JULY/AUGUST 2008

In Memoriam: Senator Jesse Helms

Beginning in 1984 Jesse Helms became one of Israel’s staunchest supporters. In 1986 he spoke at AFSI’s national convention. Helms called Israel the only reliable ally of the United States in the Middle East and initiated a letter to President Reagan dated March 6, 1985 (signed by 19 Senators and Congressmen) in which he urged permanent Israeli control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

A sharp critic of State Department policy, Helms urged a defense agreement with Israel to include air strips, joint research and development and cooperation in other fields.

AFSI is proud of a letter we received from Senator Helms dated February 25, 1987 in which he said “AFSI has become an invaluable source of information on Middle East issues for my staff and me.”

A CLIMATE FOR TERROR Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR Rael Jean Isaac

ENGLISH ANTI-SEMITISM Robert S. Wistrich

A LEADERSHIP UNWORTHY OF ITS PEOPLE David Isaac

A TRIBUTE TO SHMUEL KATZ Rael Jean Isaac

THE LEGACY OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITSM Ruth King

A DAY OF INFAMY Naomi Ragen

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

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Herbert Zweibon

The rampage by an Arab bulldozer driver first along Sarei Israel Boulevard and then along the Jaffa Road which wound up killing three, including the mother of a five month old baby girl, and injuring dozens—like the murder of eight teenage boys at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva a few months ago by the driver of an Arab owned transport company licensed to drive school children—was the product of two profoundly disturbing inter-connected developments: the permissiveness of the Israeli authorities toward lawless Arab behavior and the draconian measures against Jews who act in self-defense or the defense of other Jews.

As Caroline Glick reports, when it comes to Arabs, “the police simply refuse to enforce the law….As a consequence of police inaction, thieves, smugglers, terror solicitors and other dangerous criminals are allowed to operate in the open. Fearing the wrath of human rights groups on the one hand and Arab rioters on the other, the police simply do not enforce Israeli law in the Arab sector.”

But if anything goes where Arabs are concerned, the authorities are ruthless in their suppression of Israeli citizens who interfere with that policy. For example, Danny and Itzik Halamish, brothers who live in Gush Etzion, were recently sentenced to 7 and 8 months in prison respectively for warding off an Arab mob of 20 who surrounded them and threatened them with large rocks and poles. No one was hurt; one of the Halamish brothers apparently gave a warning shot into the air. The Israeli judges said they were putting them in jail to “serve as a lesson to others.”

Israelis have learned the lesson. As a result, with the police ever more passive and flaccid, it takes a person with exceptional Zionist faith to act in times of emergency. In both the Jaffa Road and Mercaz Harav terror attacks, it was such an individual who prevented even worse slaughter. In the case of the slaughter of the yeshiva boys, it was furloughed paratrooper Captain David Shapira who killed the murderer. There was a police officer at the scene but even as he heard the cries of the teenagers being murdered he stood outside and did nothing. And on the Jaffa Road, eye witnesses report that unarmed 20 year old Moshe Plesser climbed onto the bulldozer, seizing the gun of a security guard to finally stop the careening driver by shooting him three times in the head. And the police? Caroline Glick reports that a policeman had also climbed onto the bulldozer but instead of shooting, merely tried to restrain the driver. Glick writes that the Arab killed 33 year old Batsheva Unterman (the mother of the baby who miraculously survived) while the policeman was standing next to him in the bulldozer’s cab!

As for the courageous and quick-thinking Moshe Plesser, he is a religious soldier in the Givati brigade and a student at the Yeshiva of Kiryat Arba. whose educational values, he says, inspired his actions. Nor is the fact that he is the brother-in-law of David Shapira, the hero of Mercaz Harav, as extraordinary a coincidence as it would appear: Plesser says he was inspired by the valiant actions of his brother-in-law. Ironically Plesser had to petition the army for two years to be permitted to serve. The Israeli authorities regarded him as a security risk because, when he was 17, he took part in a demonstration against the destruction of the Jewish communities in Gaza. Photographing a protest in Ramat Gan, he was beaten unconscious by police who were anxious to keep him from documenting their behavior. Arrested and released several days later, he was left with a police record that made the IDF refuse to take him.

If those in power in Israel are incapable of deterring internal foes and instead turn on the finest and bravest of their own young people, what possible chance do they have to prevail against powerful external enemies like Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah?

Rael Jean Isaac

Halkin on the Golan

Has Hillel Halkin finally found an Israeli retreat he did not like? On superficial reading, his column in the New York Sun of May 27 makes it appear so. He starts by saying “I can’t remember how many columns I have written in The New York Sun and other places, against the idea of returning the entire Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a largely worthless peace treaty.” (The reference to many columns suggests Halkin has become sensitive to the charge—richly deserved—that he is a champion of the flip-flop.) Yet the key to the next flip-flop is right there in the phrase “the entire Golan Heights.” And it is reinforced near the end of the article where Halkin says that the Olmert government policy will mean “keeping the Golan or hoping eventually to settle with the Syrians for part of it, will be made that much more difficult.”

So Halkin leaves a door open wide enough for a camel to walk through for what will surely (if past is prologue) be his next position—that if Israel gets a statement saying this or that from the United States, then giving up the Golan (and you can bet the farm Syria won’t be content with part of it) is a wonderful move in the interest of Israel’s security and international standing. And yes, once the Golan is gone (shades of Halkin’s Gaza somersaults), we can expect more columns on what a bad idea it was after all. We repeat again, how can it be that this baffled and baffling pundit is the best both the New York Sun and Commentary can offer?

Christians in Iraq

As Robin Harris notes in National Review Online, the surge is working “but at the same time the Iraqi Christian community is dying…In former times, the violent persecution of Christians in a country effectively under the rule of a Western, Christian power would have been unthinkable. But not, it seems, in the enlightened 21st century.”

It is even worse than what Harris describes. In the enlightened 21st century, the Christian community of Iraq has been forced to finance its own destruction. For years Mosul Archbishop Paulos Faraj Raho (as reported in The New York Times of June 26) was forced to pay protection money (gathered from alms at Sunday mass and from funds donated by Christians abroad to help Iraqi fellow Christians) to the terrorist insurgency. When security improved in 2007 he stopped paying. But security had not improved enough —the Archbishop was kidnapped and his body found in a shallow grave outside Mosul.

The Archbishop’s payments were only the tip of the iceberg. The Times reports that Christian households in Mosul, the seat of Iraqi Christianity, were forced to pay hundreds of dollars a month for each male member of the household (the insurgents brazenly called this protection money jizya, the name for the tax on Christians and Jews under Islamic law). The terrorists collected further funds from Christians by kidnapping priests and forcing congregations to pay ransoms as high as $150,000. Author Rosie Malek-Yonan, at a Congressional hearing in 2006, accused the U.S. army of failing to protect Christians out of concern that special attention to their plight would play into the hands of insurgent propagandists.

U.S. catering to Moslem “sensitivities” has turned craven. A U.S. marine in Fallujah handed out what The Washington Post described as “only a few coins” inscribed in Arabic with two lines from the New Testament. As Diana West points out, it is the army’s reaction that is shocking. The Army suspended the Marine and the U.S. military spokesman in the area declared “This incident doesn’t represent the morals of the Marines.” Writes West: “Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion doesn’t represent the morals of the Marines?”

The numbers tell the story. The Christian population is half what it was when the U.S. forces took over Iraq and of the remaining 400,000, 100,000 have been internally displaced. Soon the Christian community of Iraq may become like the once proud Jewish community of Iraq – a tiny remnant.

Loony Livni

Tzipi Livni is emerging as contender for the role of Israel’s chief fool. For could even Simple Shimon top this? “The demand of the Palestinians for a home of their own is the very thing which causes our demand for a Jewish homeland to be legitimate.” (quoted in The Jerusalem Post, June 23)

Three thousand five hundred years of Jewish history don’t exist for Livni. As Shmuel Katz wrote in Battleground: “The Jews were never a people without a homeland. Having been robbed of their land, Jews never ceased to give expression to their anguish at their deprivation and to pray for and demand its return. Throughout the nearly two millennia of dispersion, Palestine remained the focus of the national culture. Every single day in all those seventy generations, devout Jews gave voice to their attachment to Zion.”

As for the Arabs of Palestine, they never saw themselves as a nation. The “Palestinians” as we pointed out in a thirty year old pamphlet by that name constitute “a political masquerade,” an “’anti-nation,’ one that derives its entire meaning and purpose from the desire to destroy another nation.” Theirs is a “nationalism which has developed through, lives in, and depends on opposition to Zionism and Israel.”

And it is in fulfilling this perverted nationalism that Tzipi Livni sees the source of Israel’s legitimacy? Heaven help us, this ignoramus is bruited as a possible future Prime Minister.

Blood on Their Hands

When the pattern of wildly imbalanced prisoner “exchanges” began in 1983 (Israel exchanged 4,700 Arabs for six captured Israeli soldiers), Israeli government leaders promised that there would be no release of those “with blood on their hands.” Like most promises of Israeli governments, that fizzled and the most recent “exchange” releases a Lebanese terrorist with the most bloody hands imaginable, Samir Kuntar, who invaded an apartment in Nahariya in 1979.

Here is a description of what happened by the woman who lost her husband and two small children at his hands: “Outside we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. ‘This is just like what happened to my mother,’ I thought.

“As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar. By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her…”

Now in his early 40s, an unrepentant Kuntar promises to return to murdering Israelis on his release. And for what is the Israeli government releasing Kuntar as well as other terrorists into the jubilant arms of Hezbollah? In the craziest (and most dishonorable) “exchange” yet, it is for the dead bodies of two Israeli soldiers, so the families will have “closure.”

As Steven Plaut points out, Netanyahu and the Likud as well as the National Union party have been silent about this disgraceful “exchange.”

Outpost has frequently pointed out that a state is not a family, and cannot act as a family might, sacrificing everything to bring home a loved one. In this case, even a family should find the price for visiting a tombstone too high.

Robert S. Wistrich

Editor’s Note: This is excerpted from an interview with Professor Wistrich conducted by Manfred Gerstenfeld, published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, No. 70, July 1, 2008.

"One characteristic of English anti-Semitism has been its often understated nature, in keeping with British tradition. That makes it more effective because one does not become aware of it so easily. One example among many is the British journalist Richard Ingrams, who was editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye for twenty-three years starting in the 1960s. He once wrote in The Observer that he threw away unread all correspondence he received from people with Jewish names regarding the Middle East because, he thought, they must be biased on the subject. If someone were to tell him he is an anti-Semite he would, of course, reject that. But would he publicly write the same thing about Arab correspondents?

"Anti-Semitism in Great Britain has been around for almost a thousand years of recorded history. In the Middle Ages, England pioneered the blood libel. The Norwich case in 1144 marked the first time Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children for their Passover matzot.

"From the Norman Conquest of 1066 onward there was a steady process--particularly during the thirteenth century--of persecution, forced conversion, extortion, and expropriation of Jews. This culminated in the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 under Edward I. It was the first ejection of a major Jewish community in Europe. It is important to bear this in mind because it is not widely known, least of all in England. I grew up there and went to grammar school and to Cambridge University and do not recall that this was ever mentioned. On the contrary, we were taught at school about the chivalry of Richard the Lionheart, not the massacres of Jews by Crusader kings.

"Britain was not only the first country in medieval Europe to expel Jews but also one of the last to take them back. It took slightly more than 350 years for this to happen. The return of the Jews to the British Isles began very quietly and informally in 1656 under Oliver Cromwell. This was the beginning--drop by drop--of the formation a new community that over time would contribute a great deal to British society.

"The long absence of Jews from the shores of the British Isles did not mean that anti-Semitism disappeared. This is an instructive early example of how society does not need the physical presence of Jews for the potency of anti-Jewish stereotypes to penetrate the culture.

"I grew up on English literature. When I was sixteen we had to prepare for the advanced-level certificate. In our syllabus were several of the classic English works. They included Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from the late fourteenth century; Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta from the late sixteenth century; and William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice of the same period, which until today has remained one of the most popular plays of the English theater. Shylock has come to embody an image of the vengeful, tribal, and bloodthirsty Jew, who will never give up his pound of flesh. Those who talk about how humanistic, universal and empathetic his portrait is, are ignoring not only how it was perceived at the time, but its historical consequences.

"English literature and culture are drenched in anti-Jewish images. One cannot understand attitudes toward Jews in Britain today without taking into account the anti-Semitism embedded in the national culture. Many well-educated and well-meaning people fail to understand the long-term impact of such a cultural factor on their society, and are not even aware of their own latent prejudices. That was my experience during the thirty years I lived in Britain and it has got much worse because of anti-Israeli sentiment."

During the nineteenth century, matters evolved favorably for English Jews. Says Wistrich: "The British Empire reached its pinnacle of power and influence. England had become a relatively liberal society. Jews could feel proud and self-confident in proclaiming that they were British citizens. In the Middle East, Britain was even considered a protector of the Jews. It was more tolerant than most of its rivals and more open to intervening and trying to correct the disabilities of Jews in other parts of the world. So this was a kind of ‘golden age.'

"Yet here, too, the picture is more ambivalent than is often assumed. This was particularly so in the late nineteenth century with the immigration of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe into Britain. At that time there was strong xenophobia. There was a conservative anti-Semitism resistant to the Jew as an alien who could never be fully English. The Aliens Bill of 1905, directed at halting the immigration of Russian Jews, was a case in point.

"In the twentieth century, after the Russian Revolution, a linkage between Jews and communism that was intertwined with anti-Semitism became a pronounced theme in British public discourse. There was considerable publicity around the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This ended when Philip Graves, a London Times correspondent, exposed it as a forgery. Until then, one could read editorials in The Times that were based on the belief that Britain had spilled much blood in the First World War only to fall into the hands of a world Jewish conspiracy—a Pax Judaica!

"Similar accusations had been made before that, during the Boer War in South Africa. There were insinuations that a small clique of cosmopolitan Jewish financiers had dragged the British Empire into a futile, useless, expensive, and wholly destructive war for their own narrow financial interests. Such claims could also be heard from leading figures in the emerging British Labour Party and trade unions, which were promoting an anti-war sentiment resonant with anti-Semitism.

"In the literature around 1900, one often finds examples of a full-fledged left-wing conspiracy theory in which British imperialism is being manipulated and controlled by ‘Anglo-Hebraic' financiers. The entire issue was connected to the discovery of gold in South Africa. This theory was promoted by distinguished English intellectuals, enlightened journalists and writers, as well as the prominent liberal economist John Hobson. The entire episode shows striking similarities with trends in left-wing political circles in recent years. The radical Left asserts that former prime minister Tony Blair was led by the nose into a disastrous, neo-imperialist war in Iraq by a clique of rich British and American Jews.

“The theme of ‘warmongering Jews' became especially popular in the 1930s with the rise of British fascism under its aristocratic leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, who came originally from the Left. British fascism was stopped by active mobilization against it. Contrary to what would happen a few years later, the communists were among the most militant antifascists in the East End. The Jewish community, which included many working-class Jews, had a kind of unwritten alliance with the Left to stop fascism. That tradition unfortunately seems to be dead and buried today.

"In the Second World War, Britain was not willing to attempt to rescue the Jews of Europe in any meaningful way. It was not only imperial Realpolitik that made the British close the gates of Palestine. We know that officials in the Colonial and Foreign offices and people in the administration in Palestine were far from immune to anti-Semitic sentiment.

"During the war the British government was obsessed by the fear that their fight against Hitler could be construed as a war on behalf of the Jews. To avoid ‘fighting a Jewish war' became a kind of alibi for the British authorities to do almost nothing for the Jews. Britain's solemn commitment to create a Jewish National Home in Palestine was in fact betrayed in the hour of greatest need for European Jewry. This is a serious stain on the British record, which until then had many positive sides.

"After 1945—in the three years before the creation of the state of Israel--relations between Britain and the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, reached their lowest point. For example, in 1947 the commander of British Forces in Palestine, Lt. Gen. Evelyn Barker, ordered his men to avoid fraternization with Palestinian Jews and to ‘punish the Jews in the manner this race dislikes as much as any, by hitting them in the pocket, which will demonstrate our disgust for them.'

"After the Mandatory Government in Palestine executed members of the Irgun, a Jewish underground organization, the latter reacted by hanging two British sergeants. This led to anti-Jewish riots in 1947 in a number of British cities including Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and London. No lives were lost, but it was a very nasty time.

Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary in the Labour government of Clement Attlee, was convinced that a Jewish conspiracy existed, supposedly in alliance with the Soviet Union. A commonly held view, both in London and Washington at that time, was that ‘the Jews' were determined to bring down the British Empire. The empire did indeed crumble, though it was not due to any Jewish conspiracy but to more mundane economic and political factors. The war against Hitler had sapped British strength.

"Bevin made a number of anti-Semitic statements. He made remarks about Jews trying to jump to the head of the queue even after Auschwitz and the Holocaust. His attitude was also recorded by people who knew him well. The young Labour MP Richard Crossman, who was close to Bevin, emphasized that he was ‘obsessed by the Jews' and wanted to teach them a lesson they would never forget.

"Winston Churchill's record on Zionism was, of course, far more positive. But it was not as unequivocal as we often assume. There is a discrepancy between his wonderful rhetoric and what Churchill--as a lifelong Zionist--actually did for the Jews when he was in power. The gates of Palestine were kept shut under his premiership. His wartime actions regarding the Jews were no better than those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is to say, unimpressive. Nor, after becoming prime minister again in 1951, was Churchill's record on Israel particularly brilliant, though he had the historical vision to understand that Israel's re-creation was a major event in modern history. In expressing its meaning Churchill was at his best.

"It is important to remember that in the 1940s the ‘Zionism is Nazism' libel was rather popular among highly placed Englishmen. True, the Nazi-Zionist equation was predominantly a Soviet contribution to postwar anti-Semitism. But it did not originate there. Indeed, a number of Britishers can claim first-class honors in this field. An example is Sir John Glubb Pasha, who was commander of the Arab Jordanian Legion fighting against Israel in 1948. He was an upper-class conservative Englishman and a lifelong Arabophile, with a special love for desert Arabs.

"Glubb was obsessed with the idea that Jews had anticipated Hitler's master race theory. Nazism, in his view, was a pale copy of the Hebrew original as revealed in Old Testament sources. In memos he sent to London he branded Jews as Nazis who combined their East European fanaticism with a narrow Hebraic cast of mind, based on biblical vengeance and hatred. Glubb was not alone. One can find in British documents similar statements from high-ranking officials in the Palestine administration.

"In the 1950s and 1960s Arnold Toynbee, the renowned British philosopher of history, was immensely popular. He came to shockingly anti-Zionist conclusions presented in the grand style of historical generalization. As an Englishman he felt superior to the German Gentile barbarians who had infamously inflicted the Holocaust on the Jews. But he also claimed that the Jews were worse than the Nazis because they had knowingly imitated their evil deeds and become ruthless persecutors. Today, a disturbingly large number of English people--misguided, intoxicated, and half-brainwashed by parts of the media--would probably agree with Toynbee.

"Toynbee ranted on about the ‘expulsion' of the Palestinians, which he considered a crime of a greater order than that committed by the German Nazis! Israeli ambassador Yaacov Herzog demolished his arguments in a debate in the early 1960s in Montreal. But the mud stuck. After all Toynbee was an elite figure of the British establishment.

"In the 1970s, I was actively involved in such debates when I wrote my doctorate at University College, London. The campus war had heated up and was at full blast in 1975 after the UN ‘Zionism is racism' resolution. There were efforts to ban all Jewish societies on British campuses. This was stopped by a militant and determined campaign. The time was not yet ripe for the brazen anti-Semitism of the kind we find today in Britain and much of Europe, but it was certainly there beneath the surface.

"In the 1970s, the anti-Zionists in Britain--some of them Jews and expatriate Israelis—were already vilifying Israel as an ‘ethnic cleansing' and ‘racist' state. Even then there were claims that Zionism equals apartheid. Among the most extreme demagogues were Jewish Trotskyites, who were the most vitriolic in their loathing for Zionism.

"It is a curious fact that Trotskyites have been influential in left-wing circles in the UK--at least in comparison to other European countries. Only in France does one find anything equivalent. In their concept of the world, Zionism has for decades been inextricably linked with global capitalism and American imperialism. These were also the hackneyed phrases of Soviet propaganda. The communist empire has collapsed, of course, but the Trotskyites are still running with the ball. Their numbers are small but they have tenacity, ideological discipline, and use clever tactics of infiltration. Trotskyites infiltrated the Labour Party and the trade unions in the pre-Blair era. We see the bitter fruits in boycott actions today against Israel, sparked by people who went through this anti-Zionist indoctrination and have passed it on.

"Trotskyites are organized in the Socialist Workers Party, which was very active in the 1970s. It has become a larger political factor in recent decades. I watched the huge antiwar demonstration in London in February 2003. The two main organizers were the Muslim Association of Britain--close to the Muslim Brotherhood--and the Socialist Workers Party. They formed a Marxist-Islamist alliance against the war in Iraq and on the issue of Palestine, which was a major unifying factor.

“The protest came at a time when the ‘cabal' theory that the Jews had seized control of American and British foreign policy was being widely advanced. It was crudely asserted in Britain, Europe, the Middle East--and to a lesser degree in the United States--that Bush's war in Iraq was being fought on Israel's behalf. This echoes the anti-Semitic notions of the late 1930s about ‘warmongering Jews' pushing the West into an unnecessary conflict with Nazism."

"There is also a relatively new party called Respect led by MP George Galloway from Scotland. He was on the left of the Labour Party before he went independent. Galloway at one time received generous assistance from Saddam Hussein and defended him regularly on British television. Galloway is an intellectual lightweight and rabble-rouser. He sees a revolutionary potential in the Muslim immigrants in Britain, a kind of ‘substitute proletariat' that could help revive the lost dreams of international socialism.

“Then there is the more general Muslim contribution to anti-Semitism in Britain, which has become a significant factor. There is no other Western society where jihadi radicalism has proved as violent and dangerous as in the UK. Although anti-Semitism is not the determining factor in this extremism, it plays a role. The exploration of Muslim attitudes in the UK is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, it appears that close to half of British Muslims believe in a Jewish conspiracy that dominates UK media and politics. The percentage of Muslim perpetrators of violent anti-Semitic acts is nearly ten times greater than the Muslim percentage of the general population. Muslims from Britain have been involved in a series of high-profile cases. One leading terrorist was Omar Sheikh, an Anglo-Pakistani born and bred in Britain and educated at the London School of Economics and the alleged mastermind of the beheading of the American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi. The horrific video emphasized Pearl's Jewish origins.

"At the other extreme, the far-Right British National Party sees a climate emerging where it might do better than in the past. The fascists would frankly like to see a Britain without Muslims. On the other hand, they also see eye to eye with many Muslim extremists on issues concerning Israel and the Jews. These British fascists admire Osama bin Laden.

“Another pioneering role of the UK, especially in the area of anti-Israelism, is the longstanding bias in BBC reporting and commentary about the Jewish world and Israel in particular. The BBC plays a special role owing to its long-established prestige as a news source widely considered to be objective.

"Within the distorted BBC system, the reporting of Israeli civilian fatalities and Palestinian suicide attacks made them seem no more than minor pinpricks compared to the retaliations by Israel, the definitive ‘rogue state.' The BBC invariably disconnects jihadi terrorism from any notion that it is part of a hate culture and the result of ideological indoctrination. The explanation is that these murderous deeds are driven by the relentless, ‘racist actions' of the Israeli government. Terrorism is mentioned without connection to an ideology and the issue of anti-Semitism in the Arab or Islamic world is virtually nonexistent.

“Another favorite topic of the British media is the power of the Jewish lobby. One well-publicized example occurred when the veteran Labour MP Tom Dalyell said in a 2003 interview in Vanity Fair that Tony Blair was surrounded by a ‘cabal' of Jewish advisers. Of the three people he mentioned, only one was Jewish, Lord Levy. A second exemplar, Peter Mandelson, did have a Jewish ancestor but never claimed to be a Jew; while the third was Foreign Minister Jack Straw, whom many Jews consider anti-Israel. Straw, it turned out, did have a Jewish grandfather but had never advertised the fact. Dalyell claimed these people were linked up with the neocons in Washington in a pro-Israeli Jewish world conspiracy. Many others on the British Left have held virulently anti-Israeli views, including former minister Claire Short who, at one point, blamed the Jewish state for global warming!

"There are exceptions to the anti-Israeli attitude. The most important was former prime minister Tony Blair, who was as sympathetic to Israel as one can reasonably be under the circumstances. The paradox is that, while Blair and his successor Gordon Brown have been pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish, Britain is still one of the leaders of current European anti-Semitism. Blair and Brown fit into a line of statesmen who came out of the British Christian tradition, which has a historic affinity with Zionism. These leaders include Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson, and Margaret Thatcher--individuals of vision and great political talent.

“Britain can also pride itself on the publication of the Report of the All-Party Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, which did a fair and thorough--though not perfect--job of investigating the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment in the UK.

"Among those who have contributed to the current hostile mood is Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London until May 2008. In the 1970s, he knocked on my door to ask for my vote in a local North London election. It turned out he was a passionate admirer of Leon Trotsky and was enthused to learn that I had just written a book on the Bolshevik leader--the kind of Jew he could empathize with--a radical leftist, an international socialist, and an ‘anti-Zionist.'
"A few years later he became a co-editor of the Labour Herald, the Labour Party's paper in London. In 1982, during the First Lebanon War it published on its front page a caricature of then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in full SS uniform with the skull-and-bones insignia on his head. He was standing atop a mountain of skulls. The caption was in big, black Gothic script: ‘The Final Solution.' This cartoon could have come straight out of Pravda.

"On two occasions Livingstone gave red-carpet treatment to Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi whom he invited to London. This Egyptian sheikh lives in Qatar and has supported suicide bombings as being consistent with Islam. He was presented by Livingstone as a ‘progressive' and the kind of moderate who could positively influence British Muslims.

“What is interesting is that in Britain, as in much of Europe, the proclaimed antiracism of the left-wing variety often feeds the new anti-Semitism—which is primarily directed against Israel. Of course, if one suggests that such leftists are anti-Semites in disguise, they are likely to become enraged and retort that one is ‘playing the anti-Semitic card.' This has become a codeword for saying, as it were, ‘You are a dishonest, deceitful, manipulative Jew' or a ‘lover of Jews.' Zionists supposedly use the ‘accusation of anti-Semitism' to distort and silence the fully justified criticism of Israel and its human rights abuses. The word ‘criticism' in this context is misplaced. It is a euphemism or license for the demonization of Israel. And that in turn is a major form of anti-Semitism in our time."

Robert Wistrich holds the Neuberger Chair for Modern European and Jewish History at Hebrew University.

David Isaac

People get the government they deserve. This oft-quoted remark, attributed to everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Mark Twain, but generally traced to 18th century politician Joseph de Maistre, is another way of saying, “You get what you deserve.” It puts the onus of the excesses, stupidity and corruption of elected leaders on those who elected them.

In Israel, the opposite seems to be true. Israelis get the governments they don’t deserve. The plain men and women of the state demonstrate time and again exceptional character even as their leadership demonstrates the basest. In Israel, it’s not cream, but another protein-rich substance, that rises to the top.

Aryeh Stav, editor of the Israel magazine Nativ, pilloried Israel’s leadership well in a recent issue. For those familiar with the Passover Haggadah, his summation reads like a Had Gadyah from hell. From Menachem Begin, who laid the foundations for a Palestinian state to Yitzhak Rabin, who shook hands with Yasser Arafat to Ariel Sharon, who ethnically cleansed the Gaza Strip of its Jews. They, and those that came between, not only betrayed the Jewish people but their own principles as well.

Contrast this with the stories of courage and sacrifice of Israelis coping with the carnage that the Knesset’s “Big Men” have wrought and you get the feeling that there is a profound disconnect between what goes in the voting booth and what comes out at the other end.

One example is 16-year-old Maayan Roth, the younger sister of Roi Roth, one of eight students killed in the Merkaz HaRav shooting in March. On her own initiative, she visits schools to talk about her brother.

At one school in Petah Tikvah, she said, “At the moment that Roi was taken, a holy person like my brother, I said to myself, ‘No, I won’t let this remain a private sorrow, one of our family alone, so even before the 30 days [of mourning] were finished, I decided to go out and have conversations with young people so that they will know my brother and will continue in his way.”

Maayan painted a portrait of a remarkable young man, deeply committed to Torah, who prayed with a special intensity and who loved the Land of Israel, whose length and breadth he hiked. “He would return to the same place a thousand times and be amazed each time as if it were new,” she said.

She described the heart-rending moment she heard of Roi’s death. “Suddenly, I heard crying. I ran and opened the door and I saw my whole school there and I realized that the terrible had happened. I started to cry and I collapsed onto the floor.”

Clearly still reeling from the loss of Roi, she yet concluded with a call to arms: “This is what I want to request from you. That you will do. You will go out. You will go on. That you will fight for this Land. Because if we don’t fight there will be none to fight.”

Another instance of a citizen who deserves better from his government is the Hesder yeshiva boy on leave from the army who killed the Arab who drove a bulldozer on a rampage through Jerusalem, killing three. Known simply as “Mem,” the young man leapt onto the bulldozer, took a gun from a security guard and shot the driver dead. (The scene was actually caught on tape and can be viewed on YouTube.)

It turns out that this same boy was beaten unconscious by police while photographing a road-blocking protest in Ramat Gan in May 2005. Though he was standing on the side of the road, the police didn’t like him documenting their behavior. Though his case was closed for lack of evidence, it left him with a police record. It took two years of arguing with the IDF before he was allowed to join an elite army unit.

Coincidentally, it was his brother-in-law who shot the terrorist in the Merkaz Harav shooting. In their reports, Israel’s media studiously avoided going into detail about either of these men as they both are a product of the religious Zionist camp, a group that has become a convenient scapegoat for those in Israel who don’t have the courage to face the stubborn facts motivating Arab violence.

As these citizens perform heroic deeds on the streets, the government sinks to new lows, the latest being the release of terrorists in lopsided prison swaps which only create incentives for terrorists to kidnap more Israelis.

Shalom Rahum, whose 16-year-old son Ophir was lured to Ramallah by a female terrorist and then killed by her two associates in January 2001, explained it simply. “If you give a wolf a lamb thinking he’ll leave the flock alone, you’re making a mistake. Next time he’ll ask for two.” He added, pointing an accusing finger at the camera: “You [the media] are supposed to guard democracy. You are supposed to give a voice to me, the little guy.”

We hope the little guy in Israel will find his voice. It will have a clear and simple ring, like the voice of Maayan and Shalom and those shots Mem fired into a terrorist's head.

David Isaac is a writer in Los Angeles.

Rael Jean Isaac

Editors note: This tribute was given at a memorial for Shmuel Katz at Temple Emanuel in New York City on June 18th. Other speakers were Herbert Zweibon, Gerald Strober, and Joel Gilbert.

My husband Erich and I first met Shmuel in 1969. Erich was teaching for a year at Tel Aviv University and I was working on a doctoral thesis on the opposing movements that had burgeoned in Israel in response to those amazing six days in June 1967 in which Israel had suddenly become over five times as large. On one side was the Land of Israel Movement, which said Israel should keep the territories it had won in battle; on the other was the peace movement, which said Israel should relinquish them.

Studying these movements involved interviewing their leaders and Shmuel, naturally, was active in the Land of Israel Movement. Of all the people we interviewed we became closest to Shmuel. He was friendly, approachable, a wonderful story-teller and, a huge bonus for me, spoke impeccable English. It may be hard to imagine today, as Israel sinks ever deeper into retreat, demoralization and political decline, but 1969 was a heady time. There were tectonic changes in the political landscape. For Shmuel much of the Land of Israel Movement’s excitement and joy was in bringing together former enemies. The word “enemies” is not an overstatement. The gulf was enormous between Labor activists and former members of the underground—and Shmuel had been a member of the high command of the Irgun. For years, in Knesset debates, Ben Gurion would not even use Menachem Begin’s name—he would refer to him as “the person sitting on the right hand of Professor Bader” or use similar circumlocutions.

Shmuel told us of an incident that dramatized the transformed climate. Shortly before the war he had been invited to a kibbutz high school to present the Irgun’s version of the Altalena incident, in which a ship bearing arms for the nascent state of Israel was destroyed on Ben Gurion’s orders. The kibbutz had invited Benny Marshak, who had been a political officer in the left-wing Palmach when the Altalena was sunk, to present Labor’s version. Marshak refused to debate on the ground he would not enter the same room as Katz. Yet a few months later they would be sitting amicably together on the executive of the Land of Israel Movement. To many in the Israeli public, all too familiar with the long internecine conflicts, it was stunning that leaders from the far left Mapam, from the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement, from Labor, would unite in a common platform with people like Katz, not to mention ultra-orthodox rabbis—this was every bit as astonishing as an agreement with the Arabs would have been.

Shmuel, never interested in putting himself forward, his eyes always on the cause, told us he was anxious that the Land of Israel movement maintain its image as primarily composed of converts from the left. He told us, and I quote: “I came into the Movement with some reluctance because of my background, and I told others to stay away. I just came to see that the movement stuck to the point. And on the whole there has been no need.”

Although I’m here to talk about Shmuel, not about these movements, I can’t resist pointing out that the Land of Israel Movement was united while the opposing peace movement was splintered into lots of disputatious grouplets. The peace movement was divided not only about how much of the territory to give up (all of it? all but Jerusalem? all but the Golan?) but was also divided about what, if anything, to demand in return and who would get the territory. There is virtual unanimity today among peace processors that a Palestinian state is the solution but in 1969 many in the Israeli peace movement sharply rejected this idea. Why? Some felt it wouldn’t work but others felt it would be morally wrong—it would be a species of Israeli “imperialism” to dictate to the Palestinian Arabs how to shape their future.

My husband and Shmuel agreed on the importance of spreading the ideas of the Land of Israel Movement in the United States, emphasizing that a strong Israel in defensible borders was not only in Israel’s interest but in the interests of the United States, this at a time when the Soviet Union was establishing client states in the region. At that time the always left-leaning Jewish community here was firmly attached to the notion that whatever the Israeli Labor government did was right, and Israel’s lightning victory in 1967 did nothing to change that conviction. This was the case even though the government’s position at the time produced paralysis. The government of Israel’s line was that it was prepared to give up almost all the territories—for peace. The Arab states had responded with the three nos of Khartoum, no recognition, no negotiations, no peace. So the government’s position was simply to hold the territories in limbo, waiting for an Arab change of heart.

We weren’t surprised when Shmuel showed up not long after our return to the United States, to prod us into doing something, and AFSI was born. My husband was chairman until the task was taken over by Herbert Zweibon, the only person I know as dedicated and as selfless as Shmuel. Shmuel would come to the states repeatedly in the following years, full of plans and ideas, meeting with a great many people. I remember a running argument with Shmuel in those years. Shmuel would insist that AFSI could do more and I would say that it was tough to be more Catholic than the Pope. I would contend that until Israel’s government adopted a policy assertive of Jewish rights, it was an uphill battle here to persuade the Jewish community and the political elite, however supportive of Israel they might like to be. Shmuel did not want to hear this, insisting that our efforts in showing that a strong Israel was in U.S. interests were quite independent of what went on in Israel. In the end Shmuel would pound the table, and that would end our chicken and egg discussion—at least until his next visit.

In 1977 it looked like such arguments would be a thing of the past. Like Shmuel we were filled with hope when the seemingly permanent hegemony of the Labor Party finally crumbled. We were especially encouraged when Shmuel himself arrived as the advance representative of the new government. It was his task to reassure a Jewish establishment-in-shock and defuse a media that ran headlines like Begin rhymes with Fagin. It was precisely because of Shmuel’s earlier single-handed, independent efforts in the United States that Begin reached out to his long-ago associate in the Irgun.

What Shmuel wanted, and he would have been absolutely ideal for the task, was to reshape and reinvigorate Israel’s information programs abroad, hasbara, as it is called in Israel. These were in woeful shape, and remain so today. But although he promised Shmuel a cabinet level post to do this, Begin backed down when Moshe Dayan, his miserable appointment as Foreign Minister, objected, insisting that hasbara remain under his control in the Foreign Ministry. To be sure, even if Shmuel had won control of information policy and performed brilliantly, his tenure would have been short. There is no way Shmuel would have presided over an information policy promoting a policy of retreat and defeat. This became Begin’s policy as he turned over the Sinai to Sadat, destroyed the Jewish communities in northern Sinai and paved the way, in the Camp David accords, for Judea and Samaria to go to the Arabs.

Deeply disappointed with Begin, Shmuel returned to private life, writing op-eds and most important, working on the definitive biography of his hero and mentor, Zeev Jabotinsky. Shmuel was convinced that it was vital that the heroes and pioneers of the Zionist enterprise not be forgotten, that their lives and sacrifices and ideas inspire new generations. And so he turned his attention to those outside the dominant narrative who had played a vital role in the creation of Israel—people vilified and sidelined by the mainstream in their own lifetime, but subsequently proven right. After Jabotinsky, he turned to the saga of Aaron and Sarah Aaronsohn, who ran the Nili spy ring, which played an important role in the British victory over the Turks in Palestine. They too had been harassed and vilified by the local Jewish community.

Despite his humor and good nature, Shmuel is often thought of as an unbending ideologue. As a result many of those who agreed with his views felt it was impossible for him to have been a political leader. In fact Shmuel was unbending only on issues having to do with Israel’s security. His first break with Begin came on the issue of inclusiveness: when Shmuel was a member of the first Knesset on the Herut list he felt it was important for the party to cease being an Irgun club and open itself up to attract Labor members. Personally ascetic, living in the most Spartan way, Shmuel was willing to make concessions on economic issues—I never spoke to him on these matters but I would be surprised if he were not suspicious of huge prosperity in Israel, fearing it would undercut the qualities of discipline and self-sacrifice the population needed if Israel were to survive.

Shmuel had the characteristics of which Israel was most in need in a Prime Minister. He had vision, optimism, high intelligence, political understanding, determination, his own firm road map, the ability to inspire and lead. He was incorruptible. Can anyone imagine Shmuel agreeing to Oslo? To the destruction of the Jewish communities in Gaza? Can anyone imagine Shmuel even considering giving the Golan to Syria? Or taking wads of cash for favors granted? It is Israel’s tragedy that it did not bring Shmuel Katz to the helm and instead has installed in the Prime Minister’s office an ever more dispiriting collection of political drifters and self-servers.

Shmuel’s unfailing optimism was sorely tested in recent years. He understood, none better, where the country was heading. And so it was a blessing that something wonderful happened to him near the end of his life: he discovered a son he did not know existed; they became close; and his life was greatly enriched.

Shmuel led a life full of adventure, physical adventure in the first part of his life, when he was an underground leader, intellectual adventure thereafter. Shmuel wrote by far the best book on the Irgun, Days of Fire, as gripping a read today as when it was written over forty years ago. In Battleground Shmuel provided the definitive work on Jewish rights in the context of the Arab-Israel conflict. There remains today no better single source to counter the lies of Arab propaganda. Then there are the collected essays in The Hollow Peace and Battletruth and the major biographies, of Jabotinsky and the Aaronsohns. We hope that a way will be found to perpetuate Shmuel’s legacy for a new generation.

Ruth King

Sultry summer days are perfect for reading. I’ve spent the first part of the season finishing a delightful memoir by Rosanne Klass entitled Land of the High Flags: Afghanistan When the Going Was Good” —and when it was good, none captured this once exotic nation better than Klass who traveled and lived there.

I also read a memoir by Amos Oz (yes, he of the anti-Israel screeds) entitled A Tale of Love and Darkness which is almost free of the bias of the anti-Israel land of Oz. It is an evocative retelling of his childhood and the dedication and love of the land that propelled the Jewish pioneers, among them his parents and grandparents, to reclaim and build Israel. Get a used copy.

There is one book that I have not read in its entirety, that I don’t recommend for the beach because it weighs more than a small sack of potatoes, and that one must never read at an airport where it might set off bells. It is a book I return to often, reading long passages and even chapters at a time. It is a book that has entirely upended my opinions with respect to the unrelenting war the Arabs and their Moslem cheerleaders have waged on Israel and indeed on all Jews since the time of the prophet Mohammed. It is Andrew Bostom’s The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism-From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.

This remarkable anthology on the theme of Moslem anti-Semitism relies on obscure texts, Koranic scripture, diaries, ancient and modern documents. The research is so extensive that even a bizarre letter to the editor published in the Arabic newspaper Akhir Sa’a in Egypt in 1948 is quoted. The author, a light skinned Egyptian Muslim complains: “It would seem that most people in Egypt are unaware of the fact that among Egyptian Muslims there are some who have white skin. Every time I board a tram I see people pointing at me saying, ‘Jew, Jew!’ I have been beaten more than once because of this. For that reason I humbly beg that my picture (enclosed) be published with an explanation that I am not Jewish and that my name is Adham Mustafa Galeb.”

I confess that Andrew Bostom, M.D. the book's author, is my friend and guru and under his tutelage I have learned about Jihad…..its origins in the Koran, its history, its goals and its role in the frenzied hatred of all “infidels” that drives Islamic terrorists.

Because of Dr. Bostom, I am also familiar with the prophetic writings of Bat Ye’or and Professor Saul Friedman and those other scholars whose research debunked the notions that a “golden era” of comity existed between Jews and the Arabs and that anti-Semitism was an import from Europe to the Middle East. That rosy and false retelling of the lives of Jewish minorities among Moslem Arabs blinded Israel into accepting false promises, truces, agreements and road maps which have weakened the state and dispirited its citizens as each time they led to more terror, more war and more demands.

The book has been praised by a wide spectrum of respected journalists and scholars. However, most indebted to Andrew Bostom are all those who care about a safe Israel.

The Zionist prophets such as Herzl and Jabotinsky and even AFSI’s beloved Shmuel Katz did not write about the faith driven raison d’etre of Israel’s enemies, namely, to recreate a Caliphate throughout the Arab Middle East in which the few surviving Jews could exist only as dhimmis.

Their failure--and the failure more recently of so many others--is understandable. The Arab world went through a series of upheavals and spawned ideologies that drew attention from the menace of Islam. There was Pan-Arabism, a movement to unite the entire Arab world; there were Arab attempts at “socialism”; there was pan-Arab socialism; and of course, there was the constant cold war threat of Soviet expansion in the Middle East.

There was also the myth of a nascent, independent Third World in which Israel could serve as a bridge between Western democracy and emerging nations in Africa and Asia. Many of these countries were Moslem but took part in trade, educational and agricultural exchanges with Israel -- which almost all of them dropped immediately after the 1967 War.

The battles fought and won by Israel were seen within those contexts. As an ally of the United States on whose aid and support Israel became increasingly dependent, Israel promoted its role as a defense bulwark against Soviet ambitions.

When pressing Israel's case in the face of the blood curdling calls for Allah’s help in its destruction which were repeated in Arab sermons, in the media, on broadcasts, and at the United Nations, Israel and too many of its supporters (I include myself) did not identify the religious aspect of Jew hatred which is endemic in Islamic history.

Even in a post 9/11 world, Israel, willfully blind to the reality of enemy goals, embarks on one foolhardy concession after another.

But fortunately, in a post 9/11 world, a physician in Rhode Island was stirred to study and confront the roots of terrorism and Jihad in Islam and his interest and support for Israel further propelled him to produce this absolutely essential text.

Outpost readers and all who want a safe Israel should buy two copies and give one to local schools or libraries. Many copies would be even better.

Naomi Ragen

I was a new oleh when the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine and two Germans hijacked a plane full of Israelis to Entebbe. I remember well those nail-biting days, the moral dilemma of freeing dangerous terrorists for live hostages; the idea that negotiations would just lead to more hijackings. But what other choice did we have? After all, they were in Uganda, so far away. We found a way.

I will never forget the morning of July 4, 1976, waking up to the news. Our soldiers had gone in, at great personal risk. They had saved almost everyone, and killed the terrorists. We were not helpless victims anymore, the Jews. No, we were clever, and resourceful and courageous. We showed the world how to behave. We led the way.

I wake up this morning of July 16, 2008 with quite another feeling. Our soldiers, kidnapped on our own land, not across any international border, are brought back to us in caskets after two years of sadistic playfulness with the hearts of their families by Hezbollah terrorists, who led us to believe they were alive. And in exchange for dead bodies, we turn over a despicable baby-killer, Sami Kuntar. Oh, you will hear the boosters of the Israeli government sigh. What can we do? We are civilized and they are not. We care about our soldiers and their families.

No, I'm afraid you do not. If you cared, then you would have a death penalty for people like Kuntar, so that they too can be released in caskets. And if you cared, you would be intelligent enough, seeing our soldiers brought back to us dead, to have put a bullet through Kuntar and then turned him over to his friends.

Civilized is a euphemism for weak and helpless. Civilized is not a moral value, because we all know what Western civilization is capable of. Concentration camps. Civilian round-ups, the gassing of children. All this under the banner of laws and policemen and governments. On the other hand, the moral thing to do to a convicted murderer like Kuntar is to spill his blood, because he has spilled the blood of others. That may not fit in with current civilized niceties, but let no one say it is immoral. When it comes to immoral, to release Kuntar to a hero's welcome and the opportunity to murder others is on the top of the scale.

My government, the Israeli government, arranged this. They let it happen. They oversaw it and implemented it. I am deeply ashamed to be an Israeli today. And I'm not very proud of being a Jew either, if this is how a Jewish country behaves. To lead the world in ever more despicable acts of appeasement is nothing to be proud of. The torch we always carried, the "light unto the nations" has been blown out by the hot air of our politicians.

If we cared about our soldiers, we would not be showing our enemies that kidnapping and terrorism pay. We would not be setting the stage for the next murderous terrorist raid and hostage standoff. We would be passing laws with a mandatory death penalty for convicted terrorists with blood on their hands. We would be making these laws retroactive. Then, we would be cutting off all water and electricity to Gaza until Gilad Shalit is released. If that didn't work, we'd begin executions within one week, increasing the number of convicted terrorists facing firing squads with each passing day until Gilad is returned to us safe and sound.

And if that didn't work, we would begin daily bombings of Gaza, with the same number and frequency of attacks that our own city Sderot has suffered over the past three years from the Gazans.

Not civilized? Perhaps. But moral. Extremely moral. My fantasy is that Israelis will rise up and overturn the political system which has left them with the dregs of their nation as leaders—a bunch of self-serving crooks and sycophants who will do anything to stay in office; an electoral system in which a party like Kadima, with its collection of felons and moral imbeciles, who got only 23% of the vote, is allowed to rule us into the ground. We have Mr. Olmert, and Ms. Livni, and Mr. Peres, and Mr. Ramon (a convicted sex offender, who is now in line to take over from Olmert) and many, many others to thank, for creating this day of infamy.

Naomi Ragen is a novelist and essayist. This was published on her website.