Surge Has Lessons For Israel
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

Durban II: The U.N.’s Racist Jamboree
Rael Jean Isaac

The Acre Story—Inside and Out
William Mehlman

A Moslem Demographic Implosion?
Yoram Ettinger

The Eurabia Code
Fjordman

Remembering A Hero: David Daniel Marcus
Ruth King

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

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Herbert Zweibon

President Bush’s record in fighting what he styled “the war on terror” has been mixed at best. As Caroline Glick has observed, in the Middle East he has wound up with a distinction between “good” terrorists to be negotiated with and supported (Palestinian terror groups) and “bad” terrorists (like Bin Laden). In caving in to the appeasers and conventional thinkers on the Arab-Israel conflict, the President has destroyed the coherence and entire moral underpinning of the war on terror.

Nonetheless in one crucial area—Iraq— President Bush has stayed the course. With failure looming, the President changed strategy and to implement the new counter-insurgency approach put in new military leadership and committed more troops. Initially few gave “the surge” any chance of success. Yet back in March 2007, in a Frontpage symposium, Outpost editor Rael Jean Isaac noted: “A leader worthy of the name must have the ability to withstand pressures…At this moment President Bush is under enormous pressure, from public opinion, from the Democratically controlled Congress, even from members of his own party, to back down in Iraq: he nonetheless presses forward to try to stabilize that country. It is only by standing up to pressure that a leader has the chance to develop countervailing pressures. If the ‘surge’ shows signs of success, Bush may energize countervailing pressures favorable to his policies.”

And indeed this is precisely what happened when, against all the conventional wisdom, the surge worked. Who would have believed in March 2007 that Iraq would take a back seat in the Presidential campaign and that the anti-war Democratic candidate would be forced into an admission that the surge “has been more successful than anyone could have imagined”? Isaac’s point was that Israel’s only hope of changing the situation in her favor was by adopting new policies based on affirmation of the state’s legitimate rights. As long as her leaders collapsed in the face of each demand, even folding presumptively before such demands were made, as in Sharon’s decision to destroy Gaza’s Jewish communities (or Olmert’s recent effort to turn the Golan over to Syria), there was no hope of mobilizing countervailing pressures favorable to Israel’s survival.

Above all, Israel suffers from a lack of leadership, an absence of leaders who understand that by showing boldness and backbone they can prevail against their enemies. Contrast the defeatism of an Ehud Olmert (“We are tired of fighting. We are tired of winning”) with the achievements of the team of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in bringing about the collapse of the seemingly unshakable Soviet empire.

In a recent speech at Hillsdale College, former National Review editor and early “Thatcherite” John O’Sullivan spoke of that partnership and the important if lesser known leadership role of Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, Thatcher claimed a little credit in her tribute to Reagan: “Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot. Not without a little help from his friends.” Included in that “help:” Thatcher matched Reagan’s military buildup; fought a war to evict Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands; rallied the Europeans to ensure the installation of U.S. missiles in Western Europe to match the Soviet planting of SS-20s in Soviet satellite countries.

While Reagan and Thatcher were themselves astonished by the speed with which the Soviet system imploded, the key to their success was that they did not accept growing Soviet ascendancy as inevitable. If a genuine leader were ever to arise in Israel, a leader who refused to succumb to defeatism in the face of “demography,” the oil weapon, the State Department and its European clones, a leader who believed in Israel’s strength and was prepared to exercise it, Israel might be surprised by the “surge” in international support and the weakness of her enemies.

Under the Radar

[Editors Note: The news item below has received scant attention in the U.S. press. Salam Fayyad, who is admired by Ha’aretz, Tzipi Livni, Colin Powell and Hamas, straddles a fence between those who wish to destroy Israel through “negotiations” and those who wish to destroy Israel in “armed struggle.”

In spite of the massive bailouts needed to prop up our own crumbling financial institutions, our government has thrown an additional bundle of cash into a black hole of terrorism.

The AP news item adds that the Palestinian economy “has been stifled by conflict with Israel as well as internal fighting among Palestinian factions” but makes no mention of the rampant corruption, outright theft and spending on illicit arms and tunnels and training of terrorists in Ramallah and other Arab centers in Judea and Samaria.

The Associated Press, Wednesday October 22,2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

RAMALLAH, West Bank: The U.S. has transferred $150 million to the Palestinians, exceeding its original pledge of aid to the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank.

U.S. consul General Jake Walles says Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad asked for the additional assistance last month to help with the Palestinian budget.
A statement from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem says American aid to the Palestinians in 2008 now totals over $700 million and exceeds the amount the U.S. pledged at a donors conference in December 2007.

Walles made the official announcement of the transfer Wednesday alongside Fayyad at a ceremony in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Le Carré’s Moral Inversions

John le Carré continues down the moral slope with his most recent novel A Most Wanted Man. In the early novels on the British secret service that made him famous, le Carré’s trademark was moral equivalence. The British secret agent Smiley becomes the moral equivalent of his Soviet antagonist Karla. And while it is legitimate for a novelist to point out there are similarities between people who fill similar roles, by never exploring the systems Smiley and Karla represent, le Carré conveys the impression that there is no difference between the governments for which they work or the societies they serve.

With his 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl, which focuses on the Arab-Israel conflict, le Carré moved further down the slope. On the surface it seems to follow the pattern of the Smiley novels, as le Carré applies his familiar mirror-imaging technique to his Israeli agent (Joseph) and the chief Palestinian terrorist (Khalil). “The house was beside a lake… Khalil drove past it twice before he turned into the drive, and his eyes as he scanned the roadside were Joseph’s eyes, dark and purposeful and all-seeing.” But in fact le Carré sets Israel up as the villain. He employs meretricious techniques to make Israel appear guilty of the vicious practices the PLO made famous. Thus when the female protagonist Charlie goes for training in PLO camps in Lebanon, a village headman tells her: “the Zionists also dropped booby traps disguised as children’s toys.” The bitterest attacks on Israel are from the mouths of Israelis (there are no mirror-imaging attacks on the Palestinian cause by Palestinian Arabs). Joseph himself launches into a lengthy disquisition on the evils of Zionism that shades into anti-Semitism: he ends by offering a toast: “To tiny gallant Israel. To her amazing survival, thanks to an American subsidy of seven million dollars a day, and the entire might of the Pentagon dancing to her tune.”

In The Little Drummer Girl le Carré transcended the fashion that sees no moral difference between East and West; he joined the still more fashionable ranks of those ranged against Western values and civilization. And it’s against Western civilization that he continues to take his stand twenty-five years later, this time portraying Islamic radicals as victims (Islamic terrorism is portrayed as a vastly overblown threat) while the Western intelligence agents seeking to thwart terror plots are the villains. As The Wall Street Journal observes wryly “We’re only three pages into A Most Wanted Man when Mr. le Carré issues this proclamation: ‘Since 9/11, Hamburg’s mosques had become dangerous places. Go to the wrong one, or the right one and get the wrong imam, and you could find yourself and your family on a police watch list for the rest of your life.’ Ah, there is the danger in Hamburg’s mosques, cradles to three of the 9/11 hijackers.”

By Their Prizes…

We periodically run a feature in From the Editor, “By Their Prizes Ye Shall Know Them,” normally referring to prizes Israeli institutions grotesquely bestow upon haters of Israel. But this month the prize “by which ye shall know them” is the brand new EU-sponsored European Research Council award bestowed upon Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. The award not only carries high prestige but an awful lot of money—three million Euros, in fact. And it can be “no accident,” as the saying goes, that the EU has chosen to honor a man who uses archaeology to shatter the Bible’s credibility and with it, Israel’s historical claims. Indeed, according to Finkelstein, the core narrative of the origin of the Hebrew nation in the Exodus is false. Israelites were not a people who came out of the desert to conquer Canaan: rather they were the indigenous Canaanites. There were no kingdoms of David and Solomon—the two men existed (if at all) as small tribal leaders.

Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, ranks Finkelstein among the small group of “Biblical minimalists” [i.e. scholars who assert the Bible is a fictional account that created a glorious, but false national history at a much later time and is worthless as a source of history for the period it describes]. Most harbor an anti-Israel political agenda. Shanks writes: “One of their number has written a book entitled, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. That about says it all.” As Shanks notes, all this “connects with a certain current faddish lack of pride in Israel’s history, both modern and ancient, as well as a certain embarrassment in placing any great value, for whatever purposes, in the Bible.” Shanks observes: “Just as it is unjustified to conclude that the Bible is literally true in every detail, so it is unjustified to throw it out as historically worthless, especially when that view is so vigorously pursued by a few scholars with a political agenda.”

There can be little mystery concerning the political motivations behind the EU’s decision to honor Finkelstein, whose interpretation of the archaeological record has been scathingly dismissed by most of his peers, including famed archaeologist Amichai Mazar of the Hebrew University. Two million euros? Cheap at the price to obtain intellectual standing for cutting off Israel from its roots. The size and prestige of the award in itself serves to give legitimacy to Finkelstein’s claims.

“Humiliating” Road Blocks

The road blocks that inspired Condoleezza Rice to compare the plight of the Palestinian Arabs to that of blacks before the civil rights movement have been damaging those inalienable Palestinian rights again – their right to blow up Israeli citizens.

A female Israeli soldier deeply humiliated an Arab male who showed up at a checkpoint with two friends by demanding his ID card. Unsatisfied even when the man she had thus shamed produced his card she dishonored him further by making him open his bag. Revolting against this abasement (by a woman!) before his friends, the man refused. The soldier insisted, whereupon the Arab opened the bag, removed a shirt and pants and closed it again. Apparently intent on degrading her unfortunate Arab victim further, the soldier opened the bag herself--and found three pipe bombs inside. Now the Arab’s two friends were also searched and found to carry three pipe bombs in each of their bags. Sappers dispatched to the scene blew up the explosive devices and the three humiliated Arabs were taken in for interrogation.

A similar attack was thwarted at a different roadblock a week earlier.

Condoleezza Rice need not lament the fate of these Arab victims. They will undoubtedly be freed to try their luck again when the Israeli government next embarks on a mass release of terrorists, excuse me, “prisoner exchange.”

The Neo-Nazi-Islamist Connection

John Rosenthal points out Pajamasmedia.com) that when protesters in Cologne in September managed to prevent the holding of an “Anti-Islamification Congress” (aimed at protesting the growing Islamic tide in Germany), the German and international media hailed it as a victory against “right-wing extremists,” or as some put it bluntly, “Nazis.”

It wasn’t so simple. Rosenthal points out that in fact the government investigation office (known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution) reported that the local neo-Nazi organization was antagonistic to the citizen’s group “Pro-Cologne” that planned to hold the Anti-Islamification Congress. On its website, the neo-Nazi outfit declared: “Inasmuch as it is a determined opponent of the western-plutocratic one-world policy, we regard Islam, globally considered, as an ally against the mammonistic dominance of the American east coast. The freedom of nations is not threatened by Islam, but rather by the imperialism of the USA and its vassals from Jerusalem to Berlin.”

The “American east coast” is the neo-Nazi euphemism for Jews. In short, yes, German Nazis are against “flooding by foreigners,” but when it comes to Islam, this is trumped by their recognition that Islam is their most powerful worldwide ally in the fight they really care about—the war against the Jews.

Rael Jean Isaac

The U.N.’s Durban Review Conference, scheduled for April 2009 in Geneva (widely referred to as Durban II) shapes up to be even more disgraceful than Durban I, the notorious anti-racism conference held in that South African city in 2001. Durban I exemplified what it was supposed to combat, turning into an orgy of hatred against Israel (with considerable venom against the United States thrown in). Then Secretary of State Colin Powell, to his credit, withdrew the U.S. delegation, telling the U.N. organizers that you don’t combat racism by singling “out only one country in the world—Israel—for censure and abuse.” In a fitting irony, the conference, which concluded by identifying Israel alone as a state sponsor of racism, ended three days before 9/11.

It is not surprising that Durban II should promote Israel’s destruction given that it is designed to come up with “concrete measures” to implement Durban I and is a project of the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Jerusalem Post reports that the agenda for Durban II is largely being shaped by Libya (the Council’s current chair) in the role of preparatory conference chairman along with so-called “Friends of the Chairman,” including Egypt, Iran, Cuba and Pakistan. (Compounding the absurdity of it all, the U.S. State Department, seeking to offer a rationale for the administration’s new policy of modernizing Qaddafi’s military with U.S. systems, has declared: “The U.S. and Libya have a common interest in promoting international peace and security.”) The U.N. Human Rights Council devotes almost all its time (and virtually all its resolutions) to condemning Israel. Durban II offers another verbal “hook” —“racism,” as against “human rights,” to make the familiar litany of false charges.

In October, meeting in Geneva, the PrepCom, as the Preparatory Committee is called for short, released the text of a “Draft Outcome Document” for Durban II. While this is not the final document (which will be adopted at the Conference itself in April), it gives a good idea of what that will look like. It draws on submissions prepared by regional groups which had met earlier to prepare their input into Durban II. For example, the African regional group met in Nigeria at the end of August and called for the elimination of Zionism in the name of “the values and principles of human dignity and equality.” The group’s Abuja Declaration made no mention of Darfur, the inter-ethnic slaughter in the Congo, the denial of food by Mugabe to political opponents in Zimbabwe.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference’s contribution and the Asian regional draft, heavily influenced by it, accuse Israel of “apartheid,” “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.”

The key individual keeping tabs on what she aptly calls the U.N. Racist “Anti-Racism” Campaign is the Hudson Institute’s indefatigable Anne Bayefsky. She has posted the “Draft Outcome Document” for Durban II on the website www.EYEontheUN.org. I will spare readers the endless paragraphs of bombast against Israel, but here are a few (as numbered in the Document) to get the flavor:

57. Reaffirm that a foreign occupation founded on settlements, its laws based on racial discrimination with the aim of continuing domination of the occupied territory, as well as its practices, which consist of reinforcing a total military blockade, isolating towns, cities and villages under occupation from each other, totally contradict the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and constitute a serious violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security.

116. Express deep concern at the plight of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons who were forced to leave their homes because of war and racial policies of the occupying power and who are prevented from returning to their homes and properties because of a racially based law of return, and recognize the right of return of the Palestinian refugees…

117. Re-emphasize the responsibility of the international community to provide international protection for the Palestinian people under occupation against aggression, acts of racism, intimidation and denial of fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, liberty and self-determination.

But the threat posed by Durban II goes beyond Israel—and indeed beyond anything in Durban I. As noted earlier Durban I ended just before 9/11—in its aftermath Islamic organizations and countries have been nurturing an odd combination of sentiments: a sense of grievance and victimhood along with feelings of empowerment. The end result is that the Moslem countries setting the agenda for Durban II seek to outlaw a new form of “racism,” namely “Islamophobia.”

Anne Bayefsky notes that the “Draft Outcome Document” constitutes an attempt to strangle free speech by demands that states adopt broad new laws that would undercut democratic rights and freedoms in the name of religious sensibilities. The Document demands that states "take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols." (One wonders if they have in mind such “firm action” as that reported by the Wall Street Journal of October 22: an Afghan student who asked about women’s rights had his death sentence revoked, receiving instead a 20 year prison term.)

Bayefsky observes that the Draft Document seeks to undercut counterterrorism and national security efforts with the accusation that they “hamper…progress in the collective struggle against racism.” Any suggestion that Islam or Muslims have anything to do with terrorism is attacked as xenophobia leading to “worsening of the situation of Muslim minorities around the world.”

Ominously, not content with urging “legal and administrative measures at the national and local levels” to punish “expressly and specifically contemporary forms of racism” the Draft Document demands international measures. “National laws alone cannot deal with the rising tide of defamation and hatred against Muslims…A framework is needed to analyze national laws and understand their provisions. This could then be compiled in a single ‘universal document’ as guidelines for legislation aimed at countering ‘defamation of religions.’” What this amounts to is a demand by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to universalize Islam’s blasphemy laws, so that the whole world becomes subject to them.

While this might have seemed ridiculous as recently as Durban I, it is absurd no longer. As an article (October 8) posted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union points out, “The recent success of the OIC in having both the Human Rights Council and the U.N. General Assembly adopt resolutions ‘combating defamation of religion’ means that even though the General Assembly resolution was non-binding, states who wish to do so now have international approval to enact new laws against defamation of religions (blasphemy laws to you and me) and to keep existing blasphemy laws in place.” See also in this issue of Outpost, the proposed European Arrest Warrant discussed by Fjordman (pp. 9-10).

While the EU has treated the defamation of Israel with indifference, the assault on freedom of speech has spurred some response. Speaking on behalf of the EU, France warned the “anti-racists” of Durban II “not to spoil this opportunity by seeking to restrain freedom of expression or other fundamental rights.”

At Durban I some of the most virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Israel denunciations came from the NGO [Non-Governmental Organization] Forum held alongside the official proceedings. The Forum grew so vicious that even Mary Robinson, then U.N. Human Rights Commissioner and no friend of Israel, denounced the “hateful, even racist” anti-Semitic atmosphere of the Forum and refused to endorse its final declaration including the call for “mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes” and “complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.” (Nonetheless, much of the Forum’s harshest attacks on Israel have made it into the draft document for Durban II.)

Unsurprisingly, the NGO Forum is back, with more than 50 rabidly anti-Israel NGOs mobilizing alongside the “PrepCom” in Geneva in October to prepare for the forthcoming Durban Review Conference. Shimon Samuels, who monitored the proceedings on behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, reported that proposals advanced included that an NGO Caucus be created to produce “a hard-language Final Declaration to impact upon the Governmental document” and that the NGO Forum be held just before Durban II “in order to fully participate in influencing Governments.”

In February 2008 Israel, which, like the United States, walked out of Durban I, announced it would not participate in Durban II and has since been trying to influence Western countries to stay away, so as not to give the proceedings legitimacy. So far only Canada, led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has agreed to follow Israel’s lead. Australia, which Israel initially believed would stay away, is expected to attend. Anne Bayefsky notes that although the United States at first seemed supportive—in December 2007 the U.S. voted against the entire U.N. budget for 2008-09 because it contained funding for Durban II—the Bush administration has not promised to stay away. With U.S. elections coming, Bayefsky says one explanation is the bureaucracy is managing to stifle decision-making along any lines a President Obama and other U.N. enthusiasts might abjure.

As for Europe, while France’s President Sarkozy suggested France might stay away last February, Gerald Steinberg, who directs the NGO Monitor in Jerusalem, says that as things stand now, France is likely to attend, as is Spain, Scandinavia, Belgium and Austria. The Jerusalem Report of October 13 notes that Steinberg will brief the European Parliament in November in an attempt to persuade as many member countries as possible to stay away. Steinberg believes that much will depend on the position of the new American President.

That in turn is likely to depend on the outcome of the election. But whatever happens, it seems apparent the U.S. will provide much of the funding. That’s because unlike Durban I, which was funded by South Africa, Durban II’s costs—a pricy $6.8 million--will come out of the core U.N. budget, which means, as journalist Claudia Rosett points out, “that Americans, as top contributors to the U.N. budget, can look forward not only to being vilified at Durban II…but also to picking up the biggest share of the tab for this next landmark U.N. exercise in bigotry.”

What’s more, the U.S. may also be funding those poisonous NGOs, for the planners, says Rosett, “have also been angling to use U.N. regular budget money to subsidize the travel costs for non-governmental organizations from poor countries to attend the conference.” Rosett has harsh words for today’s State Department which is not using the firepower the U.S. has to stop the charade. “Faced with Durban I, Colin Powell pulled out and spoke up. Faced with Durban II Condi Rice has given no sign she’s even noticed. Is it policy these days at the U.S. State Department that the U.N. abuse of U.S. money to pervert everything the U.S. stands for is no longer worth the Secretary’s time?”

While Israel is overtly most at risk from Durban II, given the emphasis on impeding Western defenses against Islam and outlawing criticism of it, the threat to the West is not far behind. Will the West fight back by refusing to attend or meekly participate and indeed pay for this attack on its own values? Will it reject this moral infamy or will it continue down the path of subservience to the barbarians at—and increasingly within—our gates?

Rael Jean Isaac is the editor of Outpost.

William Mehlman

Q: What does it take to get the Israeli police to enforce the law in Arab population areas?

A: Try a pogrom.

Did an inebriated 48 year-old Jamal Taufik deliberately shatter the solemn calm of a Yom Kippur eve in Acre, gunning his car, radio blaring, into Ben Ami Avenue, the main thoroughfare of the tensely divided northern town’s Ben-Gurion Jewish quarter, nearly running down a young female pedestrian in the process?

Or, as Mr. Taufik insisted in an IBA Channel 2 interview, did he quietly, soberly (“I’m a Moslem, I don’t drink”) merely traverse the Jewish quarter on his way to retrieving his daughter from her fiancee’s home when he was accosted by a gang of stone-throwing Jewish youths intent on killing him?

Given the Rashomonic complexion of most “eye-witness“ testimony in Israel, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of this affair may never be fully established. Two facts, however, are incontrovertible:

A false report that Taufik had been murdered by the Israeli youths triggered a rampage through the Ben Gurion quarter by some 200 axe and hammer-wielding Arabs from Acre’s Old City that resulted in damage to more than 100 Jewish-owned cars and the vandalizing of every Jewish shop in their path. One elderly Ashkenazic resident of the predominantly Sephardic neighborhood observed that the shards of glass from the smashed windshields and store-fronts reminded him of the Kristalnacht he’d witnessed as a child in Germany 70 years earlier. Contributing to that chilling sensation were the mob’s amplified threats of “death” to any Jew who dared venture forth from his home. It was the worst demonstration of anti-Jewish Arab violence since the 2000 riots in the Israeli-Arab town of Umm al-Fahm.

The second fact not in dispute is that, Yom Kippur notwithstanding, the Israeli police were “out to lunch” when the mean stuff hit the fan. Moreover, by all accounts, it took hours before the cops arrived on the scene in numbers sufficient to deal with the situation. Finally, despite the dispatch of 700 police in full riot gear, including water cannon, and the proclamation of a “zero tolerance” toward anyone further disturbing the peace, five nights of intermittent clashes between Jewish and Arab gangs ensued before full calm was restored in Acre.

The cops have taken a pummeling from all sides. Demanding the resignation of Police Chief David Cohen and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz declared that Israel had become “the only state in the Western world where pogroms are being perpetrated against Jews, with their property being damaged and with chants of ’death to the Jews.’ A police force that is unable to protect Jewish neighborhoods needs deep scrutiny.”

Describing the refusal of one police officer to respond to a barrage of stones he alleges were hurled at him and Jewish groups by Taufik and his friends, Sha’as MK David Azoulai, who lives in Acre, said the officer contented himself with merely surveying the scene. Azoulai said, “The situation could have been prevented within minutes had the police used force immediately.” A similar sentiment was expressed by Acre chief rabbi Yosef Yashar. ”We are disappointed with the police,” he said. “We expect the police to enforce the law among the Arabs too, not just among the Jews.”

MK Aryeh Eldad, whose new Hatikvah party aims to harvest the votes of secular national Zionists in the next election, laid the blame for counter-rioting by Jewish youth gangs squarely at the doorstep of the police. “One should not be surprised if Jews take up arms to defend themselves while the police do nothing to protect them,” he asserted. The same theme was being echoed up and down Ben Ami Avenue. “The police are universally condemned here as having failed to protect the people and their property,” one witness to the rampage declared. “That feeling has led some of the Jewish youths to conclude that they should take the law into their own hands.”

For different reasons the “universal” condemnation of the police extended to the Arabs. Far from applauding the blue-shirts for saving Jamal Taufik from an all but certain lynching at the hands of counter-rioting Jewish hotheads, MK Ahmad Tibi was incensed at Taufik’s subsequent arrest (he has since been released), calling it “an unreasonable decision devoid of any legal basis.” Capping his incendiary reference to the events in Acre as “a fascist pogrom perpetrated by Jewish thugs against Arabs,” Tibi accused the police of having “caved in to Jewish hooligans,” adding, “I wonder if they will start to arrest Jews who eat and drink during the month of Ramadan.” MK and Hadash party chairman Muhammed Baraket added a new note to the condemnation, charging the police with having “abused a lynch victim while protecting gangs of settlers.”

Israel’s external enemies could hardly have been expected to resist throwing a log or two on the Acre conflagration. They did not disappoint. While Hezbollah satisfied itself with hailing the “heroic [Arab] resistance in protecting the land and honor [from] the violent and barbaric assaults by the Zionists,” Islamic Jihad immediately picked up on Baraket’s reclassification of the residents of Acre’s ancient Jewish community as “settlers.” Sensing demagogic gold in them thar’ hills, spokesman Walid Hilam laced into the “extremist Jewish attacks and the crimes of the settlers” as a “manifestation of the brutality of the occupation and its racism. What happened,” he added, “is the predecessor to a third intifada, which the Palestinians within Palestine that has been occupied since 1948, will lead.”.

Islamic Jihad’s reference to pre-June 1967 Israeli territory as “occupied” and the accompanying notice that the next intifada would not be confined to Judea and Samaria, was soon echoed. “This struggle shows that the Palestine that was conquered in 1948 was never separate from the Palestine of 1967,” exclaimed Abu Abir, mouthpiece for the “Popular Resistance Committees.” “We are all one people…and we are fighting to free Palestine. All of Palestine.” From Hamas in Gaza came a loud Amen. The day was not far off, promised spokesman Mushir al Mosri, “when we will purge Acre of the Zionists.”

With over a thousand regular police and border police roaming its streets and frequent traffic checkpoints, Acre, at this writing, is superficially as calm as any town under virtual martial law could expect to be. The army in blue and green won’t be sitting there indefinitely, however, and even if Acre has had its fill of violence for awhile, the ingredients for a similar explosion are stirring in dozens of mixed population cities, towns and neighborhoods across Israel. The pot that boiled over in Acre is simmering in places like Lod, Ramle, Karmiel, Pisgat Ze’ev, lower Haifa, Jaffa and across the Galilee. “We’re not talking about an idyllic co-existence,” says Avi Weissman, director of the Lod Foundation. Rabbi Yosef Stern, chancellor of the hesder yeshiva in Acre, portrays the atmosphere in the lacerated town and in other mixed population areas as an ongoing struggle between Jews and Arabs for control over the identity of the places in which they live. He characterized this struggle within the Green Line as no less urgent than those taking place in Judea and Samaria.

Has Acre rung down the curtain on Jewish-Arab co-existence in Israel? Not necessarily, noted one long-time observer of relations between the two communities. “Co-existence, however uneasy, was a fact of life in Israel for the better part of 50 years,” he said. “It can be restored, provided it is regrounded in two essential principles. First, it must be made clear that the law will be administered and enforced to the letter, but fairly and impartially, and second, that violations of civic peace and the security of person and property will be treated with zero tolerance.“

Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards anytime soon. Yisrael Hasson, a former deputy commander of the Shin Bet (the Israeli Security Service), currently representing the Israel Beitenu party in the Knesset, ascribes the intensity of the Acre riot to “the fact that the police have lost their deterrent effect on the Arab population.” Exacerbating that loss is what he terms “an accelerated process of separation, which is nurtured and maintained by the Israeli-Arab leadership.” As for the Jews, he said, one could only imagine the feelings of helplessness and humiliation they experienced in Acre on Yom Kippur night with the police nowhere in sight. “For four hours the axe is swinging above your head and you hide the wife and children in the security room with the marauder just inches away from you. It’s insanity.” At the root of the “insanity” that could make itself felt across the length and breadth of Israel, he finds a paucity of smart, courageous national leadership. Hasson asserts that the leadership isn’t there and the Arabs know it.

What the Israeli police force is—or is not— is in large measure the creation of what is fondly referred to here as the “political echelon.” In its passion for “quiet” at any cost, it has steadily undermined whatever credibility the men and women in blue may have had in the eyes of both the Jewish and Arab communities. “Quiet” overruled any effort by the police to halt the wanton destruction of Israelite artifacts unearthed in the construction of a third mosque on the Temple Mount. “Quiet” has permitted unrestrained Arab squatter occupation of 90 percent of the Galilee and large stretches of the Negev. “Quiet“ has thwarted efforts to collect essential taxes in scores of Israeli-Arab villages. And it is “quiet” that has informed police passivity as Israeli-Arab hooligans bearing signs and PLO flags and shouting slogans denouncing Israel parade yearly across the country in commemoration of “Land Day,” marking a minor 1976 Israeli exercise of the right of eminent domain in the Galilee.

If there were still members of the police force who hadn’t absorbed the “quiet” message, it was hammered home with stunning finality in 2000 when several high ranking law enforcement careers came crashing to earth in the aftermath of a riot in Umm al Fahm that ended with a cornered police contingent having to kill 12 Arab youths in order to stave off an imminent lynching. In a textbook exercise in mindless appeasement of mob violence and its architects, the cops were offered up in sacrifice by the “political echelon,” despite the findings of an investigating committee that the unrestrained mob, hurling Molotov cocktails and burning tires, among other things, wantonly attacked Jews on the roads and was well on the way to expanding its “demonstration” into a “serious conflict between sectors of the population, such as the interracial conflicts with their attendant results that we have seen in distant locales.”

The fact that the police initially tried to stop the rioters and protect their own lives with the use of rubber bullets was given short shrift by the government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, hell-bent on repairing its Arab fences. The lives and careers of a few police officers and the blow to the morale of the force were deemed an acceptable price to pay. The essential lesson of Umm al Fahm—that enforcement of the law upon even the most dangerous elements of the Israeli-Arab population can be a quick ticket to oblivion--has implanted itself deeply into the consciousness of the men and women in blue.

After Acre, their political instructors might just be having some second thoughts on the matter, but a mindset instilled at so great a cost can’t be switched on and off like an electric bulb. It’s going to take some heavy rewiring. And so will the confidence of the public.

William Mehlman represents AFSI in Israel and is co-editor of the Jerusalem-based internet magazine ZionNet (www.ZionNet.net).

 

Yoram Ettinger

With media attention focused on the collapse of the global economy little attention is being paid to a surprising collapse of demography in the world at-large and between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean in particular. Such a demographic development directly impacts critical policy considerations which determine the future of the Jewish State.

The myth of global "doubling population every 20 years" has been shattered. The Director General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, stated during a UNESCO conference entitled "Population: From Explosion to Implosion" that "there is an abrupt slowdown in the rate of growth…also in many countries where women have only limited access to education and employment…There is not the slightest reason to assume that the decline in fertility will miraculously stop just at replacement level (2.1 births per woman)…Before 2000, the young always outnumbered their elders; for some years now it has been the other way around."

The U.N. Population Division reports a sharp decline of fertility rates (number of births per woman) in Muslim and Arab countries, excluding Afghanistan and Yemen. The collapse of fertility rates in Muslim countries is the result of modernization, Westernization, urbanization and the security concerns of dictators who fear the consequences of the widening gap between population growth and economic growth.

As a result, the U.N. Population Division has reduced its 2050 world population projections by 25% from 12 billion to 9 billion, possibly 7.4 billion. For instance, the fertility rate in Iran—the flagship of radical Islam—has declined from 9 births per woman 30 years ago to 1.8 births in 2007. The Muslim religious establishment has played a key role in decreasing fertility rates in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, from 8 and 7 births per woman 30 years ago to less than 4 and less than 2.5 in 2007 respectively. Fertility rates in Jordan and Syria have dropped from 8, 30 years ago, to less than 3.5 in 2007. A substantial dive of fertility rates in Muslim countries—trending toward 2 births per woman—is also documented by the Population Resource Center in Washington, DC. And according to demographic precedents, there is a very slight probability of resurrecting high fertility rates following a sustained period of significant reduction.

The Bennett Zimmerman-led American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG) has documented a similar demographic trend among the Arab population of Judea and Samaria (currently 4 births per woman and trending downward). The decline in fertility and population growth rates has resulted from escalating emigration (which has characterized the region since 1950!), accelerated urbanization (70% rural in 1967 and 60% urban in 2008), the expansion of education, especially among women, the entrenchment of a career mentality, the increase of median-marriage-age, an all time high divorce rate, the reduction of teen-age-pregnancy and the UNRWA/PA-led family planning campaign.

The sharp lowering of the fertility rate among "Green Line" (pre-1967 Israel) Arabs, from 9 births per woman in 1969 to 3.5 in 2007, has been the outcome of their integration into Israel's education, employment, health, cultural and political infrastructures. The annual number of Arab births stabilized at approximately 39,000 between 1995-2007. The Arab fertility rate converges swiftly toward the Jewish fertility rate (2.8 births per woman).

On the other hand, Israel's Jewish demography has been non-normative as far as the impact of education and income levels on fertility rates. The annual number of Jewish births (including the Olim/immigrants from the former USSR) rose by 40% between 1995-2007. The number of Jewish births has increased from 69% of total births in 1995 to 74% in 2006 and 75% in 2007. The secular sector— and particularly immigrants from the former Soviet Union—has been by and large responsible for such an impressive rise. The Jewish demographic tailwind is bolstered by the (under-utilized) potential of Aliya/immigration from the former USSR, USA, Europe, Latin America, etc.

Recent demographic trends bode well for the long-term Jewish majority of 67% in the combined area of the "Green Line" and Judea and Samaria, compared with a 33% and 8% Jewish minority in 1947 and 1900 respectively between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Israel's policy-makers and public opinion-molders should base their assessments on demographic realities and not on an unwarranted demographic fatalism. Erroneous assumptions yield self-destructive policy decisions.

Yoram Ettinger was Israel’s consul general in Houston and head of Israel’s Government Press Office.

Fjordman

In a letter appearing in the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga in 2008 revealed that the government of Italy in the 1970s agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks. The government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a "secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups." According to the former president, it was Moro himself who designed the terms of the agreement with the foreign Arab terrorists. "The terms of the agreement were that the Palestinian organizations could even maintain armed bases of operation in the country, and they had freedom of entry and exit without being subject to normal police controls, because they were 'handled' by the secret services." As Interior Minister, Cossiga said that he learned PLO members in Italy had diplomatic immunity as representatives of the Arab League.

This was the formal birth of Eurabia, when Western European governments, giving in to pressure from Arab terrorists and oil-producing states, abandoned their traditional pro-Israeli position and gradually aligned themselves with the Arab-Islamic world. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the Italians were the only ones to make such "deals." In addition to cultural and political cooperation, European governments agreed to pay Arabs, Palestinians in particular, large sums in "protection money" to reduce the terrorist threat. This can only be seen as jizya, and the practice has later spread to the entire European Union, which pays the Palestinians tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of Euros annually.

The MEDA programme, the principal financial instrument for the implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, between 2000-2006 spent €5,350 million on its various programs, according to the EU's official website. During the period 1995-1999, some 86% of the resources allocated to MEDA were channeled to Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority.

In 2007, MEDA was replaced by the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, which from 2007 to 2013 is projected to spend €11 billion on, among other things, promoting cooperation between European and Arab countries in the sectors of energy and transport; in higher education and mobility of teachers, researchers and students; multicultural dialogue through people-to-people contacts, including links with communities of immigrants living in EU countries as well as cooperation between civil societies, cultural institutions and exchanges of young people. The European Commission, the EU's powerful government with extensive legislative powers, shall coordinate cooperation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), universities, churches, religious associations and the media in matters related to this project. All this, easily available in documents published on the Internet, is almost unknown to the general public since the media rarely mentions any of it.

In September 2008, a brief statement in a few media outlets in Denmark (I've seen remarkably little mention of this far-reaching proposal in the mainstream media in most European countries) said that Muslims living in the EU will in future be able to divorce according to sharia law. This is the recommendation of the European Commission, which wants a couple to be able to choose which country's law they will follow if they divorce—as long as they have some kind of connection to the country they choose. Danish People's Party spokesman Morten Messerschmidt was greatly concerned about the proposal: "It's a completely lamebrain idea, the possibility that the Commission will use inhumane sharia laws in the EU," he said.

What people don't understand is that this is a part of long-term deals that have already been agreed upon by EU leaders. Virtually all Western European leaders have already surrendered. There is no longer a question of whether or not sharia will be officially accepted as law; it is only a question of how to implement this.

Meanwhile, a proposed European Arrest Warrant lists a number of crimes, including terrorism, armed robbery, rape, racism and xenophobia, to be punishable throughout the EU. The European Arrest Warrant requires that anyone who is charged by a member state under the listed group of offenses (which could cover just about anything) may be arrested by the authorities of the issuing state without interference by any other member state. The accused must then be transited for trial to the issuing state within ten days, without any interference, judicial or otherwise, by the executing state.

Racism includes "Islamophobia," according to EU documents, which means that "Islamophobia" could soon be treated as a crime as serious as rape and armed robbery across the European continent. At the same time, EU leaders are busy enlarging the EU to include North Africa and the Middle East, thus flooding Europe with tens of millions of additional Muslims. Not far into the future, we can imagine a situation where the authorities can arrest a person in, say, Denmark or Italy, who has published a cartoon that could be considered offensive to Islam. He will then be handed over to the authorities in Algeria, Egypt or Jordan.

Remember that blasphemy against Islam carries the death penalty according to sharia. Multiculturalism in Europe is about to reach its openly totalitarian phase. Those who think this is a joke can look at the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot who was arrested in 2008 for cartoons that "insulted" Muslims. Several documents that are publicly available but little known by the general public state that the EU should "harmonize" the education and legal systems with the Arab "partner countries" within the coming decade. This is being negotiated as we speak, behind our backs.

European Commission president José Manuel Barroso earlier expressed unease with the prospect of a second Dutch Lisbon Treaty/European Constitution referendum. "Referendums make the process of approval of European treaties much more complicated and less predictable," he said, asking every member state considering a referendum to "think twice." Mr Barroso in his previous job as Portuguese Prime Minister in 2004 backed a referendum on the EU constitution in his own country—but since then his thinking has changed. "I was in favour of a referendum as a prime minister, but it does make our lives with 27 member states in the EU more difficult. If a referendum had been held on the creation of the European Community or the introduction of the euro, do you think these would have passed?"

In October 2008 journalist Nick Fagge wrote in the British newspaper The Daily Express:

"More than 50 million African workers are to be invited to Europe in a far-reaching secretive migration deal, The Daily Express can reveal today. A controversial taxpayer-funded 'job centre' opened in Mali this week is just the first step towards promoting 'free movement of people in Africa and the EU.' Brussels economists claim Britain and other EU states will 'need' 56 million immigrant workers between them by 2050 to make up for the 'demographic decline' due to falling birth rates and rising death rates across Europe. The report, by the EU statistical agency Eurostat, warns that vast numbers of migrants could be needed to meet the shortfall in two years if Europe is to have a hope of funding the pension and health needs of its growing elderly population. It states: 'Having sufficient people of working age is vital for the economy and for tax revenue.' The report, by French MEP Francoise Castex, calls for immigrants to be given legal rights and access to social welfare provisions such as benefits. Ms Castex said: 'It is urgent that member states have a calm approach to immigration. To say yes, we need immigration…is not a new development, we must accept it.'"

Let's sum up our findings so far: The EU has accepted that the Union should be enlarged to include the Muslim Middle East and North Africa. The EU has accepted that tens of millions of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries in northern Africa should be allowed to settle in Europe in the years ahead. This is supposedly "good for the economy." It is planning to implement sharia laws for the millions of Muslims it is inviting to settle in Europe. It has passed stronger anti-racism laws while making it clear that "Islamophobia" constitutes a form of racism, and is cooperating with Islamic countries on rewriting school textbooks to provide a "positive" image of Islam to European children. Finally, the EU is developing an Arrest Warrant which stipulates that those charged with serious crimes, for instance racism, can be arrested without undue interference by the nation state they live in. In essence, the EU is formally surrendering an entire continent to Islam while destroying established national cultures, and is prepared to harass those who disagree with this policy. This constitutes the greatest organized betrayal in Western history, perhaps in human history, yet is hailed as a victory for "tolerance."

Finally, we should remember one thing: All of this started with the appeasement of Arab bullies like Arafat in the 1970s, who used oil or terrorism or both as weapons. Europeans should work to get rid of the culture of betrayal, but then we also need to get rid of the culture of appeasement that brought us this mess in the first place. No money for the Palestinians; not one cent. If they need money, they can ask the Saudis. And no more appeasement of or deals with Islamic terrorists. It was "dialogue," the Euro-Arab Dialogue, that created these problems. No more "dialogue." The only way to deal with a bully is to punch him in the nose, and make him back down. That's the only appropriate way to deal with Jihadists.

This is an edited version of an article by the Norwegian writer who goes under the pseudonym fjordman that appeared in http://www.brusselsjournal.com on October 13.

Ruth King

In West Point Cemetery at the United States Military Academy there is only one grave for an American soldier who fell fighting for another country. His gravestone reads: “Colonel David Marcus--a Soldier for Humanity.” David Marcus, known as “Mickey,” was an officer in the U.S. Army who became a volunteer warrior in Israel’s army.

Mickey Marcus was born in 1901 to Rumanian immigrants and, like many young Jews taunted by local anti-Semitic thugs, he learned to box. He was smart and scrappy and after graduating from Boys High School in Brooklyn was accepted at West Point in 1920. On graduating in 1924, he completed his active duty requirements in the United States Army and went on to become a lawyer and subsequently a U.S. Attorney.

He spent almost a decade as a prosecutor in New York City until Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia appointed him as Commissioner for Corrections. It was a post in which he served with honor and integrity. In 1998 the Department of Correction commissioned a biographical plaque in Midwood, Brooklyn. Attendees at the event spoke of Marcus’s heroism and public service. Then chief of the Department of Corrections Edward Reilly said, "It is not surprising that a most memorable Mayor chose a memorable man to lead the boldest uniformed agents of this city."

When war in Europe seemed imminent, Marcus resigned to return to the military. After Pearl Harbor he was appointed as officer to the military governor of Hawaii. In 1942 he became commander of the Army’s Ranger school, created to develop tactics for jungle warfare. Sent to England, he volunteered for the Normandy invasion and parachuted into France with America’s 101st Airborne.

He drew upon his legal training when he participated in drawing up the terms for surrender of the Axis. As part of the occupation government in Germany, he was put in charge of clearing out the concentration camps and rescuing the millions of starving survivors in the Allied liberated areas. Marcus was named chief of the War Crimes Division which planned legal procedures for the Nuremberg trials.

Although he returned to civilian life, the Holocaust, in which one of every three Jews in the world were killed, haunted Marcus. Although he had earlier been indifferent to Zionism, he became a militant advocate for Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.

In 1947, after the United Nations vote for partition, facing the prospect of assault by well-armed and determined Arab enemy states, David Ben Gurion asked for Marcus’s help in recruiting an American officer to serve as military adviser to Israel’s fledgling army. Marcus himself volunteered after receiving reluctant approval from the United States War Department—on condition that he use a pseudonym and disguise his military record.

Thus, in January 1948, “Michael Stone” went to Tel Aviv to confront nearly impossible odds. A nation struggling with the recent trauma of genocide, duplicitous British collusion with the Arabs, ancient artillery, no real air-force, and manpower with no military experience other than the hit and run tactics of the Irgun and the Haganah, was faced with extermination. Marcus applied his skills as a Ranger, designed roads, formulated strategy, printed manuals and conducted training runs. When the assault came, Israel miraculously prevailed and Ben Gurion appointed Marcus to the rank of General—the first General of a sovereign Israel in two thousand years.

“Aluf” (Hebrew for general) Mickey Marcus tragically did not live to see his people’s victory. He died in a “friendly fire” incident. On the battlefield, sleepless and hot, Marcus went for a stroll wrapped in a white bed sheet. A frightened sentry saw a robed figure approaching and fired a deadly shot. His body was returned to the United States for burial at West Point, where he received full military honors for his service to the United States. Many years later, in 1966, Kirk Douglas, then a young Jewish actor, whose real name is Issur Danielovitch Demsky, portrayed Marcus in the movie Cast a Giant Shadow.

There were many other American, British, Australian, South American and European volunteers who did battle for Israel and also deserve honor, respect and gratitude. On May 21, 2006 dozens of cars arrived at the United States Military Academy Jewish Chapel. The American Veteran Volunteers for Israel, whose thinning ranks once numbered over one thousand, had assembled for the fortieth memorial service honoring their Zionist comrades and U.S. Army Colonel David “Mickey” Marcus.

The memorial plaque in honor of Marcus, located in the lobby of Union Temple of Brooklyn where his funeral service was conducted, speaks for them too. After commemorating Marcus who was “killed in action in the hills of Zion while leading Israeli forces as their supreme commander in the struggle for Israel’s freedom,” the following words are added:

“Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake.”