These are two more of Fred Reisenberg's imaginative graphic artworks. Contact him at fred343@gmail.com

Motion everywhere

Driving in the Rain

HOW MUCH DOES WEAPONIZATION MATTER? JUDGING IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM Posted by Bryna Berch, December 31, 2007.

This was written by Patrick Clawson and it was published December 4, 2007. Patrick Clawson is The Washington Institute's deputy director for research and the author of several books on Iran.

The just-released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," is about weaponization, not the enrichment and fuel cycle issues that have been the focus of multiple UN Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board resolutions regarding Iran's nuclear program. The NIE only suggests that Tehran has changed its sequence -- something that does not slow the country's progress toward a nuclear weapon by a single day. Therefore, it is not clear how this report affects the current thrust of U.S. policy: to stem Iran's nuclear fuel cycle capabilities. Is Iran Aiming to Make a Nuclear Weapon? The NIE states, "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so." The key word in that sentence is "eventually," because the most vital question worrying Iran's neighbors and the international community is when Iran will be able to produce its first nuclear weapon. The estimate says nothing about how the reported halt of Iran's nuclear weapons program affects that date. One estimate of how long it would take Iran to produce nuclear weapons once its openly acknowledged fuel-cycle facilities are completed is "a few months." That estimate -- from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei -- suggests that the existence of a weapons program is not important until Iran is close to producing fissile material. Making fissile material is difficult -- making a bomb is not necessarily as hard. Although constructing a nuclear warhead for a missile is tricky, making a bulky, heavy nuclear device that can fit into a ship container or a truck -- similar to the truck Iran's proxies used to bomb the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 -- is rather easy. That is why the forty-year effort to verify and enforce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has been based on controlling the production of fissile material. The NIE states that Iran is making a headlong rush to produce enriched uranium -- an attitude that does not support Tehran's claims of a strictly peaceful nuclear program. Indeed, the NIE's information about Iran's enrichment program is inconsistent with any claim that the regime has abandoned its interest in nuclear weapons. In fact, the new report barely changes the 2005 estimate about when Iran might obtain sufficient fissile material for a bomb. In that earlier report, the intelligence community concluded that the prospect of Iran making a nuclear weapon "is unlikely before early-to-mid next decade." In the current report, more details are provided, but the message is much the same: "We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame." The only caveat is from the State Department's intelligence arm, which "judges that Iran is unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013." How Much Confidence Is in Order? The U.S. intelligence community has a poor track record regarding nuclear weapons programs, making incorrect judgments on some of the most important proliferation cases. Most infamously, it badly misjudged not only what Iraq was doing, but also how confident the intelligence community could be about Baghdad's efforts on that front (e.g., former CIA director George Tenet's "slam dunk" remark). And although less noted, the intelligence community long underestimated the progress Libya and North Korea were making before it successfully caught both regimes red-handed -- a delay that brought scathing remarks from the Commission on WMD Proliferation. The intelligence community also failed to spot India's nuclear test preparations in 1998, and its confidence that South Africa was not working on nuclear weapons was proven wrong (though it should be noted that U.S. intelligence eventually decided the latter had produced a weapon, long before Pretoria acknowledged it). There is a pattern here. A charitable interpretation would be that nuclear programs are difficult to assess. A less charitable interpretation would be that the United States has not figured out a fully accurate way to judge progress in such programs. Part of the problem is imperfect information, but there is also the inherent difficulty of interpreting intentions and future actions. No matter how good the data, it does not tell us the "why" or the "what next." Indeed, the U.S. intelligence community's track record on Iran suggests that its knowledge has been imperfect. As the new NIE points out, the 2005 estimate assessed "with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons," whereas the new estimate is that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003 -- well before the 2005 estimate came out. Since the intelligence community decided it was wrong in 2005, one might think that U.S. intelligence agencies would be more cautious about what they now know. It is possible that the new information is the last word on the subject, but it is vital to remember that deciding whether or not Iran is "determined" is a matter of interpretation, not just information. The contrast between the NIE and the recent IAEA report is also sharp. In the latter report, the IAEA was extremely careful to highlight what it does not know. The concluding paragraph warned that the agency "is not in a position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran." Does Pressure on Iran Work? The clear sense from the new NIE is that pressure on Iran works. In the estimate's words, "Our assessment that the [nuclear weapons] program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously." A longtime theme of The Washington Institute's work has been Iran's vulnerability to influence on the nuclear issue, so it would be comforting to think that the NIE is correct. Yet, the NIE provides little reason to come to that conclusion. The alternative, more cynical interpretation of what it describes is that Iran understood that suspending its nuclear weapons program would have no effect on its progress toward nuclear weapons, yet would reduce the risk that IAEA inspectors would discover Iran's true intentions. The NIE provides no reason to favor its optimistic interpretation over this pessimistic view. In other words, the NIE displays undue confidence that the U.S. intelligence community knows not just what happened, but the reasons why. The new estimate is sure to have considerable political impact. Before deciding on what the NIE means for policy, one should first be sure what it says. The reality is that the estimate says little about whether Iran still aims to produce nuclear weapons or when it might do so. The NIE's information supports the theory that Iran has simply changed the sequencing of its nuclear weapons effort -- not necessarily the theory that Iran is no longer pursuing nuclear weapons. To Go To Top

IRAN'S SECRET SYRIAN PLAN Posted by Koira, December 31, 2007.

This was written by Olivier Guitta and it appeared in Middle East Times November 19, 2007. Olivier Guitta is a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant based in Washington, D.C. He speaks four languages, including Arabic; he has long experience in international banking and portfolio management; he has a solid reputation for significant articles in serious journals and newspapers; and he is a contributing editor for the prestigious counterterrorism blog: http://www.counterterrorism.org. He is the founder of the foreign affairs and counterterrorism newsletter The Croissant available by subscription at http://www.thecroissant.com

Israel has been providing intelligence and satellite images to the U.S. about a secret Syrian nuclear program for several months, according to media reports. Discussions between Israel and the United States took place last summer regarding a possible strike. But when Israel found the matter so pressing that when they realized the U.S. was not ready to act, on September 6 they attacked a Syrian nuclear site. Hence the question: what is Syria really up to or, more to the point, what is Iran up to? First, let's start with an underreported explosion that occurred in a Syrian military base outside Aleppo on July 26. Jane's Defense Weekly reported, citing Syrian defense sources, as saying the explosion took place during a test to fit a "Scud C" missile with a mustard-gas warhead. It quoted the sources as saying the explosion occurred when fuel caught fire in the missile production laboratory. But there might be another explanation. Kuwait's Al Seyassah newspaper recently reported that a Shiite Lebanese religious cleric claimed the Iranians were allegedly supervising a chemical weapons manufacturing program and that tens of Iranian experts and engineers died as a result of that explosion. He also said Israelis attacked the base. He added that Western officials told him they received proof from Israel on the Syrian chemical weapons program. Even if Israel's involvement is not proven, what remains sure is that it must be very happy that a chemical weapons facility in Syria has been partly destroyed. Now regarding the September 6 strike; while we may never know what really occurred, what remains sure is that the situation is direr than one could imagine, and that most likely, Israel did not just bomb a nuclear site in the early stages. Indeed, the silence of the international community and especially the Arab world after the attack is a first, and it shows the gravity of what happened. Even though Syria and its Iranian sponsor are detested, and in the case of Iran feared, in the Muslim world, the fact that there was no condemnation of Israel at the U.N. could be interpreted as a tacit relief that Israel acted. Another proof of what transpired came from ranking Republicans on the House Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Peter Hoekstra, who were briefed on the Israeli strike and sworn to secrecy. They wrote an op-ed in the October 20 Wall Street Journal clearly underlining the seriousness of the situation regarding both the North Korean and Iranian involvement in the Syrian arms program. Finally, the fact that the Bush administration (including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and most notably Defense Secretary Robert Gates) has been ramping up the rhetoric and taking action against Iran (including the latest sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) in the past week, might also be linked to what really happened in Syria. The Syrian story is far from over: in fact, on October 23, Al Seyassah ran a story about potential new secret nuclear sites in Syria. According to Western sources cited by the paper, it is possible that Syria is developing other nuclear sites with the help of North Korea, Iran and Iraqi experts, the latter who fled their country at the start of the Iraq war in 2003. In fact, observation satellites have allegedly located in Syria at least two other sites similar to the one destroyed by Israel last month. Iran's handwriting is all over the wall from the chemical to the nuclear arms program in Syria. Indeed, in research conducted last year as part of an article published in Washington's The Examiner, this reporter delved into Syrian's secret nuclear program, making the point that Syria might actually be "Plan B" for Iran. By helping develop nuclear sites in Syria, strikes on Iran might turn out to be useless. This was a smart strategy until Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear site on September 6 and made the world notice. Contact Koira by email at koira@dbmail.com To Go To Top

U.S. INTEL POSSIBLY DUPED BY IRAN Posted by Kenneth R. Timmerman, December 31, 2007.

The NEI concluded that Iran is not building a bomb. This is based presumably on hard data on physical happenings and on estimates of intent. This article deals with both aspects -- part 1 looks at the estimators and their reliability; part 2 estimates how peaceful is Iran's intent. The first part appeared December 4, 2007 in NewsMax (http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/iran_nukes/2007/12/04/54359.html). Part 2 appeared December 07, 2007 in The Washington Times.

Part 1. The Authors Of The NIE A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts -- not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned. Its most dramatic conclusion -- that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure -- is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States. Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for "a deliberate disinformation campaign" cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe. Dangerous Game The National Intelligence Council, which produced the NIE, is chaired by Thomas Fingar, "a State Department intelligence analyst with no known overseas experience who briefly headed the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research," I wrote in my book "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender." Fingar was a key partner of Senate Democrats in their successful effort to derail the confirmation of John Bolton in the spring of 2005 to become the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. As the head of the NIC, Fingar has gone out of his way to fire analysts "who asked the wrong questions," and who challenged the politically-correct views held by Fingar and his former State Department colleagues, as revealed in "Shadow Warriors." In March 2007, Fingar fired his top Cuba and Venezuela analyst, Norman Bailey, after he warned of the growing alliance between Castro and Chavez. Bailey's departure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was applauded by the Cuban government news service Granma, who called Bailey "a patent relic of the Reagan regime." And Fingar was just one of a coterie of State Department officials brought over to ODNI by the first director, career State Department official John Negroponte. Collaborating with Fingar on the Iran estimate, released on Monday, were Kenneth Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, and Vann H. Van Diepen, the National Intelligence officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation. "Van Diepen was an enormous problem," a former colleague of his from the State Department told me when I was fact gathering for "Shadow Warriors." "He was insubordinate, hated WMD sanctions, and strived not to implement them," even though it was his specific responsibility at State to do so, the former colleague told me. Kenneth Brill, also a career foreign service officer, had been the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2003-2004 before he was forced into retirement. "Shadow Warrior" reports, "While in Vienna, Brill consistently failed to confront Iran once its clandestine nuclear weapons program was exposed in February 2003, and had to be woken up with the bureaucratic equivalent of a cattle prod to deliver a single speech condemning Iran's eighteen year history of nuclear cheating." Negroponte rehabilitated Brill and brought the man who single-handedly failed to object to Iran's nuclear weapons program and put him in charge of counter-proliferation efforts for the entire intelligence community. Christian Westermann, another favorite of Senate Democrats in the Bolton confirmation hearings, was among the career State Department analysts tapped by Fingar and Brill. As a State Department intelligence analyst, Westermann had missed the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba, and played into the hands of Castro apologist Sen. Christopher Dodd, D, Conn., by continuing to use impeached intelligence reports on Cuba that had been written by self-avowed Cuban spy, Ana Belen Montes. "After failing to recognize the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba and Cuba's cooperation with Iran, Westermann was promoted to become national intelligence officer for biological weapons," I wrote. "Let's hope a walk-in defector from Iranian intelligence doesn't tell us that Iran has given biological weapons to terrorists to attack new York or Chicago," I added, "because Westermann will certainly object that the source of that information was not reliable -- at least, until Americans start dying." It now appears that this is very similar to what happened while the intelligence community was preparing the Iran NIE. The Defector My former colleague from the Washington Times, Bill Gertz, suggests in today's print edition of the paper that Revolutionary Guards Gen. Alireza Asgari, who defected while in Turkey in February, was the human source whose information led to the NIE"s conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But intelligence sources in Europe told Newsmax in late September that Asgari's debriefings on Iran's nuclear weapons programs were "so dramatic" that they caused French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister to speak out publicly about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Sarkozy stunned his countrymen when he told an annual conference of French ambassadors on Aug. 27, 2007, that Iran faced a stark choice between shutting down its nuclear program, or tougher international sanctions and ultimately, war. "This approach is the only one that allows us to escape from a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb, or the bombing of Iran," Sarkozy said. Three weeks later, Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher warned in a televised interview that the world's major powers needed to toughen sanctions on Iran to prevent Tehran from getting the bomb and to prevent war. "We must prepare for the worst," Kouchner said. "The worst, sir, is war." Those comments were prompted by reports that were given to the French president about Iran's nuclear weapons program derived from debriefings of the defector, Gen. Ashgari, a Newsmax intelligence source in Europe said. Ashgari is the highest-level Iranian official to have defected to the West since the Islamic revolution of 1979. His defection set off a panic in Tehran. As a senior member of the general staff of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Asgari had access to highly-classified intelligence information, as well as strategic planning documents, as I reported at the time. A damage assessment then underway in Tehran was expected to "take months" to complete, so extensive was Asgari's access to Iran's nuclear and intelligence secrets. Asgari had detailed knowledge of Iranian Revolutionary Guards units operating in Iraq and Lebanon because he had trained some of them. He also knew some of the secrets of Iran's nuclear weapons program, because he had been a top procurement officer and a deputy minister of defense in charge of logistics. But Asgari never had responsibility for nuclear weapons development, and probably did not have access to information about the status of the secret programs being run by the Revolutionary Guards, Iranian sources tell Newsmax. In an effort to cover up the failure of Iranian counter-intelligence to prevent Asgari's defection, a Persian language Web site run by the former Revolutioanry Guards Comdr. Gen. Mohsen Rezai claimed in March that Asgari was on a CIA "hit list" of 20 former Revolutionary Guards officers and had been assassinated. The Senate intelligence committee will be briefed today on the NIE, and the House committee on Wednesday. But already, the declassified summary has Republicans grumbling on Capitol Hill. "We want to know why we should believe this," one congressional Republican told Newsmax. "This is such a departure from the past and there are so many unanswered questions." While the intelligence community is supposed to report just the facts and its assessment of those facts and their reliability to policy-makers, this NIE clear advocates policy positions. "Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously," the NIC wrote in the declassified "Key Judgments" of the NIE. The NIE opined that the new assessment leads to the policy conclusion that the United States should offer "some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunites," in order to lock in Iranian good behavior. This carrot and stick approach has been the State Department's preferred policy for the past 27 years, and has only strengthened the resolve of Iran's leaders to continue defying the United States. "Those [countries that] assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," Ahmadinejad said in Tehran in September at a military parade. By "progress" Ahmadinejad was referring to Iran's recently-declared success at enriching uranium. Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees "have been running around with big smiles on their faces," a Republican source tells Newsmax. Republicans on the committees intend to ask for more information on the sourcing of this latest NIE during closed door briefings today and tomorrow.   Part 2: Iran's Nuclear Deceptions Somehow, this music is familiar. The Islamic Republic of Iran, once thought to be working on nuclear weapons, has seen the folly of its ways. Without saying a word to anyone, it has canceled clandestine work on the bomb, but our sharp intelligence warriors learned all about it and have now warned the White House and Democrats in Congress: Iran is no longer a threat. The world can sleep soundly at night. Behold, it's Peace in Our Time. The truth, of course, is far more nuanced. What the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran actually said for the first time in an official, United States government document released to the public, is that Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003. The NIE also said Iran continues to enrich uranium and will have enough highly enriched material to make its first bomb by the end of 2009. Or by 2013. Or perhaps 2015. It all depends, we are told, on just how much progress the Iranians have made in this part of their program. That uncertainty -- which is absolutely critical -- concerns the one part of Iran's nuclear programs that is open and has been declared (since 2003) to the International Atomic Energy Agency. If the U.S. intelligence community can't give us a reliable estimate on the status of that declared program, how can they state with "high confidence" that Tehran halted a clandestine nuclear weapons effort in fall 2003? If Iran actually stopped something, we don't know what it is. Because, of course, what they stopped was covert and has never been declared or inspected. But we do know quite a lot. We know, for example, that Iran announced last week the successful test of a new, multistage, solid-fuel missile, the Ashoura. This new missile is said to have a range of about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles), and brings most of Europe into range of Iran. Why is this new missile important? For one simple reason, according to Israeli missile expert, Uzi Rubin. "A solid-propellant, multistage missile is the big milestone on the way to developing an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile," he said at a conference hosted Tuesday by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. If the Iranians can make the Ashoura fly, "they will have achieved the capability" of launching ICBMs at Europe or the United States. Why would Iran want to develop an ICBM without a nuclear warhead? That question was not addressed in the National Intelligence Estimate, according to the declassified summary released Monday. There are many additional questions raised by the NIE that should give us pause. Here are just two: (1) The information that Iran stopped some unspecified nuclear weapons work in autumn 2003 seems based on a single, unvetted source -- an Iranian defector who provided information to a foreign intelligence service. What confidence do our intelligence analysts have in this defector? With the CIA's miserable track record in dealing with Iranian defectors, I suspect I know the answer. (2) What about the possibility of strategic deception? We are told the National Intelligence Council considered this possibility, and ultimately rejected it. And yet, Iranian and Russian intelligence services have a deep, longstanding relationship. Let's not forget that the Soviets invented the entire art form of maskirovka as a means of gaining strategic surprise. Iran's new nuclear "negotiator," Saeed Jalali, recently told the European Union's Javier Solana that Iran now intended to "go back to Square One" in its nuclear negotiations with the West. This was before release of the NIE. Was it just a coincidence that Mr. Jalali then flew to Moscow on Dec. 3, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and top national security adviser, Valentin Sobolov? My Iranian sources tell me there was a great deal of gloating behind those closed doors in Moscow about how the Iranians had managed to put one over on us. President Bush had it just right at his press conference Tuesday. Setting aside the questions raised by the accuracy of the NIE, the one thing everyone agrees on is this: Iran continues to enrich uranium, and that gives Iran the capability to make weapons should they so choose. What we can't do today any better than we could two years ago -- or ever -- is read into their minds to discern intent. And yet, this is precisely where the NIE falls down. It attempts to ascribe peaceful intentions to Iran's leaders -- intentions that fly in the face of their words, their actions, and their proven capabilities. Kenneth R. Timmerman was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with John Bolton for his work on Iran. He is Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, and author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum: 2005). To Go To Top

WHO NEEDS ISRAEL? -- WISHING FOR A CHANGE OF COURSE IN 2008 Posted by UCI, December 31, 2007.

This was written by Pat Boone. Pat Boone, descendant of the legendary pioneer Daniel Boone, has been a top-selling recording artist, the star of his own hit TV series, a movie star, a Broadway headliner, and a best-selling author in a career that has spanned half a century. During the classic rock & roll era of the 1950s, he sold more records than any artist except Elvis Presley.

A Wish for 2008 Many Western and European political leaders having heard the deprecations and the determination to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, from the likes of Palestinian Yasser Arafat, Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and so many other power brokers in the region have come dangerously close to deciding that little Israel is the "thorn in the side" of world order. The next logical thought is: "Who needs Israel? Let her be erased, her people dispersed (or whatever), and the Middle East can settle comfortably into a harmonious Islamic community of states. Problem solved!" What folly. What suicidal blindness... [We hope and pray that during 2008 President Bush and Condoleezza Rice will experience a change of heart. That their drive down the treacherous Roadmap will come to a screeching halt and that they will change course from this path toward disaster. That they will consider Israel's many accomplishments:] Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can make claim to an astounding number of society's advances in almost every direction! Intel's new multi-core processor was completely developed at facilities in Israel . And our ubiquitous cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its largest development center in the little land. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology was pioneered in Israel . AirTrain JFK, the 8.1-mile light rail labyrinth that connects JFK Airport to NYC's mass transit is protected by the Israeli-developed Nextiva surveillance system. Bill Gates calls Israel "a major player in the high-tech world"; most of Windows NT operating system was developed by Microsoft-Israel; the Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel; both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the U.S. in Israel; and, with more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of high-tech companies in the world apart from the Silicon Valley. Get this: Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S. , over 70 in Japan , and less than 60 in Germany . With over 25 percent of its workforce employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well! It goes on and on. The Weizmann Institute of Science has been voted "the best university in the world for life scientists to conduct research." Israeli researchers have: Discovered the molecular trigger that causes psoriasis. Developed the Ex-Press shunt to provide relief for glaucoma sufferers. Unveiled a blood test that diagnoses heart attacks ... by telephone! Found a combination of electrical stimulation and chemotherapy that makes cancerous metastases disappear and developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer! Designed the first flight system to protect passenger and freighter aircraft against missile attack. Developed the first ingestible video camera so small it fits inside a pill used to view the small intestine from the inside, enabling doctors to diagnose cancer and digestive disorders! Perfected a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with congestive heart failure, synchronizing the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors. These are only a few of Israel 's recent contributions to the welfare of the world. There are just too many to list here. Water shortage, global warming, space travel, anti-virus, anti-smallpox, blood pressure, solar power, paralysis, diabetes, data storage these and hundreds more are being addressed by Israel's scientists. They're pioneering in DNA research, using tiny strands to create human transistors that can literally build themselves and playing an important role in identifying a defective gene that causes a rare and usually fatal disease in Arab infants! Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin; It has the largest number of startup companies globally, second only to the U.S.; it is No. 2 in the world for venture capital funds, financing all these advances; its $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined; and Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. And while it maintains, by far, the highest average living standards and per-capita income, exceeding even those of the UK , Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth, relative to its population. It is truly an unparalleled marvel of our time. ...the very idea of eradicating or even displacing Israel from its historic home is suicidal to the rest of the world, not just her Arabic neighbors. ... imagine what our world would be like if Israel 's enemies held sway. Would you rather live in Iran , Iraq , Syria or Afghanistan? [under Sharia law] Or in Israel? [Wishing everyone a Happy, Healthy and Joyful 2008, during which time the world may hopefully grow to appreciate the extraordinary contributions of a country that most nations would like to see destroyed in the name of Islamofascism. Where will we be if the culture of death prevails and Israel and Western Civilization are annihilated? We hope that in 2008 the goals and aspirations of the radical Islamists will be defeated and a new age of democracy and enlightenment will reign on our imperiled planet.] UCI -- The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) -- is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" To Go To Top

TURKS & KURDS; OLMERT OPENING YESHA TO ATTACK!; "RIFTS" WITH THE U.S. Posted by Richard H. Shulman, December 31, 2007.

WHAT ABOUT ILLEGAL P.A. WEAPONS? The P.A. and Israel signed agreements on which weapons are permitted to the P.A. forces and how many troops, and that beyond that, terrorists must be disarmed and illegal weapons destroyed or shipped out. The P.A. has violated those terms. IMRA asked the government of Israel what is its policy on that. After all, the P.A. maintains that by registering terrorist militiamen within P.A. forces, it has disbanded terrorist militias. The government replied that its policy on recruitment is that the P.A. see to it that its recruits favor peace. (We know the P.A. propagandizes in favor of war.) It did not address the size of P.A. forces. The government said its policy is that the P.A. destroy or ship out illegal heavy weapons (12/18). The P.A. has been known to confiscate heavy illegal weapons held by others, but that only adds to its own armory for war on Israel. Accordingly, I asked Dr. Lerner of IMRA that beyond proposing that the P.A. destroy or ship out illegal heavy weapons, what does Israel do to make sure that the P.A. does. He said, "Zip." In other words, the government of Israel utters empty policy pieties. It does not enforce the policy. It does not admit that it does not enforce the policy and that the P.A. violates the policy. As a result, more Israelis will get killed. People don't know the half of how bad jihad is and how anti-Israel the government of Israel is, because the government is in a sort of clandestine collusion with is Arab enemies and its State Dept. adversaries. TURKS & KURDS The Kurdish rebels are not fighting out of Islamist motives (for Turkey is Islamist), but for nationalist motives tinged with Maoism. They are like the Pol Pot terrorists, having murdered tens of thousands of fellow Kurds who might oppose them. They are not entitled to anything. The Kurdish sector of Iraq harbors the terrorists. Judging by the terrorists' methods, the Kurdish regime trains them against Turkey. Turkey has every right to pursue them across the border of Iraq that the Kurdish sector lets the terrorists pass through. Pres. Bush finally has cooperated with Turkey in its military action against the terrorists. Unfortunately, the State Dept. is interfering and is reducing the credibility of his war on terrorism. It is urging compromise by Turkey, with concessions to the Kurds in Turkey, in return for Iraqi Kurds denying the terrorists sanctuary. The Iraqi Kurds, however, repeatedly promise to cooperate, but renege. The State Dept. is pursuing the same policy of accepting false promises from terrorists and their facilitators in return for good faith concessions from the victims, as it did with Arafat and Israel (Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum, 12/18). P.A. FAILS LATEST TEST Abbas has deployed his forces in several P.A. cities. As in all the years since 1994, when the P.A. was set up, P.A. police have not moved against terrorist organizations and sometimes moved with them against Israelis (IMRA, 12/17 from Caroline Glick). The US had asked Israel to withdraw from some P.A. cities so Abbas could show that he is a partner for peace by cracking down on terrorism. This is another of the many tests, all of which the P.A. has failed. OLMERT OPENING YESHA UP TO ATTACK! "Over the past two months, while arming the PA security forces, the government has been instructing the IDF to place new draconian limitations on the ability of the Israeli communities to protect themselves from attack. In two weeks, the Defense Ministry will disband the civilian units comprised of residents of the most threatened Israeli communities. Since they were established two years ago, these units have borne the brunt of responsibility for defending their communities. Next month too, new regulations will make it more difficult for Israelis to receive weapons permits to participate in guard duty in their communities." The Olmert regime is following the same anti-Zionist course that Sharon did in Gaza. First, "the Sharon government scaled back IDF counter-terror operations. They also curtailed the ability of the Israeli residents of Gaza to defend themselves. In so doing, the Sharon government both enabled an increase in terror and successfully portrayed the Israeli residents -- shorn of their defensive capabilities -- as a security burden. These twin policies secured the support of Israel's governing leftist elites in the media...In repeating the Sharon government's policies towards the Palestinians (s.b. Palestinian Arabs, as contrasted with Palestinian Jews) and the Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria, the Olmert government is similarly receiving the backing of the media." Olmert is endangering national security (Op. Cit.). Olmert doesn't seem to care, so long as he destroys the settlements. WHO ARE THE MUSLIM TERRORISTS? A study found a much higher percent of educated, non-poor, employed, young, and single men among terrorists than in the population at large (IMRA, 12/18). WHAT MAKES FOR VICTORY & DEFEAT? Israelis knew that their government would not abandon them on the battlefield. This boosted their morale. They attributed many victories against great odds to that solidarity. Unfortunately, the government has ended that solidarity. Instead, it abandons soldiers and sells the enemy arms that experience finds get turned on Israelis, in the name of friendship with the implacable P.A.. In the same manner, it abandoned Jonathan Pollard for a false friendship with the US. (Friendship that is one way is not friendship for Israel.) By abandoning its honor, Israel incurs contempt (IMRA, 12/18). ISRAEL'S REPUTATION PERSISTS People still think of the old Israel, which was resolute about defending itself from the Arabs, and the old sabras, who were tough. An aunt of Daniel Pipes, a fine lady, told me that we don't have to worry about Israel, it takes care of itself. I replied that Israel has become cowardly, the government, that is. It is appeasement-minded. It asks US permission when to attack, where to put roadblocks, whether it may keep certain towns it built in the Jewish homeland, which weapons it may sell where, and to certify that the enemy is adhering to armistices. That is not sovereignty. The secular sabras have gone soft; religious youth now form the backbone of the Army. How long will Israel's reputation for courageous and independent defense persist, now that it increasingly makes its defense dependent upon Egypt, the P.A., the UNO, and the US, none of which is pro-Israel? How long will it be respected? When will Americans decide it isn't worth supporting? 'RIFTS" WITH THE U.S. The government of Israel said it would allow building in Judea-Samaria on areas within built-up areas but not past the built-up areas even within municipal boundaries. Critics say this would cause a rift with the US. They don't understand. Everything in Israel's interest causes a rift with the State Dept.. The State Dept. is anti-Zionist and represents the Arabs, who put many retired US diplomats on its payroll or pay a ex-President lavishly for pro forma speeches. The notion of causing a rift is as specious as worrying about settlements endangering the peace process -- as much a fraud as is the notion of the US being a "friend" of Israel. (By US, here, I mean the Executive branch. Congress and the American people do favor Israel, but are ineffective.) Yes, the State Dept. doesn't want Israel to build any housing in the Territories. That is because it wants Israel to give up all of the Territories and more. The rift exists, but by not recognizing it, the appeasement-minded government of Israel lets the US blackmail it into continuous concessions to its other enemies. I fear that the US will demand, and the Olmert regime would be happy oblige, or at least the leftist Attorney-General holding open the possibility of indicting Olmert would see to it that he obliges, in ceding the vacant land beyond the built-up areas. That would leave no buffer zone for detecting terrorists and allow terrorists easy access for attacking people in the built-up areas. Judging by the way the fence lets Muslims close to Jewish communities, making opportunity for terrorists to murder Jews is Israeli policy. MIGRATION & TERRORIST MATH I once pointed out that the successful daily slaying of a few terrorists is less than the natural increase in the jihadist population, and therefore is inadequate. One answer is not only a major offensive but also policies to keep Muslims from immigrating and to get encourage them to emigrate. Hence the world favors building a P.A. economy. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: SETTING PRIORITIES Posted by Arlene Kushner, December 31, 2007.

That is what I've had to do in recent days, my friends. I have refrained from taking the time to post because I have beeen at work on a major report on Fatah, and determined that this had to come first. Documenting the fact that Fatah is neither moderate nor a viable partner for peace, it has been timed for the arrival here of President Bush. Once it is up on a website (it also is being printed hard-copy), I will share a link so all may see it. For now, I would like to include at the bottom of this posting one particular piece of information included in the report that is very pertinent to Fatah's true intentions. You will not see this in any media -- it was acquired via someone doing private translating from PA radio. Even without the body of my report, it tells the story that must be told. ~~~~~~~~~~ And so I return to the on-going news, at least beginning to deal with the morass of information that flows to us. I do this mindful of the fact that tonight New Year's Eve is celebrated in the N. America and elsewhere (while in the main ignored here), and that many of you may be away from your computers. And I do it with wishes to all for a good 2008. Wishes? My most fervent prayers, actually. ~~~~~~~~~~ Two beautiful young men -- David Rubin and Achikam Amichai -- from Kiryat Arba (a Jewish community adjacent to Hevron) were killed by terrorists on Friday, as they hiked in a secluded area west of Hevron. The two, who were friends, were both on leave from an elite IDF unit; Achikam was the son and grandson of rabbis. The incredible, sinful human waste of this! They were buried Saturday night on Har Hertzel (the military cemetery) in Jerusalem. ~~~~~~~~~~ According to Khaled Abu Toameh of the Post, some of those responsible for these terrorist murders are connected to Fatah. On Saturday, the IDF arrested terrorists suspected of being involved; they are associated with a militia called the Yasser Arafat Groups -- including the leader of the group in Hevron, Ahmed Abu Sittah. Please note this from Abu Toameh, as well: "Fatah activists said the attack may be linked to the faction's preparations to celebrate its 43rd anniversary this week. The attackers, they explained, were apparently hoping to send a message to the Palestinian public that, contrary to claims by Hamas, Fatah has not abandoned the path of armed struggle." Our peace partners. ~~~~~~~~~~ All of this mightily embarrassed PA officials, and PA prime minister Salaam Fayyad went out of his way to express condolences, and to assure everyone that PA security is doing everything possible to investigate and apprehend those involved. There was some announcement about the PA returning to Israel the guns of the young victims, which had been taken from them. That smacked to me of the sort of typically empty gestures that the PA advances, in lieu of genuine efforts, to show they're "doing something." My report is full of documentation of such gestures, so I'm particularly cynical. I even have a quote from Barry Rubin that "The PA has never really punished anyone for murdering or trying to kill an Israeli..." ~~~~~~~~~~ And sure enough, by Sunday, the PA was saying that the Hevron murders were "criminally motivated." It was suggested that the attack was the result of a "dispute" between arms dealers, the implication being that the two young Israeli soldiers had gone hiking to sell arms. The PA security forces in Hevron -- ignoring the fact that Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had all claimed credit for the attack -- said there was no evidence of any reason for the attack other than that arms dispute. Could make one gag. ~~~~~~~~~~ And there's more: On Saturday PA Interior Minister Abdel Razzak al-Yahya announced that Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades had ceased to exist. Another effort to show that the PA security was handling matters and had eliminated a Fatah branch that was terrorist. Well, this didn't sit too well with Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. First they distributed thousands of leaflets saying they were continuing the armed struggle. And then, yesterday, they called for the elimination of Fayyad, a "collaborator" with the US and Israel. ~~~~~~~~~~ This dovetails so neatly with what I wrote in my report that I must refer to it here: The prevailing thesis among those who adhere to wishful thinking (and they are legion!) is that Fatah is a moderate foil to Hamas and thus must be strengthened. What I am arguing is that the presence of Hamas as both a political and military strength has shifted the entire Palestinian dialogue to the right -- forced it to be even more radical and even less conciliatory. Even if -- and I'm not saying it is so, because I don't believe it -- Abbas and Fayyad were sincere moderates, they are beholden to the street and to the other members of their party. And Hamas thinking -- which calls moderation weakness -- has affected all of this. Hamas implies that anyone who doesn't continue the "armed resistance" is a traitor. Who wants to be labeled a traitor? I suggest that in this climate, true negotiations, which require compromise and conciliation, are not remotely possible. ~~~~~~~~~~ The PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki has announced that PA security forces have arrested a Hamas cell that was planning a suicide attack; he said they had a videotape of one of the members of the cell detailing their plans. "We confiscated huge amounts of mercury (used in detonators) in Nablus," he elaborated. However, the videotape wasn't shown, Malki wouldn't answer reporters' questions, and no names of those arrested were provided. These guys have no shame. Of course the fact that Bush is coming next week and the PA has to show it is doing its part for security has nothing to do with this. The IDF -- which has excellent intelligence in the area -- says it has no knowledge of this incident. ~~~~~~~~~~ This past week, the IDF picked up 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate, a banned explosive material, as it was being smuggled through a checkpoint in sacks that identified it as sugar from the EU. Note: this was stopped at a checkpoint. Six tons would have made a lot of Kassams and bombs. ~~~~~~~~~~ Abbas spoke in Ramallah today during celebrations marking Fatah's 43rd anniversary. He said the PA would never cede a single inch in negotiations with regard to Jerusalem. And he made conciliatory gestures to Hamas: he called for "dialogue, dialogue, dialogue," and held out the hope of reconciliation (based still on Hamas relinquishing its control over Gaza). ~~~~~~~~~~ "Friday sermons delivered at the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount are broadcast on PA radio. On Friday, December 28, 2007 (just one month after Annapolis), Sheikh Mohammed Hussein delivered the sermon. It included the following fabrications and incitement to violence: "Al Aksa Mosque has become the target of Israeli settlers. They have become accustomed to entering Al Aksa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli security forces. This refutes Israeli claims to protecting our holy places. "The Israeli authorities are not satisfied with the excavations already performed... [In addition] they have been digging tunnels under Al Aksa Mosque's foundations and walls, allowing the herds of settlers to enter its squares and gates in their plan to turn the holy city of Jerusalem into a Jewish one. "I'd like to warn against the criminal Israeli plans for the holy city. We have confirmed that there is a real danger to Jerusalem. The Arab nation should not stand [with] hands folded when it comes to Jerusalem. "Jerusalem stands for the Islamic history and doctrine that establishes an inseparable relationship between Muslims and Jerusalem. Allah chose us, a nation religiously and historically connected with this land, to be faithful guards to the holy places in Palestine. This obligation drove Prophet Mohammed's followers to arrive here, in Palestine, and spread the Islamic religion. This is the holy land of Allah, and Muslims are only the guardians of these holy places. "The Israelis aren't interested only in Al Aksa Mosque but want the whole city of Jerusalem to become Jewish. They have confiscated the Jerusalemite's lands, built new settlements in and around the city to isolate it from its Arab surroundings, and have expanded settlements." "The Palestinians are the defenders of this land. We should face up to our responsibilities and fulfill our duty. Our sacrifices are many; the number of martyrs and wounded is growing. [We see] the destruction of the Palestinian life and infrastructure, the arrests of Palestinians by the Israeli forces. All this will not deter us from fulfilling our duties. On the contrary, they serve as evidence to our willingness to sacrifice for our goals." Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

AN ISRAELI REACTION TO STUDY ON MILITARY RAPE Posted by Naomi Ragen, December 31, 2007.

I thought I'd share this letter that I received from Yael Pedhatzur, an Israeli who lived in the States for a number of years and has now returned. She wrote this following my last message concerning the Hebrew University study that showed one of the reasons for the lack of IDF rapes was racism. It is harsh, but I wonder what your reactions will be. By the way, I have zero political ambitions. [Editor's Note: See also Plaut's article below.]

Dear Naomi, Since returning to Israel after 6 years abroad I find myself wondering about the country I call home. I am hard wired to be an Israeli & consider this the only country I could ever really live in. I have lived in the US for 14 years of my life, have citizenship, speak the language, still came back to live here and raise my children here. All served in the IDF all doing well. Then I left again to live in China, an experience put of a fairy tale. AMAZING!!!! But home is only here -- right? So we came back to give our youngest child the chance to finish High School in Israel. The kid is very happy, I would be too. School is like a summer camp and social life for kids here is fantastic. An anomaly I must say given the news, the daily disgust with what we hear & see and are helpless to change. I, Yael, brought up in the Conservative movement and imbued with the Zionist ideals in-utero, have begun to believe that Neturei Karta were right. The Jews are simply not ready to govern themselves and have their own country. Otherwise how do you explain the self destructive, self hating behavior that takes place here on an hourly basis? The dishonesty, the corruption, the discrimination, the rudeness and stupidity? The greatest miracle of the 20th century is the creation of the state of Israel & the redemption of the Jewish people, the second one will be if we survive another decade in this country as an independent entity. There is no leadership no leader. The "great white hope" of Israeli society, the first generation born into an independent state (my generation) is less competent and far more lacking in skills that the founding fathers/mothers of this country. They are self serving and ignorant. I am worried, unhappy and so disappointed. I am not surprised by the latest travesty you have just sent us, it is just another nail driven through my heart. I tell you frankly that only Hashgacha Eliona [G-d's intervention] will save us from this insanity. Have you ever thought of entering politics here? You have my family's vote. With sincere appreciation, Yael Yael Pedhatzur P.O.Box 4024 Omer, Israel Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. To Go To Top

KNESSET VOTES TO INVESTIGATE HANDLING POLLARD CASE BY STATE COMPTROLLER Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, December 31, 2007.

Responding to the news that the Knesset State Control Committee voted unanimously today to empower State Comptroller Judge Micha Lindenstrauss to investigate the Government's 23 year failure to secure Jonathan Pollard's release, Esther Pollard gave the following statement to Galei Tzahal (IDF) Radio : There is a time to investigate and there is a time to act expeditously to save a life. After 23 years in prison in harsh conditions Jonathan's life is literally hanging in the balance. Every day he struggles to survive in spite of his failing health; in spite of the harsh conditions he is held in; and in spite of the violent, anti-Semitic environment . In a very few days from now, President George Bush will arrive in Israel. Now is the time for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to ask President Bush to make a gesture to Israel. One gesture, one prisoner, Jonathan Pollard, home, now. Jonathan has served more than 5 times the ususal sentence for the offense he committed, including 7 years in solitary confinement. Israel has already paid the full price for Jonathan at Wye (the release of 750 terrorist with blood on their hands). With the visit of President George Bush to Israel next week, now is the right moment to collect his release. The time to save Jonathan's life is now. To bring him home safe and sound. When Jonathan is home and out of harm's way, there will be ample time to investigate. See Also: The Wye Double-Cross Page www.jonathanpollard.org/wye.htm Audio: Esther Pollard's Interview Re: Knesset Vote to Empower Investigation -- Galei Tzhal (To be posted to the web as soon as the sound file is available.) Reach Justice for Jonathan Pollard by sending an email to justice4jp@gmail.com To Go To Top

HOBSON'S CHOICES DEFINE OUR PERILOUSLY EMERGING NEW MILLENNIUM Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, December 30, 2007.

How can the seeds of peace flourish in the world, especially in the unstable Middle East, when secular moderate leaders continue to be assassinated, the latest former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, along with at least twenty others in range of an exploding twisted human, aided and abetted by an astonishing lack of security in the radical Islamic fundamentalist breeding ground of Pakistan, a powder keg with many fuses? Its sheriff Pervez Musharraf, in the mold of Casablanca's Inspector Louis Renault, will no doubt round up the usual suspects with no intention of solving the crime, knowing any true investigation indeed could lead to a few murky motives, some of which could even reside on his own less than savory doorstep. Furthermore, could the twisted human homicide/suicide bomber that whacked Ms. Bhutto and proximate victims be a cum laude graduate of one of the fine Saudi financed Wahhabi universities strewn about the landscape of sheriff Musharraf's wild west of the East, where no non-jihad junkie might travel safely unless he or she astutely be donned in say de rigueur U.S. manufactured Dragon Skin body armor, the kind our fair intrepid upper class fatalistic lady Bhutto should have been wearing, if indeed that badland's sheriff deigned to provide her with the necessary permit to do so? Surely, in them there hills or pot holed bustling urban streets of rag tag Pakistan, teeming with 160 million Muslims of all sorts, one does not poke one's head and torso outside of a stage coach, limo, or Bradley nee Sherman tank without the necessary protection buffering all vital parts, unless of course one is possessed by a death wish dwarfing that of the late daredevil Evel Knievel. Then again, at least Ms. Bhuttos' twisted assassin was not attired in a Dr. Strangelove nuclear vest, cut from cloth woven by Pakistan's yet idolized 'father of nukes' primo physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan, instiller of pride within a humiliated underdeveloped nation of too many losers, abutting an also nuclear in-your-face much larger mostly Hindu on and off adversary India currently kicking economic butt unlike Musharraf's scruffy multitudes. As an aside of worldly importance, just because the 'hero of the critical masses' Khan presumably (ha! ha!) conned the 'always vigilant' Musharraf into believing he would not disseminate his nuclear knowledge to the world, and he did, does not mean the regime's 'rock star' equivalent should be tossed in the slammer. Right!?! The badland's sheriff with an uncanny survival instinct as well as friends in high as well as low places knows just how and how not to handle such matters. Speaking of friends in high places, how come a presumably 'war on terror' obsessed Bush Administration still powwows with such an obvious rogue like Pervez, the cagey Muslim cat with at least nine lives? Perhaps for the same reason the U.S. Prez and his crew still remain bosom buddies with the terrible turbaned Wahhabi financing Saudis; sometimes you've gotta lie down with dogs and hope you don't get up with fleas! Speaking of dogs and fleas, how come America's elected high muckamucks still slobber over that Hamas alternative and unrepentant Holocaust revisionist Fatah Big Kahuna Mahmoud Abbas; early 1980's author of an abomination comparing Jews to Nazis, suggesting the swastika set might not have used gas chambers, minimizing the number of Jews tortured and incinerated during century twenty's most calculating mechanized horrific genocide; yet rightly condemn all other Holocaust revisionists? Oh yeah, sometimes even a superpower has gotta do what a superpower has gotta do, and hope there's plenty of Raid in the house just in case you know what starts itching on a presumed thick skin. And why not be one of almost ninety donor nations pledging 7.4 billion to the Holocaust revisionist smoothie, dressed to the nines unlike his late four decade mentor Yassar 'Allah forbid peace with Israel or I might lose my power and wealth' Arafat, that ever popular, especially to his U.N. groupies, Arab intifada indulger always bedecked in anti-Armani terrorist attire with a dirty shmata festooning his forehead? Could ninety in fact mostly non-Muslim nations be wrong, noting that 80% of the pledge money is promised by that majority of 'infidel' entities, using the vernacular of many Palestinian recipients? Furthermore, would it be presumptuous to ask if those ninety mostly non-Muslim nations intend to merely sweep Abbas' Holocaust revisionist philosophy, attesting to his current biased agenda, under the rugs of any future Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiating tables, thus allowing his unfettered anti-Semitic mindset to postulate the terms of all peace proposals to be foisted at Israel, without themselves being well stocked with Raid or some other flea repellent (my apologies to such blood sucking insects for comparing them to a lowlife thinking creature whose potential for harm is so much greater than theirs)? Yet, that is the way of today's world, full of perceived Hobson's choices, yet choices that would more than likely contribute substantially to the dysfunction of a perilously emerging new Millennium. There has got to be a better way! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at larose@snip.net To Go To Top

A WASTE OF MONEY: ARAFAT'S RAT-HOLE IS ALIVE & OPERATING Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, December 30, 2007.

It has been reported by DEBKAfile that Fatah leaders are conspiring to unseat Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and to pre-empt his control of the donated (pledged) $7.5 Billion from the donor nations. Why would anyone be surprised as the rats originally assembled by Arafat scrap over who is going to get their share of the Billions? Recall the prior Billions donated by the Europeans and Uncle Sucker Sam to the Palestinian enterprise. Every nation knew that the money was plunging down that Palestinian rat-hole and coming out in Swiss bank accounts. I suppose Salam Fayyad accounting and pay out wasn't sufficiently generous in his last payout. In fact, he used $58 Million in U.S. cash to pay the salaries of Abbas' Force 17 and, somehow, checks also wound up going to Hamas. (Shucks...Just another one of those unavoidable mistakes.) He said it was merely "an accounting mistake". Now there is some big cash to plunder and the rats are gathering for their share as happened when Yassir Arafat was King Rat. So now Bush and the Europeans stand and gawk with a stupid look on their faces as they throw away their tax-payers' money on the insatiable Terrorists' appetites for paychecks and arms. Could we all possibly be that stupid or is it just a scheme of Bush, Rice and Baker to please the Saudis? But, not to worry. Abbas' lieutenants in Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades or Force 17 will, at the very least, end up with elegant apartments and cash reserves in Switzerland. The West has been bribing the Palestinian Muslim Arabs as a permanent charity obligation so all they have to do is to conduct Terror and collect charity checks. Billions and billions of dollars that could have gone to real charity around the world only goes to a people whose work ethic is teaching their children to become Shahids or Shahadas (boy and girl suicide martyrs). I wonder how much of the $7.4 Billion will be used to train and obtain weapons of Mass Destruction to be set off in America, England, France or wherever Islamists need to show their strength. I wonder if, after training by the American CIA and after the Palestinians achieve the skill level of Al Qaeda and blow up our cities will we convene a Nuremberg Tribunal and sentence those who gave them money to kill us? Did you ever think that America and the European Union would invest their tax-payers' dollars and euros in a global enterprise of developing Terror so Muslims could create an Islamic Caliphate to rule the world. It's understandable that Arab pagans believe in suicide to launch them to Islamic Paradise but, why would Americans and Europeans volunteer to be sacrificial victims in order to fulfill the beliefs of the Mullahs and Ayatollahs? Is the untimely death of Benazir Bhutto at the hands of Islamists sufficient lesson? I doubt it. Will the increased firing of missiles and rockets into Israel teach a lesson that Islamo-fascism cannot be appeased? Will sucking up to the Saudis' temper their hatred of the West, of all infidels, of all non-Muslims? I doubt it Will the Saudi plan for the U.S. to open diplomatic relations with Iran stop their determined Nuclear Development? I doubt it. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@gwinston.interaccess.com To Go To Top

DEFEATING TERROR....SUPPORTING TERROR Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, December 30, 2007.

President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have encouraged most (not all) governments to "fight Terrorists". The U.S. Government, under Bush, was to lead the way for fighting Global Terror wherever it occurred. Bush poured Billions into Iraq to encourage the Iraqi government to fight both the Shiite and Sunni Terrorists. And more Billions into Afghanistan. Regrettably, Iraq's leaders failed to do so and the war rages on. Bush spent more Billions encouraging Pervez Musharraf, the leader of Pakistan to fight the Terrorists there and, he too, achieved only modest success. He refused to allow U.S. strikes on the Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda who find refuge on the Pakistani-Afghani border. As in Iraq and Pakistan, it is believed the leaders have close ties to the Terrorists and refuse an all-out fight. In Afghanistan, here too Bush and NATO are fighting the Taliban -- funded primarily by the Bush Administration. The Taliban are now re-grouping and Afghanistan's government under President Hamid Karzi seems to have divided loyalties when it comes to fighting Terror. Bush, Rice and Baker do everything they can to keep the Saudi royal family in power despite the fact that the Saudis fund many Terrorist movements and teach their children the Wahhabi way of hating non-Muslims. The Bush regime has demonstrated their willingness to fund the fight against Global Terror in Africa, South America -- with one exception -- Israel. Here the Bush Administration and the European Union fund Terror against Israel. The Jewish State of Israel, at one time, was self-sufficient in fighting Palestinian Terrorists and winning wars initiated by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Losing wars against a tiny nation of Jews wounded their vaunted Muslim pride as "great Muslim warriors". Therefore, we saw a flip-flop by several U.S. Presidents and the Arabist U.S. State Department to rescue that vaunted pride so it could continue their religious uprising in the name of Islam. Instead of fighting and funding the fight against Terror launched on Israel, America began to fund the Terrorist nations and the Terrorists themselves. America paid Billions of American tax-payers' dollars into Arafat's PLO and the pockets of his high command -- and continues to do so. At the same time, American Presidents like George Herbert Walker Bush and his ever hostile to Israel companion, James Baker III began the process of subverting and restraining Israel's fight against Arab Terror. Rabin, Peres, Barak and then entrapping Ariel Sharon and easily recruiting Ehud Olmert. They were assigned the distasteful role of "Quislings". All over the world President Bush was encouraging other nations to fight Terror but, around Israel, he was encouraging and paying the Terrorists to expand their attacks. Now American forces arm and train Palestinian Terrorists to shoot, set explosives, fire missiles and teach all the skills necessary to overthrow the Government of Israel. We all know that oil and cash flow is the great motivator. Thus we see the Bush Administration and the Europeans pledge $7.5 Billion to pay the Palestinian army of Terrorists who will and have turned on their benefactors. It would take a crowbar to disengage their lips from the oil spigot of the Royal Saudi family and the feeding trough of the Palestinian Fatah. Imagine, the only country holding its own against expanding Islamic Jihad is to be subverted by the Bush Administration. Is this the legacy of the Bush family and their cohorts "I defeated Israel" carved on stone? Every country that you have attempted to encourage and fund to defeat Muslim Terror has failed. The only country and ally who has been effective in countering Islam's march to a Global Islamic Caliphate you treat as an enemy. Condi Rice has been heard to scream at Israel's leaders in the King David Hotel if they did not bow to her demands for obedience. If Israel dares to move against Hamas in force, the threats for Israel to show "restraint" come pouring in. As the Palestinian Arab Muslims, both Fatah and Hamas, build their forces with U.S. assistance and that of Egypt, Syria, Iran, only Israeli forces are kept on a short leash held by Rice, Baker and Bush. Do you really think the Arabs, once so close to the German Nazis will stop their march to occupy the West, will cease their march because you threw Israel to them -- like a bone? Betraying an ally puts the mark of Cain on America's forehead, making all America an unwitting partner in the Administration's crime against the Jewish nation. You President Bush, along with your talking head, Condi Rice, will visit Israel around January 9th. You bring with you a veritable army to protect you -- not from the Jews but, from the Muslims whom you are funding. You know that the Muslim Palestinians of Fatah, Hamas, the proxies of Syria and Iran -- like Hezb'Allah -- would try anything to assassinate you as they just did with Benazir Bhutto. Why not appeal to their conscience and tell them how much you have done for them. No doubt, they will stand down any plans to assassinate you...don't you think? I guess you will have to rely upon the only security you can trust...Israeli Intelligence. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@gwinston.interaccess.com To Go To Top

LIBERATION, NOT OCCUPATION Posted by Fred Reifenberg, December 30, 2007.

What always amazes me is that writers like this were no where to be found, after the socalled peace process began. I've always said that the problems we now face could, and should, have been solved as early as 1994, by sending those cutthroat terrorists our left brought here, packing, when they made agreements, that were worthless, and made in 'BAD FAITH". This was written by Asher Zelig Fried and it appeared December 28, 2007 in Arutz-Sheva

Israel stands accused of conducting a brutal military occupation of Arab lands inhabited by an indigenous, peace-seeking Arab population. Repeatedly, in newscasts and the press, Israel is characterized as harshly subjugating another people. These accusations are dangerous, a pervasive lie, and an existential threat to Israel. They are a classic manifestation of a much utilized propaganda tactic known as "The Big Lie." Accusations resulting from this falsehood exceed all bounds of truth and continue relentlessly. Incredibly, many are now accepted as "articles of faith" by increasing numbers of those who heretofore viewed Israel favorably. These accusations have become the common ground that transforms casual supporters of Israel into vocal Israel-bashers, and the glue that today binds every manner of Israel's enemies. Israel's "occupation" of the disputed areas began subsequent to its 1967 victory in the Six Day War, when Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria began in earnest. Initial Arab reactions were positive, as working relationships were maintained between Jewish communities and their Arab neighbors. Jews would regularly visit Arab towns and employ local townspeople. The Arab standard of living improved significantly as its per capita income increased exponentially. Local roads were modernized, water supplies increased, electricity and telephone communications were developed, and a new tourism industry flourished. With rare exception, there were no road-blocks, lock-downs, or curfews, as Arabs worked and shopped in Haifa and Tel Aviv, and Jews shopped in Ramallah and in local Arab villages. With the benefits of Arab and Jew living side-by-side and in relative peace apparent through the 1970s and 1980s, there nevertheless were Arab rumblings about Jewish settlement in the land. It received, however, minimal attention; it was perceived to be the sentiment of relatively few Arab dissidents. The improving economic conditions of the local population and its benefits were deemed far more important than the negative potential of a renewal of friction. These relationships, built over a period of 25 years, were dramatically and irretrievably altered with the signing of the Oslo Accords of 1993. The Accords created an entirely new narrative. The status of Jewish residents changed abruptly from neighbor to occupier, even in their own homes and communities. Arab extremists, emboldened by Oslo's promise of an independent Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, demanded removal of all Jewish communities in areas they now claimed as exclusively their own. In 1994, Israel granted the Palestinian National Authority autonomous control of the major Arab cities in Judea and Samaria, and of the surrounding areas. The PNA's corrupt rule and suppression of all opposition resulted in a GDP in 2003 one-tenth of what it had been in 1992. The then-newly-returned Yasser Arafat and his murderous henchmen spread their reign of terror and hostility, while their propagandists introduced a new rallying call, "End the Occupation." Israel's political Left, in support of Oslo, immediately joined the fray. Incredibly, no one questioned the incongruity of Jews branded occupiers of Judea, the province named for its Jewish residents. No one thought it odd that Jews were now accused of occupying Jerusalem, known historically as "the city of the Jew." Far more vociferous then even the Arab propagandists, the Israeli Left immediately embraced the Arab narrative and intensified their onslaught. They too adopted "End the Occupation" as their rallying call, with which they then pervaded Israeli TV, radio, newspapers, film, literature and the universities. Today, the very words of seditious Israeli university professors, who denigrate Israel in the most perverse manner, are quoted by Israel's enemies across the globe. Perhaps the greatest irony is that The Big Lie as a tool of propaganda was first introduced by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf. He states that for the Big Lie to be effective, it "must be so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." He further posits that "in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily." This tactic was utilized by Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, who understood that for the lie to be effective, it must not only be colossal, but also must contain at least a kernel of truth, and be repeated with great frequency. The Arab propagandists, and now enemies of Israel worldwide, have learned well from their murderous Nazi predecessors. Accusations of occupation by Israel's leftist press, and by Israel's detractors following their lead, are repeated regularly and without respite. The necessary kernel of truth is evident: Israel does, in fact, occupy Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem; much the same way that it occupies Tel Aviv and Haifa, and in much the same the way the United States occupies Miami and Los Angeles with their minority Latino populations, and the same way Canada occupies Quebec, with its minority French population. Jews were sovereign in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and the lands west of the Jordan River for a thousand years, while Arabs were never sovereign in these lands. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th century that the overwhelming majority of Arabs living west of the Jordan River migrated to the area. The land then was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Subsequently, until the founding of the Jewish State, it was under British control. With Israel's victory in the Six Day War and subsequent control of these areas, Jordan disavowed any further claim to it. The merit of Israel's claim thus far exceeds any other. By what standard are Jews "occupiers" for striving to settle these areas? By what justification should this land, Israel's ancient heartland, be exclusively Arab and forbidden to Jews? Branding Israel an "occupier" is designed to engender overwhelming negative reaction to Israel and ultimately to delegitimize her. It places Israel, via comparison, alongside murderous military occupations. Israel's "occupation" is thus similar to Nazi Germany's occupation of eastern Europe, or Japan's occupation of China, or the Soviet Union's occupation of eastern Europe, all of which resulted in millions murdered and enslaved. Perpetrated by cruel and despotic dictators, these occupations were militarily invasions of sovereign countries for the purpose of murder, mayhem and subjugating the citizenry. Israel's "occupation," by contrast, is led by Jewish families building new communities, schools, and houses of worship. These families have built the area's infrastructure anew and desire only to live in peace with all residents of the area. Comparing such families settling their ancestral homeland to murderous Nazi, Japanese and Soviet armies is more than a lie; it's obscene. In the final analysis, the lie of Israel as Occupier was created by the Oslo Accords. The Accords transformed Jewish families settling Israel's heartland into pariahs in the eyes of much of the world, and confusion as to where in Israel Jews would be permitted to live. Israel's friends began to wonder why Israel would surrender its heritage to an enemy sworn to destroy it. Most horrifically, Oslo brought about a reign of terror resulting in death and disfigurement to thousands of innocent Jewish men, women and children. The most difficult issue facing Israel today is that of a hostile minority population, resentful of and refusing to live in peace with the ruling Jewish majority. Believing the surrender of Israel's heartland will bring peace is delusional. The issue will be resolved only when Israel's minority population recognizes the myriad advantages of living together peacefully with the Jewish majority. Israel needs new leadership with a new vision, one that is ready to proclaim Jewish sovereignty over all of Jerusalem and over Israel's historic heartland. Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

6.5 TONS OF POTASSIUM NITRATE DISCOVERED IN SUGAR BAGS MARKED: EU ASSISTANCE Posted by Bryna Berch, December 30, 2007.

A IDF spokesman announced they'd discovered 6.5 Tons of Potassium Nitrate in Sugar Bags Marked as EU Assistance. They discovered them at a checkpoint. This comes by way of IMRA -- Independent Media Review and Analysis Website: www.imra.org.il The pix come from the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Group (http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/eng/eng_n/ct_301207e.htm) Potassium nitrate camouflaged as sugar sent as European Union aid to the Palestinian Authority (IDF spokesman, December 29, 2007). Sacks of potassium nitrate (IDF spokesman, December 29, 2007). Some points of interest: First: the discovery was made "a few weeks ago". Maybe around the time of the Annapolis festivities and nobody wanted to dissipate the pretense that the meeting was going to make the Arabs peace-loving. Even now, the idiot Israelis aren't acting outraged at this threat to their citizen's safety -- wouldn't want to hurt EU's feelings. Second: look at how many sacks there were and they look pretty big. This wasn't a 2-bit 5-minute operation. So how did so much nitrate get into so many bags without knowledge of the "humitarians" shipping the sugar to Hamas-controlled Gaza? Answer. It didn't. Some EU employees are actively helping the Arab terrorists and, of course, EU is funding these terrorists. The IDF is polite and says the terror org "exploited" the humanitarians. Maybe. Or maybe the EU was a consenting delinquent. It's pretty clever putting the potassium nitrate in the sugar, ahead of time. It and sugar are basic ingredients for making explosives. They'd be nicely mixed by the time they reached the bomb makers. Who knew the scatty labile "Palestinians" were so efficient.

Now released for publication: In a joint IDF and ISA operation several weeks ago, a truck was caught at one of the crossing points in Judea and Samaria carrying approximately 6.5 tons of Potassium Nitrate. The Potassium Nitrate was disguised in sugar bags, and was intended for use by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Qassam rockets. The terror organizations disguised the Potassium Nitrate in sugar bags that were marked as being part of the humanitarian aid provided by the European Union. This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval. Contact Avodah by email at avodah15@aol.com To Go To Top

WARRIORS OF OUR LAND Posted by David Wilder, December 29, 2007.

[BACKGROUND: see below.] This morning I was told an amazing story, which I'd never heard before. I was sitting with my good friend and teacher, Rabbi Yisrael Shlissel, the dean of the Ohr Shlomo Study Hall located in Tel Rumeida. I had just related to him one on a list of horror items concerning Friday's battle, when two young Kiryat Arba men were killed by Arab terrorists. On this morning's news the Arabs claimed that Achikam Amichai and David Rubin were not killed by terrorists. Rather the incident was criminally motivated. The terrorist spokesman said that it was a drug deal gone bad and they started shooting at each other. As a result of these charges, on Friday night, following the beginning of the Jewish Shabbat -- Sabbath, police invaded the morgue in Kiryat Arba, stripped the two dead men, photographed them and took their fingerprints, in order to check out any past 'criminal' or 'drug-related' past. It's enough to turn ones stomach. When I finished telling Rabbi Shlissel about this, he told me his story. The Rabbi is, by the way, the son-in-law of murdered Rabbi Shlomo Ra'anan, who was stabbed to death in his Tel Rumeida home by an Arab terrorist over nine years ago. Rabbi Shlissel told me that following the week of mourning for his father-in-law, the police requested that the murdered Rabbi's widow, Chaya Ra'anan, accompany them to the police station in order to answer a few questions. She had been present at the time of the murder and tried to save her husband, to no avail. She agreed and sat down with an investigator at the local police headquarters. When their line of questioning became clear, she abruptly got up and walked out. The police officer interrogating her suspected her of having murdered her husband and then setting up her home, (including igniting a firebomb in order to burn down their caravan home), to make it 'look like' a terror attack. So much for our wonderful Israeli police, who suspect terror-attack victims of murder, and strip and fingerprint murdered Israelis because of terrorist's charges. Difficult to believe. But the stories are true. This is the country we live in. This is very similar to charges made by IDF officers, who have said, between the lines, that the two men and young woman with them shouldn't have been where they were, or that they should have first received an OK from the army. Had they done so, they'd still be alive. May so, but who would have been killed in their place? And why should Jews living in Eretz Yisrael have to get permission to hike in our own land? The so-called leaders of our country are attempting to close us into a ghetto, or perhaps something smaller than a ghetto. They'd prefer to lock us in and throw away the key. This is 'living?' This is 'being a free people in our Land?' as we recite in the Israeli national anthem, HaTikvah. Clearly the Israeli government has drawn the borders for the yet-to-be-born 'palestinian state,' G-d forbid. Anyone driving into Judea, from Jerusalem in the north, or via the Transjudea highway from the west, has to pass though a 'border-checkpoint,' all ready to begin checking passports and stopping 'unwanteds' from entering 'palestine,' G-d help us. The new Fatah-terrorist prime minister was quoted as saying that the killings 'pain' the palestinians. Of course the killings 'pain' them. It 'pains' them that only two people were killed, and not more. After all, there were three Jews present at the site; why wasn't the third person done away with too?   NOT TOO LONG AGO I wrote that America is our enemy. This riled up and even offended a few people. Perhaps I should have been more specific. Not all the American people are our enemy. But this American administration? What can you do? I cannot retract the truth. There are three forces working against Israel today, two from the outside and one from the inside. From the outside there is Yishmael, today represented by the Arab world, represented by the Fuhrer of Iran, the demon of Al-Qaeda, and our peace partners across the road, which are the most sophisticated of the groups. The first two don't hide behind niceties. They say straight out: We are going to erase the Jews from the map. The third group prefers the Trojan horse method, as admitted by 'international statesman' Feisal el Husseini, just prior to this death, and backed up by one of his successors, Sari Nussebah, who recently declared that Jews have no place in Jerusalem, Hebron or even Jaffa. The second group, is Asav, (Esau), which is today represented by 'the Western World,' namely, Europe, the UN and on top of it all, the United States. When the Secretary of State of the greatest power in the world compares the 'plight' of the palestinians to the discrimination against blacks in the United States, when the American ambassador to Israel meets with the president of the Israeli supreme court to 'talk about the occupied territories,' when the President of the United States is adamant about creating a new terror state in the world prior to exiting the White House at whatever price, the agenda is clear. Bush isn't coming to Israel in a couple of weeks to vacation in the Eilat sun. He's coming over to exert as much pressure as he possibly can to receive more and more Israeli concessions, in an attempt to force the 'piece-process' down our collective throats. Israel will have a hard time saying no; Bush is putting too much prestige on the line for Israeli leaders to be able to ignore or refuse his demands. Bush is, today, leading the frontal attack against Israel, using not nuclear bombs, rather statesmanship as his primary weapon. This is, perhaps, even more dangerous than a nuclear bomb; with such a bomb you know what you're up against; with statesmanship you can only guess at the significance and implications of the intended results. If this isn't an enemy, I don't know what is. However, there is a third force pushing Israel into a corner. That force is, of course, ourselves. No, not all of us. But those people who are supposed to be 'leading' the people, are in fact leading, but in the wrong direction. Rather than portraying strength, courage and wisdom, they are rendering versions of the exact opposite. Israeli leadership has, for a number of years, been leading our people and our country down a dead end lane, a suicide path, which brought us to Oslo, Hebron, Wye and now Annapolis, the supreme betrayal of all that the authentic Israel stands for. Achikam Amichai and David Rubin were warriors. Both served in elite units, one naval and the other air force. They were trained to protect their country, to defend their people, to do whatever necessary to defeat the enemy. They faced a surprise attack, but did not despair. At least two of the terrorists attacking them were killed; perhaps also a third one also. During the battle they fell, but they saved the life of a young woman who was with them. Had they not fought back, had they died without a fight, she too, almost certainly, would have been killed. They knew the odds were against them, but you do not give up without a fight. Their love for their land, for their people, for their beliefs, their courage, their very lives, is the quintessential Jew in Israel: this is true leadership; this is the way a Jew should live today. We may have lost two of the best, but we have, staring us in the eyes, the Jewish Israeli of the future. Not Olmert, Peres, Livni, not Mazuz, Beinish, or Barak, rather people like Achikam and David, they are our future. Achikam means, my brother has risen; David, the eternal King of Israel. Achikam is a brother to all of us, he rose above the everyday drudgery of life, to give his life for his people, for his land, for his G-d. David exemplified the bravery of his namesake. May their lives and their memories be a blessing upon us all; may we learn from their lives and continue on the path that they laid out before us. With blessings from Hebron. David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com To Go To Top

SDEROT ABANDONED Posted by Koira, December 29, 2007.

This was written by Myles Kantor and it appeared 17 December 2007 in www.FrontPageMagazine.com (www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E76D9AB3-495E-4004-B8D1- 85E0473039CB)

Generations ago, Arabs used knives and bullets to murder Jews in Israel. Today they prefer bombs and rockets. While all of Israel faces menaces like Iranian nuclear aggression and Syrian gangsterism, many Israeli areas are relatively tranquil. As Charles Bukowski once wrote in a poem, it's not war all the time. Unless you live in Sderot. The words "Sderot" and "Qassams" go hand in hand, and with good reason. It is an atrocious reality that Sderot-an Israeli city no less than Tel Aviv or Tiberias-is a place where citizens of Israel have suffered thousands of rocket attacks from the nearby Gaza Strip. In November 2006, one of these Qassams murdered Yaakov Yaakobov, a husband and father of two sons. In a demonstration of Muslim solidarity, another Qassam murdered Muslim Fatima Slutsker as she crossed a street in November 2006. Israel under Ariel Sharon may have "disengaged" from Gaza, but Gaza has not disengaged from Israel. With death never far from their minds, residents of Sderot do not lead normal lives. Longtime Sderot resident Haim Kuznits has remarked, "When we take our son to school we are afraid of what might happen. We call it our Russian roulette." With comfortable detachment from life in Sderot, perpetual Israeli politician Shimon Peres trivialized the attacks last year as "Qassams shmassams." After yet another Qassam attack, Sderot's mayor resigned on December 12. Eli Moyal had been mayor since 1999. "Perhaps this will get the government to undertake action for the sake of the residents' lives," Moyal commented, disgusted with the Israeli state's failure to protect Israelis in Sderot. Municipal policy has also endangered Israeli lives in Sderot. Consider the case of Dr. Boris Singer, who suffered extensive shrapnel damage from a Qassam in 2006 and almost died. At the time of the attack, he was in a legal battle against a regulation that prohibited the construction of shelters in homes. When you have to break the law to protect your family, your society has some serious problems. Another distressing aspect of Sderot's bombardment is how it reenacts a form of aggression Israel endured after 1948. When Israel attained national liberation in 1948, the Arab world did not suddenly accept Jewish sovereignty and move on. Prior to Israel's 1956 war with Egypt, it faced a continuous, demoralizing, lethal threat in the form of Arab infiltration. From 1948 to 1956, infiltrators killed nearly 300 Israelis and wounded between 500 and 1000. (To put this in demographic context, Israel's population in 1956 was less than two million.) Infiltrators also inflicted massive economic damage through theft and sabotage. Prime Minister David Ben Gurion called this a "guerrilla war" against Israel supported by Arab states. Sderot was founded in 1951. In December of that year, a report about a community west of Jerusalem called Mishmar Ayalon noted, "In the evenings the women are afraid to remain in their homes, and they gather together with their children in a number of houses in the center of the settlement." In 1953, residents of Mishmar Ayalon continued "to join 4-5 families in one room [at night], so that there's a feeling of security." Constant aggression by infiltrators caused other communities to be abandoned. Historian Benny Morris notes in Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001: Some half dozen moshavim [cooperative agricultural communities composed of individual farms], populated by new immigrants mainly from Muslim countries, were completely deserted during this period [1950-1953], and more than a dozen others suffered major population depletion. In large measure this was due to depredations by infiltrators. The departure of some families inevitably increased the guard-duty burden of the males who remained, further undermining the settlers' staying power. In the early 1950s, Israel did not have the military sophistication and power it has today; but it still responded to the attacks. Writing about this period in The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force, military historian Martin van Creveld observes, "[N]o state can tolerate a situation whereby its borders are violated hundreds of times a year by thousands of people, particularly if some are armed and attack property and citizens." In 2007, Israel's borders have been violated thousands of times in Sderot; and Jews die or escape death with maimed bodies and traumatized souls. Why is this happening? Demography might provide a despicable explanation. Sderot's population largely consists of Moroccan and Russian Jews. It is not an affluent city. One wonders: If Hamas and Islamic Jihad were firing Qassams into wealthier cities like Rishon LeZion and Herzliya (named after the very European Zionist, Theodor Herzl), would the Israeli government be as derelict? Or would the government use its vast military resources to stop the aggression? Israel's Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty states, "All persons are entitled to protection of their life, body, and dignity." In Sderot, the Israeli government has abandoned its primary duty of protection. Every Qassam that hits Sderot is an indictment of that government. Contact Koira by email at koira@dbmail.com To Go To Top

JOHN BOLTON: STATE DEPARTMENT LEFTISTS HAVE DEFEATED BUSH Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, December 28, 2007.

Washington is always on the look out for moles who subvert Government policies. They say if you wish to hide, do it in plain sight. Perhaps the biggest of moles would be the gigantic U.S. State Department, representing themselves and using U.S. Intelligence as a cover. It is often seen where State Department diplomats stationed in Europe or the Muslim and Arab nations adopt the views of their hospitable host government. Often when they retire they even take employment as foreign agents for the foreign governments in which they previously served. The recent NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) Report by America's 16 separate Intelligence Agencies demonstrates the power of what can only be called a "Shadow Government" subverting America's elected government. We see the State Department acting the role of a giant mole, serving other vested interests. Clearly, Congress has abdicated its role of "oversight" rather than challenge the authority of a non-elected institution which is supposed to serve the Government's Executive Branch. As you read and digest the following essay by Kenneth Timmerman about John Bolton's opinion, you may, no doubt, conclude that Government Policy has been deliberately subverted. It appeared in Newsmax yesterday and it is entitled "John Bolton: State Department Leftists Have Defeated Bush."

"I think we are very close to a decision point," John Bolton says. "And if the choice is between nuclear Iran and use of force, I think we have to look at the use of force." Resistance by partisan "shadow warriors" at the Department of State has limited the president's options and is bringing us dangerously close to a military showdown with Iran, former Bush administration official John Bolton told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice initially had planned to provide significant aid to the pro-democracy movement in Iran, as a means of giving the president more policy options, Bolton said. But resistance by the State Department bureaucracy crippled the programs and rendered them ineffective. "[T]he outcome has been no overt program of support for democracy and no clandestine program to overthrow the regime," Bolton said. "This is a classic case study why diplomacy is not cost-free. If we had been working on regime change effectively over the last four or more years, we would be in a lot different position today," he added. The State Department emphasis on European-led negotiations has allowed Iran to buy time and to perfect the technology it needs to make nuclear weapons, Bolton argued. Even if President Bush decided to reinvigorate the pro-democracy programs tomorrow, Bolton believes we probably don't have enough time for them to be effective before the Iranians get the bomb. "I think we are very close to a decision point," Bolton told Newsmax. "And if the choice is between nuclear Iran and use of force, I think we have to look at the use of force." Bolton said that the CIA shared the State Department's opposition to doing anything overtly or covertly to undermine the Iranian regime, and faulted Secretary of State Rice for getting "co-opted" by the bureaucracy. "Secretary Rice has adopted the prevailing view within the bureaucracy, which have been reflected in our deference to the Europeans and the exclusively diplomatic approach for four years," he said. This approach is particularly dangerous because the U.S. intelligence community has almost always been wrong in its estimates of when Iran could acquire nuclear weapons capability, Bolton said. One of reason for the inability to get Iran right is an unwillingness to talk to Iranian defectors. "Since World War II, the Intelligence community has disliked exiles and dissidents, claiming they are unreliable because they have a political agenda. This is just self-blindness," he said. As a result of such prejudices, "[o]ur lack of reliable intelligence inside Iran is substantial... Every day the military option is postponed makes it riskier that we will actually use force but fail to achieve our objectives." Bolton worries that bad intelligence, coupled to wishful thinking by bureaucrats who tend to downplay the threat, could lead to strategic surprise by Iran or North Korea. "I personally do not believe in just-in-time non-proliferation," he said. Bolton has long been an advocate of muscular diplomacy. When he served as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Non-proliferation during the early years of the Bush administration, he frequently crossed swords with arms control advocates who were viscerally opposed to imposing sanctions on proliferators. In his recent book, Surrender is Not an Option, Bolton names one such official, Vann Van Diepen, who refused to act on direct orders to apply non-proliferation sanctions. As Newsmax revealed on December 4, Van Diepen was one of three former State Department officials who authored the much-disputed recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The arms controllers are also trying to rewrite history on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Bolton warned. During negotiations in 2002, the North Korean government admitted that in addition to its plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon, it also had a clandestine uranium enrichment program. For once, Bolton said, "all of the intelligence community agreed that North Korea had embarked on procurement for a uranium enrichment program." And yet today, the arms controllers are trying to walk back that conclusion and "rewrite history" in order to cover-up North Korea's lies and dissembling, Bolton said. Bolton also was critical of the Bush White House for not doing more to name and retain strong conservatives in the administration. When his nomination to become the permanent U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was submitted to the Senate, for example, the administration ran a confirmation battle, whereas the Democrats engaged in a full-fledged political campaign. "Given that, the outcome was predictable," Bolton said. The consequences of allowing the shadow warriors run the government instead of Bush loyalists have been dramatic, since they have succeeded in "turning the President's policy in effect in a 180-degree U-turn" in North Korea and other areas, Bolton said. Bolton said he planned to continue "hawking" his book until Christmas, then would take off January while he mulled future opportunities. He said he eventually planned to join one of the Republican presidential campaigns, but hadn't yet chosen his candidate. Excerpts from the interview: NEWSMAX: Do you think we are heading for war with Iran. JOHN BOLTON: I think there is little doubt that Iran has mastered the Science and technology it needs to enrich uranium. That means that the time and the manner in which it acquires a nuclear weapons capability is entirely within its discretion. It's only a matter of resources, and with oil at 90 dollars a barrel plus, Iran doesn't lack for resources. That means that if the president follows through on his view that Iranian nuclear weapons are unacceptable then we are at a decision point very quickly on whether to use military force. My preference would be regime change in Iran. I think there is a real possibility that the different democratic regime would make the decision that pursuing nuclear weapons is not really in Iran's interest. But that's nothing you can turn on or off like a light switch. So because of the wasted time allowing the Europeans to try to negotiate Iran out of nuclear weapons, I think our options are very few. And if the choice is between nuclear Iran and use of force, I think we have to look at the use of force. NEWSMAX: Why do we have so few options now? BOLTON: Because by deferring to the EU 3 these last four plus, almost five years. we have limited our ability to do other things to see if we can get effective sanctions at the Security Council. I don't think sanctions are going to have a chance of being effective any longer. Especially not UN sanctions. And this long period of time has put Iran in a much more favorable position. It's a classic case study why diplomacy is not cost-free. If we had been working on regime change effectively over the last four or more years we would be in a lot different position today. It's not just the nuclear program. It's Iran's support for terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza strip, including their activity particularly against our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. So if steps are not taken soon, Iran and other nations in the region will draw the conclusion that we are not serious about stopping Iran's nuclear program, we are not serious about stopping Iranian support for terrorism and they will draw the appropriate conclusions, all of which will be negative to American interest. NEWSMAX: Why hasn't [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] done anything to help the pro-freedom movement in Iran? Why has the $75 million program to help the pro-democracy movement had so little impact? BOLTON: I think there is enormous bureaucratic opposition to doing anything overtly or covertly from both the State and CIA bureaucracies. And as on so many other issues, I think, Secretary Rice has adopted the prevailing view within the bureaucracy, which have been reflected in our deference to the Europeans and exclusively diplomatic approach for four years. NEWSMAX: Do you think she is convinced we can do nothing to help the pro democracy movement? After all this was her program. BOLTON: This is completely inexplicable to me. On the overt side she announced it with great fanfare, but as we can see with the recent resignation of the head of the program at the State Department, it has gone nowhere. The argument that identifying Iranian Diaspora groups as being linked to our program makes it disadvantageous for them is belied by the statements of many of these groups who say 'we need the help and we're pleased to have it.' But the outcome has been no overt program of support for democracy and no clandestine program to overthrow the regime. So in effect, we have been doing nothing for getting on to five years now except deferring to the Europeans NEWSMAX: So this leaves us basically with war, or a nuclear armed Iran-- BOLTON? --Or regime change, if we have the time. The problem is we likely do not have the amount of time that would be required. If we only had been more active over the past several years we might not be faced with the unhappy alternative of having to use force. NEWSMAX: How do you see this scenario developing? How do we get to the point of using military force? What happens next? BOLTON: I think we are very close to a decision point. There are all kinds of estimates of when Iran will actually have a nuclear capability. They are all based on assumptions. So if some of those assumptions turn out to be wrong, the Iranians can have the weapons capability much earlier than the estimates would lead you to believe. I personally do not believe in just in-time non-proliferation. There's too much of a risk there that intelligence and analysis can be wrong by understating the threat as well as by overstating the threat. Moreover the Iranians are obviously aware of the risk they run and I think every day that goes by gives them more of an opportunity to harden their existing facilities such as at Natanz, the uranium enrichment facility, or to build completely alternative facilities of which we have no knowledge. Our lack of reliable intelligence inside Iran is substantial. That doesn't make me feel better; it makes me more nervous. Time is working against us. Every day the military option is postponed makes it riskier that we will actually use force but fail to achieve our objectives. NEWSMAX: I've [Kenneth Timmerman] just written a book called Shadow Warriors that talks about people in the CIA and the State Department who have attempted to undermine the president's policies. Do you think the $75 million that Condi announced to help the pro-freedom movement in Iran was undermined by people who don't agree with the policy? BOLTON: I don't think there is any doubt of it. There are many people at the State Department who simply don't like the concept of regime change whether done through pro-democracy groups or done clandestinely. They especially don't like a program that could be said to undercut the European efforts of diplomacy. I think the failure of the $75 million program sends an enormous signal through out the bureaucracy that resistance can work. This is going to have negative consequences not just for the situation in Iran but for a range of other policy issues around the world. NEWSMAX: So the "Shadow Warriors" won this round? BOLTON: I think there is no doubt about it. I don't profess to know everything that went on, but you can tell when the director of the program resigns and basically says, 'I can't make it work,' that there is obviously something badly wrong. NEWSMAX: How is this Administration's track record on hiring and keeping conservatives in key positions? BOLTON: I think it is unfortunately not very good. I talk about this in my book, about what happens when Presidential personnel doesn't focus on the very difficult circumstances appointees face within the State department, which is one of the savi-est bureaucracies in Washington experts in co-opting, seducing or subverting political appointees who try to pursue policies it disagrees with. And I think in this Administration, it has had considerable success. I use the example of North Korea, and what's happened to our policy there. What has happened since I wrote the book is an even more graphic example of the bureaucracy in effect turning the President's policy in effect in a 180 degree U-turn. NEWSMAX: Do you think the North Korean have agreed to talk and to shut down the reactor because they have sold off the critical elements? BOLTON: I think they are doing the same thing they did under the [1994] Agreed Framework. I think they have been planning to cheat on their declaration and their program and hope they get away with it, which they will if we don't have an adequate verification program. And I think this facility [in Syria] that the Israelis bombed on September 6 is an indication of yet another alternative, which is either to clone the Yongbyon reactor or out-source some of the nuclear weapons program. How better to hide your North Korean program than to build it in Syria where nobody is looking! Just this morning there was a story that it may be harder to shut done Yongbyon than people thought. Now this will extend into the next year, which I think is part of North Korea's pattern of slow-rolling the program. But which also shows something which I and others have been saying for some time, which is that Yongbyon is at or beyond its useful life. Part of the reason they have difficulties extracting the fuel rods that are in there now is that the whole facility is in terrible repair, which means they agreeing to freeze it or even to dismantle it is not such a big concession from the North Koreans. They may already have been able to extract as much plutonium as they were going to be able to. Shutting down a broken facility is hardly a sign of good faith. NEWSMAX: There is a lot of dispute about North Korea's uranium program. You write in your book that the North Koreans talked to our delegation in 2002 about the uranium enrichment program. Do you think that is what they transferred to Syria? BOLTON: It's hard to say what they've transferred. There was no sign of radiation escaping after the Israeli attack [on Syria], which seems to indicate that they proceeded before there was any actual enriched uranium or even unenriched uranium there. Otherwise you would see likely release of radiation. In my book, I go through this business of what Jim Kelly confronted the North Koreans with in 2002, and what the North Koreans said in response. There was no ambiguity in 2002 about the intelligence. In fact, what happened was that in the early summer 2002, for a change, all of the intelligence community agreed that North Korea had embarked on procurement for a uranium enrichment program. That was what was significant. That after years of disagreement within the intelligence community, they had reached consensus. And there was no dispute at that time. Nor is there really dispute about the North Korean reaction to Kelly's trip, that they admitted they had a uranium enrichment program. It's not just my book. Read Jack Prichard's book, published by Brookings. He says there was no ambiguity, and he was there! I think this is significant, because people are now trying to rewrite history, to help excuse why the North Koreans are not dissembling when they say they have no enrichment program. They are trying to lay the groundwork that there never was a program, so when the North Koreans say they don't have one it's not another example of dissembling. NEWSMAX: Would their uranium enrichment program have come from Pakistan, or would they have had access earlier to the technology? BOLTON: My guess is in part they had some technology from [Pakistan's Dr.] AQ Khan. But I think it was more of them acting as a general contractor building their own program, using AQ Khan for pieces of it, as opposed to Libya, who said to AQ Khan, you are the general contractor, you create the program for us. NEWSMAX: It really astounds me the lack of information on the Iranian nuclear program, and the unwillingness of the Intelligence community to talk to Iranians, even to Iranian exiles. BOLTON: Since World War II, the Intelligence community has disliked exiles and dissidents, claiming they are unreliable because they have a political agenda. This is just self-blindness. Not only has our human intelligence capability declined dramatically over the last several decades, there doesn't seem to be much inclination to want to build it back up. Look at Joe Wilson: the best our intelligence community can do is send a former ambassador to Niger to have tea with officials that say, 'so, what's up on the uranium front?' That's our intelligence community? Forget everything else about Valerie Plame. That whole story is unbelievable! Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@gwinston.interaccess.com To Go To Top

BHUTTO'S ASSASSINATION IS A POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HONOR KILLING Posted by Phyllis Chesler, December 28, 2007.

In a sense, the assassination of Benazir Bhu