TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lessons from Georgia
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

Anti-Semitism Without Anti-Semites
Henryk Broder

Rings of Mortal Danger
Moshe Sharon

Basta! To Drama
David Isaac

Combating Defeatism
David Krakow

Islam. Don't Leave Home Without It.
Hugh Fitzgerald

The BBC's Contamination
Melanie Phillips

The Council of Europe Fights "Islamophobia"
Fjordman

Tough Policy Questions For The Candidates
Ruth King

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

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HERBERT ZWEIBON

As Russia exerts its military power at will over Georgia, there are lessons for Israel—and the West.

For Israel the lesson is obvious. To expect others to save you in an existential crisis is folly. The United States makes strong statements of disapproval and sends humanitarian aid. The EU can’t muster that much resolve: France and Germany are not even willing to blame Russia. “I don’t think we should lose ourselves in long discussions about responsibility and blame” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeir.

Moreover there is no comparison between the threat Russia poses to Georgia and that the Islamic world poses to Israel. Putin’s goal is not to liquidate the Georgians or end Georgia as a state. He wants to send a message to Georgia (and other breakaway states of the former Soviet empire) that they are not free to align themselves with the West, but must remain within the Russian sphere of influence. Contrast this with the determination of Israel’s Arab neighbors to end the “scandal” of a Jewish state in the heart of the Moslem Arab world and Ahmadinejad’s vow to annihilate Israel and its Jewish population.

But if what is happening in Georgia illustrates yet again that Israel must rely on itself, the feckless Kadima government has totally shattered Israel’s deterrent power, first by leaving the Gaza communities (to become rocket bases for Hamas) and then by losing the Lebanon war to Hezbollah. Now Defense Minister Barak even abandons the rhetoric of deterrence. While he has previously threatened repeatedly that an IDF operation in Gaza was close, he now says that a large scale invasion would not stop Hamas attacks and he preferred the existing truce (which had reduced their number). What about the strengthening of Hamas through rampant arms smuggling of explosives and rockets under cover of the truce? Incredibly, Barak airily dismisses this as “not a problem for Israel.”

But there are also lessons for the West. As long as Kosovo remained part of Serbia, Russia was barred from recognizing the “independence” of Georgia’s breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia because in opposing Kosovo’s independence Russia was relying on the entrenched international principle that the country being partitioned must consent to the separation. In the March 2008 Outpost we warned that in recognizing Kosovo’s independence despite the fact that Kosovo was legally part of Serbia and the cradle of its civilization, “the Bush administration is taking a step profoundly inimical to the interests of the U.S., the West and international stability.” We noted that while the EU drafted a statement decreeing that Kosovo’s independence was a “one-off” which shouldn’t set a precedent elsewhere, it would in fact constitute a potent precedent. And indeed, as Walid Phares points out In The American Thinker, on the very day Kosovo declared independence Russia issued a statement declaring it would recognize the efforts by South Ossetia and Abkhazia to secede from Georgia. Phares points out that this clear eye for an eye declaration went unnoticed in the West.

Russia now rubs in the Kosovo precedent. Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper house of Russia’s Parliament, in a letter to U.S. Senators, wrote: “The desire of South Ossetia and Abkhazia for independence is historically and actually much more legitimate than the Kosovars [claims].”

Yes, Russia was looking for a way to punish Georgia for its effort to join NATO. But if the U.S. and the West wanted international legality on their side, they made a terrible mistake in opting for “outreach” to Islam at the expense of international principles.

Neither Israel nor the United States seems prepared to think ahead to the implications of their actions. But, as events in Georgia—and Gaza—show, the consequences are not long in coming.

RAEL JEAN ISAAC

CHOUDHURY ON TRIAL

The long awaited trial of Bangladeshi editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, an unsung hero of our time, finally began—after repeated delays—on August 6. Choudhury is on trial for treason and, if convicted, could be sentenced to death. His crime? Seeking to visit Israel in November 2003, to make a speech promoting understanding between Muslims and Jews. In Bangladesh, which doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence, this counts as sedition.

Choudhury could have left Bangladesh—while his trial was pending the government put no obstacles on his travel abroad—and this is clearly what the government hoped he would do. But Choudhury has refused to seek foreign asylum: he says that others would be discouraged from following in his footsteps within Bangladesh if he fled.

Dr. Richard Benkin, the American Jew who has taken the lead in fighting for Choudhury abroad, is concerned but for the first time cautiously optimistic. He told The Jerusalem Post: “The judge conducted himself in a judicially correct and professional manner today, something we never experienced under the previous government which initiated these charges.” The trial resumes at the end of August.

Those who want to express their support and admiration directly to this wonderful man can write to salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com and copy Dr. Benkin Drrbenkin@comcast.net.

AN ISRAELI DEATH PENALTY

With Israel releasing child-murderers (Samir Kuntar) for corpses, and large numbers of murderers soon to be released for Gilad Schalit, Caroline Glick points out that it is high time Israelis demanded the death penalty for terrorist murderers—the only way to stop such irresponsible governmental behavior.

The Israeli criminal code permits the death penalty, but the prosecution refuses to seek it. Glick points out that the Knesset could amend the criminal code to require the death penalty in cases of terrorist murder but here too prosecutors and judges would be likely to sabotage the law.

Glick sees the only hope in mobilizing public opinion, which in an election season can make itself felt through demonstrations and email campaigns.

Israel’s public has been pitifully lethargic as its political leaders have been throwing away territory and security with high abandon. If an issue touching with such immediacy on the ability to conduct ordinary life free of fear cannot move them, little can.

FATAH REFUGEES

As the redoubtable Melanie Phillips observes, developments in Gaza have given a new meaning to the term “Palestinian refugees.” The newest wave consists of 180 Fatah “militants” fleeing for their lives from Hamas “militants” in Gaza. And where do they flee? Why, to Israel. Israel wants to send them on their way to their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but with the exception of five individuals, he won’t let them in.

To no one’s surprise Israeli “human rights” activists have gone to court arguing that Israel has a moral duty to give these men asylum. Phillips writes: “So let’s get our head round this: Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel fled from other Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel into Israel, which is providing them with sanctuary and medical treatment, while the president of their putative state who bases his claim against Israel on its alleged refusal to admit Palestinian ‘refugees’ refused to allow actual Palestinian refugees fleeing Palestinian violence access to that same putative state, while Israel agonizes over whether to grant them permanent asylum. Surreal, or what?”

KORAN'S NOT KIND

Arab media have reacted violently on hearing that a Jewish professor at Haifa University is using verses from the Koran to help his Muslim psychology students reinforce in their patients concepts like respect, responsibility, honesty, dignity and kindness. Never mind that the course was developed at the initiative of Muslim students. Never mind that it was developed with 15 Muslim students and reviewed by three Islamic clerics.

Speaking to Gulf News, Dr. Abdullah Al Mutlaq of the Senior Ulema Board of Saudi Arabia said that Professor Grosbard’s efforts would give Muslims the wrong impression of their religion.

Yes indeed.

U.S.FUNDS JIHAD

Would she had remained retired in Texas! Our clueless Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, long time friend and adviser to President Bush, has been funneling millions of U.S. grant dollars into radical Islamist organizations, many of whose leaders have been either convicted or indicted in terrorism cases in the United States. A number of these groups have links to al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. So recently testified terrorism expert Steven Emerson to the House International Relations Committee.

Journalist Kenneth Timmerman has reported on Emerson’s testimony, which was largely blacked out by the media. Seeking to “reach out” to Moslems, Hughes has embarked on a “disastrous policy” of outreach to Islamists, Emerson told Congress. In addition to the grants to Islamist organizations, Hughes brought Islamist leaders to Washington and personally attended conferences held by anti-American organizations. Hughes “outreach” policy “legitimizes Islamism to the world” while “sending a terrible message to moderate Muslims who are thoroughly disenfranchised by the funding” said Emerson.

NO VACATION IN SPAIN

A roster of Israeli generals and defense officials will not be taking vacations in Spain any time soon. The National Court in Spain has ordered the arrest of Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, currently Minister of Infrastructure, former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon, former chief of staff Dan Halutz, retired General Doron Almog, former National Security Council head Gen. Giora Eiland and Ben Eliezer’s military advisor Mike Herzog. They are to be arrested immediately upon setting foot on Spanish soil.

All of these are held culpable in the killing of arch-terrorist Salah Shehada (for whose liquidation in a less crazy world, they should all receive Orders of Merit.) Shehada was slated to succeed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as leader of Hamas. Responsible for hundreds of attacks against Israelis, Shehada was killed in July 2002 shortly before his plan to send a truck loaded with 600 kilograms of explosives to a Jewish celebration in Gush Katif was to be implemented. (A reminder of behavior for which Israeli leaders should indeed be held to account – the subsequent destruction of these beautiful communities.) While the IDF had postponed the mission numerous times because it feared civilians would be hurt, in the end 14 went with Shehada, giving the Palestinian Authority its opportunity to bring suit in Spain.

SHIP OF EVIL

In a bizarre takeoff on ships like the Exodus which ran the British blockade to bring refugees from Europe to Israel, a large group of Israel-haters (from self-styled moral arbiters like Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu to usual suspects like Noam Chomsky to celeb-relations like Tony Blair’s sister-in-law) in a bid to embarrass Israel and show solidarity with Hamas, are backing two boats, the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty setting out from Cyprus to crash though Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. (Like the Furies, whom the Greeks called the Eumenides, or kindly ones, the boats’ names neatly invert reality.)

The timing is perfect. The Hamas regime in early August tied down a group of helpless “prisoners” and pumped gas into the private body parts of their victims until they died. As journalist Ben Dror Yemini notes in Maariv, this murderous regime is now the favorite of the “forces of progress.” One benefit from the soaring price of oil—the organizers are pleading for more funds since they are way over budget.

HENRYK BRODER

Editor's note: In July, the Domestic Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag held public hearings on anti-Semitism in Germany. While most speakers focused on right-wing anti-Semitism --skinheads and Nazis--journalist Henryk Broder located the problem uncomfortably close to home: among German elites, including some of his Parliamentary listeners. The following is excerpted from his remarks and translated by John Rosenthal. Broder's entire speech, in Rosenthal's translation, can be found on pajamasmedia.com.

I thank you for the invitation to this hearing. It is an honor for me to be able to speak to you.

This is not the first hearing on the issue of anti-Semitism and it will not be the last. Ever since the writer and self-avowed Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr published his The Triumph of Germandom [Deutschtum] over Jewry in 1879, thus becoming the leader of political anti-Semitism in imperial Germany, there have been numerous attempts made to define, explain, and neutralize anti-Semitism. They have all failed. If this was not the case, we would not be here today.

If you want to come to terms with anti-Semitism, you must realize that it is not a fixed quantity like the meter prototype in Paris or the definition of the volt, watt, or ampere. Like all social phenomena, anti-Semitism is susceptible to transformation. Even poverty is no longer today what it once was at the time of Oliver Twist. The anti-Semitism that we are most readily inclined to discuss is an artifact of the last century and the century before that. It is the anti-Semitism of fools, who are still chasing chimeras. [In the late 19th century, the German Social Democrat August Bebel famously described anti-Semitism as the “socialism of fools.” — Translator’s note] The common anti-Semite has no real idea about the object of his obsessions, but only a diffuse feeling. He lets off steam by painting swastikas on aluminum siding and scribbling Juda verrecke [”Jews go croak!”] on gravestones. He is a case for the police and the local courts, but nothing more than that. Nobody is going to feel sympathy for thugs who raise their arms to give the Hitler salute and shout Juden raus! [”Jews out!”]. This sort of anti-Semitism is ugly, but politically irrelevant: it is its own death notice.

The modern anti-Semite looks entirely different. He does not have a shaved head. He has good manners and often an academic title as well. He mourns for the Jews who died in the Holocaust. But at the same time he wonders why the survivors and their descendants have learned nothing from history and today treat another people as badly as they were once treated themselves. The modern anti-Semite does not believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Instead he fantasizes about an “Israel lobby” that is supposed to control American foreign policy like a tail that wags the dog. For the modern anti-Semite, it goes without saying that every year on January 27 he will commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz. But at the same time he militates for the right of Iran to have atomic weapons. For “how can one deny Iran what one has permitted Israel or Pakistan?” as Norman Paech [the foreign policy spokesperson of the German Left Party] has put it. Or he inverts the causal relationship and claims that it is Israel that is threatening Iran and not vice-versa—as [German Middle East scholar] Dr. Udo Steinbach did in a recent radio interview.

The modern anti-Semite finds ordinary anti-Semitism disgraceful. He has no problem, however, embracing anti-Zionism and is grateful for the opportunity to express his resentment in a politically correct form. For anti-Zionism is a sort of resentment just like classical anti-Semitism was. The anti-Zionist has the same attitude toward Israel as the anti-Semite has to Jews. He is not bothered by what Israel does or does not do, but rather by the fact that Israel exists. That is why he participates so passionately in debates about the solution to the Palestinian question—which could well mean a final solution for Israel. On the other hand, he is left indifferent by conditions in Darfur or Zimbabwe or Congo or Cambodia, because there are no Jews involved in those places. Ask the foreign policy spokesperson of the Left Party, for instance, how many statements he has issued about “Palestine” and how many about Tibet.

Earlier—let’s say at the time of classical anti-Semites like Wilhelm Marr, Karl Lueger, and Adolf Stoecker—everything was plain and simple. There were Jews, there were anti-Semites, and there was anti-Semitism.

After 1945, for well-known reasons, we had in Germany an anti-Semitism without Jews. And today we are again confronted by a new phenomenon: an anti-Semitism without anti-Semites. Another new phenomenon is the professional profile of what might be called the “leisure time anti-Semite” who does his regular job during the day, perhaps even in a federal government office, and then in his spare time writes “critical” texts on Israel that appear on obscure anti-Zionist websites. [The reference is to Ludwig Watzal, an official of Germany’s Federal Office for Civic Education (BpB), many of whose articles have been reprinted on the site antimperialista.org. The BpB has resisted calls for Watzal’s dismissal, arguing that the writings in question are not connected to his professional activity. — Translator’s note] Nobody wants to be an anti-Semite, but the “anti-Zionist” hall of shame is getting increasingly crowded.

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are two sides of the same coin. If the anti-Semite was convinced that it is not him, the anti-Semite, who is to blame for anti-Semitism, but rather the Jew himself who is to blame, so too is the anti-Zionist convinced that Israel is responsible not only for the suffering of the Palestinians, but also for the hardship it suffers itself. The older persons among you will perhaps remember what a Green Party politician, who is still a member of the Bundestag, said about the Iraqi rockets that were fired at Israel at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991: “The Iraqi rocket attacks are the logical, nearly unavoidable consequence of Israeli policy.” [The quote is from Green Party Member of Parliament Hans-Christian Ströbele. — Translator’s note] At the time, the same Green Party politician also opposed the delivery of defensive weapons like Patriot rockets to Israel, because this would, he claimed, lead to an escalation in the hostilities.

Today, some 17 years later, we hear similar remarks about rocket attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon or the Gaza Strip: namely, that they are the logical, nearly unavoidable result of Israeli occupation and that Israel would do well not to react in order to avoid escalating hostilities. The modern anti-Semite pays tribute to Jews who have been dead for 60 years, but he resents it when living Jews take measures to defend themselves. He screams “Beware of the Beginnings!” when a handful of weekend Nazis hold a demonstration in Cottbus, but he justifies the policies of the current Iranian president and defends the continuation of German business with Iran.

Ladies and gentleman, we will not solve the problem of anti-Semitism: not at this hearing nor at the next. But the mere fact that you are discussing the issue—when there are also other and more pressing problems that need attention—is a good sign. If I may in all modesty make a suggestion: leave the good old anti-Semitism to the archaeologists and antiquarians and historians. Devote your attention to the modern anti-Semitism that wears the disguise of anti-Zionism and to its representatives. You will find some of the latter among your own ranks.

I thank you for listening.

Henryk Broder’s most recent book is Hurra, wir kapitulieren.

MOSHE SHARON

Two rings of mortal danger are closing on Israel: The narrower is the Middle Eastern Arab ring and the wider is the Islamic ring. These two rings interact, share a common purpose and enjoy almost unlimited financial resources.

The Arab ring comprises all the Arab countries (including Jordan and Egypt, despite their formal peace treaties with Israel) whose strategic goal is to remove the Jewish state from the heart of the “Arab Nation.”

The Islamic ring, equally dedicated to Israel's destruction, includes states such as Shi‘ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, religious-political movements like the Islamic Brotherhood and terrorist organizations of which the best known are Hizbullah, Hamas and Al-Qa'idah. Hizbullah and Hamas (the first Shi'ite, the second Sunni) are only two of the organizations connected with Iran, sharing with it the aims of the rest of the Islamic terrorist organizations, including the ones which are an integral part of the Palestinian Authority (like the Tanzim, the Aqsa Brigades, and many others). Of these organizations, Hamas is the strongest, most organized, popular, and best equipped. Like the Hizbullah, it is financially backed and militarily supplied by Iran. It is connected to groups of mujahidin in many parts of the Islamic world, some directly operated by al-Qa‘idah.

Concurrently, outwardly non-militant (or law-abiding militant) Islamic activity has been growing throughout the West, particularly in Europe. Its aim is to establish Islam as a permanent, active component in Western societies, to gain political power, undermine Western civilization and reduce Europe to a satellite of the Islamic world.

To forward their plans, Muslims make use of Western democracy, Western political and judicial institutions, Western media, human rights organizations and UN facilities and agencies. They are helped by the plethora of “useful idiots”—left-wing organizations and individuals, the media, much of the intellectual community and the Academy—to get special concessions in the name of “multiculturalism,” “human rights,” “freedom of worship” and so on.

In their dealings with Westerners, Muslim spokesmen, politicians and propagandists use their customary bazaar tactics and language jugglery. “There are no custom duties on words” says an Arab proverb. “Lie is the salt of man,” says another Arab proverb. The western mind cannot understand a culture in which a “good lie” is meritorious. Western civilization has yet to recognize that promises made by Arab or Iranian leaders, agreements signed, oaths taken, outwards signs of friendship (including hugs and kisses) are nothing but forms of the bazaar game, which men of the East never take seriously. From the Islamic point of view agreements with the infidel are merely instruments to gain as much as possible from him while giving nothing in exchange. For since its appearance on the threshold of history Islam’s aim was not to live side by side with the Western world but to live at its expense and ultimately to subdue it.

Muslim rulers and scholars have made no secret of their view that Islam is destined to rule the world. And since Islam is triumphalist by nature, it has never lost hope of achieving this goal by waging Jihad--Holy War--against non-Muslims, whom classical Muslim sources define as “the food of the Muslims.”

Jihad can also take the form of economic war and of quiet infiltration into the enemy’s society and institutions--precisely what is happening in Europe. However, much more important is the military aspect, for it is the essence of Jihad. Iran is aiming for military jihad when she strives to achieve nuclear capacity, and will use it either directly or as a threatening weapon of control, harassment, and extortion. The West is not alert to the Iranian danger because it cannot grasp the deadly combination of religious Shi‘ite Messianism and the megalomaniac dream of imperial revival.

The Iranian president promises the elimination of Israel. He means it, and he is supported by the vast majority of Muslims. He must be happy to observe that the “humanistic and liberal” West (that sold the Czechs to Hitler in 1938, and abandoned European Jews to their fate) is not reacting to his genocidal plans. The vicious Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism orchestrated by intellectuals, educators, politicians, religious leaders and media throughout the Islamic world is ignored, and in some cases welcomed by an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe.

The elimination of the Jews is the religious duty of all Muslims and is bound up with the messianic expectations of Islam. The most authorized hadith (holy traditions) attributed to the Prophet Muhammad teach that all Jews must be killed before the bliss of the End of Days can take place. These hadiths are extremely popular; they are frequently used in Friday sermons and taught to children in schools side by side with traditions which denigrate Jews as “the sons of monkeys and pigs.”

Again, this grave situation is being ignored or played down by Western leaders and by Israel herself. The main reason for this irresponsible neglect, productive of terrible policy decisions, is that Israel and the West do not understand the cultural language of the East nor speak the language of Islam. They do not “think in Arabic” and cannot “imagine in Persian.” The West swallows the lies of the Muslims, lets itself be manipulated by them, ignores their threats, takes seriously their promises and succumbs to their intimidation. This stems also from the fact that even before World War II Europe had lost its will to fight. After the war there was the Cold War slogan “Better Red than Dead” which has been transformed into today's “Better Mecca than Rome.” Unfortunately such deadly attitudes are well entrenched in Israeli discourse as well. In 2005 the present Prime Minister declared in America: “We are tired of fighting. We are tired of winning.”

Grave as the situation is, we are not enacting a Greek foreordained tragedy. Much can be done to fight back, particularly in the field of public opinion. This not only means alerting the “infidel” victims to the danger but Muslims as well. True, the Jannah (the Muslim Paradise) is open wide for the millions of Muslims who would die in an Iranian Shi'ite atomic Armageddon but it is also true that if Sunnis are alerted to this possibility in time, many of them would prefer to continue living on this earth.

To all these dangers must be added the danger from within. The looming danger of Israeli Arabs is already obvious. But there is also the deadly danger caused by Israel's stupid, fraudulent “leadership,” its corrupt political system, an army that has forgotten what it is to go to war and win because there is no other possibility. The word endlessly repeated since the Six Day war is “withdrawal;” this is no recipe for survival in the Middle East. (Incidentally the word “survival” should be taken out of Israel's vocabulary, and inserted into that of her enemies. The word "peace" must also be eradicated from Israel's dictionary.)

Unfortunately the voice of Israel is not heard in the Arabic and Persian speaking sectors of the Middle East. The minds of viewers and listeners are poisoned daily by their powerful media. Israeli decision makers have long ago abandoned any effort to counter the propaganda of their enemies. The history of the Jews, their intimate connection with their land, exposure of the lies spread by the Muslims against them and similar topics are no part of the lexicon of Israel’s leaders and media.

Israel must speak and act with vigor, self conviction and without fear, presenting the Jewish truth without attempting to be “conciliatory,” without apologizing. Israel must fight the Arabs and the present Iranian regime with their own language, using their tricks, exposing their faults, using their own culture, playing their game whenever needed. Use the rules of the bazaar; use their own weapons to defeat them. The Jewish people and its friends have the brains and the experts to achieve these goals.

Moshe Sharon, a frequent contributor, is professor emeritus of Islamic studies at the Hebrew University.

DAVID ISAAC

When revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky found his patience worn thin, he expressed himself with the Italian for “enough” – “Basta!” Were Jabo with us today, he would have shouted his “Basta!” in a crowded theater.

Theater may have been a gift from the Greeks, but it is the Jews who have embraced it with a special affection, making it an inseparable part of Yiddishkeit. Search the most God-forsaken places imaginable, say the swamplands of 1930s Birobidzhan in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, where fish were frozen solid by putting them next to the window and winters reached –50 degrees Celsius, and there you’d find the local theater troupe rehearsing adaptations of Shalom Aleikhem stories and plays by Perets Markish.

Sadly, this heavy Jewish involvement has only contributed to the endless stream of fiddle-faddle; not that the theater, always a haven for the progressively kooky, needed help in producing political nonsense.

It’s not hard to tell where the playwrights are coming from. For some it springs from a well-meaning if misguided mixture of new age and modern liberalism, where opposing parties heal misperceptions of the “Other” through dialogue in order to “conflict resolve” and “peace build” to a better future.

Such playwrights graduated from the Dale Carnegie School of International Relations. Carnegie, in his classic, How to Win Friends & Influence People offers sound advice on getting along well with others:

“Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so. Don’t condemn them. Any fool can do that. Try to understand them. Only wise, tolerant, exceptional people even try to do that… There is a reason why the other man thinks and acts as he does… Try honestly to put yourself in his place.”

Unfortunately, while this might help in personal relations, it doesn’t translate so well to the international stage. The reason is that, in general, we don’t find psychopathic, child-killing death cultists in the work place. Conflicts center around which agency to use for the next advertising campaign, where to hold the company’s holiday party and what jerk took your Lipton Noodle Cup-O-Soup out of the microwave before it finished heating. Rarely, if ever, does this lead to someone getting their throat slit.

Whereas, in Israel, if a Jew makes a wrong turn he makes the evening news as body parts. If such was the norm in the workaday world, Dale Carnegie would have written a very different book, one titled, “How to Smite Your Enemies & Build Alliances of Blood,” with chapter headings like “Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight” and “The Logic of Steel.”

This may explain why the plays about Arab and Jew, the well-meaning ones at least, so frequently begin by removing the differences in the first place, so that it’s just two people talking, kind of like two co-workers at the company picnic. Take this summer’s West Coast premiere of playwright Misha Shulman’s Desert Sunrise. The play, set in the Hebron Hills, throws together an off-duty IDF soldier, an Arab shepherd and his militant Muslim girlfriend.

“A collision cracks open bias and fear so that they’re left with no choice but to experience each other in a purer state—stripped of their usual armor of politics, religion and even personal history,” the director said. In short, the play starts by giving the main characters a lobotomy. Once all those pesky differences still extant in the real world are out of the way, crack open the Dale Carnegie.

Said the director, who has never been to Israel: “What interests me more [we assume she means more than reality] is what happens to these three people—it’s much more fundamental, the need for connection, the need to be seen for who we are, to be accepted, forgiven, to be loved.”

While this director may be accused of simplicity and ignorance, Jewish self-loathing drives the work of other playwrights. Such was on display this summer in Philadelphia at InterAct Theatre’s Israeli/Palestinian Play Festival.

The festival centered around the world premiere of Larry Loebell’s play House, Divided, featuring a young IDF soldier who wants to desert the army: “Didn’t you teach me there’s a civic duty to resist evil? What we blame the average German for. Not resisting the evil of Hitler?” he says to his Orthodox father.

The festival also included a play titled Reading Hebron about a Canadian Jew obsessed with the massacre of 29 Arabs at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994. “Was it the act of a madman or a result of state-sponsored attitudes toward Palestinians?” a reviewer of the play writes.

My Name is Rachel Corrie was another whopper at the event. Corrie was the 23-year-old girl crushed by an Israeli bulldozer while volunteering as a human shield for the International Solidarity Movement, a PLO invention that sends naïve children into war zones, knowing the huge propaganda value if one of them gets killed. They hit the jackpot with Corrie. That didn’t stop the play’s Jewish co-editor, Katharine Viner, from including an addendum in the playscript essentially accusing the bulldozer driver of murder.

Shakespeare wrote, “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” To succeed, that play within a play relied on truth. When it comes to Israel such a play has yet to be written.

David Isaac is a free-lance writer living in California.

DAVID KRAKOW

"The State of Israel has no confidence in its continued existence” said Israeli linguist, Ruvik Kershner, in explaining the emotional response of many of those viewing the 2100 year-old Isaiah Scroll on display in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem ( New York Times, August 8, 2008).

However shocking, this defeatist observation calls to mind several others that are noteworthy, e.g., Ehud Olmert’s comment not long ago (while addressing the Israel Policy Forum) to the effect that Israelis are tired of fighting, tired of winning, and the old refrain of the Left that there is no military solution to terror, which gave rise to Oslo and other miscalculations that have had disastrous consequences for Israel.

This is not a new problem. It was defeatism that spurred Ze’ev Jabotinsky to forge the Union of Zionist Revisionists and Betar, which strove to refocus Zionist perceptions.

The Zionist movement was in the depths of despair when Jabotinsky quit the Executive and created these movements in the 1920’s. In spite of the elation produced by the Balfour Declaration and General Allenby’s conquest of Eretz Israel, subsequent developments had severely undermined Zionist morale. First and foremost, there was the loss of Russian Jewry as a result of the Bolshevik victory, then the abrupt demobilization of the Jewish Legion, the dismemberment of the Jewish Homeland through the separation of the Golan and Ever Hayarden [Transjordan], the evisceration of the Zionist Organization of America, thanks to the Weizmann-Brandeis donnybrook, not to speak of the deaths of Joseph Trumpeldor and Max Nordau.

The consequences were immediate: disparagement and debasement of the Jewish State idea which, according to Emanuel Neumann, “became taboo—not merely on the grounds of expediency. The very word was banned from Zionist use and driven underground. The State was not only impossible of achievement but of questionable morality.” What emerged instead was a “nobler and loftier” goal, a model society “which could be built slowly over many decades, even centuries.” (In the Arena, Herzl Press, 1976)

But what did all this have to do with the plight of European Jewry whose very existence was in jeopardy? What was to become of the tormented, threatened and defenseless Jewish masses in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, etc. while the model society gradually evolved?

It was defeatism that Jabotinsky was still contending with when, in May 1939, he declared to an audience in Warsaw:

"...sometimes bold, fervent desperation can constitute a legitimate response. Worse than that is what I see among Eastern Europe’s Jewish masses – equanimity, fatalism. People behave as if they’ve been condemned and sentenced. I know of nothing like this in history and haven’t encountered such surrender to destiny in novels. What’s this like? It’s like shoving 12 million educated, experienced people into a wagon that is hurtling toward an abyss. And how do these folks behave? One cries, one smokes cigarettes, some read newspapers, another sings. Don’t bother looking for one person to take over the controls and reroute the wagon. That’s the mindset. It’s as if a great enemy came and chloroformed everyone’s brains. I come to you in one last attempt and call upon you. Put a stop to this. Try to halt this wagon. Try to jump off. Place obstacles in its course. Don’t go like sheep to the wolf. In nature when the wolf devours one sheep and then another, the remainder at least quake and take fright and flight. Yet here—it’s just one huge graveyard.”

Citing this fervid plea in August 2003, journalist Sarah Honig admonished Israel’s Peace Now movement: “Resolute determination in the face of unpleasant reality is certainly healthier than persistent self-delusion.”

When Jabotinsky died sixty-eight years ago, there was no Jewish State and the Shoah was just beginning, but he left a legacy (Betar, the Revisionist Movement and the Irgun Zvai Leumi) that played an indispensable role in overcoming pervasive defeatism and facilitating the rebirth of Israel.

In his time Jabotinsky succeeded where others failed in taking a full measure of the condition of Jews in the Diaspora; in sorting out priorities, assessing strengths, weaknesses and possibilities; in giving direction which, however unpopular at the time, was vindicated by bitter facts. Jabotinsky was right that the British would renege on the promises of the Balfour Declaration in spite of Chaim Weizmann’s soothing reassurances. He was right that the Arab world would never accept a Jewish state in Palestine. He was right that a state would have to be established and maintained by force. He was right that socialism would curb Jewish energies and initiatives as it did wherever it was instituted. He was right that the Jews of Europe needed to be evacuated en masse and that British immigration policies would trap millions.

And Jabotinsky was right—appallingly right—when he wrote that in spite of well-meaning talk about the brotherhood of man: “Only a fool relies on justice. Justice exists for those who have the fists and determination to appropriate it for themselves. When I am reproached for preaching about self-reliance, distrust of others, and other things that irk the idealists, I want to answer. I plead guilty.”

Most of Jabotinsky’s contemporaries did not want to hear the message of Zionism’s great prophet. Weizmann was seen as the level headed rational statesman while Jabotinsky was called an impractical dreamer by kinder critics and a militant fascist by the Zionist left. Sholem Asch, one of the foremost Yiddish writers of the last century who was also a harsh critic of Jabotinsky, confessed to Shmuel Katz, Jabotinsky’s biographer, “I was all wrong. After all that happened, it became clear to me that Weizmann was the dreamer and Jabotinsky was the ultimate practical thinker.”

In his own time Jabotinsky was derided and jeered and unheeded. It was exactly eighty years ago on this season of Tisha B’Av, which observes and laments the destruction of the Temples, that Jabotinsky issued his message of warning to the Jews of Poland: “It is already three years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are the crown of world Jewry [there were three million Jews in Poland in 1938]. I warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer. I became gray and old in these years, my heart bleeds, that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon spit its all consuming lava. I see that you are not seeing this because you are immersed and sunk in all your daily worries...If you do not believe me, then listen to me at this twelfth hour. Save yourself as long as there is still time. And, there is very little.”

Nonetheless Jabotinsky clung to his vision of the “rebirth and rise of the Jewish State,” which he knew would come to pass “as I am sure that tomorrow morning the sun will rise.”

What would Jabotinsky say on this Tisha B’Av? Each year on this day Jews gather in synagogue to read the Book of Lamentations in which Jeremiah inveighs against the false prophets who have led Israel to its destruction. Today Jabotinsky would surely denounce the false prophets of peace who would lead Israel to a new destruction—and warn again that there is little time.

A final irony. Jabotinsky’s vindication by history discredited his adversaries so they climaxed their long history of vilification with a conspiracy of silence to blot out his memory. In 2005 Israel at last set out to rectify this—the Knesset passed a Jabotinsky Law and established a Jabotinsky Day to commemorate his vision and legacy. Yet only three years later, on August 8, the education minister decided to expel Jabotinsky from his place in the curriculum of Israeli schools. If Israel obliterates its history and heroes, how can it have confidence in its continued existence?

David Krakow was active in Betar and editor of its magazine Hadar. He is currently President of the Nordau Circle which (with AFSI) is conducting a memorial marking the 68th anniversary of Jabotinsky’s death on September 14.

HUGH FITZGERALD

We have with us, and apparently are doomed to always have with us, those who have spent their entire professional lives on the "Arab-Israeli dispute" —or, as it is now known so tendentiously, the "Israel/Palestine problem.” And none of them—not the aaron millers (with the "fourcoreissues" of "settlements-security-Jerusalem-refugees"), not the dennis-rosses (with the "fourcoreissues" of "settlements-Jerusalem-refugees-security"), not the richard-haases (with the "fourcoreissues" of Jerusalem-refugees-security-settlements"), not the martin-indyks (with the "fourcoreissues" of "Jerusalem-security-settlements-refugees")—have ever studied, have ever grasped, the relevance of Islam. Because what Islam is in the minds of men is not so obviously visible to them as are the "fourcoreissues-of-Jerusalem-security-refugees-settlements." It is so much easier for them to believe, in good American fashion, that there is a "problem" and that this "problem" can be solved.

They believe it is susceptible of "solution" -- one-state, two-state, three-state-potato four. And they wish very much to believe this, because if, for some reason, it could be shown that this war on Israel is a Jihad, and that Jihad is a permanent part of Islam, then where would those haases and millers and rosses and indyks be? Where would they have been for the last several decades of their lives? Who would have received, instead of them, the money they get from naive rich Jewish endowers of this or that Washington think-tank that still keeps putting on the same performance of "Hamlet" without the Prince, putting out solemn papers and Op/Eds that assume the non-relevance of, or that willfully ignore, Islam?

Those think-tank endowers—"as for thinking, the recipients of our largesse will do that for us"—assume that the dennis-rosses and the aaron-millers and the martin-indyks and the richard-haases must, simply must, know what they are talking about, and what's more, must, simply must, be "pro-Israel"—whatever that is supposed to mean when it is applied to those who refuse to understand, who willfully will not understand, the real nature of the permanent war (a manageable war, but a permanent one) that is being waged against Israel.

That war uses many instruments besides the most obvious ones of terrorism and jihad. That war is not to be avoided or ended by any Israeli concessions. All such concessions—all of them—merely whet Arab Muslim appetites. All such concessions--all of them-- are occasions when Israel deliberately sits mum about its own considerable--overwhelming in fact--legal, moral, and historic claims, and the more Israel does that, "for the sake of peace," the more the world, and even worse, Israelis themselves, forget those legal, moral and historic claims, forget that they are in the right.

The dopes must be shown up to be dopes. Their funders must be made to see this, and then to de-fund them. They must no longer serve as the full-of-fault default advisers to candidates. They must be mocked, held up for ridicule, with their fourcoreissues that never include the One Big Core Issue: Islam.

Arab Muslims do not, have not, and never will accept the existence of the Infidel nation-state. They can be forced to acquiesce in its existence, as they do now. They can, some of them, possibly decide that the game is not worth the candle, if the stakes, for them, and the damage that will be inflicted on them, in turn, simply becomes too obviously high. But Israel should no longer make a single concession in any of its many negotiations and treaties with Muslim Arab states. These concessions are always made in the coin of real, tangible, non-recoverable things--land, for which successive Israeli governments could not or would not firmly and resolutely state, and then maintain, their legal claims.

These legal claims arise from both the precise provisions of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, and from the laws and customs that in modern times have always applied in post-bellum settlements. The victors—particularly those who have repeatedly been the victims of aggression--keep territory they have won. “Peace" is what the victor offers the vanquished. Certainly it is not the defeated who are in a position to expect that an offer of a false "Peace" will be taken seriously. Why false, one of those "experts" listed above tries to protest in a voice that is breaking? Well, all any of those fourcoreissue experts need do is look at the record of all those negotiations and those treaties. Then, for the reasons that explain that unbroken record of broken promises, they may consult Majid Khadduri's War and Peace in the Law of Islam, or otherwise familiarize themselves with the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and its significance.

Memo to American Presidents, to American Secretaries of State and Defense, to American diplomats and all those who are involved, or want to be, in "solving" the "Israel/Palestine Question:”

When going to the Middle East in order to "find out what the people in the region think" (a condoleeza-riceish conceit) by hearing from the mouth of some "moderate" Arab leader "what must be done," make sure you are prepared. (For this fact-finding any old Hussein or Abdullah of Jordan will do nicely. Once it was Hussein, the plucky little king, as he used to be called. Now it is his less plucky son Abdullah, squiring Obama about in a Mercedes 600 and telling him why the Americans really must put pressure on Israel in order to "calm" the Middle East down.

One can just imagine his spiel: "I say this as a true friend of the United States! My days at Deerfield were my happiest, you know. And have you seen my wife?" When you, diplomat or candidate or Cabinet member or President, are going to the Middle East, make sure you know all about Islam. Make sure you have set yourself to school, and not at a school where your smiling tutor is sly John Esposito or the army of apologists for Islam abroad in the land.

Need a reading list? That can be supplied. Want a private tutorial? That too.

Just make sure you fix on Islam: the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics of the Belief System, and the history of Islamic conquest over the past 1350 years, from the Iberian Peninsula to the East Indies.

Islam. Don't leave home without it.

This appeared on jihadwatch on August 10th.

MELANIE PHILLIPS

Editors Note: This is from Melanie Phillip’s blog:

A reader has sent me the following cri de coeur about the hallucinatory level of prejudice at the BBC:

“It really is becoming quite a frightening topic. I never used to worry too much about it…These days I see a much more sinister agenda, a more subtle use of bias—not just ear-bashing a right of centre politician with some tough questions, but even in the entertainment we are provided with.

“There is a new drama series (pretty dire) called Bonekickers. The bad guys this week were posh-speaking Christian fundamentalists; other characters are an upper-class curmudgeon who makes remarks about women’s breasts (tsk tsk such shame!) and a wonderfully tolerant Muslim who tries to talk sense to one of the Christian zealots and gets his head cut off for his pains. This week’s episode is going to be about American politicians and the slave trade. I haven't seen it but I am pretty sure what picture will be drawn.

“I had a moan via the complaints procedure suggesting it really was not cricket for the writers to visit the public with their own prejudices on a light(ish) drama show. The reply I received was a joke: ‘We are sorry you felt our programme was biased against Muslims.’ Ehhhhh? They had the reply ready before they had even read the complaint—and as the programme presented Muslims in the kindest of lights, it beggars belief.

“I stopped watching the rather good ‘Spooks’ series when the plot lines became so implausible and political that it was a joke: Israelis dressing up as Palestinians and setting bombs off in London. Yeah right!

“It seems ‘they’ are engaged in a self-appointed crusade to politically educate the plebeian hordes to follow a twisted political truth. I find it sinister. Who are ‘they’? The writers? OK, writers might have opinions; but isn't there someone with a decent rounded intellect who can say, hey, there is a time and place for this sort of preaching or comment and it isn't a drama show? I think not. I think the BBC is contaminated at the highest level. It has too much unelected power for this to be allowed to continue. The establishment is there to be challenged but I find this new establishment frightening in its scope, power, tactics and lack of ethics.”

It is really quite obscene that the BBC repeatedly portrays the victims of mass murder—Americans, Israelis—as its perpetrators and its actual perpetrators as victims. The BBC is doing the work of the enemies of civilization for them. In a less degraded political environment this would be raised in Parliament and the BBC called sharply to account for such infernal propaganda. The fact that this complainant received a pro-forma get-lost letter written for complaining Muslims (the letter went on to say that “the BBC is satisfied that, whilst asking some difficult questions about religious fundamentalism, it is not blasphemous”) shows all too clearly that BBC group-think has now fully absorbed the inversion of truth and lies, victim and victimiser, right and wrong that forms the Muslim culture of grievance, and has made it its own.

Truly terrifying.

FJORDMAN

I recently wrote an essay on how the Council of Europe, in close cooperation with the European Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Arab League and other Islamic organizations, are working to combat "Islamophobia" in Europe by all means necessary. Now the French blog Galliawatch takes a look at the Council of Europe as well. This should be considered required reading for all those numerous people who still stubbornly dismiss Eurabia as a "conspiracy theory." The Council of Europe and the EU are implementing policies aimed at rewriting school textbooks throughout the European continent in order to provide a positive and non-threatening view of Islam. They are thus indoctrinating our children to accept Islam.

They are doing this behind our backs, without consulting us, and they can do so because the EU is constructed as a top-down organization where all crucial decisions are taken behind closed doors and imposed on the general public by an unelected oligarchy, who may or may not be bought and paid for by our enemies. Yes, this is a massive betrayal, but we should remember that it is a betrayal that they can commit because we gave them the tools to do so, or at least didn't object strongly enough when they took these tools, maybe because we didn't understand the full significance of them. The only way to stop this and prevent similar betrayals from occurring in the future is to take away these tools from the hostile Eurabian oligarchy, which requires dissolving both the European Union and the Council of Europe.

Resolution 1605 of the Council of Europe:

Council of Europe member states should continue to be vigilant in their work to prevent and combat the phenomenon of Islamophobia.

9. In light of the above, the Assembly calls on the member states of the Council of Europe to:

9.1. act strongly against discrimination in all areas;

9.2. condemn and combat Islamophobia;

9.7.6. encourage the participation of people with an immigrant background in political parties, trade unions and non-governmental organizations;

9.7.7. take all the necessary measures to eliminate the inequality of opportunity faced by immigrants, including unemployment and inadequate education;

9.7.8. remove unnecessary legal or administrative obstacles to the construction of a sufficient number of appropriate places of worship for the practice of Islam;

9.7.9. ensure that school textbooks do not portray Islam as a hostile or threatening religion;

11.6. encourage young European Muslims to become imams;

11.8. encourage the promotion of fair coverage of Muslim reality and views in the media and ensure that the voice of moderate Muslims is also reported;

11.9. develop ethical guidelines to combat Islamophobia in the media and in favor of cultural tolerance and understanding, in co-operation with appropriate media organizations;

This appeared in Brusselsjournal.com on Aug 14.

RUTH KING

We are repeatedly told by pundits, legislators and think tankers that solving the Israel/Arab dispute is the paramount challenge facing the world today. Given its supposed centrality, the issue was strangely absent from debate in these Presidential elections.

In 2004 both the Democratic and Republican Platforms pledged commitment to Israel’s security, called a return to the 1949 lines unrealistic, stated that Arab Palestinian refugees should have no "right of return," and declared Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel. The Republican platform called terror attacks against Israel part of the same evil as the September 11 attacks on the United States, and issued a resounding condemnation of anti-Semitism. Both platforms supported the creation of an independent Arab state in the sliver of land between Israel and Jordan and both parties called for a responsible Palestinian Arab leadership that disavowed terror.

With the election moving into its final phase, supporters of a safe Israel have the obligation to demand the candidates answer some tough questions--that they go beyond the perfunctory sweet talk about our “special relationship” with Israel.

Here is a baker’s dozen of such questions to ask John McCain and Barack Obama.

1) Are you committed to the principles of your party as set out in 2004? Are there any additions or deletions you might make in view of the events of the last four years?

2) In view of the catastrophic results of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza (including the terrorist rule of Hamas) are you willing to renounce demands for further Israeli withdrawals?

3) How can you reconcile a vow to keep Israel’s qualitative edge within so called secure borders without opposing a two state solution which imperils Israel as well as Jordan?

4) What, in your view, is the root of Arab terrorism and the Mideast war and what is the role of Islam in the Arab/Israel conflict?

5) Are you aware of the fact that Jordan occupies 82% of historic Palestine and is in fact an independent Arab Palestinian state?

6) Is Israel in the front line of America’s war against terror? Do you consider Israel to be America’s strongest and most dependable ally in the Middle East and do you consider any threat to the existence of Israel to potentially threaten us as well?

7) Is an undivided Jerusalem Israel’s capital and how soon would you relocate the American embassy there?

8) Do you consider Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or any members of OPEC and the Arab League to be dependable “moderate allies?” Can you name a single nation in those organizations that are real democracies with respect for human rights and minorities?

9) Are you concerned about the growing and coercive influence of Islamic organizations such as CAIR and the Moslem Brotherhood on American institutions and would you favor a curb on immigration from Moslem nations that fund terrorism?

10) Are you in favor of our State and Defense Departments’ ban on the use of the words Jihad and “Islamic” in policy formulation?

11) Do you think that oil rich nations should be barred from funding our academies and establishing chairs in Middle East Studies where they influence the curriculum as well as the hiring of professors?

12) Do you think that our unwillingness to exploit our own energy resources has made our Middle East policy hostage to oil kingdoms? Would you agree that achieving significantly greater energy independence is more important than solving the Arab/Israel war?

13) Given our rather lame response to Russian aggression in Georgia, can you ask Israel to take existential risks in exchange for American guarantees?

Unfortunately, the candidates take softball questions and respond with soft people-pleaser answers. Supporters of Israel in the Jewish community raise millions for their candidates without taking the time to educate them and ask serious questions. They declare their choice a “true friend of Israel” based on nebulous professions of good will.

These are parlous times. If we don’t ask we won’t know, nor will the candidates realize how important this issue is to us.