel Peace prize to Whacky Al Gore for his environmentalist hysterics and pseudo-scientific posturing must surely rival the earlier absurdities. Gore, who was defeated in the Presidential election even though he tried to steal it by only recounting the ballots in his favor in Florida, is also the guy who claims to have invented the internet. He has reinvented himself in recent years as a groupie of radical environmentalist nuttiness.

It seems that whenever countries get too rich and comfortable, their chattering classes starting wringing their hands over the environment. It is part of the price those countries pay for not having more serious national problems and challenges.

"Global Warming" has become the leading pseudo-cause of those practicing recreational compassion, people looking for a cheap way to impress their friends and neighbors about how caring they are. As P. J. O'Rourke said, everyone wants to save the planet but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes.

Global warning is the cause celebre of the moral posturers, except when they are warning us about the dangers of global cooling (and there are many who still do that!). They discover thinning ice shields in the polar regions except in the areas where it is getting thicker. They chant the mantra that George Bush and America's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol are behind the warming and the hurricanes. Of course, if the earth is really getting a smidgen warmer it has nothing to do with humans. Mars is getting warmer and its ice caps are melting a bit. Gore will no doubt attribute that to selfish Republicans as well.

I have always thought that the idea that humans can change a planet's climate is a bit of megalomania. While there is some doubt whether global warming is taking place, there is no doubt at all that humans —if it is—have nothing to do with it.

The global warming hysteria also ignores the many benefits and positive aspects of global warming. Even those who are convinced beyond a doubt that it is occurring agree that its main manifestation is slightly warmer winter nights. Since my heating system does not work very well, I for one would welcome warmer winter nights. No one knows how warmer climate affects rainfall but it is likely to cause more of it, and that surely is good for Israel, and the British would deserve it!

Ever since the first cries of global warming were heard, I have been checking the beaches of Haifa, hoping to see a visible sign of some rise in ocean surface levels. But alas, not even a bit. On the other hand, all those tales about tropical orchids growing at the North Pole are actually reasons for celebration! Indeed, there are so many benefits from global warming, I think it behooves all of us to do our part to create more of it!

First, if the ice pack over Greenland really does melt, this might be a nice place to create a "Palestinian state." The terrorists could undergo career reorientation and take to cod fishing. They could throw grenades at whales.

Second, I can see numerous benefits for the world from any rise in ocean surface levels. It would solve most of the problems of the Middle East. Flooding the Gaza Strip due to rising sea levels would surely stop the Kassam rockets. Now that is something worth buying an SUV in order to achieve! True, some other areas might be inundated. But what is wrong with Ramat Aviv being under some nice sea water? The leftist yuppies in the upper floors of their buildings would not be affected and would get capital gains on their oceanfront property. The others could simply relocate and make aliya to Eretz Yisrael, getting new homes in Gush Etzion, Efrat and Ariel.

Elsewhere, rising sea levels would erase Venice, California, and Santa Cruz. The hills in Berkeley where the employed professionals live would be safe, but the Berkeley lowlands where the radicals posture and protest would be eliminated. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea!

Israel is so small that it cannot be seen on most global maps. But even so, we really should be doing more in order to hasten global warming. Cutting taxes on imports of SUV would be a good place to start and would also lower the traffic fatality rate.

So let's do our part to hasten global warming! A Nobel Peace Prize may be waiting down the road.

Prof. Steven Plaut is an economist at Haifa University.

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D.

In one of those ironies of questionable scholarship, just as a battle over a Barnard anthropologist’s book about Israeli archeology had inflamed her application for tenure, heavy equipment was tearing away at the ancient crown of Jerusalem's 36-acre Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Nadia Abu El-Haj's book Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, originally a doctoral thesis, questions the historical existence of a Jewish link to Israel, and her provocative claims have caused her to become the center of a fractious debate about her qualifications for tenure.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem last week, Hebrew University's Dr. Eilat Mazar, along with representatives from the Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities, was in the Israeli High Court of Justice attempting to halt the work on the Temple Mount being conducted by the Muslim Waqf, the religious trust charged with oversight of the location. The excavation, a trench 500 meters long and 1.5 meters deep, is, according to the complainants, "causing irreversible damage to antiquities and archaeological artifacts of the greatest importance . . , is being carried out illegally, [and] entails damage to ground layers, some of which may have been in place since the first Temple stood there 3,000 years ago."

The effrontery of this recent, but not isolated, act by the Waqf is made all the more troubling by the fact that the archeological contempt shown by the trust reflects their attitude that a Jewish historical connection to the site is only apocryphal. In the same way that El-Haj denies a Jewish component to the archeology of Israel, the Waqf's oversight of the Temple Mount has contributed to an effort, in pursuit of the Palestinian's nationalistic cause, to erase or obscure Judaism and replace it with a Muslim historical narrative. Hebrew University's Yitzhak Reiter, who conducted a study for the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, observes that this has been a deliberate strategy: "In the last generation, the Islamic and Arab history of Jerusalem has gradually been rewritten. At the heart of this new version is the Arabs' historic right to Jerusalem and Palestine. The main argument is that the Arabs ruled Jerusalem thousands of years before the children of Israel. In addition to building the Arab-Muslim case, the Muslim thinkers are formulating a denial and negation of the Jewish-Zionist narrative. Included in that effort is the de-Judaizing of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and Jerusalem as a whole."

A second, but concurrent, assault on that Jewish history is "post-colonial" scholarship like that of El-Haj, which makes what author Stephen Schwartz calls "the hallucinated claim that Jewish identity is a modern, nationalist, and Zionist-imperialist ‘construct' rather than a product of thousands of years of recorded history and religious tradition."

El-Haj's book has been widely denounced precisely because it seems not to be authentic scholarship on archeology of the Holy Land at all, but a revisionist history based on political ideology--the notion that any historical relationship between Jews and Jerusalem, indeed to Israel itself, is merely a construct, a fiction, a professional fraud hoisted upon the world of scholarship by Israel archeologists who artificially ‘built' a historical link between the Jews and Israel. Israel, a "colonial settler state," had to contort history through selectively revealed archeological finds and, she says, "the colonial dimension of Jewish settlement in Palestine cannot be sidelined if one is to understand the significance and consequences of archaeological practice."

She thus disingenuously, and without worrying about science, fact, or history, dismisses or ignores generations of professional archeology carried out by actual archeologists (which she is not), and posits that "the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins" is a "pure political fabrication," an "ideological assertion comparable to Arab claims of Canaanite or other ancient tribal roots."

That may be El-Haj's way of wanting to appraise the history of Israel, but it unfortunately flies in the face of all scholarship on the antiquities of Israel and Palestine, and would require that previous scholars and archeologists overlook facts and embrace her politically-shaped theory. In fact, Diana Muir and Avigail Appelbaum, two Barnard graduates who wrote a review of her book, feel that the "outrageous nature of this demand is breathtaking. Not only does Abu El- Haj take upon herself the privilege of dismissing large bodies of evidence, she demands that other scholars ignore or deliberately distort evidence to conform to her political bias."

Of course, "distorting evidence to conform to political bias" is ubiquitous amid Palestinian propagandists, who, along with their apologists in the West, have assiduously attempted to rewrite a historical narrative with themselves as an indigenous people and Israelis as European colonial usurpers with no real connection to the land of what became Israel. So to overcome that inconvenient set of facts, El-Haj contends, Israeli-directed archeology took it upon itself to sift through a past rich with Muslim relics, but ignored them, and recorded only those findings which confirmed a historical Jewish connection to the land.

"The work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a cardinal institutional location for the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood," El-Haj writes with the politicized syntax of her ideological mentor, Columbia's Edward Said, "producing facts through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects, and historicities [sic] ‘happen.'"

The problem with coming up with a book of archeology which defies logic and history, as El-Haj has done here, is that one would have to condemn the work of all archeologists in the field whose work had formed the basis of the historical record she is determined to negate. One of the reasons that critics oppose her being granted tenure at Barnard is precisely because she has defamed noted professionals in the field, based on anonymous sources and anecdotal evidence. In fact, one of El-Haj's fellow professors at Barnard, Alan F. Segal, Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies, recently took her to task in an op-ed in The Columbia Spectator for what he perceived to be one of her severest scholarly offenses, a claim "that Israelis deliberately mislabel Christian sites as Jewish and tear down churches . . [and] that they use bull-dozers to level sites and wipe out evidence of Palestinian habitation."

Professor Segal finds the assertion that bulldozers have been used in "contemporary archeology" to be El-Haj's "most outrageous charge," not only because Israeli archeologists are fastidious in methodology and practice, but also, given what is happening currently atop the Temple Mount itself—one of the world's richest archeological and historical sites--it is something that the Waqf, not the Israelis, should have to answer for.

Many will remember, for instance, the howls of outrage that arose from the Arab world in February 2007 when Israeli authorities initiated a project to rebuild a ramp to the Mugrabi Gate, an entrance to the Temple Mount plaza and the Al Aqsa Mosque platform that had been damaged in an earlier storm. Riots and protests began immediately, with accusations against Israel coming from throughout the Arab world for its "scheme" and treachery in digging under and threatening to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque itself. The committee of Muslim scholars in Jordan's Islamic Action Front, for one, "urge[d] . . . proclaiming jihad to liberate Al Aqsa and save it from destruction and sabotage from Jewish usurpers," a spurious claim since construction was taking place well outside the Mount platform, some 100 meters from the mosque, and clearly posed no possible threat.

So while riots ensued when Israelis initiated a carefully supervised reconstruction project near the Temple Mount, the Muslim guardians of Judaism's holiest site have felt no compunction in brutally gouging the historic surfaces when it suits their own purposes, either currently as they create a deep trench or as they did in 1999 when they opened a gaping hole in what is known as Solomon's Stables -- 18,000 square feet in area and 36 feet deep, for new mosques. Most seriously, 13,000 tons of rubble from that criminal dig, containing rich archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods, was scattered clandestinely in the Kidron valley dump without any professional archeological oversight and before experts could evaluate any unearthed items of significance.

The Arab world's own complicity in playing fast and loose with history, and obscuring the "facts on the ground" in their attempt to create a historical narrative conforming to their political agenda, makes El-Haj's accusations against Israeli archeologists all the more disingenuous. Notes Ralph Harrington, "The claim that Israel practices ‘bulldozer archaeology’ is an explosive one and draws on images of ideologically-driven Israeli destructiveness that are deeply rooted in contemporary Palestinian perceptions," but it is explosive because it is part of a pattern of lies. In yet another example of "turnspeak," the Arab world has accused Israel of the misdeeds, lies about history, and destruction of a nationhood that they themselves are committing. It is part of a relentless and continuing effort to de-legitimize Israel and finally eliminate it through a false historical narrative that is repeated in Palestinian schoolbooks, in sermons, in the Arab press, in Middle Eastern study centers at universities, and in the politicized scholarship and dialogue generated by Israel-haters, anti-Semites and Palestinian apologists around the world.

“At the heart of this . . . is a monstrous lie," says professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno, Bruce Thornton, "the airbrushing of Jews from the history of Jerusalem, an Orwellian rewriting of history started by the Arabs and abetted by some politicized Western scholars." That is the core problem with Facts on the Ground -- that it is not a scholarly attempt to shed light on the rich archeological history of the Levant at all. Instead, it is ideology parading as scholarship, the work of a dilettante who never visited a dig, reads no Hebrew, and used anonymous sources to craft what Haaretz columnist Nadav Shragai called a "tissue of lies" about Israeli archeologists, who, perhaps lacking the political motivations that so clearly subsume El-Haj's own work, uncovered the true facts on the ground that shape the uninterrupted 3000-year Jewish presence in the land that became Israel.

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D. is director of Boston University's Program in Book and Magazine Publishing at the Center for Professional Education. This article appeared online in American Thinker on October 17.

Ruth King

Two issues which are proving especially vexing to candidates and voters alike this election season are immigration (and its corollary, assimilation) and the problem of maintaining civil rights while monitoring enemies within the state. Israel is a role model in both.

First, assimilation of immigrants. By now it is clear that such multi-cultural experiments as bilingual education have failed dismally. Contrast this with the success of Israel in making Hebrew the common language. With the creation of modern Israel, a few years after the Holocaust, absorption centers were set up to provide housing, counseling, vocational training and language skills for millions of survivors of Nazi brutality as well as for the flood of Jewish refugees from Arab states who poured into Israel.

International Jewish charity and social service organizations contributed generously to this enormous effort, but it was Israel, surrounded as it has always been by murderous enemies, that achieved this epic rescue and the rebirth of a united nation speaking its ancient language.

One of the first acts of Israel’s new parliament was to abolish the priority of English and replace it with Hebrew. Until this day parliamentary debate and enactment of laws are conducted exclusively in Hebrew. This was an act of nationalism as well as Prime Minister Ben Gurion’s pointed rebuke to Great Britain for its duplicity toward the Jewish homeland.

The revival of Hebrew as a modern language can be credited to Eliezer Ben Yehuda ((1858-1922), who went to Israel in 1901 determined to revive the language. His mantra was “Hebrew in the homes and schools” and “talk and talk.” Ben Yehuda’s odyssey and heroism will be the subject of a separate essay in Outpost.

It was one thing to share this Jewish hero’s revivalist dream, but a near impossible task to implement it. Immigrants came from every corner of the world speaking dozens of languages with differing alphabets and dialects which made the task even more daunting, especially when one considers that prior to 1948, more people in the world probably spoke Mongolian than conversational Hebrew.

The task was accomplished through a system of ulpans initiated to teach arrivals Hebrew and to create, through language, a common bond and identity. In some ways ulpans were similar to the “total immersion” system of the Berlitz schools; however in Israel they were group sessions available free of charge. Since 1948, this was repeated again and again as new waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia and Ethiopia have come to Israel. It is estimated that almost two million people have learned Hebrew at ulpans.

Ulpans varied and their methods were often improvised. In 1955, I spent many months in Israel and signed up for an ulpan attended by about twenty women, mostly from Europe. After a few days of pointing to objects and teaching us greetings and some elementary words, the instructor took the entire class on a shopping expedition. We took a bus and went to a food market where the art of buying chickens, choosing vegetables and other edibles, and paying and getting change was illuminated for us by bemused vendors from every corner of the world as well as the instructor who insisted that we converse only in Hebrew. The next day in class we reenacted the scene with some of us playing the vendors.

Within two weeks we learned functional Hebrew and then set ourselves to the more difficult task of learning the alphabet, reading and writing. I did not stay for the full series but my acquaintances from the ulpan all learned to speak, read and write Hebrew within a very short time. Their kids and grandkids and 6,000,000 Israelis speak, read and write it fluently.

Incidentally, Arabic is taught to Arab children in Israel as a second language, but those Arabs who wish to debate laws in Israel’s fractious parliament must do so in Hebrew. Ben Yehuda would be proud.

On the problem of maintaining security while guaranteeing maximum civil rights to all citizens, Israel is, again, a model. Israel has a large minority population of Arabs. On a bus or in a café or a market, Arabs blend into the crowd and have wreaked havoc on Israel’s citizens. They represent a potential fifth column within the heartland of the Jewish state and they must be carefully monitored.

Nonetheless, Arab citizens in Israel benefit from full protection under Israeli law, freedom of speech, assembly and religion, not to mention government medical and educational services unknown in Arab lands. In great part this is possible due to tenacious intelligence services that are committed to security as well as to maintaining a civil society which respects all citizens. If only Israeli jurists would be as sensitive to the plight of Israeli citizens who live in the towns of Judea and Samaria as they are to the complaints of Haifa’s large Arab population!

Israel, beleaguered and battered though it may be, has much to teach the world and our presidential candidates and legislators should take notice.