Reducing Foreign Policy to the Lowest Common Denominator
By Sarah N. Stern October 15, 2009 

“Everything would have been just fine, if only Adolf Hitler hadn’t lied to me.”                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                       --- Neville Chamberlain
The problem with a multilateral approach to foreign policy is that it entrusts governments who do not have the same moral standards that we do, to operate along the same moral lines; it reduces our foreign policy to the lowest common denominator. 

This might be alright if there weren’t existential threats to the free world, as we know it. During times like these, however, when a madman in Tehran explicitly threatens a friendly ally, and threatens to destabilize the entire, global balance of power, the urgency of the situation means we do not have the luxury of time for consensus building.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came back from a two day trip to Russia claiming that there was a meeting of the minds between the two nations on the necessity of global sanctions on Iran.  On Wednesday, October 14, the Secretary of State said “I’m very pleased about how supportive the Russians have been in what has become a united, international effort.”

However,  that same day, according to a story on Reuters, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that talk of sanctions against Iran is “premature”, and “might intimidate the Iranians.”

This is ofcourse after we have abandoned  the airtight pledge for a missile defense shield over Poland and the Czech Republic, in order to extract a consensus from Russia over Iranian sanctions. Throughout the Czech Republic and Poland, the press continuously reports profound feelings of betrayal and abandonment by the United States.

Foreign policy by virtue of a popularity contest or by cozying up to despots and dictators is simply not the way to lead. That is why it took the Obama administration eleven full days before saying a word of support for the dissidents after the June elections in Iran. Three of those beautiful young dissidents have just been sentenced to death this week. These are three of one hundred forty show trials that are currently occurring in Tehran. This is occurring at a time when the State Department has decided to obliterate then five year old Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center. One would do well to ask why, at a time when it is precisely most needed.

However, the American people seem to be much wiser than our leadership when it comes to Iranian game-playing. According to a poll by the respected Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, while most Americans (63 percent) support direct U.S.-Iran negotiations to try to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, 64 percent nonetheless predict it fruitless.  And while 78 percent would approve of tougher economic sanctions, only 56 percent have faith they would work – that is, force Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.  If diplomacy fails, 61 percent would support a military strike.  Most tellingly, only 24 percent of supposedly war-weary Americans believe avoiding military conflict is more important than Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

And our Congress, reflecting the innate wisdom of the people they represent,  overwhelmingly passed the Iranian Sanctions Enabling Act, by a bipartisan vote of 414 to 6, authorizing state and local governments to divest from countries that invest in Iran’s petroleum and natural gas sector.

The people of America and their representatives have an appreciation that we may be living in a Lockian world of Western liberties here in America, but that, unfortunately there are bad actors on the world’s stage, who are acting out a Hobbesian script. They have the wisdom to know that we should not be deceived by the lines that these bad actors occasionally memorize with the effort to seduce us into believing that they have malign intentions.

There is simply too much at stake here to place our trust in winning the consensus of despots and dictators. Not with so many centrifuges spinning, and time quickly running out.
    
  

Evian Re-Take
By Sarah N. Stern and Jess Sadick

October 6, 2009

For the first time in our lives we feel what it must have been like to be Jews in America in 1938. In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aware of Hitler’s program of increasing antisemitism and expulsion of Jews from Germany, tried the multilateral route, and convened a conference in Evian, France, to deal with the problem of Jewish emigration.

Ultimately, the Evian Conference ended in failure. Not one of the thirty-three nations in attendance wanted to absorb thousands of Jewish immigrants. Hitler took it as a green light to continue toward implementing the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question.

Ultimately, America, Great Britain and the other Allied nations had to roll up their sleeves and fight to make this a safer, saner, more moral world.

There are those who believe that the world is a level, moral playing field and others, like President Ronald Reagan, who understood what American exceptionalism is; that we are that “shining city upon a hill,” and that not all nations have equal sins, some nations are moral giants in the fields of democracy and human rights, others are moral midgets. And although, yes, America is not perfect and has made some mistakes in the past, we are not living in a world where everyone uses the same moral playbook.

Working through the international community presumes that every nation plays by the same moral playbook.  We know that certain nations, such as Russia and Red China, have craven interests in doing business with Iran.

Preventing Iran from acquiring its own nuclear weapons first requires understanding Iranian intention and goals.  If one believes that Iran, like North Korea, is disgruntled by its second-class status and only seeks attention and greater economic opportunity, he or she is mistaken.  No amount of greater acceptance into the international community or package of economic incentives is likely to alter Iran’s plans to go nuclear.

President Obama’s statement that multi-party talks in Geneva afford Iran “a path towards a better relationship with the United States,” misreads Iranian intentions completely.  Iran hates the U.S. and, as has been mentioned elsewhere, wishes for “a world without America.”  To assume Iran would be forthcoming on any issue in exchange for a better U.S. relationship is wrong and dangerously risks underestimating Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons to use for political blackmail.

If talks must occur, the U.S. and its allies should ensure they are serious, constructive, and fruitful.  State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said that Undersecretary of State William Burns used a meeting Thursday with the chief Iranian negotiator “to reiterate the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.”  The time for such toothless protestations has long passed.  Rather, for talks to succeed, the West needs to firmly make clear to the Iranians what specific steps they must take as well as specific consequences they will face for not doing so.

While the Geneva talks may have calmed many peoples’ fears, we should not put too much hope in them.  At first glance, they seem worthwhile.  Iran has signaled it may agree to transfer to Russia its enriched uranium for further processing, will allow inspectors to visit, within two weeks, a nuclear facility at Qom, will hold further negotiations by month’s end, and for once made decisions rather than promise “we’ll get back to you” and then never do. In reality, however, Iran will use renewed talks to feign interest in reconciliation with the West while moving ahead with its nuclear plans. 

Importantly, the talks allow the U.S. the opportunity to say that it tried diplomacy and could make iteasier to rally support behind what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has termed “crippling sanctions.”  After all, nothing less will force Iran to recalculate the costs of moving forward with its nuclear program.  Eventually, renewed negotiations – if that, ultimately, is where Geneva leads – will dead-end, and when they do, brave leadership will be necessary to call a spade a spade and set in motion the appropriate consequences, starting with effective sanctions.

Tony Karon of Time Magazine has written that “given the limited potential for sanctions to change Iran’s behavior, it’s not as if the Western powers have much of an alternative to pursuing diplomacy, with all its pitfalls.”  He couldn’t be more mistaken.  Sanctions have not yet been tried and cannot reasonably be discounted as an effective measure against Iran, whereas talks with Iran are risky because they legitimize the terrorism-sponsoring and repressive Iranian leadership and buy it time.  Once negotiations run their course, Western leaders must be ready and willing to face the consequences and act accordingly.  Amid festering domestic opposition, effective sanctions could turn up the heat even further and lead Iran’s leaders to choose regime survival over staying their nuclear course.

For international sanctions to work, the cooperation of China is necessary.  China has protected Iran at the United Nations from meaningful sanctions partly because it sees Iran as an emerging regional power and wants deals with Iran’s oil and natural gas industries.  The U.S. and its allies should work to convince the Chinese that countries like Iran are not among tomorrow’s leaders.  The U.S. should also seek to assure China that the U.S. does not seek global dominance or control over oil resources.  An oil development-sharing agreement could help bring China aboard.  The U.S. might also identify ways to elevate China’s image internationally, because its opposition to Iran sanctions probably also is intended to exert more publicly its importance in world affairs.

Domestically, effective sanctions have a head-start in the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would impose sanctions on companies involved in refining Iranian oil and prohibit them from doing business in the U.S.  The bill -- sponsored in the House by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA) and in the Senate by Evan Bayh (D-IN), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) -- enjoys bipartisan support.  Representatives Ros-Lehtinen and Eric Cantor (R-VA) recently released press statements expressing doubts that renewed talks with Iran will work and endorsing immediate and crippling sanctions as an alternative.

Meantime, the Obama Administration deserves credit for the effective disclosure of intelligence.  As Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler noted, the revelation of the existence of the uranium-enrichment facility at Qom “diplomatically isolated Iran, leaving it little choice but to cooperate or face new sanctions.”  The United States and its allies should not hesitate to exploit additional evidence, of which there likely is plenty, of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to discredit Iran as a trustworthy and well-intentioned negotiating partner.  The U.S. should not hesitate to embarrass Iran with evidence of their duplicitousness.

According to the New York Times, Iran’s own Arab neighbors are growing increasing concerned about Iran’s nuclear program.  They fear it will destabilize the region and increasingly believe Iran cannot be stopped.  “Iran is forcing everyone in the region now into an arms race,” said one academic in the United Arab Emirates.  An Arab newspaper report said Arab states in the Persian Gulf region are taking measures to try to persuade Russia and China to stop providing Iran cover at the U.N.  The head of a prominent research center in Dubai is reported to have said that a Western, or even Israeli, military strike on Iran would be better than allowing Iran to emerge as a nuclear power.  In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst outlined the significant challenges that Israel would face in trying to effectively disrupt Iran’s nuclear facilities in a military strike.

But it should not be Israel’s responsibility alone to bear the burden and the consequences of such action. The entire world will be significantly more dangerous once Iran goes nuclear.  If sanctions prove ineffective, a collection of nations should be ready and willing to materially or politically support whatever military action is necessary to set back Iran’s nuclear program until such time as a change in Iranian government reconsiders its usefulness.
The clock is ticking, and it is almost 1939.

Sarah N. Stern is Founder and President of EMET. Jess Sadick is EMET’s Vice President of Operations and Policy.

Kafka is Alive and Well
By Sarah N. Stern

Kafka is alive and well and lives in a building in Turtle Bay, New York, called the United Nations. The United Nations had been a very noble experiment. Conceived in the midst of the earthquake to the civilized world that was the Holocaust, the premeditative, systematic attempted total annihilation of the European Jewish community, and born shortly after Germany’s defeat in 1945, the United Nations was erected with the noble purpose of “saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime had brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

The horrific events of the 1930’s and 1940’s in the European theater composed the shock to humanity’s central nervous system that created the necessity for that august body.

The United Nations has disintegrated into a sheer travesty of its once noble purpose. There was a hope it would create a forum that would elevate nation states to rise above the fray of ancient prejudices like antisemitism. Rather than being a motivating factor to rise to humanity’s highest levels; it has descended to humanity’s lowest common denominator. It has created a forum to single out Israel, the Jewish state, for opprobrium. It has made Israel the apotheosis of the world’s Jew, assuming its rightful place in a heavily antisemitic world,

According to Ambassador Richard Shifter, and Sharon Wilkes of the American Jewish International Relations Institute, “For more than three decades, the United Nations has pursued actions to denigrate the United States and to de-legitimize Israel.  Year after year, nearly 25% of the UN General Assembly resolutions adopted by roll-call are directed against Israel and are opposed by the U.S.  More serious than the number of resolutions is the content of these decisions, which establish the foundation and provide the funding for a year-round, worldwide anti-Israel propaganda campaign administered by the UN Secretariat’s Division for Palestinian Rights.”

The anti-Israel apparatus at the United Nations was in full swing, this week, with the release of a report by Richard Goldstone, commissioned by the United Nations Council on Human Rights. (May I remind you that this is where that beacon of democratic liberty, Moammar Qaddafi’s Libya currently sits.) The report was written to investigate alleged human rights abuses during Operation Cast Lead.
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter states that it is the primary responsibility of every nation state to protect its civilian population.

From the time of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip in August of 2005 until the end of Operation Cast Lead last winter, Palestinian groups including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and The Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other spin off groups had launched a reign of terror on Southern Israel, particularly on the Israeli border town of Sederot.

After having endured more than eight thousand rocket attacks since the withdrawal, traumatizing the entire town and making life there a living hell.  How quickly people forget  that the children of that town  have been scarred for life with the daily trauma of the few minutes to find shelter when the “Seva Adom”, (Code Red) alarm went off. Adults are living daily with the anxiety of post-traumatic stress injury, and cannot internalize that a life without several daily rocket attacks is actually “normal”, and are still waiting for the sirens to sound. There had been several deaths and casualties, although it is nothing short of a miracle that there hadn’t been more.

In what can only be described as a case of selective amnesia, the report glosses over the nightmarish hell that the people of southern Israel had of living with this daily trauma.  It only focuses on the traumas of the Palestinian side, who were the attackers. It glosses over the twenty-first century reality of living with terrorism and unconventional, urban warfare.

Operation Cast Lead has been a success. Hamas and company has been greatly set back in its ability to do harm and inflict terror. The number of rocket attacks since Operation Cast Lead ended last winter, has been reduced to eight. Prior to the operation, the people of Sderot had endured that many attacks in a single day.

What does this set as a precedent for democracies and for those of us who are on the side of living within civilized norms and protecting its civilian population?

By casting Israel under this opprobrium it has legitimized the use of terrorism and tied the hands of all civilized nations trying to protect its civilian populations behind their backs. It ignores the reality that today’s method of warfare is a sinister, urban one that uses their own civilian population as human shields to hide behind, and makes it virtually impossible for a civilized nation to defend its civilian population from the scourge of terrorism, which is the sinister and cowardly way that war is currently being conducted.

The Goldstone commission had become a kangaroo court, as has much of the United Nations. This week it will yet again demonstrate just how low the noble idea behind its birth has fallen. It will, once again, provide a forum to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who just few days ago had called the Holocaust “a lie”, and as he works towards completion of its plans for a nuclear bomb in which to create another Holocaust.

The civilized world has had almost a sixty year reprieve from antisemitism, due to the Holocaust. That dread disease is alive and well and has infected much of the august body that had been created very much as a result of the horrific tragedy that had led to its birth. How far the mighty have fallen.

Goldstone Mission Guilty of Hate Crime
Ignoring Nine Years of Terror

Arab leaders will see the Goldstone Report as justification to continue to incite, inflame and encourage Palestinian Arabs to pin every problem they face as individuals and as a society on Israel. This strategy of channeling frustrations into hatred and revenge against Israel is adopted both by Israel's immediate Palestinian Arab neighbors and Arab leaders throughout the Muslim-Arab world.

The UN Goldstone Mission ignores Hamas - a terror organization listed as such by the United States, European Union, and Canada among others. Internationally binding instruments go on to impose uniform mandatory counter-terrorist obligations to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of terrorist attacks and stresses that those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable. The Goldstone Mission in effect became a violator of international law.

There is no escape clause - United Nations Security Council repeats its unequivocal condemnation of all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever committed.

Terrorist organizations such as Hamas that indiscriminately launch around-the-clock Qassam rockets targeting civilian populations in Israel, are clearly committing Crimes Against Humanity - acts of terrorism for which the United Nations Security Council Resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter directs everyone to fight terrorism by all means.

International law leaves no room to question Israel's right to defend its citizens against systematic and sustained terrorist attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza.

Israel's reaction to nine years of Hamas aggression is nothing more than a measured, fair and proportional response, designed to effectively terminate the attacks upon it, in order to prevent its recurrence. Israel was far from using all means in fighting Hamas in Gaza, as required by the United Nations.

My Prayer for the New Year of 5770

By Sarah N. Stern

As I write these words, Jews throughout the world are busy getting ready to celebrate the new year of 5770. Jews celebrate the new year quite distinctly from the way that other people, do. One essential element of the way we do it gives a sociological understanding for what many of my people have been going through over the past sixteen years, which this week on September 13th, marked the sixteenth anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords.

The process of “Tsheuva” involves one of deep, serious introspection, an accounting for one’s soul and an atoning for one’s sins, plus a commitment to better oneself. The process involves that of a genuine soul searching of any possible wrongs that we might have done before G-d or our fellow man and a real and honest attempt to rectify them, both on the individual and the collective level.

We pray and quite literally, beat our breasts, reciting repentance collectively,  not only the sins of ourselves, but for those of the entire community. This has imbued us with 1.) a huge sense of collective responsibility and collective guilt and 2.) the feeling that we are active agents of change; that everything is in power; that anything can be achieved if we only tried hard enough.

This brings us to the other major event we are marking this week, the anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords. Sixteen years ago, many wonderful, idealistic people had determined that they would take the brave step of offering the Palestinians regional autonomy which would lead to independent statehood, if they only abided by certain conditions. Most important among them was that all further disputes would not be resolved through the use of violence, but around the negotiating table.

It had been 2,000 years of exile for Jews, and we Jews, felt a unique sense of guilt and a heighted degree of discomfit at this new role of “occupier”. Now that we had achieved our own dream of erecting a free, independent Jewish state in the ancient homeland of our ancestors, we had felt that we could afford to be benevolent, and to help our neighbors establish theirs. We were prepared to share the land. “The status quo is untenable”, is what the mantra was, or “We could afford to be the big ones..After all, we were the ones who had won the war of 1967. We can take risks for peace.”

With tremendous empathy, we beat our chests at the plight of the Palestinians. For many years, our own Israeli culture, including art, fiction, dramas and cinema, focused primarily on their plight.

We felt that if we just tried hard enough we could change the conditions on the ground for the Palestinians and we could therefore convince them to love us,  or at the minimal live next to us without wanting to destroy us; if not for us, then at the very least  for themselves, to  motivate  them toward the goal of “two states living side by side in peace and security.”

It is not only a very Jewish sentiment, but a very Western one. With good old American ingenuity, we feel all problems can be resolved with enough effort.

The United States, therefore inserted itself into the equation as “honest broker”.

However in the ensuing sixteen years, thousands of lives on both sides have been tragically lost While the Israelis had instituting a “Peace Curriculum”, teaching their children a sense of empathy for the plight of the Palestinians, the Palestinians children had been horrifically exploited by their own people to make themselves into human bombs and to blow themselves up “for the sake of Palestine”.

When Israel would then respond in self defense, the world would equalize the equation, making countless statements to the effect of, “Both sides have got to refrain from engaging in the cycle of violence.”

The condition that was placed on the Palestinians during Oslo, and all subsequent accords, of resolving all further disputes around the negotiating table was conveniently ignored. If we are going to insert ourselves into the equation as being “honest brokers”, then the operative word must be “honest.”

However, rivaling the senseless deaths in terms of tragic outcomes of Oslo, was the tremendous schism that developed between many Jews. Many on the left looked towards the religious and the settlers as “The Obstacles” standing in the way of peace. This, while the bombings on Mike’s Place and the Dolphnarium Discotheque, to name only a few that happened way inside the Green Line, dramatically brought home the lesson that the dispute had nothing to do with the shape, configuration or contours of the map if Israel, but had everything to do with the fact that there was a Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East. And many on the right looked at those on the left as naïve idealists living in a dream world that is quite remote from the harsh realities of the Middle East.

The gravest part of the tragedy is that people became entrenched and calcified in their beliefs, some more empathic to the suffering of their Palestinian neighbors and immune to that of their fellow Jew, particularly if he lived “beyond the Green Line.”

All of this has been happening and has been the focus of much of the attention of the Israelis and the world, while the Iranians have now reached the breakout point of being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon. While we have been busy worrying about contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza and stop signs within Pkaestinian Authority, Israel is on the brink of its destruction.

My prayer for the new year is simple, but three-fold. That 1.)  Jews should first come together as a people and feel the pain of one for the other. We should begin to cry, once more at the deaths of each fellow Jew. (When did that stop happening? When did Jewish lives become a statistic instead of a life?) We should begin to appreciate that both left and right share a vision of peace, but that the state needs a peace that it can live with, with defensible borders and where there will be no more human “sacrifices for peace” (as the victims of Palestinian terror had frequently been dubbed by many during the Oslo years), and 2.) That my people begin to have a certain wisdom and humility to understand that some problems are not resolvable, irrespective of whether we try hard enough, but simply manageable.  If we keep giving and each land withdrawal or release of prisoners is perceived as a sign of weakness, then we have to go back at the premises of this paradigm and evaluate whether or not this process has actually gotten us any closer to the goalpost of peace.3.) We look at the big picture and unite over the existential Iranian threat.

We might have to be a bit more modest in our aspirations. We might not ever be able create what Shimon Peres had once described as a “New Middle East”. Some things are simply beyond our scope.

We can, however, start on a much smaller scale. We might be able to gradually start with one young mind at a time, by instituting a peace curriculum in the Palestinian schools and conditioning American aid on whether or not it is implemented. We know that everything starts with ideas, and no one is born wanting to strap a suicide belt around their waists. That is anti-Darwinian. As long as young Palestinian children, however,  are schooled with the idea that the best thing that they can do for their people is to continue to blow themselves up and take as many innocent Israelis with them, there will never be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

My prayer therefore is that we will finally posses sufficient intellectual honesty to evaluate whether or not this paradigm works, the humility to start on a much smaller scale, the wisdom to know that some things are within the ability of us to change; and some may just be beyond our scope, and the moral courage to change our focus and unite over the real, existential threat to the Jewish state..

Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of EMET, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a pro-Israel think tank and policy shop.
  
  

Libel Terrorism
By Sarah N. Stern

If there is anything that rivals the insidiousness of the Saudi regime, it is the blatant assault that the Saudis have made on our  own  precious first amendment rights, particularly our freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This is what  is sometimes referred to as  “libel terrorism” or “libel tourism” .

This new form of terrorism is in keeping with the Saudi rigidly biased, tightly controlled state press, which is  designed to deflect attention away from the lack of domestic  development of an educational infrastructure for their people , lack of advancement in the field of democracy, and  horrific human rights abuses by magnifying the evils of Jews and  of Christians, of Israel, and of  the United States. 

 A major maniacal player in the battle over our first amendment rights has just recently departed from the scene.  On Sunday, August 21st, perhaps the greatest global inhibitors of freedom of speech and of a free press, Saudi billionaire, Khalid Bin Mahfouz passed away in his home in Jidda.

  Sheik Mahfouz amassed a huge fortune of petro dollars worth approximately 3.35 billion dollars. His meteoric rise of massive wealth was based on our addiction to Saudi fuel and the Sheik’s thirty percent share of the Saudi Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Bank of Credit and Commerce International is a bank which had been shut down in 1991 amidst charges of money laundering and financial fraud. He had been forced to pay a fine of 225 million dollars. His financial operations have been accused of funneling money to Al Qaeda and other terrorist operations.

One of the ways that Mahfouz used this massive oil wealth was by shopping around the globe for a court system where the burden of proof is on the defendant. He was shopping for a judicial system which would make it easy to sue any author, scholar, journalist or publisher, who had the temerity to tell the truth about, “our (so called) allies in the war on terrorism,” as the Saudis have often been conveniently referred to, by members of various administrations, republican and democrat, alike, who have made a Faustian bargain for an unfettered supply of cheap Saudi oil. Mahfouz’ target was anyone who dared to tell the truth regarding the not very insignificant role the Saudis have played in either the spreading of that particularly radical form of Islam, Wahhabaism,  through funding Islamic mosques and schools throughout the world, and the Saudi’s rather direct link to worldwide terrorism.

 In England one is guilty, before being proven innocent.  Mahfouz therefore chose Britain, where the libel laws favor the plaintiff, in which to play his highly expensive, litigious games.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, an internationally recognized Israeli-American anti-terrorism expert and member of EMET’s Board of Advisors, was the sole author, to date, who has possessed sufficient courage to fight back. In her 2005 book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It”, Rachel was able to draw upon government documents that directly identified Sheik Mahfouz as a leading financier of terrorism.  These documents traced the money trail directly back to Mahfouz, who had erected a Saudi banking system, which as far back as 1996 had been identified by French, British and American intelligence as having had been used for the benefit of none other than Osama Bin Laden.

  Bin Mahfouz also established a bogus “charitable foundation” entitled, “Muwafaq”, (Blessed Relief), which Dr. Ehrenfeld definitively established in her book through government documents, had been a front organization for funding money to Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Makhtab al-Khadimet.

Although the book was published in the United States and not in England, Sheik Mahfouz ordered 23 copies of the book through Amazon.com, to be delivered to Britain.  The English court accepted jurisdiction of the case on those rather shaky grounds. Because Rachel had neither the money to fly to England or to hire expensive legal counsel, nor the desire to appear in court, Sheik Mahfouz won in a default judgment against Dr. Ehrenfeld in 2005. She was ordered to destroy all copies of her book and to pay out $230,000

The Saudis, and particularly bin Mahfouz, have made a favorite sport out of exploiting the British court system and rendering expensive suits against any author who dares to speak out against them. Even the venerable Cambridge University Press, established in the year 1200, cowered in 2007 and agreed to turn to pulp

Not being one to mess with, Rachel and her full 5’2” frame fought back, and fought back hard. First she lobbied for and successfully passed “Rachel’s law” in New York State.  The New York law says that no foreign libel law judgment can be enforced in New York, protecting New York publishers and writers. Similar laws were passed in Illinois, Florida and California, where it is pending signature by the governor.

In the United States Senate, the Free Speech Protection Act 2009 is pending, sponsored by  Senator Arlen Specter,(democrat, Pennsylvania)  Senator Joseph Liberman, (independent, Connecticut),  Senator  Chuck Schumer,  (democrat, New York)   and Wyden. This bill would protect our sacred constitutional freedoms of freedom of the press and freedom of speech from being assaulted by other enablers, financers and defenders of global Islamic terrorism.
 

As Rachel Ehrenfeld has said, “The death of Khalid bin Mahfouz means absolutely nothing in the fight for the protection of free speech. His son, Abdurrahman Ben Mahfouz” was a part of the law suits and is heir-apparent to this sort of Saudi legal blackmail. It is ironic that England, the mother of the Magna Carter, John Locke and John Stuart Mill, and its rich intellectual tradition as the birthplace of Western liberty has provided the judicial theater for this egregious Saudi assault on American freedom speech.

Please attend our event on September 10th at the Congressional Auditorium where you will have the opportunity to hear Dr. Ehrenfeld directly, and other courageous warriors in the battle to tell the truth against the far-reaching grip of the Saudi Royal Family.
 

Those Who Stand On The Side of The Sanctity of Human Life

The Will to Believe
By Sarah N. Stern

Throughout Jewish history, some of us have been prone to suspend our critical judgment and believe in false messiahs.  Many of us, after all, followed Shabtai  Zvi, the 17th century rabbi and self-declared (and ultimately, false) messiah.

Unfortunately, our recent history is no better. So many of us suspended critical thinking and skepticism and believed in PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, the grand-daddy of 20th century terrorism whose great contribution to the world was the hijacking of airplanes — and please remember that the next time you are forced to wait on long lines in the airport.   Arafat’s deception of Israel and of the West, and our complicity in it, should finally disabuse people of the notion that Jews are a smart people.

The list of false messiahs does not end with Arafat, however.  After the unprecedented, generous peace offer that Israeli Prime Minister (now Defense Minister) Ehud Barak put on the table on July 25, 2000, which Arafat walked away from, and after the violence that Arafat instigated the following September, Arafat’s fig leaf tended to disappear in many Jews’ eyes. A shattering moment of truth in our view of Arafat and his Fatah movement occurred, finally, that October 12. That was when two Israeli reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami, took a wrong turn, ended up in Palestinian-ruled Ramallah and were brutally murdered in a police station, with one killer proudly displaying his blood-drenched hands from the window.

However, that same capacity to suspend our critical judgment and to believe seems to never have left us. Exit stage right, Yasser Arafat; enter stage left, Mahmoud Abbas, whose nom de guerre is Abu Mazen. What sort of a so-called peaceful movement elects a leader with a nom de guerre, anyway? And for those with the capacity to believe without cause, the list will forever continue.

Early this month, for the first time in over 20 years, Fatah (the leading movement in the Palestine Liberation Organization, which itself evolved into the governing Palestinian Authority) convened a General Assembly, its sixth. Please note that the first one was held in 1965. That was two years before the June 1967 war, which leads to the question: Exactly which lands was the Palestine Liberation Organization  trying to liberate?
 
We must remember that an earlier meeting of the General Assembly, in Tunis in 1974, adopted the “phased plan” for the elimination of the State of Israel. This occurred after the Arab world’s crushing defeat in the 1973 war by the Israeli army. The Fatah charter had been amended to say that any land ceded through either the “armed struggle” (meaning: terrorism) or through the process of negotiations should be used as a “base of operations” to “liberate all of the land of  Palestine.”
In the General Assembly that was just convened in Bethlehem, Fatah’s old guard was brought together with its new one — but just because they are younger, we must not harbor the illusion that they are any less radical. A successor was chosen, as were 22 members of Fatah’s decision-making group, the Central Committee. The Central Committee includes at least five people who haven’t even accepted the Oslo accords, and 18 are old-style Arafat cronies and bureaucrats.

The most alarming development was that the future successor to Abu Mazen, Muhammad Ghaneim, was elected. Ghaneim is so opposed to any sort of a peace deal with Israel that he refused to participate in the Palestinian Authority as long as it was involved in the peace process. He also refused to enter the West Bank or Gaza with Arafat in 1994.

The resolutions that the council adopted were equally alarming: no negotiations until Israel releases all political prisoners, no division of Jerusalem, no deal with Israel unless it agrees to a “right of return” of all Palestinian refugees, and no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Fatah’s political plan, adopted at the convention, calls for the use of “peace as a strategic option,” but reserves “the right to resist the occupation by all legitimate means.” Meaning: Fatah did not give up the “armed struggle.” Instead, it is simply using its time-proven, successful game of double-speak and re-introducing, formally, the concepts of “armed struggle” and “resistance,” which it never had repudiated in practice, anyway.

 The good news is that the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade was officially adopted as a part of Fatah. That means that there can be no more “good cop/bad cop” game that we Westerners, who want to suspend our critical judgment, engage in. You know the game: telling ourselves that it is not that Palestinian leaders — Arafat, then Abu Mazen and, in the future, Ghaneim — do not want to control the violent factions; it is just that they are unable to.

I know as I write these words that we are left with a very bleak option: Fatah or Hamas. However, that merely has been the distinction between those who want to destroy Israel today (the latter) and those who want to destroy Israel tomorrow (the former). Why negotiate at all if Israel is just engaging in an elaborate charade, pulling the wool over our own eyes and giving the Palestinians more time and international funds to regroup and succeed in the devastating plans of the PLO charter they have just voted upon?

Yet, I know that fairly soon, much ink will be spilled by Jewish analysts in an attempt to make Ghaneim into a Gandhi. So much for the touted, vast, intellectual capacities of our people.
  

The Freedom of the City
By Sarah Stern

The freedom of the city is not negotiable. We cannot negotiate with those who say, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”

U.S. President John F. Kennedy, addressing a concerned nation during the Berlin Crisis 48 summers ago, spoke those words in standing firm against Soviet designs on the city.

The speaker could just as sensibly be Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu today, addressing a concerned nation and standing firm against Palestinian designs on Jerusalem.

Just as America then recognized the need to oppose a takeover of vital real estate, so must Israel today. The need for Israel to clarify its sovereignty over and rights to Jerusalem appears ever more necessary as Palestinian rhetoric continues on its dishonest, insensible and dangerous path.
The freshest example is last week’s meeting in Bethlehem of the Fatah general council, which produced the statement that the Palestinians consider all of Jerusalem to be theirs.

According to the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, the council published a position paper that stated that the organization does not distinguish between Jerusalem’s western and eastern sectors. The position paper contained this line: “Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be returned [to the Palestinians], clean of settlements and settlers.”

At first glance, Fatah’s position is startling. I cannot name a single, non-Muslim country that considers the western sector of Jerusalem — a sector that was internationally-recognized Israeli territory even before the Six-Day War — to be up for negotiation. Jerusalem’s inclusion on the 1993 Oslo agreement’s agenda for final-status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians always had referred, presumably, to the eastern sector of the city because that is where many Palestinians live. Even then, Israel has very strong historical, moral and religious claims to that sector — particularly to the Old City, which contains Judaism’s holiest site (the Western Wall) and where Jews lived for 3,000 years until the Jordanians in 1948 killed Jewish residents, evicted survivors and razed synagogues.

On second glance, though, last week’s Palestinian statement is par for the course — the course being denying Jewish claims to any place in Israel and falsifying history to suit the Palestinian agenda.
If, with Oslo and subsequent agreements, the Palestinians truly had opted to settle their grievances with Israel, why do the Fatah movement and the Palestinian Authority (to say nothing of even more radical organizations, such as Hamas) continue to utilize a logo that shows the entire territory of Israel as an undivided entity of Arab Palestine?

And what about last week’s Fatah pledge to “sacrifice victims” to seize Jerusalem? Supposedly, the Palestinians committed 16 years ago to forsake the armed struggle and terrorism, and instead settle all disagreements peaceably. So much for the worth of a piece of paper and a handshake. Do Jews pledge to “sacrifice victims” for territory or for any other purpose? No, because people who value life do everything to preserve life.

Governments of the world should do the right thing, and recognize the truth: that Jerusalem never has been more politically open and religiously free than under Israeli sovereignty the past 42 years. Because of the openness and freedom that Israel affords, Muslims bow down in the mosques on the Temple Mount, Christians pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Jews touch their hands to the kotel (Western Wall) whenever they so desire. Political correctness, fear of Muslim violence and belief in Palestinian entitlement are among the factors accounting for governments’ unwillingness to recognize the Jewish state’s utmost respect for religious freedom in Jerusalem and throughout Israel.
Governments also should recognize the fabrications inherent in the Palestinian narrative, of which last week’s statements were but the most recent. During the Camp David talks in 2000 — when Ehud Barak presented the Palestinians with a final-status deal that no sensible leader would reject, but that Yasser Arafat rejected — President Clinton was furious with Arafat. Why? Because he was disgusted by Arafat’s false claim that Jews never had a presence in Jerusalem and that the holy Jewish temples there never existed. Palestinians’ destruction of the Temple Mount’s archaeological finds that offer additional proof of Jewish history in Jerusalem similarly must be condemned.
In the Bible, G-d speaks of punishing the third and fourth generations for the sins of their fathers.
I never quite understood that threat. Now, I do. The maximalist offers of prior Israeli leaders only feed the maximalist ambitions of the Palestinians. Those approaches condemn both people to a deadlock  in negotiations for many years to come.

Tisha B’Av 2009

In Memory of Alan Stern and in Defense of the State of Israel
By Sarah N. Stern

After a long and heroic struggle with cancer, my husband’skid brother, Alan Stern, died on Wednesday. Twenty-five years ago, he was told that he only had six months to live. I remember riding with Alan, and his amazing wife, Annie, during those days after the initial diagnosis in our car back from the NIH, in Washington. Alan made a promise to his beautiful wife, Annie, back then, that they were going to go on and live a full a rich life together. They had one six month old child, then. He promised her they would have more children, take vacations together, and just squeeze the juice out of life.

Alan kept his promise to Annie. They went on to have two other amazing children he saw his eldest get married, he was made partner of his accounting firm, took numerous vacations, built a home and a really beautiful family. He refused to succumb until his youngest was a few months shy of 21.He raised another generation, three beautiful young sons.

When Alan was asked how he felt, even though we all knew he HAD to be feeling totally miserable, he would (usually), respond with “Ehh, Not so bad” When he got a bad report from a doctor, we knew he had to be scared, he would just raise his hands up and say, “Okay…here we go again.” When he was cut open, drugged and nauseous, we would come in, and he would greet us with the warmest, widest smile imaginable.

Alan Stern gave willingly and unquestionably to others, particularly toother cancer patients. One called him just the other week, right before Alan had been admitted to the hospital, telling him not to listen to the doctors when they say there is no hope. He was a veritable resource guide of options for the “next generation of chemo”. He did this, with absolutely no sense of personal gain, what-so-ever. But simply because it was the right thing to do.

And he was discerning in his treatment. He would not take the apricot pits or “snake oil” that phony cancer specialists were hacking.

When he was not being probed, poked, cut open and injected with chemotherapy, Alan enjoyed every single moment of those twenty five years. He loved his family and friends, and lived life to the gusto. Alan Stern taught us all how to live.

Alan and his brave fight to survive against all odds is analogous to that of the tiny, embattled state of Israel . Both share a sorry history pfthe many battles to destroy it. In Israel’s case,from the enemies outside and from the cancer of self doubt that has metastasized from within

Alan’s ceaseless giving to other cancer patients evokes the heroic efforts that Israel constantly undertakes to fly into regions of the world that have been struck with disaster and to provide emergency, humanitarian assistance. Many times the Israelis are forced to do this anonymously because the governments in the disaster-stricken areas will not even let them unfurl the Israeli flag. One thinks of the countless Israeli programs such as “Save a Child’s Heart Foundation” where primarily Arab and Muslim children who need sophisticated, cardiac surgery are flown into Israel without any cost and given sophisticated operations; of the open accessibility of Israeli medical care in the hospitals, no questions asked as to whether or not the patient is a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew, tthe multitude of Israeli high tehk strides an dmedical advancements that have been the product ofof Israeli laboratories that have been exported to save countless lives throughout the globe.

The joie de vivre that Alan had and that tiny, feckless nation has cannot be matched,anywhere in the globe. That is, when it is not being besieged by war, intifada, or duplicitous judgments of morality from the international community that nations would never apply to themselves, if they were living in similar situations. When not under siege, enjoying and celebrating life is something that most Israelis are masters at. Israelis have a joie de vivre that is unrivalled and a gust for life that is unrivalled, while its enemies have made a cult out of the deification of death and martyrdom.

And that is why we have to heed Israel’s warnings when it refuses to swallow the “snake oil” of a quick and instant peace, one that will be eradicated as soon as the ink on the paper is dry. The plan that is being discussed right now is the Saudi Plan. This plan would take Israel directly back to the pre-1967 borders, or the 1949 armistice lines, the borders that had been referred to by Ambassador Abba Eban as the “Auschwitz lines”.

This plan would leave Israel exactly nine miles wide in its narrowest wait. Bearing in mind the constant barrage of Kassam rockets that have been leveled against Israel from Gaza, onto the neighboring Israeli town of Sderot, can one wonder why Israel exercises caution in accepting it?
lessons of the Gaza withdrawal, when Israel made that internally gut-wrencging decision to evacuate every soldier, every settler, every last remaining outpost from Gaza, leaving behind millions of dollars in greenhouses to bequeath the nascent state of Palestine with an economic infrastructure that was later destroyed in hate-inspired frenzy of mayhem and anarchy.

The real cancer, the real root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with the shape and contours of the borders of the state of Israel, but is this constant and daily incitement to hate and to kill, coming out of the Palestinian and Arab media, textbooks, sermons from the mosques, and every means of communication possible.

As discerning as Alan was about his medical care, we have got to learn to be as discerning about what exactly is written on “peac”e initiatives and to listen to what tis being said to one another in Arabic, andt o discern the vast difference s from what is said to Western diplomats and journalists.

In the end, after a quarter of century of struggle,, Alan’s valiant little body was finally tired of fighting. Israeli society has plenty of those tired elements in the far left wing of it, (although not as many as during the Oslo years), who believe in the snake oil hackers of peace at any price. Their perspective has been so drugged by fatigue that they empathize more with Israel’s enemies that intend to eliminate the existence of the Jewish state then with its own valiant struggle to survive against all odds.

Unlike Alan’s cancer, the cancer of radical Islam is contagious. Each Israeli concession and withdrawal is something that every radical Islamist group draws encouragement and reinforcement from. Just look at what is written in Arabic on their own websites. And that is why, contrary to what many of the policy makers of te current administration might argue, each Israeli concession will not buy the love of the international community for America, but will simply encourage the radical sIlamist in his attempt for Islamic hegemony. As they write in Arabic on their own websites,” First the Saturday people; then the Sunday people.”

Alan Stern’s 54 year life taught us not to give up. In Alan’s memory, to nevergive up the fight for the state of Israel. We pledge to give heart to those living within Israel that they are not alone, to give a forum for Israel’s narrative that is constantly being drowned out in a deafening drumbeat of political correctness and moral relativism, so that the Israelis will not succumb to the all-too-predominant politics of fatigues and exhaustion. We will fight against the cancer of hatred and antisemitism that has metastasized not only around it, but, more virulently, the cancer of self doubt that has metastasized from within it.

A will to live and to a sense of moral clarity of the rightness of one’s cause is the sole antidote to this lethal cancer. We at EMET, will do our best to ensure that unlike Alan, Israel will survive, and when she eventually signs a peace treaty, it will not be a piece of paper that will be violated as soon as the ink is dry, but a peace that will endure for generations to come. Or else the cancer of radical Islam will set its sights on our very own shores, here in America.

UN: Israel Must Tear Down West Bank Barrier

Is the ICJ Guilty of Deliberate Fraud or Criminal Ignorance - or Both?
July 9, 2009 | Eli E. Hertz

In many respects, the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on Israel's security barrier does not deserve to be dignified by a learned rebuttal. The Opinion deserves the same treatment as another shameful United Nations' document which Israel's ambassador to the UN, the late Haim Herzog, publicly tore up from the dais in a demonstration of protest and repugnance, after the motion was passed - the 1975 General Assembly Resolution 3379 that equated Zionism with racism.

Nevertheless, the ICJ's opinion needs to be addressed not only due to the biased manner in which it weighed the 'evidence', but also due to the evidence it failed to examine - including a host of relevant UN documents. These documents are quoted selectively or totally ignored, while the Court's narrative of the conflict boldly rewrites history - recent and past, without so much as a blush.

The Opinion is so sloppy that it wants the reader to believe that the League of Nations document - the 1922 "Mandate for Palestine" that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - was the founding document for Palestinians' self-determination! It's not just that the members of the Court didn't do their history homework, but they didn't even bother to read the six-page legally binding "Mandate for Palestine" document, before authoritatively citing it as one of the cornerstones for Palestinian self-determination. In essence, the ICJ 'converted' the "Mandate for Palestine" from the machinery for creating a Jewish Homeland into a founding document for Palestinian Self-Determination. This single misstep of the International Court of Justice essentially rendered its own case null and void.

The Opinion is so biased that it found terrorist activities to be irrelevant in its judicial investigation. The ICJ that cites the Secretary-General's Report on the security fence as a key document and a major source of information for its opinion, skips the part of the same report where Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, cites: "After a sharp rise in Palestinian terror attacks in the spring of 2002, the [Israeli] Cabinet approved ... construction of ... [a security] Barrier." Not only does the UN Report label the Palestinian actions "terror" but it also clearly establishes, in its own words, the cause for building a security barrier.

The Advisory Opinion is so incompetent that it demonstrates a total disregard or a lack of understanding of the UN's own legal machinery by treating General Assembly Resolutions as a source of law. Highly qualified legal opinions by past members of the ICJ, including a past president of the Court, who have gone on record to underscore that General Assembly resolutions carry absolutely no 'legislative' power and cannot be used as a source of law, labeling such attempts: "illusion." Yet, this Court uses such GA resolutions to support its illusive conclusions. Professor Stephan M. Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice (1997-2000) has said that:

"The General Assembly of the United Nations can only, in principle, issue recommendations which are not of a binding character, according to Article 10 of the Charter of the United Nations."

Schwebel also cites the opinion of Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, a former member judge of the International Court, who declared on another occasion that:

"The General Assembly has no legal power to legislate or bind its members by way of recommendation."

The Opinion is so devious that it 'found' the need to selectively quote from the 1970 GA Resolution 2625: "Emphasized that 'No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.'" But the Court hides from the reader that the same Resolution subsequently clarifies that: "Nothing in the foregoing paragraphs shall be construed as enlarging or diminishing in any way the scope of the provisions of the Charter concerning cases in which the use of force is lawful." [E.E.H., such as in Self-Defence] "Furthermore, no one has taken the Court to task for the deceitful 'abridged' historical narrative they concocted which erases all references of Arab aggression during the British Mandate period (1922-1948), and through 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 as well as Israel's continuing fight of self-defence against Palestinian terrorism.

Another case of doctored use of historical documents: The Court states that Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) emphasized, among other things, the call for "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." The ICJ misleads the readers by simply removing from this principle the need, as stated in Resolution 242, for withdrawal to "secure and recognized boundaries" that will not invite future Arab aggression.

According to the PLO's legal advisor, the ICJ consciously sought to engage: "The United States in a tango of mutual deterrence" and "chart a path for the international community to counter the United States' veto power."

The Bench allowed its chambers to become a political instrument abandoning any semblance of fairness or professionalism, for political gain. The above examples are only the tip of the iceberg.

Matters of Trust
By Sarah N. Stern
June 228, 2009

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved”
-- George MacDonald

From the commitments exchanged between a man and his wife, to those that are exchanged between nations, trust is the cement that adheres all human relationships together. When assurances are given in good faith, the most valuable currency that could bind any commitment is not a signature on a paper, but a handshake, a look in the eye and a feeling of mutual respect and of trust.

Nations are simply aggregates of people, and what holds for any human relationship certainly holds for international relationships.

That is why I have been so profoundly dismayed to hear of comments by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which appear to run counter to the commitments that have been given to Israel under the Bush administration. These commitments were meant to reassure a loyal friend, a friend who has the most parallel voting record to that of the United States within the entire United Nations, a friend who lives in a very dangerous neighborhood, and a friend who was about to take an enormous and politically divisive risk for peace. When that friend, Israel, wanted to break the impasse in the negotiations with the Palestinians which had been a result of Israel’s unprecedentedly far-reaching offer that was made to the Palestinians on July 25, 2000 at Camp David II. Rather than saying either “yes” or “no”, Chairman Arafat simply walked away from the negotiating table. His response arrived the following September with a renewed round of violence, the second Intifada, which resulting in the loss of over one thousand innocent civilian lives, on both sides.

In the absence of a negotiating partner, in order to put an end to the violence once and for all, and to break the deadlock in the negotiations, Israel, at the end of 2003,arrived at the internally gut wrenching decision of unilaterally removing every last Israeli soldier and civilian from the Gaza Strip. In the summer of 2005, Israel made good on that politically explosive and brutally conflict-ridden decision. At the suggestion of the United States, Israel also removed some West Bank settlements and gave up her occupation of the Philadelphi Strip, a segment of land that sits between Egypt and Gaza, which has proven to be quite costly for her, in terms of Israeli lives, due to the huge network of underground tunnels and the smuggling operation between Egypt and Hamas.

On April 14, 2004, President Bush wrote a now famous letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The following are excerpts from that letter:

“The United States appreciates the risks such an undertaking represents. I therefore want to reassure you on several points.

First the United States remains committed to my vision and to its implementation as described by the roadmap, The United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan. Under the roadmap, Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel. The Palestinian leadership must act decisively against terror, including sustained, targeted, and effective operations to stop terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. Palestinians must undertake a comprehensive and fundamental political reform that includes strong parliamentary democracy and an empowered prime minister.

Second, there will be no security for Israelis or Palestinians until they and all states, in the region and beyond join together to fight terrorism and dismantle terrorist organizations. The United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible, borders and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or combination of threats.

The United States is strongly committed to Israel’s security and well being as a Jewish state.

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

President Bush closed his letter stating, “Mr. Prime Minister, you have described a bold and historic initiative, (i.e. the Gaza withdrawal), that can make an important contribution to peace. I commend your efforts and your courageous decision which I support. As a close friend and ally, the United States intends to work closely with you to help make it a success.”

In an editorial, in the Wall Street Journal on June 25, 2009, Elliott Abrams, Director of Middle East Affairs for President George W. Bush’s National Security Council from 2001 to 2009, writes, “On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some natural growth. Mr Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: “Israel will meet all of its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.”

Continues Mr. Abrams, “Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.” And, “Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed ‘agreed upon principles’. On August 21, 2004, the New York Times reported that “the Bush administration…now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward .”

Yet, Secretary of State Clinton stated on June 17 that “in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility.”

One might do well to ask who might be in a greater position of responsibility within the Bush administration, other than the Director of his Middle Eastern Affairs of the National Security Council.

But beyond that, why is there such an emphasis on the responsibilities that were incurred upon Israel, when according to the Roadmap there were two parties with two distinct sets of responsibilities? The critically important set of tasks that were placed upon the Palestinians do not appear to receive equal emphasis from the Secretary of State. It clearly states in the Roadmap that the “Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel’s right to exist n peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.”

This past week, I was on Capitol Hill with Eve Harow, a woman who lives in Efrat, a Jerusalem suburb just over the green line, who stated, “Whether or not thirty children were born five years ago in my community, and we will now need to have a kindergarten built for them, is not the critical factor that stands between us and a peace agreement with the Palestinians.”

Normal growth of a community does not kill. Incitement and terrorism does.

The critical factor that does stand between a real peace that will endure for generations, and one that will simply fade away as soon as the ink on the paper is dry, is the issue of incitement to hate and to kill. This is an issue that according to Phase One of the Roadmap, the Palestinian leadership was supposed to have taken care of long ago. Ideas precede conduct. No one is born wanting to strap a belt of dynamite around his waist and become a suicide bomber. That is counter-Darwinian. Palestinian children, have been exposed to a steady diet of incitement to hate and to kill, through the media, the textbooks, the sermons on the mosques, through every means of communication available. As President John F Kennedy, “Peace is not built around signed documents and treaties alone, but in the hearts and minds of the people.”

Israel has been offering valuable tangible currency, land, in exchange for the intangible promise of peace. A necessary prerequisite for Israel to ever be able to have a durable peace is the end of incitement as well as the trust that she will not be offering more strategic sacrifices on the alter of peace when she can not trust her strongest ally to even remember the assurances given her. As the maxim goes, “It takes years to build trust, and only seconds to destroy it.”

for Iran’s Military Dictatorship
By Clare M. Lopez
19 June 2009

With Iranians taking to the streets again by the hundreds of thousands, memories flash back to 1979, the last time that sheer mass of numbers fired with hatred of tyranny toppled an autocrat in Tehran. As the United States (U.S.) and the world stood by and watched, the people’s Revolution was stolen by brutal theocratic thugs intent on flinging Iran back to the 7th century even while arming itself with 21st century technology. Now, after 30 years of developing biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, wrecking every chance for peace between Israel and Palestinians, launching terror across the globe, and perpetrating a gruesome spectacle of atrocities against their own people, the aging mullahs clinging to their Khomeinist inheritance face a population on the edge of rebellion.

Few if any commentators, however, have noted that in the swirl of idealistic young students, restive ethnic minorities, and women determined to claim their equal place in Iranian society, what the cell phone cameras and Twitter Retwits cannot possibly capture is the crass corruption of both sides in this Persian putsch. To paraphrase Patrick Buchanan, it’s Rafsanjani’s boys versus Khamenei’s boys.
The blood-soaked rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini turned centuries of Shi’a tradition on its head with his Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Jurisprudent) ideology and imposed a moral code imported wholesale from the baking deserts of the Arab Bedouin. As Khomeini reminded his disillusioned co-revolutionaries, “this revolution was not about the price of watermelons.” Thirty years on, though, absolute power has corrupted absolutely, and what’s left of the Khomeini Revolution is all about the money and very little else.

Khomeini’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) now fights mostly to guard its financial empire. It’s the PTSD-addled survivors of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war who today pledge bayat to Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But aside from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, first selected as president in 2005, and his chiliastic coterie of Twelver well-watchers, many of the IRGC’s elite commanders are a lot more focused on expanding their personal net worth than they are the austere ideals of a bygone Revolution. It was not long after Khomeini passed on to face the torments of the grave that the IRGC began using force and intimidation to grab whatever financial assets it could get its hands on. As the years of the Rafsanjani presidency gave way to Khatami and eventually to Ahmadinejad, the IRGC grew both powerful and rich. These days, the Iranian press writes of men such as Sadeq Mahsouli and IRGC companies such as its engineering arm, Khatam Al-Anbia, which they say regularly receive no-bid contracts awards worth billions of dollars in the oil, gas, petrochemical, and infrastructure development sectors. Not satisfied with owning outright massive segments of the Iranian economy from banking and finance to manufacturing and the defense industry, the IRGC reportedly is involved in black market smuggling as well. Like Mahsouli, with his six mansions and a net worth estimated by Iranian media to be in the tens of millions of dollars, the IRGC has come a long way from the zealous religiosity of its wild-eyed origins.
With that economic clout has come an increasingly powerful position for the IRGC within Iran’s political leadership; calculated support from the Supreme Leader has enabled the IRGC to turn Iran into a military dictatorship, albeit one with a turban at the top. Not all the IRGC rank and file get to share in the lives of luxury enjoyed by its leading commanders, however, and this surely must be cause for resentment. Should Khamenei deploy the IRGC and its subordinate Bassij and Ansar-e Hizballah divisions onto the streets to confront the demonstrators as threatened, the commitment of those cadres to their corrupt leadership will take on a critical importance.

Besides the furious crowds, there is another element to this showdown, whose presence mostly behind the curtain of Iran’s public face veils its power. This element is comprised of a gang of clerical billionaires whose looting of Iran’s wealth has been no less rapacious than that of the IRGC. Led by former president and speaker of the Majles, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and fronted for this election by former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, this gang is fighting not just to defend its share of the Iranian pie from the IRGC maw, but for its very survival. These two gangs are like mafia families and to characterize the one as “moderate” or “reformist” and the other as “conservative” is to miss the point entirely. Neither gang has ever demonstrated the slightest inclination to anything remotely resembling representative governance that is responsive to its electorate. In any case, the entire electoral edifice in Iran is but a façade that bleeds off a bit of the suppressed steam from an oppressed population but in fact wields no real power against the system of clerical control that is enshrined in Iran’s constitution.

Exactly when or even if the Rafsanjani-Mousavi gang consciously decided to confront the IRGC gang via the mechanism of the always fixed and fraudulent electoral system or whether there was or wasn’t an understood deal with the Supreme Leader may be debated as may the question of whether they deliberately roused the fury of Iran’s youthful masses to serve their own ends. What is certain at this point is that from the capi to the fanti, these Mafiosi all miscalculated badly. With a population that is at least 60% under the age of 30, some 23 million Internet users, 7 million bloggers, and an untold number of Tweeters, Iran today cannot be controlled the way the rough-bearded revolutionaries of 1979 did it. Even though everyone in Iran knows the elections are rigged, the staggering brazenness of this year’s fraud took many by surprise. It was over the top and overnight served to transform a simple protest against election results to something far more serious for the Tehran regime. Whether Mousavi intended to topple a regime or not, he’s now leading a revolution. As Ambassador John Bolton put it on Fox News, “Mousavi stands at the Rubicon”.

But events on the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, and Shiraz are making his decision on whether to cross over that dividing line about as relevant as the hapless Obama administration’s faint-hearted reticence, gazing impotently from the sidelines as if at a football match while the Iranian people begin at last to stand up for their liberty. The Iranian Resistance is seizing the moment in defiance of the bloodshed already unleashed by a regime whose escalating threats to them signal desperation, not resolve: it has issued a seven-point manifesto that makes clear its objectives are nothing short of regime change. Among its demands are stripping both Khamenei and Ahmadinejad of power and formation of a new government headed by Mousavi.

The U.S. Congress at least has passed a resolution in support of the Iranian people’s battle for democracy and rule of law. Concern for the protesters is a laudable, if feeble, sentiment. But failure by the erstwhile leader of the free world to stand with the Iranian people as they stand up to tyranny bespeaks vacillation beyond mere concern about tainting the legitimacy of regime opponents or possessing the willpower to follow through. After all, leaders of the last student uprising in Iran, the one crushed by the so-called “moderate” president Khatami in 1999, now tell us they took renewed hope and found the strength to hold fast to their resistance even in their jail cells and under torture because they heard that the United States of America spoke up for them and their cause. Somewhere in Evin Prison today, young Iranian freedom fighters wait for that word of support. Withholding it on the advice of lobbyists more hopeful of future oil and business contracts than a liberated and democratic Iran will not save a corrupt regime or its Mafiosi challengers from the wrath of a people determined to be free.
##
Clare Lopez is the Vice President of the Intelligence Summit and a Professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence & Security Studies.

Missiles, Bombs and Tweets
By Sarah N. Stern, June 19, 2009

“Dictatorial regimes and their behavior are a phenomenon that must be confronted constantly... It is very important to explain and stress over and over again that people fighting for human rights are not doing this just for themselves, but they are opposing the humiliation of individuals wherever they may be”---Vaclav Havel, Former Czech President

At this point, we are still unsure whether or not the beautiful dissident struggle for increasing freedoms under the Iranian theocratic boot will flower like the orange revolution of the Ukraine in 2004 to 2005, or will be squelched like the pro-democracy movement of Tiananmen Square, China in 1989.

We know that the Iranian government has a Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij Militia and a vast army, and an arsenal of missiles, bombs and guns. Skulls have been crushed. People have begun to disappear from the streets. The demonstrators have simply their consciences, their yearning for freedom and their tweets.

We also know that the leader of the free world should be standing beside those who are struggling on the side of freedom. President Obama has begun slowly, after seven days of the dissidents courageously putting their very lives on the line, to utter some words of encouragement.. But if we do not stand on the side of freedom from repression, what is America all about? What sort of values do we represent if we descend to the least common denominator of governance, as though those
who rule with an iron whip for a despotic theocracy are on the same moral plane as those who struggle for democracy?

Part of the reason why it has seemed so difficult to have been able to have thrown his support behind those who truly yearn for feedom is that the academy has had a pernicious influence on the feeling of security with the American project.

American exceptionalism, being what President Reagan had stated was “that shining city on the Hill” is difficult to swallow together with those who have been products of our educational system for the last several decades where much of the academy has been imbued with a sense of American guilt over much exaggerated stories of colonialism and Western imperialism.

It is this sort of knee-jerk reaction that has led many liberals, who, ironically once represented the party of the little people and the under-dog, to try not to offend the very worst despots and dictators on the world stage. This impulse inhibits them from clearly being able to distinguish between good and evil. In an attempt to understand the world view of those who are clinging onto the reigns of
power today, theyare imbued with a sense of moral ambiguity at best, or insecurity and guilt over America’s past “sins” at worst. What has occurred therefore is a tacit affirmation of the status quo and a tepid and tardy display of support of those who represent the American core values of peaceful dissent and a yearning for democracy and freedom.

However, today, Friday June 19th, in an astonishing bipartisan act of political courage, the US Congress overwhelming passed a resolution in support of the Iranian Dissidents in a vote of 430 to 1. Chairman Howard Berman, (Democrat, California), and Ranking Minority Leader, Ileana Ros-Lehitnan, (Republican, Florida), are to be applauded for their wisdom in the language and for their successful stewardship of this through the House. This is a sure sign that the our American legislators have cast their lot with those who represent human rights and freedom over those who represent the crushing boot of oppression.

An Iranian dissident has just emailed me that he has had a call from inside Iran, pleading that the West know that this pouring out onto the streets is not about a mere election dispute. It is no
longer about simply ballot counting and rigged elections. Mousavi has become an icon of their general yearning for equality, freedom and democracy.

This whole revolution would not be possible had it not been for the generation who is using Twitter and Facebook and other devices to escape the brutal scrutiny of the authorities of the dictatorial Middle Eastern regimes.

One of my close Syrian friends, Ahad Al Hendi, had used the internet to blog against the government, but was discovered and turned in by the owner of the internet café. He was imprisoned and tortured, and upon release, our State Department helped him to gain political asylum within the United Sates. However, many of his friends have not been quite so lucky and are still rotting away in Syrian jails.

In EMET, we have made it a cornerstone of our philosophy to deal with brave Arab and Muslim dissidents ever since our inception. We nurture and value the friendships of those who have the wisdom to speak out against the dictatorial regimes where many of them have been raised. They have had the intelligence to penetrate through the hateful anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic propaganda that they had been schooled upon. We honor them on Capitol Hill, bring them into our homes to break bread, laugh and cry with them over personal events in their lives, and bring them to briefings with staffers on the Hill, so that they can relate to the human faces behind their suffering.

We are now working to strengthen the voice of the dissent inside Iran and the other repressive regimes of the Middle East, through the Cyber Dissident Project. Similar to the devices which have escaped the watchful eye of the Iranian regime, EMET will begin using twenty-first century technology to work in partnership with other NGO’s to promote and amplify the message of dissent, and to penetrate through the Middle Eastern Iron Curtain of hatred.

The Brutal Reality of the Middle East

By Sarah N. Stern

In the punishing sun of the Middle East one is often prone to seeing desert mirages. The climate of the desert is so much harsher than what we find it easy to wrap our minds around, here in the West. The average temperature in Riyadh in the summer is approximately 104 degrees. Without protection, one can easily be scorched.

The seventeenth century British philosopher John Locke felt that the underlying nature of mankind was essentially good and would be constrained by acts of conscience. His contemporary, Thomas Hobbes, famously argued that “life is nasty, brutish and short”, and that people were governed by essentially selfish motives.

Some of President Obama’s statements indicate he is seeing the Middle East through a Lockian view of mankind. However, Israel is forced to survive in what anybody who has followed the events in the Middle East over the past several decades would have to conclude is a Hobbesian neighborhood.

President Obama’s harsh rhetorical tone towards Israel marks a dramatic departure from every single president going back to Lyndon Johnson. The issue at hand is not about borders or settlements or even of the natural growth onto Israeli towns or neighborhoods, the issue is one of maintaining defensible boundaries and the necessary strategic depth for Israel to survive in the age of terrorists, rockets and ballistic missiles.

Seeing the empirical evidence of what has happened to Sderot and other towns of the Western Negav in the light of the Gaza withdrawal, where Kassam missiles are continuously raining down on its population, one would easily conclude that a post-West Bank withdrawal would be a very alluring target for terrorist groups, putting their cross hairs that within striking distance of every major Israeli population center. One attack on Ben Gurian Airport, which would be in easy striking range, could paralyze the country from further air transit and isolate it. Israel’s strategic deterrence would be eradicated, actually increasing the allure of attacks on a very narrow Israel with no strategic depth with which to defend itself.

President Johnson, in the wake of the 1967, Six-Day War seemed to understand this, when he said “an immediate return to the situation as it was on June 4th, before the outbreak of hostilities, “was not a prescription for peace, but for renewed hostilities” What was needed, he said were “recognized boundaries” that would provide “security against terror, destruction and war.”

President Ronald Reagan on September 1, 1982 ,most vehemently argued for Israel’s right for defensible borders when he remarked that “In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.”

President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Warren Christopher wrote at the signing of the Hebron Accords that “a hallmark of U.S. policy remains our commitment to work cooperatively to seek to meet the security needs that Israel identifies.” Adding, “Finally, I would like to reiterate our position that Israel is entitled to secure and defensible borders.”

Finally, in a letter from President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of April 14, 2004, after Prime Minister Sharon set out his Gaza Withdrawal Plan, President Bush wrote, “As part of the final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from the negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

If President Obama’s administration believes there is zero likelihood of renewed conflict in the Middle East, then perhaps it would be quite lovely or him to make a grand gesture on the back of Israel as a peace offering to the Arab world However, given the scorching climate within which Israel is forced to live, it is more than likely that the day after President Obama’s grand gesture is made, Israel and Israel alone, will be left out in the harsh desert sun to be scorched.

For a comprehensive discussion of this topic, and for all references, the author would like to refer the reader to the outstanding work of Dore Gold and Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs entitled, “Defensible Borders for a Lasting Peace”, which can be found at www.jcpa.org.

Hopes, Dreams and Nightmares
An Analysis of President Barack Obama’s Cairo Speech of June 5, 2009

By Sarah N. Stern and Kyle Shideler

President Barack Obama’s much anticipated Cairo speech had within it some high points and some rather disappointing ones. It carried a positive tone of respect to the Muslim world which can only help to build bridges and ease some unnecessary tension and several lofty universalist and humanist message that can only resonate well with anyone with a sense of the common thread of humanity and decency. However, there were also several deeply disturbing elements.

There are many conflicting narratives that are straining to be heard in the Middle East. In reaching out as strongly as he did to the Muslim world and glossing over many deeply troublesome issues, he seems to be signaling to all of us his desire to amplify the Arab narrative and to turn down the volume of the narrative of the small democratic state of Israel who has always shared a common value affinity with the United States, and who must live in a very tough neighborhood. This is deeply disturbing because in the international arena Israel and the United States have always had, with the exception of perhaps Micronesia, only one another to depend on. The worry is that this speech may be signaling an unwelcome bend in that long travelled road.

First the good news: President Obama spoke unapologetically of an America founded upon the ideal of equality, pluralism and tolerance. He spoke of his personal biography as someone with Muslim roots, and of the promise of opportunity that America holds for all.

Contrary to the worst fears of many, the President was clearly unapologetic in his defense of the security needs of Americans, promising to “relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security”.

The statements regarding the brutal reality of the Holocaust are welcome reality testers in a region that is replete with historical revisionism and Holocaust denial. Another critically important piece of reality that the President unequivocally stated was that “Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied”. As basic as this statement sounds, the fact that the leader if the most powerful nation in the world uttered in front of a Muslim and Arab audience it can only be of benefit in eradicating the fantasy that many unfortunately still harbor in that region of the world about Israel’s eventual destruction.
His statement that “Threatening Israel with destruction” or “repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong” can only help to cement in the minds of the Arab world that antisemitism is not tolerated within his administration and that Israel is not a phase to be wished away or vanquished, but is a reality that is here to stay.

Another piece of good news: The President clearly told the Palestinians that they must abandon violence that it is wrong, and has never succeeded as a tactic. (He failed to state however that it is morally wrong. Is it simply wrong because it never succeeds as a tactic? Was this an intentional act of omission, or what the State Department refers to as creative ambiguity?)

Another high note is that the President exhorted the Palestinians to develop its capacity to govern themselves and that Hamas must abandon violence, recognize past agreements and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

However, that takes us to the bad news, of which there is much. President Obama indicated a profound lack of understanding of history when he compared the struggle of Palestinians to that of the blacks within our own country. Black people never used terrorism against innocents in this country. In fact, both Fatah and Hamas with their constant incitement to hate and kill, using every means of communication necessary, ( including the media, textbooks and, sermons from the mosques) are more analogous to the Ku Klux Klan’s role in the black struggle for freedom within our own country. His use of the term “resistance” totally underscores his misconception that the Palestinian cause is a movement of freedom from oppression, when in fact, Christians and Arabs living in Israel are more free then in any Muslim Arab nation.

The President speaks of the “daily humiliations” of Palestinians living under occupation, totally forgetting the six opportunities offered to Palestinians to have their own state since the 1937 Peel Commission, if it meant that they would also have to accept the existence of Israel as a homeland for the Jews, up until the rejection by Yasser Arafat of the historic offer that was made to him on July 25, 2000 by Prime Minister Barak and President Bill Clinton.

That remarkable generous offer of shared sovereignty of Jerusalem, a return of all of the territories that Israel had captured in its defensive war of 1967, a re-absorption of thousands of refugees into Israel proper and a compensatory package of those that could not be absorbed was met with Arafat’s refusal to give a “yes” or a “no”, but simply walking away from the negotiating table. A few months later, his response came in the form of a renewed intifada which resulted in the loss of thousands of lives of thousands of lives.

If there were no terrorism, there would simply be no need for the “humiliation” of checkpoints or roadblocks, just as we would have no need to take off our shoes and wait on line to go through metal detectors in airports. Nor would there be a need for a security fence, which unfortunately reflects the reality of the tough neighborhood in which Israel is forced to live. It is an irrefutable fact that the erection of the security fence has resulted a great reduction in the amount of Israeli civilians killed by suicide bombings or stabbings.

When the President said that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” there is some degree of ambiguity in the sentence structure as to whether or not that means the construction of new settlements or that existing settlement blocks would have to be dismantled.

If it is the latter, then that reflects a total misreading of American policy heretofore. Since 1967, there has been an appreciation of the vulnerability of Israel’s 1949 armistice lines, an appreciation of how easily Israel could be overrun by rapidly shifting military and paramilitary forces and a recognition in successive American administrations that Israel must have “secure and recognized borders.”

In fact, in immediate days subsequent to the Six Day War, President Lyndon Johnson stated that “an immediate return to the situation as it was of June 4”,before the outbreak of hostilities was “not a prescription for peace, but for renewed hostilities.” He states that the old “truce lines”, (the 1949 armistice lines which had been the previous borders), had been “fragile and violated”. What was needed were “recognized boundaries” that would provide “security against terror, destruction and war.”
This sentiment has been expressed over and over again by countless administrations, including that of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George W. Bush.

In fact, in a letter of understanding of President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of April 14, 2004, the former president wrote, “As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light if new realities on the ground, including already existing Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

It would be rather astonishing, in light of the historic record, if the intended meaning of President Obama’s statement would be to dismantle all settlements that have been erected since 1967.
The most troubling aspect of the speech, however, was the facile glossing over the existential threat that the Iranian nuclear program holds not just for Israel, but for the Sunni nations in the region. As opposed to previous presidents, there was no demand to Tehran for the immediate halt in uranium enrichment or nuclear production activities. It almost seems that he is expecting an Iranian nuclear capacity as a fait accompli.

This attitude marks a stark departure from that of previous administrations, and may constitute an extremely troubling shift, one that neither Israel nor the Sunni Arab states can well afford to live with.

Speaking of Iran, there was absolutely no reference to the Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hizballah, as such, even though they are among the most destabilizing elements in the region.
His words unfortunately also reflect a basic lack of understanding regarding radical Islam, and at worst, an implicit, if unintentional, endorsement of the campaign of stealth jihad being promulgated by Islamists in the West.

Take for instance, President Obama’s very first paragraph, which contains an endorsement of the mission of Al Azhar University as a, “beacon of Islamic learning.” It is impossible to imagine that the President really intends to endorse the university whose grand sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi issued a fatwa that suicide-bombers are martyrs under Islamic Sharia law , or which considers fatwas on subjects such as whether “the source of all the existing pigs in the world is Jews, who were cursed by Allah.” So instead, President Obama is speaking, not of an Al Azhar University which exists, but rather as he imagines it exists, regardless of facts to the contrary.

This kind of cognitive dissonance runs throughout the length of the speech, particularly when President Obama discusses Islam.

Take for example, President Obama’s reference to the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli. The treaty was signed by a newly forged United States which was too weak to defend itself from the piracy of the Barbary States. The text of the treaty primarily consists of a guarantee by The Pasha of Tripoli of the typical rights and freedoms of the seas, in exchange for goods and cash. It is, essentially, an agreement by the United States, to pay the jizya, the Shariah law proscribed tax on non-Muslims in Muslim controlled land. What is perhaps even more ironic is that the treaty lasted only 6 years, before being abrogated by the Pasha of Tripoli after President Jefferson, (whose ownership of a copy of the Koran President Obama highlights) refused to pay increasing exorbitant tribute, leading to a series of Barbary wars finally ending with an American victory and the end of extortion in 1815.

President Obama would not be the first President to misuse a historical reference in his speech, but in doing so, he reveals the depths of his mis-education regarding the Islamic world’s relationship with the West. Further this flawed understanding, is the basis for the policies he puts forward in the remainder of the speech.

Obama’s self-appointed responsibility to fight “negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” seems to be taken directly from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting Bloc of the United Nations, which in the past several years has been working tirelessly to criminalize free speech, as it relates to analysis of the history and theology of Islam. Take for instance, this week’s condemnation by the Islamic states of U.N expert on the right to free expression by Frank La Rue. La Rue said, "Restrictions should never be used to protect particular institutions or abstract notions, concepts or beliefs, including religious ones…" The OIC, led by Pakistan, and the Africa Group, led by Egypt, slammed the report, for failing to report on “abuses of this freedom [of expression].” Rather than use his opportunity at Cairo to defend the Western concept of free expression, President Obama implicitly endorses the OIC effort to silence its critics.

And while President Obama points to America’s freedom of religious practice, he uses it to endorse a typical Council on American-Islamic Relations talking point that somehow, somewhere, women are being kept from wearing hijabs in America. The reality however, is that when such controversies have arisen, they’ve invariably been in places where all attire covering the head was prohibited, or where it interfered with identification for law enforcement or other purposes. The inclusion of this statement by the president is at best shameless pandering, and at worst, seeks to reinforce the very false perceptions of America Obama claims to desire to dispel. Nor is it the only case where the President avoided an opportunity.

President Obama cited the figure of 1,200 American mosques, but fails to note that at least 27% of them are controlled by the Wahhabist-funded, Muslim Brotherhood-linked, North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). The NAIT is an arm of the Islamic Society for North America (ISNA), an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful Holy Land Foundation prosecution. The ISNA was listed as a partner of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the now infamous Holy Land Foundation trail documents, in which the Muslim Brotherhood calls for a strategy of "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Of course, no pundits truly expected Obama to criticize the Muslim Brotherhood and its “sabotage” plot, in the same speech where U.S Officials allegedly insisted that M.B officials be allowed to make up part of the audience, according to Marc Ambinder of the news magazine, The Atlantic.

Perhaps the least noticed, but most egregious statement in this vein, comes from Obama’s proclamation that he is committed to improving American Muslim’s access to zakat, that is, charitable giving required under Islamic Shariah. The President appears to be asserting that some kind of substantial government action interferes with charitable giving by Muslims in the United States. The only government action which would appear to fit the bill, however, is the Treasury Department’s designation of several Islamic charities for contributing to the financing of terrorism, and the legal action taking by the justice department in terror financing cases, such as in the Holy Land Foundation trial mentioned early. The argument that these investigations are targeting innocent Muslims charities has been made, primarily by the same Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups listed as co-conspirators in the HLF case. Indeed, CAIR drew the same conclusion as to the meaning of Obama’s remarks as it praised the statement in a recent press release.

While it was heartening that President Obama brought up Human Rights and in particularly women’s rights during his speech, sadly the language did not go nearly far enough. Nowhere did President Obama address the wide spread practice of honor-killings in the Islamic world, which is now found even among immigrant communities in the West. As author and long-time feminist Phyllis Chesler wrote in the Spring 2009 Middle East Quarterly, “The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families. This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders. The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women's empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.

Indeed President Obama’s claim that some in the West consider women who cover their hair “less equal” makes a mockery of the work being done by advocates to protect women who have been murdered by their own families for failing to adhere to Islamic standards of dress or morality, such as the Canadian case of 16 year old Aqsa Parvez, strangled by her father for refusing to wear a hijab.

In conclusion, as a sermon from a preacher, the speech was soaring, full of humanistic hopes and egalitarian dreams. As a policy statement, it lacked meat on the bone, and what there was to chew on glossed over so many very real threats to Western civilization and the balance of power in the Middle East, that if translated into policy prescriptions, we may well be left with a nightmarish scenario with which to contend for many years to come.

In the June 4th speech in Cairo, President Obama spoke about the bonds America shares with Israel, saying:

“America's strong bonds with Israel are well known.This bond is unbreakable.It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”

Indeed, Israel is the United States' strongest ally in the Middle East, as reflected in how often the two countries vote the same way in the United Nations:

(Source: U.S. State Department, Voting Practices in the United Nations, 2008, via Michael Rubin at The Enterprise Blog.)

Dear Barack, do not reward terror with gifts

President Obama, Please Reconsider...

June 4, 2009 | Eli E. Hertz

Mr. President: On June 4, 2009 in a Keynote Address to the Muslim world delivered from Cairo you asserted that it is "undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland." You continued and claimed that "for more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation" and "daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation." You concluded by stating "let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own."

Mr. President: 61 years ago the Arabs in Palestine were neither hapless targets nor innocent bystanders. The human tragedy of being uprooted notwithstanding, the first stage of Israel's war of independence in 1948, was a fierce interethnic and anti-Zionist civil war in which the Arabs in Palestine were the aggressors and the initiators. Then came the all-out war and invasion of seven regular Arab armies whose participation the Arabs in Palestine engineered. There were 6,000 Israelis dead as a result of that 1948 war, in a total population of 600,000. One percent of the Jewish population was gone. In American terms, the equivalent is 3.0 million American civilians and soldiers killed over an 18-month period.

Mr. President: You speak about daily 'humiliation' of the Palestinian Arabs but ignore the real victims of Arab terrorism. In Israel, every Israeli is searched numerous times during the course of a day. Israelis are asked to open their bags and purses for inspection and in most cases are subjected to body searches with a metal detector every time they enter a bank or post office, pick up a bottle of milk at the supermarket, enter a mall or train station, or visit a hospital or medical clinic. Young Israeli men and women are physically frisked in search of suicide belts before they enter crowded nightclubs.

These ordinary daily humiliations extend to similar searches when Israelis go to weddings or bar mitzvahs. No one in the western world speaks of the humiliation that Jews in Israel are subjected to, having to write at the bottom of wedding invitations and other life cycle events, "The site will be secured [by armed guards]" - to ensure that relatives and friends will attend and share in their joyous occasion.

To date, no one protests the fact that, since the 1970s, Jewish schoolchildren in Israel are surrounded by perimeter fences, with armed guards at the schoolyard gates. Not one Arab village in Israel or the Territories has a perimeter fence around it. Guards are not required at Arab shops, cafes, restaurants, movie theaters, wedding halls or schools - either in Israel or in the Territories. Palestinian Arabs also do not need armed guards to accompany every school trip, youth movement hike or campout, as they are not targets of terrorism.

Israelis are told to disguise themselves when traveling abroad - not to speak Hebrew in public and not to wear garments that reveal their Jewish/Israeli origins. On the other hand, Arabs who frequent Jewish cities and towns in Israel wear their traditional Arab headgear without fear of being attacked or harassed.

In fact, Mr. President, the average Israeli is "humiliated and harassed" far more times a day than the average Palestinian Arab.

And as to the claim of occupation - the former president of the International Court of Justice, Professor, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel makes it clear:

"As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem."

Thank you for your attention.

Eli E. Hertz

Israel Fulfilled its Peace Commitment in 242
Eli Hertz

It Returned 90% of the Territories Gained in the Six-Day War

UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted on November 22, 1967, is the cornerstone for what it calls "a just and lasting peace" that recognizes Israel's need for "secure and recognized boundaries." The resolution became the foundation for future peace negotiations.

In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel fought off the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, gaining nearly 68,176 sq. km. of land. Since that time, in expectation for genuine peace, Israel relinquished a total of 61,360 sq. km. that represents 90% of the land gained in a defensive war imposed on Israel by its Arab neighbors' aggression.

The UN adopted Resolution 242 five months after the Six-Day War ended. It took that long because each word in the resolution was deliberately chosen, and certain words were deliberately omitted, according to negotiators who drafted the resolution.

The wording of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 clearly reflects the contention that none of the Territories were occupied territories taken by force in an unjust war.

Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, the former President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, stated after the Six-Day War ended:

"As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt."

Professor Eugene Rostow, then U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs and the former dean of the Yale Law School, went on record in 1991 to make this clear:

"Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces from territories it occupied during the Six-Day War - not from the territories nor from all the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

"Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from 'all' the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the 'fragile' and 'vulnerable' Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called 'secure and recognized' boundaries..."