Zionist Conspiracy

Lessons Of The Katyushas

By: Steven Plaut
People have very short memories. Most Israelis do not recall the
events that have led up to the rain of Katyushas and other missiles
upon Israeli civilians these past two weeks.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the terrorists. It
then continued to hold southern Lebanon as a buffer zone, to keep the
terrorists away from the border, in alliance with the South Lebanon
Army (SLA) militia, until the Israeli government under Ehud Barak
ordered the area turned over to the Hizbullah in exchange for…nothing.

In the late 1990's, some Israelis, led by the Labor Party, began
to turn against the government as Israeli deaths continued to mount in
the war of attrition in southern Lebanon between the IDF and the
terrorists. Meanwhile, the Israeli Left had undergone a process of
radicalization, in large part because of Lebanon.

What began as mere disagreement by the Left over tactical issues
in what had been regarded as an essentially just occupation of south
Lebanon morphed into an outburst of openly anti-Israel extremism.
Inevitably, the Labor Party joined the far left in demanding an
unconditional capitulation by Israel in Lebanon.

It was Labor prime minister Barak who in the summer of 2000
implemented the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli troops from
Lebanon. The withdrawing Israeli army abandoned the fighters of the
South Lebanese Army and their families to the mercies of Hizbullah.
Many SLA members were murdered.

Barak's withdrawal took place under fire, with Hizbullah and
others shooting at the retreating Israeli troops to demonstrate their
contempt and show the world that the cowardly Jews were being driven
out.

Barak's capitulation was a parody of Dunkirk. But the Israeli
chattering classes saw it as not only a great victory but as a
precedent for solving all the problems of Gaza and West Bank.

This writer, like many others, predicted for years that northern
Israel would be attacked by masses of missiles and that Israel would
be forced to invade and re-conquer south Lebanon, at a large cost in
Israeli lives, to drive out the terrorists Barak had installed there.

I also warned that when that happened, no southern Lebanese
Christian or Muslim, remembering how Israel had betrayed the SLA,
would believe any promises made by Israeli leaders. As a result,
Israel would have trouble finding local allies and informants.

It occurs to me that now would be as good a time as any to sum
up everything that has been learned in the past few weeks about the
Middle East conflict – that is, everything the Israeli government and
chattering classes refused to learn during the past two decades.

Here are 40 lessons from the Katyusha war on the Jews:

1. Nice fences do not stop missiles, rockets, and mortars.
2. Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish settlers from
an area merely signals Israeli weakness and invites escalated Arab
terror and aggression.
3. Hizbullah and Hamas cannot be defeated with air strikes.
There is no effective alternative to ground invasion and ongoing
Israeli military control of the ground.
4. Unless the Israeli military controls the ground on the other
side of fences, those fences achieve nothing.
5. Goodwill gestures by Israel increase terror.
6. Goodwill gestures by Israel never produce moderation of Arab
goals and demands, but rather the opposite.
7. Terror is not caused by settlements but by the removal of settlements.
8. Terror is not caused by Israeli military occupation but by
the removal of Israeli military occupation.
9. It is impossible for two sovereign entities to exist between
the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
10. No matter how many concessions Israel makes the world will
always justify Arab terrorism because there will always be still one
more capitulation Israel fails to make.
11. No matter how nice Israel is to its Arab citizens and no matter
how many affirmative action programs it implements, Israel will always
be accused of being an "apartheid regime."
12. The Israeli far left is an openly anti-Semitic movement that
seeks Israel's destruction and automatically endorses the enemies of
Israel in nearly all things.
13. The Israeli Labor Party and its Kadima cousin may be more
effective at fighting terror, once they decide to do so, than Likud.
If it were a Likud government fighting Hizbullah, the Israeli Left
would take to the streets in mass demonstrations against Israeli
"imperialism and war crimes" and the Israeli media would declare that
half a million protesters had turned out.
14. The real enemy of Israel is not Arab fascism but Jewish leftism.
15. Much of the world has no qualms seeing Jewish civilians murdered
by terrorists.
16. The Israeli Left will oppose every conceivable act of Israeli
self-defense.
17. Israeli niceness and flexibility fan anti-Semitism.
18. Arab terrorists do not morph into statesmen.
19. Israel bashers do not care about dead Arab civilians, other than
as a useful tool with which to bludgeon Israel.
20. Many on the worldwide Left would not raise an eyebrow if Israeli
Jews were shipped off to concentration camps in cattle cars – except
perhaps to demand improved rail service.
21. The vast majority of Israeli Arabs and nearly all Israeli Arab
politicians support terrorism and wish to see Israel destroyed.
22. There are hundreds of Jewish professors in Israel who serve as
an academic Fifth Column and who collaborate with the enemies of their
country.
23. The Arabs will not accept an independent Israel within any set
of borders, no matter how small. Hence reducing Israel's territory
does nothing but signal weakness and destructibility.
24. The only country on earth expected to respond to the mass murder
of its civilians by turning of the other cheek is Israel. The only
country on earth that has spent years trying to defeat aggression and
terrorism by turning the other cheek is Israel.
25. No matter how Israel responds to aggression and terrorism, it
will always be seen in many quarters as a "disproportionate" response.
The only "proportionate" response is complete capitulation.
26. Those who claim that anti-Zionism is different and distinct from
anti-Semitism tend, on close inspection, to be anti-Semites
themselves.
27. The only people on earth whom the Left believes should be denied
the right to self-determination and self-defense are the Jews.
28. "Palestinians" are not a nation in any true sense of the term
and never were. They are simply Arabs who happened to migrate to
Western Palestine. They have no "right" to statehood.
29. Israeli leftists, rather than learn from the failures of their
policies and "ideas," complain that their policies are not applied
thoroughly enough.
30. The moral and legal responsibility for every single Arab
civilian killed or injured in the Middle East conflict rests squarely
on the shoulders of the Arab terrorists.
31. There is no moral or legal reason for Israel to refrain from
attacking terrorists and murderers when they hide among civilians.
32. Too many of the "anarchists" and others who protest against
Israel's security wall want the wall removed because they want
terrorists to murder Jewish civilians.
33. Palestinians are the Sudeten Germans of the Middle East.
34. There are no non-military solutions to the problem of terrorism.
35. One can only make warwith one's enemies. One can only make peace
with one's defeated enemies.
36. There are no significant differences between the agenda of the
PLO and the agenda of Hamas and Hizbullah.
37. One cannot make peace by pretending that war does not exist.
38. One cannot buy off anti-Semites and Islamofascists with trade
concessions and subsidies.
39. The only way to stop terrorism is to kill terrorists.
40. No terrorist has ever murdered anyone after he was executed.

http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18973/Lessons_Of_The_Katyushas.html

1. Yes, anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism!
http://hnn.us/articles/28503.html
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: The Link
By Diana Muir
Ms. Muir is the author of Reflections in Bullough.s Pond: Economy and
Ecosystem in New England. The working title of her current project is:
What Good is a Nation; A Clear-Eyed Look at Nations and Nationalism.

This week, the Spanish Foreign Minister felt compelled to defend Prime
Minister Zapatero from charges of anti-Semitism.

Zapatero had donned the black-checked keffiyeh that is the symbol of
Palestinian determination to destroy the Jewish State and criticized
Israel for using .abusive force that does not protect innocent human
beings..1

It was all too familiar.

On any given day one can find some eminent European . a university
professor, high-ranking churchman, a parliamentarian . gravely explaining
to reporters that harsh and disproportionate criticism of Israel is not
anti-Semitic.

And their protestations sound plausible. After all, this is not your
grandfather.s anti-Semitism. Israel.s highly-educated critics do not
refuse to dine in restaurants that serve Jews, use epithets like .kike,.
or believe that Jews control the international financial markets and are
more likely than others to engage in shady business practices.

At least that is what I assumed until someone did the study.

Two Connecticut professors got curious about the constant denials that
extremely harsh critics of Israel were anti-Semitic. Edward H. Kaplan, the
William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences, and
Charles A. Small, Director of Urban Studies, Southern Connecticut State
University, decided to examine the issue in formal way. Their paper,
.Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe,. appears in the
August issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution. 2

Kaplan and Small ask whether individuals expressing strong anti-Israel
sentiments, such as the statement by Ted Honderich, Emeritus Grote
Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College
London, that .those Palestinians who have resorted to necessary killing
have been right to try to free their people, and those who have killed
themselves in the cause of their people have indeed sanctified
themselves,. are more likely than the general population to also support
in such old-style anti-Semitic slurs as .Jews have too much power in our
country today..

The correlation was almost perfect. In a survey of 5,000 Europeans in ten
countries, people who believed that the Israeli soldiers .intentionally
target Palestinian civilians,. and that .Palestinian suicide bombers who
target Israeli civilians. are justified, also believed that .Jews don.t
care what happens to anyone but their own kind,. .Jews have a lot of
irritating faults,. and .Jews are more willing than others to use shady
practices to get what they want..

The study.s other interesting finding was that only a small fraction of
Europeans believe any of these things. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
flourish among the few, but those few are over-represented in Europe.s
newspapers, its universities, and its left-wing political parties.

For Americans who do not read the European press, the level of raw
anti-Semitism in European intellectual circles can be shocking.

A couple of years ago the French Ambassador at the Court of St. James,
Daniel Bernard, told his companions at a London dinner party that Israel
is a .shitty little country,. .Why,. he asked, .should the world be in
danger of World War Three because of those people?.3

Those people? Moderates heard echoes of old-fashioned anti-Semitism. But
the French Foreign Ministry stood behind their ambassador, calling
assertions that Bernard.s remarks were anti-Semitic "malevolent
insinuations."4

The British press agreed. Columnist Deborah Orr defended Ambassador
Bernard in the Independent. .Anti-Semitism is disliking all Jews,
anywhere, and anti-Zionism is just disliking the existence of Israel and
opposing those who support it,. explained Orr, who holds .the honest view
that in my experience Israel is shitty and little..5

Columnist Richard Woods summed up the attitude of the European
intelligentsia when he wrote that Ambassador Bernard.s remark was only
.apparently anti-Semitic..6

Kaplan and Small have shown otherwise. When you read, for example, the
opinion of Marc Gentilli, president of the French Red Cross, that the idea
of allowing Israel to join the International Red Cross and use the Star of
David on its ambulances is .disgusting,.7 you can be pretty sure that he,
along with Ambassador Bernard, Prime Minister Zapatero, President Chirac,
and the rest of Europe.s harsh critics of Israel, are very probably the
kind of old-fashioned anti-Semites who just don.t like Jews very much.

1 .Spanish Minister Objects . Says Criticism of Israel Not anti-Semitic.
International Herald Tribune, July 20, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/20/news/spain.php

2 Kaplan, Edward H. and Small, Charles A., .Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts
Anti-Semitism in Europe,. Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 50 No. 4,
August 2006, pp. 548-561 PDF

3 Tom Gross, . .A Shitty Little Country,. Prejudice and Abuse in Paris and
London,. National Review, Jan 10, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml

4 ..Anti-Semitic. French Envoy Under Fire,. BBC Dec. 20, 2001
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1721172.stm

5 Deborah Orr, .I.m fed up being called an anti-Semite,. Independent,
December 21, 2001, cited in Tom Gross, . .A Shitty Little Country,.
Prejudice and Abuse in Paris and London,. National Review, Jan 10, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml

6 Richard Woods in the, .When silence speaks volumes. London Sunday Times,
December 23, 2001, cited in Tom Gross, . .A Shitty Little Country,.
Prejudice and Abuse in Paris and London,. National Review, Jan 10, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml

7 Davis, Avi, .A Star-Crossed Resignation,. Washington Times, Jan 2, 2002,
http://www.mideasttruth.com/mda2.html

2. National Review Declares: Bibi saw it coming:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDliYjYwM2MyZDJjNjRmMzNkYWEzODI0ODdjNWY0NzQ=

3. http://hnn.us/articles/28321.html
Axis of Hypocrisy.Russia, US, UK, Italy, France Urge Israeli Restraint
By Edward Olshaker

4. Noam Chomsky Celebrates the Hezbollah:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=11&x_article=1151

5. Fighting Amalek:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13938178/site/newsweek/

6. What innocent Lebanese civilians?
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dershowitz22jul22%2C0%2C7685210.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

7. Think Chomsky will attend?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060722/wl_nm/cambodia_rouge_dc

8. Treason Chic - the Jews for a Second Holocaust are already out with
their banners:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3279792,00.html

9. Israel's film producers are the closest thing the Hezbollah has to a
fan club in Israel. Ynet has an expose of these critters here
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3279357,00.html
alas in Hebrew only.

In an open letter, dozens of these "film producers" expressed their
support for Lebanese and Palestinian terrorism against Jews. They wrote
it just in time for an Arab film festival about to open in Paris.

The YNET piece has 1600 talkbacks at the moment and almost all of them are
denouncing these moonbats as traitors, while some are proposing to do
things to these traitors that could not be shown in a PG film.

1. While katyushas rain down on Israel, Ran HaCohen from the literature
department at the University of Tel Aviv has been busy celebrating and
promoting the Hizbollah. Think I am kidding? Here is HaCohen singing
the praises of the Hizbollah:
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h081303.html . The web site in question,
antiwar.com, is a neo-nazi web site that also promotes the "theory" that
the Jews were behind the 911 attacks on the US.

Notice the bio on the right of that page,
where HaCohen brags of his being on the faculty of Tel Aviv University.
This piece was very widely reprinted, such as here -
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/HaCohen_Hizbollah.htm
and on many other anti-Semitic web sites enjoying the notoreity of an
Israeli celebrating the Hizbollah.

If you are upset that TAU has someone on its faculty promoting the
Hizbollah, why not tell the heads of TAU how you feel?
They can be reached via the information here:
Tel Aviv University:

President: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html

Rector: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html

Officers: http://www.tau.ac.il/officers-eng.html

Friends and Alumni Associations: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html

Public Affairs: http://www.tau.ac.il/affairs-eng.html

2. A couple of days back, al-Jazeera ran a special on defending Hezbollah
and attacking Israel. One of those featured in the special was Haaretz
columnist Gideon Levy, who defending Hezbollah and attacked Israel.

3. An End to Peace thru Fantasizing?

The dangerous fantasy of peaceful Arab intent
Full story:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003138455_alexander20.html

By Edward Alexander
Special to The Times

The two-front war launched against Israel by the Hamas and Hezbollah
branches of the worldwide Islamic fascist movement -- the same folks who
brought us the recent Bombay massacre, to say nothing of 9/11 and the
London Underground abattoir of last summer -- has shattered many lives,
and will undoubtedly destroy many more.

Is there any hope that it will also shatter illusions tenaciously held by
accredited experts on the Arab-Israeli "conflict" (more accurately called
the Arab -- also Iranian -- war against Israel)?

For nearly 40 years, academic Middle East experts and State Department
inventors of quixotic "peace plans" have insisted that Israeli occupation
of "Arab lands" causes Arab hatred and terror and is the "root cause" of
the conflict; end the occupation, they have always said, and all will be
well.

How, then, is it that, starting the very day after its withdrawal from
Gaza last year and six years after its unilateral retreat from Lebanon,
Israel is under attack from both those places?

Would it not be closer to the truth to say that terror is caused far less
by Israeli military occupation than by the removal of that occupation?

Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish residents from an area
achieves nothing except to invite greater terror and aggression from
people who use every meter of land they control not to build their own
state but to destroy an existing state.

This is why the idea -- promoted by virtually every recent American (and
Israeli) administration -- of two sovereign entities, Jewish and Arab,
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is dangerous fantasy.

What, except historical amnesia, could have made the experts forget that
it was Arab hatred and aggression that led, in 1967, to occupation, and
not occupation that led to Arab hatred and violence? For 19 years,
starting in 1948, the Arabs had full possession of the "West Bank," theirs
to do with whatever they chose, and -- as always -- what they chose was
not an independent Palestinian state but incessant terrorist attacks on
Israel.

Fences afford Israel only temporary and partial protection; they cannot
keep out rockets and missiles, such as have been raining down on Israeli
towns in the south of the country ever since Hamas won the election in
Gaza (a voting result that could have come as a surprise only to the
experts, including Condoleezza Rice). Unless Israel controls both sides of
its borders, it can have no security against invaders bent on raw murder.

Can anything positive emerge from the current carnage? Perhaps. Since
Hezbollah has over the years killed hundreds of Americans (most notably
the Marines in Lebanon) without ever paying a price, its destruction by
Israel would constitute a major American victory; the same may be said of
Hamas, whose agents of mass murder are already operating in America.

Perhaps the incessant nattering about "the occupation" will finally give
way to a recognition that the real "root cause" of Middle Eastern wars is
a genocidal Islamicist culture, which must be uprooted by a process
roughly akin to the denazification of Germany after World War II.

Perhaps the Israeli politicians who were so proud of their flight from
Lebanon and Gaza will conjure the ghost of Winston Churchill rebuking
arch-appeaser Neville Chamberlain: "You were given the choice between war
and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."

Perhaps -- but maybe this is too much to hope -- even our Middle East
experts in this country (who bear a large portion of responsibility for
our mental unpreparedness for 9/11) will be subject to liability laws for
scholarly malpractice of the sort that have long been in place for medical
malpractice.

Edward Alexander is emeritus professor of English at the University of
Washington and co-author (with Paul Bogdanor) of "The Jewish Divide Over
Israel: Accusers and Defenders" (Transaction Publishers).

4. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot19jul19%2C0%2C3628616.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
Max Boot: Let Israel Take Off the Gloves
The true sources of terrorism need to be confronted; Syria would be a good
start.
July 19, 2006

5. http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il.
Why Ground Offensive?! Yoram Ettinger, Ynet, July 18, 2006

6. A new grad from the University of DUH?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740429.html

7. http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/23873/the-lebanese-really-blame-hezbollah.thtml
The Lebanese really blame Hezbollah
Michael Young

8. Israel's 1982 Invasion:
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107945

9. The Enemy is Iran:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=6398

10. The David Duke Left:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23466

1. All together now! To the tune of 'Tis the season to be jolly
Deck Beirut with bombs, by Golly
NasraLlaLa La La La Lala La
'Tis the napalm makes us jolly
FadlaLlaLa La La La Lala La
2. As many of you know, I wrote a biography about a Bedouin scout in Israel. He called us yesterday to check that we are all ok. Seems a katyusha landed in his own back yard - no one hurt and no damage.
3. http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18908/Why_The_Left_Hates_Israel.html
Why The Left Hates Israel
By: Vasko Kohlmayer
Few facets of today.s politics are more obvious or more startling than the Left.s hatred of Israel. Be it the United Nations, elite universities or The New York Times, the Left unashamedly uses its institutions as forums from which to conduct its relentless campaign of vilification.
What makes the Left.s behavior especially puzzling is that it runs counter to one of its supposedly most cherished principles . concern for oppressed minorities. Its opprobrium of the country sheltering a group that has been persecuted longer, more unjustly and more cruelly than any other thus presents a seemingly irreconcilable contradiction.
To see what.s behind it, we need to begin with the Left.s overall disposition, which is one of entrenched anti-westernism. Making no secret of its contempt for the West.s traditions, values and achievements, the Left is as much offended by the West.s Judeo-Christian religion as it is by its moral code. The Left deems the West.s cultural triumphs no more unique than those of other societies and sees its past as little more than a story of oppression, exploitation and ignominy. And the Left despises free market capitalism . our socio-economic foundation . which it claims to be exploitative, unfair or worse.
The Left does not confine itself to criticism, but also expresses itself in practical action. These efforts take place on two fronts. Internally, it seeks to undermine the West by corroding its values and institutions. Externally, it renders assistance to its enemies which is why, for instance, many on the Left sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Belligerent and armed, the Soviets vowed to consign the West to the abyss of history and large numbers of leftists relished the prospect. Needless to say, the collapse of the Soviet Empire came as a bitter setback.
Then, on 9/11, radical Islamists burst on the scene. Their attacks and subsequent statements left no doubt that their goal was the West.s destruction. Perceiving a unique opportunity, the Left sprang into action and since then has done all it can to undermine our ability to prosecute the war. Impugning the president, attacking our military, calling for the closure of detention centers and outing secret programs are all part and parcel of this effort.
Intent on using Islam as a battering ram against the West, the Left has pressed on with hopeful zeal, for the terrorist attacks in America and Europe revealed just how vulnerable we are. Even more significantly, most Western nations are quite obviously unwilling to defend themselves and they castigate the one country willing to confront the threat head on. The West has shown itself weak and vacillating, and there is indeed much reason for optimism as far as the Left is concerned. The Left.s hopes, however, are being seriously threatened from an unexpected quarter: Israel.
The Islamic movement derives much of its impetus from the belief in the coming of a worldwide caliphate which, most Muslims believe, is ultimately destined to rule this earth. One of the great obstacles on the road to this vision is Western civilization, which will have to be overcome if Islam is ever to reign supreme.
Given the West.s economic and military superiority, conquering it is a task whose magnitude could easily discourage even the most ardent believers. In order to shore up the fighting spirit of their followers and unleash their destructive passions, Islamic ideologues employ a two-pronged strategy. They portray the West not only as a beehive of godless infidels, but also as a decadent, corrupt, depraved and dysfunctional culture. This ensures that many are driven to jihad as much by their outraged moral sensibilities as by a desire to bring about Allah.s kingdom and securing their place in paradise should they die on the way.
But this strategy of vilification has one profound weakness. It is based on lies.
Nothing makes this more obvious than the State of Israel, a flourishing Western-type democracy in the heart of the Middle East. Decent, just and fair, the country.s mode of existence is completely at variance with Islam.s claims about the West.s inherent wickedness. Furthermore, Israel.s success and prosperity accentuate the backwardness, poverty and stagnation of the Islamic regimes themselves.
Israel thus puts the lie in devastating fashion to Islam.s claims about the West while throwing into sharp relief the depth of its own failures. Situated right in their own backyard, the Jewish state continually threatens to expose Islamic ideologues for the demagogues they are in the eyes of the very populations they seek to manipulate.
This in turn poses a grave danger to radical Islam itself, because once it is shown for a fraud in its own hotbed of the Middle East . the place from which it draws much of its impetus and energy . it may as well abandon its aspiration of ever becoming a force that can seriously challenge the West.
This possibility alarms the Left deeply. Having enlisted Islam as its closest ally in the anti-Western crusade, the Left naturally wants it to remain as strong and robust as possible. By undercutting the viability of radical Islam, Israel thus endangers the Left at the point of its ultimate hope and desire . the West.s destruction. Only when we grasp this will we understand the true reasons for the Left.s bitter dislike of the Jewish state. The Left.s virulent attacks on the country that is home to a long-persecuted minority will then no longer seem so bewildering.
One of the Left.s most salient characteristics is that its concern for the causes it outwardly espouses extends only insofar as those causes further leftist objectives, which, in the case of minorities, is the weakening of Western culture through balkanization. The moment a minority happens to benefit the Western cause . as Israel does in this clash of civilizations . the Left not only abandons it, but turns against it with a vengeance.
There can be little doubt that the elimination of Israel is what the Left is ultimately after. Statements by many of its spokesmen make this amply clear. Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and their ilk speak of Israel as a land whose malignant influence can only be checked by severe measures. And the liberal elites throughout the West back that kind of rhetoric with action. In a gesture so twisted as to defy belief, it awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to a terrorist who had devoted his life to Israel.s obliteration.
The United Nations, the Mecca of the international Left, passes resolution after resolution condemning Israel while turning a blind eye to the barbarism of its enemies. Attempting to force terms that would make its survival untenable, the UN tries to box Israel into a position from which it would be unable to defend itself. At the same time, the Left.s media organs put out editorial after editorial castigating Israel.
Few examples better reveal the Left.s duplicity than its stance on Israel, a country whose only offense is that it is a successful practitioner of the Western tradition. A Western outpost in the very heart our enemy.s base, the Jewish state is a crucial battleground in this war of civilizations. And the Left, fully cognizant of its seminal importance, is doing all it can to tear it down.
As the West.s strategic ally, Israel must not be abandoned if we are to emerge victorious from the life-and-death conflict in which we are currently engaged. But there is another, equally important, reason why Israel must survive. An enlightened and decent country, its demise would be a tragic setback not only for Jews but for all who fight on the side of humanity and enlightenment against terror, fanaticism and darkness.
Vasko Kohlmayer defected from Communist Czechoslovakia at the age of 19. He lives in London and can be contacted at vasko_kohlmayer@msn.com.
4. Hizbollah is Here:
http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin071906.php3
5. Richard Cohen's parents made a very serious mistake. Why did they not pull out?
http://netwmd.com/blog/2006/07/19/737#more-737
6. Only at Counterpunch. The Cockburn-Cockroach Jonathan Cook, an anti-Semite that Israel for some reason has not arrested nor deported, sits in Nazareth and spews out neo-nazi propaganda. In his latest, http://counterpunch.com/Cook07192006.html, he takes Israel for task in using Arab towns in the Galilee as human shields. I guess he means rather than treating them in a more humane manner and expelling their inhabitants altogether?
7. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23448
Leftists: Born to Run
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com July 20, 2006
I knew the events in the Middle East were big when the New York Times devoted nearly as much space to them as it did to a New York court ruling last week rejecting gay marriage.
Some have argued that Israel's response is disproportionate, which is actually correct: It wasn't nearly strong enough. I know this because there are parts of South Lebanon still standing.
Most Americans have been glued to their TV sets, transfixed by Israel's show of power, wondering, "Gee, why can't we do that?"
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says that "what's going on in the Middle East today" wouldn't be happening if the Democrats were in power. Yes, if the Democrats were running things, our cities would be ash heaps and the state of Israel would have been wiped off the map by now.
But according to Dean, the Democrats would have the "moral authority that Bill Clinton had" . no wait! keep reading . "when he brought together the Israelis and Palestinians." Clinton really brokered a Peace in Our Time with that deal . "our time" being a reference to that five-minute span during which he announced it. Yasser Arafat immediately backed out on all his promises and launched the second intifada.
The fact that Israel is able to launch an attack on Hezbollah today without instantly inciting a multination conflagration in the Middle East is proof of what Bush has accomplished. He has begun to create a moderate block of Arab leaders who are apparently not interested in becoming the next Saddam Hussein.
There's been no stock market crash, showing that the markets have confidence that Israel will deal appropriately with the problem and that it won't expand into World War III.
But liberals can never abandon the idea that we must soothe savage beasts with appeasement . whether they're dealing with murderers like Willie Horton or Islamic terrorists. Then the beast eats you.
There are only two choices with savages: fight or run. Democrats always want to run, but they dress it up in meaningless catchphrases like "diplomacy," "detente," "engagement," "multilateral engagement," "multilateral diplomacy," "containment" and "going to the UN."
I guess they figure, "Hey, appeasement worked pretty well with ... uh ... wait, I know this one ... ummm ... tip of my tongue...."
Democrats like to talk tough, but you can never trap them into fighting. There is always an obscure objection to be raised in this particular instance . but in some future war they would be intrepid! One simply can't imagine what that war would be.
Democrats have never found a fight they couldn't run from.
On "Meet the Press" last month, Sen. Joe Biden was asked whether he would support military action against Iran if the Iranians were to go "full-speed-ahead with their program to build a nuclear bomb."
No, of course not. There is, Biden said, "no imminent threat at this point."
According to the Democrats, we can't attack Iran until we have signed affidavits establishing that it has nuclear weapons, but we also can't attack North Korea because it may already have nuclear weapons. The pattern that seems to be emerging is: "Don't ever attack anyone, ever, for any reason. Ever."
The Democrats are in a snit about North Korea having nukes, with Howard Dean saying Democrats are tougher on defense than the Republicans because since Bush has been president, North Korea has "quadrupled their nuclear weapons stash."
It wasn't that difficult. Clinton gave the North Koreans $4 billion to construct nuclear reactors in return for the savages promising not to use the reactors to build bombs. But oddly, despite this masterful triumph of "diplomacy," the savages did not respond with good behavior. Instead, they immediately set to work feverishly building nuclear weapons.
But that's another threat the Democrats do not think is yet ripe for action.
On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Sen. Biden lightly dismissed the North Koreans, saying their "government's like an eighth-grader with a small bomb looking for attention" and that we "don't even have the intelligence community saying they're certain they have a nuclear weapon."
Is that the test? We need to have absolute certainty that the North Koreans have a nuclear weapon capable of hitting California with Kim Jong-Il making a solemn promise to bomb the U.S. (and really giving us his word this time, no funny business) before we . we what? If they have a nuclear weapon, what do we do then? Is a worldwide thermonuclear war the one war Democrats would finally be willing to fight?
Democrats won't acknowledge the existence of "an imminent threat" anyplace in the world until a nuclear missile is 12 minutes from New York. And then we'll never have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so," because we'll all be dead.
8. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23446
The End of Israel's "Peace Through Weakness"
By Michael Reagan
FrontPageMagazine.com July 20, 2006
(let us hope he is correct)
9. Presbs back off, for now:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23439
10. Jihad at U-Wisconsin
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23450
11. Ayn Rand Institute Press Release
http://www.aynrand.org/
Israel Should Wage a Real War
July 19, 2006
Irvine, CA--What will it take for Israel to wage a real war? How many more Israelis will have to be murdered, kidnapped, or maimed?
Israel says the killing and kidnapping of Israelis by Islamic terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas are acts of war. But is Israel prepared to wage a real war in self-defense?
Hezbollah and Hamas have been launching attacks against Israelis for decades--yet Israel has not used its military capability to inflict massive destruction on these groups and obliterate the terrorist states that harbor and sponsor them.
"It is long past time for Israel to wage a real war against these terrorist groups and states," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"And it is long past time for the United States to join Israel in waging this war."
### ### ###
Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle-East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle-East issues. Dr. Brook has served in the Israeli Army Intelligence and has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News (The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN's Talkback Live, CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money, and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.
To book Dr. Brook for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550 ext. 213 (office)
949-838-5137 (cell)
media@aynrand.org
Copyright 2006 Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.
12.
Subject: "I was BANNED from a "pro-Israel" rally!
I am very disappointed in my fellow Jewish people this evening, as I printed out hundreds of fliers (on my own time and dime) and I went to a "Rally for Israel" here in Dallas today. I expressed my intentions prior to the "rally" to some of its organizers beforehand, and no one told me I had to get some sort of approval to hand out a sheet of paper with words on it.
After I shared the flier with some of the organizers and while waiting for "rally" to end, many of them approached me to tell me I could not hand out the flier. I said that I was waiting for it to end so I could hand it out as people were leaving. They told me I could not be on the premises distributing it because it was not "pre-approved," and if I gave them a hard time, they'd get the police involved. So I stood outside the property (just outside the main parking lot) and waited for the few people trickling down into that direction to leave and handed them the following words:
B'H
LEBANON RETREAT = TERROR IN THE NORTH
GAZA RETREAT = TERROR IN THE SOUTH
WEST BANK RETREAT = TERROR IN THE MIDDLE
i.e. JERUSALAM AND TEL AVIV
We support Olmert.s military self-defense.
We can no longer tolerate giving .land for terror..
Olmert is planning to retreat from the West Bank.
The West Bank to the north of Jerusalem is elevated ground in the heart of the country.
It will make the terror from the north and south seem minimal.
Members of large Jewish organizations,
tell your leaders to tell Olmert...
"The Convergence/Realignment Plan" = National Suicide"
13. Aussie for Terror:
http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=1515&ICJS=1883&article=953

1. The UN-solution by the Unintelligent
The West and Israel's leftists are already bandying around a new pusillanimous "solution" for Lebanon - turn southern Lebanon over to the UN, which will patrol it and keep the terrorists under bay. Sure they will.
The only problem is - the UN already is there, has oodles of troops there, and they have yet to stop a single rock being thrown at Israel, let alone a katyusha missile! Actually, more often that not they collaborate with the terrorists!
Fool us once, shame on you; fool us again, shame on us for not jailing the idiot politicians who would agree to such a "deal"!
Remember UNIFIL? On 15 March 1978, the Lebanese Government submitted a "protest" to the Security Council against an Israeli incursion, stating that it had no connection with Palestinian terrorist operations. On 19 March, the Council adopted resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978), in which it called upon Israel immediately to cease its military action and withdraw its forces from all Lebanese territory. It also decided on the immediate establishment of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The first UNIFIL troops arrived in the area on 23 March 1978. Incompetents from the Third World mostly, they have been there ever since. They have done absolutely nothing to stop any terror attacks on Israel nor to prevent all of south Lebanon being converted into the Hezbollah's launch pad.
(see http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html)
In short, a UN "solution" is merely to help the Hamas re-arm and shoot a few thousand upgraded new missiles into Israeli living rooms.
2. Thought for the day:
The dwarf Trumpkin from C S Lewis' book 'Prince Caspian' - "being the target of attempted murder makes onevery hungry!"
3. Another war caused by Labor Party Folly:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886036561&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
4. From Tom Gross:
THE FRENCH LOVE BOMBING
In 1999, in the heart of Europe, in a 72-day air war against
Yugoslavia, dozens of NATO bombs and missiles hit Serbian bridges, communications grids, power plants and a television station, killing at least 498
civilians, including many children, and decapitating a village priest.
Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine reports that French fighter
pilots flew more than 1,100 of the war's air strikes, or about 11
percent of NATO's missions.
Last week, France was among 10 UN Security Council members voting to
condemn Israel for "disproportionate use of force."
The 25-nation European Union, which includes other countries that
participated in NATO's air war, such as Britain and Denmark, also condemned
Israel's "disproportionate" response.
Meanwhile, the BBC was so busy in recent days scrutinizing what its
chief Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen called Israeli "war crimes,"
that it forgot to report in any detail that on Saturday British troops
led the raids in Afghanistan that killed 35 people.
5. Pen-gate?
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107703
6. More Frog meat:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/07/frances-disproportionate-response-in_17.html
7. You know Israel is winning when the Cockburn Cockroaches are whining about a TV station getting vaporized!
http://counterpunch.com/Schuh07192006.html
8. "I never was an objective reporter."
29.11 2005, Knesset Member Sheli Yechimovitz - in radio interview
Duh!
9. Maybe he could get work at Ben Gurion University?
Canadian white supremacist jailed for contempt
18 July , 2006
For the first time in Canada, a white supremacist has been jailed for ignoring a court order to stop spreading hate messages against Jews, blacks and immigrants via the Internet. The Federal Court jailed Tomasz Winnicki for nine months for contempt of court for refusing to cease his "vile and unrelenting message of hatred."
Justice Konrad von Finckenstein sent Winnicki to jail for flouting a Federal Court order last fall to stop his Internet postings while a complaint against him wound its way through the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
"They send a persistent vile message, which in essence suggests that there is a Zionist conspiracy, that Jews dominate all levels of government, that those of the black race are lazy, AIDS-infected, criminals and welfare cheats, that all non-white immigrants fall into the same category and that multiculturalism is a policy conceived by Zionists to perpetuate non-white immigration."
Norman Finkelstein woul dbe his cousin even if it turns out they are not related.
10. "Proprtionate?"
July 19, 2006
Arithmetic of Pain
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
July 19, 2006; Page A12
There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable." The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action.
This is all well and good for democratic nations that deliberately locate their military bases away from civilian population centers. Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country. It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population. Hezbollah and Hamas, by contrast, deliberately operate military wings out of densely populated areas. They launch antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties, and then hide from retaliation by living among civilians. If Israel decides not to go after them for fear of harming civilians, the terrorists win by continuing to have free rein in attacking civilians with rockets. If Israel does attack, and causes civilian casualties, the terrorists win a propaganda victory: The international community pounces on Israel for its "disproportionate" response. This chorus of condemnation actually encourages the terrorists to operate from civilian areas.
While Israel does everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties -- not always with success -- Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides. Islamic terrorists, a diplomat commented years ago, "have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain. . . . Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israeli casualties play in their favor." These are groups that send children to die as suicide bombers, sometimes without the child knowing that he is being sacrificed. Two years ago, an 11-year-old was paid to take a parcel through Israeli security. Unbeknownst to him, it contained a bomb that was to be detonated remotely. (Fortunately the plot was foiled.)
This misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war. The distinction between combatants and civilians -- easy when combatants were uniformed members of armies that fought on battlefields distant from civilian centers -- is more difficult in the present context. Now, there is a continuum of "civilianality": Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents -- babies, hostages and others completely uninvolved; at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually.
The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.
Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism. Israel will -- and should -- take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties on the other side. On July 16, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, announced there will be new "surprises," and the Aska Martyrs Brigade said that it had developed chemical and biological weapons that could be added to its rockets. Should Israel not be allowed to pre-empt their use?
Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. These are not "occupied" territories. Yet they serve as launching pads for attacks on Israeli civilians. Occupation does not cause terrorism, then, but terrorism seems to cause occupation. If Israel is not to reoccupy to prevent terrorism, the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority must ensure that these regions cease to be terrorist safe havens.
Mr. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115326519401110452.html

The War that Ehud Barak Begot
1.
The View from Haifa September 10th Syndrome
By: Steven Plaut
"All you do all day is threaten that there will be Katyusha rockets landing in Ashkelon. Would you mind telling me why there are no rockets fired from Aqaba to Eilat?"
. Foreign Minister and Labor MK Shimon Peres, Knesset minutes, September 9, 1993
I could still hear Peres's words echoing when Katyusha rockets began exploding in Haifa a few days ago, some of them just several blocks from my home. Filled with thousands of lead pellets to maximize the carnage, one of them ended the lives of nine people in a Haifa train depot.
I contemplated those words while Patriot missile batteries were being erected on my campus at the University of Haifa. The college was shut down for the duration of the attacks, but I proposed to the powers-that-be that all leftist professors be forcibly kept on campus to serve as human shields.
The e-mails and phone calls come in nonstop. Why are you online and not down in the bomb shelter, you meshugena? asks a friend from California. I reply that there are too many spiderwebs down there.
The Katyushas landing in Haifa were, for all intents and purposes, dropped here by Ehud Barak.
In the summer of 2000, in what amounted to a cowardly unilateral retreat, then-Prime Minister Barak ordered the IDF to abandon its positions in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah terrorists had been sniping at Israeli troops inside Lebanon and the toll was slowly mounting. With a bit of initiative Israel could have put a stop to that, but instead Barak opted for placing all of northern Israel within the rocket sites of the terrorists.
Ever since that withdrawal, the Israeli Left had been patting itself on its collective back, insisting that the unilateral retreat had not only worked but could serve as a role model for Gaza and the West Bank.
The abandonment of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip was largely based on that notion, as is Prime Minister Olmert's current plan for "contraction" in the West Bank. After all, the retreat from Lebanon had "worked" in the sense that the Lebanese border seemed to be "relatively" tranquil, with a death toll below what it had been when the Israeli army was still on the ground in Lebanon.
Six years have passed since the retreat from southern Lebanon. The attitude of the Israeli chattering classes toward that "success" is illustrative of what I call the September 10th Syndrome. On September 10, 2001, there were many public figures in the U.S. convinced that there was no chance terrorists could or would strike America. Their conclusion, to quote Mark Twain, was just a little premature.
Israel has suffered from a mass infestation of September 10th Syndrome ever since the capitulation to Hizbullah in 2000. But in recent days it's become clear that there can be something even worse than such an affliction . namely, suffering from September 10th Syndrome on September 12, i.e., not even realizing how wrong one had been even after events should have removed all doubt.
True, the Lebanese border remained "relatively" quiet after the Barak withdrawal, but not for the reasons marketed by the Israeli political establishment. All that had happened was that Syria was cowed into keeping the Lebanese border quiet for a while after 2001 due to its fears of being targetedby an enraged America on the warpath against Middle East terrorism.
The supposed success of the Lebanese capitulation was also the official theology behind Israel's security fence in the West Bank. The security fence along the Lebanese border was thought to have demonstrated that all Israel now needed to do with Gaza and the West bank was get itself out and build similar fences, replete with all manner of electronic gizmos, just as it had done along the Lebanese border. After all, the politicians kept chanting, once there were no Israeli troops in "Arab lands," the Arab side would have no reason to engage in terror and military aggression against Israel.
Of course, the Barak withdrawal never really solved anything. The Lebanese border was not calm. Thousands of state-of-the-art rockets were sitting there, ready to strike. Shelling and cross-border incursions by Hizbullah were regular occurrences, and Hizbullah agents were freely wandering the Gaza Strip, helping Hamas build its bombs. In short, the Lebanese border was as secure and as calm as the World Trade Center towers were on September 10, 2001.
******
There is no diplomatic way of putting this. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and along the Lebanese border is the direct result of Israel's rewarding and appeasing terrorism over the past few decades. Long gone are the days when Israelis boasted that their government never negotiated with terrorists.
The 1976 Entebbe rescue was the greatest and, alas, the last serious use by Israel of force to deal with the kidnapping of Israelis by Arab terrorists. Since then, Israel has more often than not dealt with hostage situations by capitulating and conceding.
Such situations, of course, are never easy, both from a strategic and a moral perspective. There is a complex trade-off between the desire to free hostages at once and the need to deter and punish hostage grabbers. The understandable human . and humane . instinct to seek the immediate freeing of hostages must be weighed against actions that will put other lives in jeopardy. Decision makers face the dilemma that saving a single life today may well produce scores of deaths tomorrow.
. In 1985, the Likud-led government of Yitzhak Shamir carried out a prisoner exchange with the "Jibril" terrorists. Israel agreed to release more than a thousand Arabs incarcerated for terrorist activities in exchange for three Israeli soldiers. Just three days after the trade, one of those released Arabs was brought into an Israeli hospital. He had accidentally blown himself up while preparing a bomb intended for Israeli shoppers. Others among the released terrorists would, in the months and years to come, participate in a number of attacks and murders.
. On October 16, 1986, while on a mission over southern Lebanon, Israeli air force navigator Lieutenant Colonel Ron Arad and his pilot were forced by a technical problem to parachute out of their plane. The pilot was rescued by an Israeli chopper, but Arad fell captive to terrorists belonging to the Lebanese Shi'ite Amal militia. All trace of Arad was lost. Since 1986, Israel has engaged in feeble and pointless attempts at "quiet diplomacy" in order to win the release of Arad or at least learn of his fate. The efforts have produced nothing.
. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin launched his "peace plan" of legitimizing and recognizing the PLO and at the same time ordered the expulsion of 400 Hamas terrorists from the West Bank and Gaza to Lebanon. The expulsion had near-universal support in Israel. Shortly thereafter, however, Israel permitted almost all the expelled terrorists return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they resumed their leadership roles in terror organizations. It was a yet another goodwill gesture for which Israel got nothing in exchange. Not even information on Ron Arad.
. In 1994, in the middle of Rabin's "peace initiative," Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. The kidnappers held him hostage in the West Bank village of Bir Naballah, which had long been a hotbed of terror.
On October 7, 1994, villagers violently attacked Israeli soldiers who were trying to storm the Bir Naballah home in which Wachsman was being held. The terrorists had enough time to murder Wachsman before his would-be rescuers got into the house. Israel did not bulldoze the village in retaliation, just as it has not bulldozed other West Bank villages in which soldiers and civilians have been murdered.
These days, Israeli leftists are busy assisting the residents of Bir Naballah in sabotaging the security wall Israel is constructing, because it offends the sensitivities of the Arab villagers.
. In July 2003 the Israeli cabinet decided in a 14-9 vote to buy Ariel Sharon a Kodak moment in Washington by releasing more than 500 Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terrorists, again as a "goodwill gesture." Few of the released terrorists took up quilting.
. In January 2004, Israel agreed to an exchange with Hizbullah. More than 400 Arab prisoners, many accused of killing civilians, were released in return for a single Israeli civilian hostage and the bodies of the three soldiers who had been murdered in cold blood by Hizbullah.
The prisoner exchange was widely opposed in Israel, and passed the Israeli cabinet by a single vote. Afterward, Israel never avenged the three soldiers murdered by Hizbullah. A suicide bombing that killed 10 Israelis took place the very day of the prisoners' release, but Israel went ahead with it anyway.
Two of those set free had been high-ranking Lebanese terrorists, directly involved in the kidnapping, torture, and reported "sale" of Ron Arad to Iran. Israel did not even demand information on the whereabouts of Arad in exchange, just an empty promise of some information in the future, which, needless to say, has never materialized.
At the time, the Arab media crowed in smug satisfaction at Israel's humiliation in the prisoner release. Al-Ahram called it a "new notch in Hizbullah's belt!" In Israel it was seen as a debacle. Even Yoel Marcus at Israel's far-left daily Haaretz called it a "License to Kidnap."
Yuval Arad, Ron Arad's daughter, said she felt Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had abandoned her father. In a letter to Sharon, she wrote: "I can't understand how you can sleep at night ... you're about to release the man who tortured him [her father]."
******
In the early stages of the Allied invasion of Iraq, a number of Western hostages were grabbed by terrorist groups. Some were murdered by beheading. The U.S. and Britain did not release any captured terrorists in exchange for any hostages, nor did they make any other concessions to the terrorists. On the contrary, in cases where hostages were not released unharmed, allied troops went after the kidnappers with a special vengeance and ferocity. The result was an end to the wave of kidnappings.
The Israeli strategy of appeasing terrorists by releasing prisoners has caused more kidnappings and more terrorism. The lessons of recent years are as simple as they are absent from Israeli policy thinking. Releasing prisoners to appease terrorists causes more kidnapping. Refusing to capitulate to terrorist demands stops the kidnapping. Cutting and running when rockets fall causes them to fall in much larger numbers.
Yes, Jewish tradition has always allowed, indeed mandated, payment for the redemption of Jewish captives. Buried in the Aramaic in every marriage contract is a clause that obligates husbands (male readers, be warned!) to ransom their wives should they be taken captive.
But there were always clear limits on what could be paid for ransom . for two reasons. The first was to "avoid placing onerous economic burdens on the community." But the second was more for strategic considerations, and in some ways is the more important. Paying out large ransoms creates incentive for further kinappings and inspires escalated ransom demands. The Talmudic sages understood what Israel's politicians do not.
During the Middle Ages, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, one of the last Tosophists, was the leader of German Jewry. He prohibited women from wearing tefillin but at the same time was a strong defender of wives against abusive husbands. Some of his elegies are still part of the prayer book. (Interestingly, there are reports that he claimed to be a direct descendent of the evil emperor Nero.)
Convinced that Jews had no future in Ashkenaz (Germany), Rabbi Meir was leading a contingent of families to the Land of Israel when he was abducted by the authorities in Basel and held for ransom. He prohibited the Jewish community from paying for his release, fearing it would encourage more kidnappings of Jews. He died in a prison near Colmar in 1291, and some years later his body was ransomed and then buried in Worms. Rabbi Meir chose death over putting the burden of frequent abductions on the entire Jewish population.
At the time of the capitulation by the Israeli government to Hizbullah in the 2004 mass release of terrorists, Israeli politicians insisted that they had no choice and were just following the dictates of Jewish ethics. While it is nice to hear Israeli politicians (uncharacteristically) acknowledge the importance of Jewish ethics, they had no idea what those ethics actually say about hostage redemption (or anything else). They were simply looking for a pseudo-ethical argument to use as a fig leaf for their appeasement of terrorists.
Speaking of Jewish ethics, Judaism unambiguously supports the death penalty for murderers, whereas Israeli politicians are pusillanimously opposed to it. Let us take note of the fact that no terrorist has ever murdered anyone else after being executed.
Had convicted terrorists and murderers been executed in Israel all along, there would be few terrorist prisoners frolicking in Israeli jails, serving as bait and incentive for Palestinian militias and Hizbullah to kidnap Jews.
Had Hizbullah villages been turned into parking lots years ago, there would be no Katyushas falling on northern Israel.
http://www.jewishpress.com/UploadedImages/stdImage/450072106_frntpg_colorcomp.jpg
2. Proportionate and Disproportionate:
http://americanthinker.com/articles_print.php?article_id=5680
3. Bomb Damascus, not Beirut:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjI0YjAzMTVmZWQ5NWMzNDZiNTNiN2U3YjMyNzBmZWM=
4. Stop playing and make a ground invasion:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDI3MTMwZjg0ZjAxODJhMzkxYzI0ZGU4YzQ3ZDRlNmU=

1. <http://www.tnr.com/> The New Republic Online
WHY ISRAEL SHOULD BOMB SYRIA.
by Michael B. Oren
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.17.06
N <http://www.tnr.com/images/dropcaps/N.gif> early 40 years ago, Israel and the Arab world fought a war that altered the course of Middle Eastern history. Now, as the region teeters on the brink of a new and potentially more violent cataclysm, it is important to revisit the lessons of the Six Day War, a conflict that few Middle Eastern countries wanted and none foresaw.
By 1967, ten years after the Sinai Campaign, the Arab-Israeli dispute had settled into an uneasy status quo. The radical Egyptian regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser still proclaimed its commitment to liberating Palestine and throwing the Jews into the sea, as did its conservative rivals in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but none of these states made any attempt to renew hostilities. On the contrary, Egypt remained quiescent behind the U.N. peacekeeping forces deployed in Sinai, Gaza, and the Straits of Tiran since 1957. Jordan maintained secret contacts with the Israelis. Israel, for its part, had long learned to ignore bellicose Arab rhetoric and to seek backdoor channels to even the most vituperative Arab rulers. As late as April 1967, officials at Israel's foreign ministry were speculating whether Nasser might be a viable partner for a peace process.
But one Arab state did not want peace. Syria, then as now under the rule of the belligerent Baath Party, wanted war. Having tried and failed in 1964 to divert the Jordan River before it crossed the Israeli border--IDF jets and artillery blasted the dams--the Syrians began supporting a little-known Palestinian guerrilla group called Al Fatah under the leadership of Yasir Arafat. Using Lebanon as its principal base, Al Fatah commenced operations against Israel in 1965 and rapidly escalated its attacks. Finally, at the end of 1966, Israeli officials felt compelled to retaliate. But, fearing the repercussions of attacking Soviet-backed Syria, they decided to strike at an Al Fatah stronghold in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank.
The raid unfortunately led to a firefight between IDF and Jordanian troops, and to Jordanian claims that Nasser had not done enough to protect the West Bank Palestinians. Desperate to restore his reputation, Nasser exploited a spurious Soviet report of Israeli war plans to evict U.N. peacekeepers. He closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, concentrated 100,000 of his troops along the Israeli border, and forged anti-Israeli pacts with Syria and Jordan. The Arab world rejoiced at the prospect of annihilating Israel, and even the Soviets, eager to find some means of distracting American attention from Vietnam, were pleased. Israeli leaders had no choice but to determine when and where to strike preemptively.
And so, suddenly and unexpectedly, a regional war erupted that the principal combatants--Israel, Egypt, and Jordan--neither desired nor anticipated. The lesson: Local conflicts in the Middle East can quickly spin out of control and spiral into a regional conflagration.
The lesson is especially pertinent to the current crisis. Then, as now, the Syrians have goaded a terrorist organization, Hezbollah, to launch raids against Israel from Lebanon. Then, as now, the rapid rise of terrorist attacks has forced Israel to mount reprisals. If the Soviets in 1967 wanted to divert America's attention from Vietnam, the Iranians--Syria's current sponsors--want to divert American attention from their nuclear-arms program. And once again Israel must decide when to strike back and against whom.
Back in 1966, Israel recoiled from attacking Syria and instead raided Jordan, inadvertently setting off a concatenation of events culminating in war. Israel is once again refraining from an entanglement with Hezbollah's Syrian sponsors, perhaps because it fears a clash with Iran. And just as Israel's failure to punish the patron of terror in 1967 ultimately triggered a far greater crisis, so too today, by hesitating to retaliate against Syria, Israel risks turning what began as a border skirmish into a potentially more devastating confrontation. Israel may hammer Lebanon into submission and it may deal Hezbollah a crushing blow, but as long as Syria remains hors de combat there is no way that Israel can effect a permanent change in Lebanon's political labyrinth and ensure an enduring ceasefire in the north. On the contrary, convinced that Israel is unwilling to confront them, the Syrians may continue to escalate tensions, pressing them toward the crisis point. The result could be an all-out war with Syria as well as Iran and severe political upheaval in Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf.
The answer lies in delivering an unequivocal blow to Syrian ground forces deployed near the Lebanese border. By eliminating 500 Syrian tanks--tanks that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad needs to preserve his regime--Israel could signal its refusal to return to the status quo in Lebanon. Supporting Hezbollah carries a prohibitive price, the action would say. Of course, Syria could respond with missile attacks against Israeli cities, but given the dilapidated state of Syria's army, the chances are greater that Assad will simply internalize the message. Presented with a choice between saving Hezbollah and staying alive, Syria's dictator will probably choose the latter. And the message of Israel's determination will also be received in Tehran.
Any course of military action carries risks, especially in the unpredictable Middle East. But if the past is any guide, and if the Six Day War presents a paradigm of an unwanted war that might have been averted with an early, well-placed strike at Syria, then Israel's current strategy in Lebanon deserves to be rethought. If Syria escapes unscathed and Iran undeterred, Israel will remain insecure.
Michael B. Oren <http://www.tnr.com/showBio.mhtml?pid=227&sa=1> is a senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the author most recently of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press).
2. From National Review:
Hezbollah's Casualties, The Cynical View [Jonah Goldberg]
I should have mentioned this in the original post. But several readers have raised the other possibility that some of the "civilians" are in fact members of Hezbollah and the Western press takes casualty reports at face value. Maybe. It's not like we haven't see that before. Still, most of these casualties must in fact be civilians . the refugee caravan for example . and Israel has not denied as much.
Posted at 9:42 AM
3. Eradication Now:
http://www.meforum.org/article/977
4. We are all Israelis now:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjM1OGMxZWU0YzQ4MTQwZGU5NGRkMzQzM2MzNzdiNDc=
Even Hillary:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739473.html
5. Police detain Al-Jazeera news team in Haifa
Etgar Lefkovits Jul. 16, 2006
The Israel Police on Sunday detained an Al-Jazeera news team after it
broadcast live footage which disclosed the area of Sunday's deadly
Katyusha
attack in Haifa, in violation of military censorship rules, police and
security officials said.
Eight people were killed and dozens were wounded in the mid-morning
attack, the most lethal Hizbullah rocket attack since Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon six years ago.
The station's Israel correspondent, Elias Karram, was among those
detained by police.
6. While the Israelis for a Second Holocaust are holding anti-Israel rallies to oppose Israeli aggression and imperialism against Lebanon, some of the academic moonbaterie are also active.
Rachel Giora is a fanatic anti-Israel pro-terrorist from Tel Aviv University in linguistics, having taken over as TAU's leading linguistics cheerleader for terror now that Talya Reinhart has been forced into requirement.
Her web site is at http://www.tau.ac.il/~giorar/index.htm
She is distributing a petition denouncing Israel for defending itself in Lebanon and demanding that the US take action against Israel, not against the Hezbollah.
Here is what she wrote:
From: Rachel Giora
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 8:16 PM
Subject: Fw: petition
Please sign & forward this petition:
" Israel attacks Lebanon"
"Believing that the current actions by the State of Israel in
invading/attacking the State of Lebanon is both an unlawful and
unwarranted attack upon innocent civilians by an aggressor nation, we call
upon the United States of America and the United Nations to condemn the
State of Israel, and the actions thereof, and to demand the immediate
cessation of all military action by the forces of the State of Israel
within the borders of the state of Lebanon, and to demand the immediate
withdrawal of all personnel of the State of Israel from the State of
Lebanon."
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?50600
If you wish to tell the heads of TAU what you think of this, or to describe to them your intentions regarding future contributions to TAU, contact these people:
Tel Aviv University:
President: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html
Rector: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html
Officers: http://www.tau.ac.il/officers-eng.html
Friends and Alumni Associations: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html
Public Affairs: http://www.tau.ac.il/affairs-eng.html
7. Oh what sad news for the Israeli Left:
Israelis overwhelmingly support IDF's Lebanon op.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 18, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nearly nine out of 10 Israelis say the IDF's week-old operation against Hizbullah is justified and nearly 60 percent say the operations should continue until the movement is destroyed, according to an opinion poll published Tuesday.
The Dahaf poll, published in Yediot Ahronot, found that 81 percent of Israelis want the military campaign to continue. Another 78 percent said they were satisfied with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's functioning.
The poll of 513 Israelis taken Monday was the first since the start of Operation Changing Direction on Wednesday. The poll had an error margin of 4.2 percentage points.
(Remember that one in 6 Israelis is an Arab)
More bad news for the moonbats. Take a look at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739042.html
and read the talkbacks there!
8. Please forgive me.
I have been under katyusha attack all day so forgive me for this poor taste. But the news reports say that Israeli ground troops at long last entered Lebanon but were very quickly ordered to withdraw.
Please be advised that there are significant penalties for early withdrawal. (Frankly, I would term the 2000 Barak withdrawal from Lebanon as "premature ejaculation")
9. Soviet Joke Telling:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7412
10. Think this is relevant?
In late April, Arab terrorists affiliated with the Fatah terrorist group, headed by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, issued a communique in which they call for kidnapping Israelis, as well as Jews outside of Israel.
"This is an open call to all our fighters in the homeland to focus on kidnapping Israeli soldiers and civilians inside our occupied land," the Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades declared. "If the enemy does not release our prisoners, then Zionists outside Palestine will be an easy target for our fighters."
11. Or this?
ROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
No. 2 for Israeli PM's party
in U.S. a convicted criminal
Kadima rep with history of forgery, grand
larceny speaking in synagogues, debates
Posted: July 15, 2006
5:27 p.m. Eastern
By Aaron Sichel
2006 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON . The man who has been serving as the No. 2 representative in America for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party is a convicted criminal facing a possible lengthy prison sentence after pleading guilty to felony grand larceny and has in the past been convicted of forgery, WorldNetDaily has learned.
Marc Mishaan, who was listed as the vice president of Kadima USA, has been representing Olmert's political party at various public events the past few months.
According to criminal conviction documents obtained from the New York state court system and to community leaders and associates of Mishaan speaking to WND, the Kadima representative has a long history of fraud, forgery and financial improprieties. One Jewish leader accused Mishaan of embezzling from his charity fund.
Kadima USA is the American fundraising and public support branch of Olmert's party.
Jewish community leaders said they informed Kadima USA officials of Mishaan's documented criminal past, but they said Mishaan continued to serve in an official capacity even after they delivered their warnings.
12. Nice political cartoons at
http://www.coxandforkum.com/
13. Axis of Appeasement:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23381
14. Bay Area Jews for a Second Holocaust:
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2006/07/17/18288971.php
15. Juan Cole cheers the Hezbollah to punish the Jews for blocking his gig at Yale:
http://juancole.com/
16. The Enemy is Iran:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23402
17. Stalin's ghosts at The Nation
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23408

1. SO how bad is it?

Death statistics and probabilities are always hard to explain to
non-statisticians. It sounds like between 25 and 30 Israelis have been
murdered so far by the katyushas and other missiles that Ehud Barak and
the Israeli Labor Party dropped this week on Israel through their
Hezbollah peace partners whom they installed on Israel's northern border.

But let us keep something in perspective. This is about the same as
the death toll from a SINGLE one of some of the worst suicide bombings of
buses and cafes Israel has known. For a while, Israel was having 3 such
bombings each week.

Another way of putting this is that a week of katyushas has produced
a death toll about the same as a week of Israeli traffic accidents.
Actually, because a quarter of the country is indoors and in shelters,
traffic accidents are probably down this week, offsetting Ehud Barak's
katyusha toll a bit.

True, the katyushas tend to frighten people more and are more
emotionally upsetting, because they can strike you at random inside your
home. But traffic accidents and suicide bombers also kill people at
random as they go about their lives.

SO get a grip everyone. And I say that from Haifa, in the top floor
of my building (the vulnerable floor)!

2. Ground troops

It is a complete delusion to think that Israel can resolve the
Lebanon Hezbollah problem with air strikes. The air strikes, mainly on
empty buildings, cannot stop firing of katyushas or kassams.

Only Israeli ground troops can stop the rockets. So far, the Israeli
government and chattering classes prefer to delude the public with
gee-whiz high-tech displays of air power. It is all show and a kind of
national video game. There will be no choice put to conduct a massive
ground invasion and re-conquer southern Lebanon. The only alternative to
THAT is to make the katyushas a permanent part of life in Israel.

Having said that, there is another way to read the Olmert reluctance
to introduce ground troops so far. I myself do not believe this is the
actual explanation, which I think is cowardice, but I mention it to you
anyway.

For the past 58 years, almost every armed confrontation between Israel
and the savages was ended by international pressure to cease fire, always
much too early for Israel to complete its military program. The Six Day
War may be the only exception and even that was done quickly to beat the
stopper. In every other case, Israel was forced to race the clock to
accomplish as much as it could in artificial haste. So far , there is no
international pressure on Israel to hurry things along regarding Lebanon.
But the moment a ground invasion were to take place in south Lebanon, the
pressures would build at astronomical pace.

So someone less cynical than me might attribute that consideration
to Olmert's delay of the ground operations.

3. The Demise of the Left?

Israel's anti-Israel Jewish Left, led by the tenured traitors, is out
showing its solidarity with the Hezbollah this week at protests in Tel
Aviv (you know, the lattes in Sderot are not very good so why go there?).
But there are signs that the entire country has gone through an
ideological revolution and has earmarked the moonbat Left for special
hatred and denunciation, which probably will not become fully evident
until after the war ends. Why do I say this? Well, the "talkbacks" at
leftist Haaretz are viciously anti-Left (at the other papers they have
ALWAYS been so). Chat lists usually featuring leftist professors
denouncing Israel are being flooded with denunciations of the Left.

And there are other signs.

This past Friday, for the very first time, a mainstream columnist in
Israel denounced the Israeli Left as anti-Semitic. Incredibly, the writer
who wrote this is himself a left-of-center professor. Amnon Rubinstein
was among the founders of Meretz. A professor of law, he had been a
strong supporter of Oslo. But lately he has shifted towards center. He
writes a column this past Friday in Maariv, Israel's second largest daily,
and he explicitly denounced the "Post-Zionist" and anti-Israel professors
in Israeli universities as anti-Semites (his word), turning out
anti-Semitic propaganda, indoctrinating their students in anti-Israel
extremism, and working for anti-Semites all over the world. He notes that
some departments at universities are so filled with anti-Semites that if
all the anti-Semites were to be fired, those departments would be shut
down.

Sure, I have been saying that for years, but it sounds better coming
from a founder of Meretz! (Article not available online or in English)

4. I continue to believe that there are some important advantages in
having the Left leading the battle against the Hezbollah. By that I mean
the Labor-Kadima coalition. If the Likud under Bibi were bombing the
bejeebers out of the savages in Lebanon, the Labor Party would be shutting
down the country in protests against the "war criminals" and "fascists"
from the Likud mistreating the Lebanese in their unnecessary war of
imperialism and colonialism.

5. Israel's Moronic Leaders:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739500.html

6. Haaretz Columnists for a Hezbollah Victory:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739501.html

7. The Israel Enigma:
http://jewishworldreview.com/0706/hanson070606.php3

8. A University of Haifa Leftist prof defends Israel's battle against
terror:
July 18, 2006
Hezbollah and Pericles

By FANIA OZ-SALZBERGER
July 18, 2006; Page A14

War does not preclude clear thinking. When Israel withdrew from southern
Lebanon six years ago, to the last inch, and from Gaza one year ago, to
the last inch, scenarios of over-the-border hostilities were high on the
public agenda. Thus, even as smoke rises over northern Israel, Lebanon and
Gaza, some clearheaded points are being made on the Israeli side of the
border. Here is a brief selection.

First and most crucial, a majority of Israelis consider this sad
unleashing of Israeli firepower in Gaza and Lebanon to be, up to now, a
just war. It has both a casus belli and a convincing rationale.
Hostilities were initiated by militias strongly associated with the
elected governments in both regions, targeting IDF personnel strictly on
the Israeli side of the border. Since many media consumers have short
memories, a reminder is in order: Over the last five months, some 800
Kassam rockets were fired at towns and villages in southwestern Israel.
The town of Sderot alone was hit several hundred times. Israel occupied
not an inch of Gaza at that time.

Israel certainly responded, as any sovereign state would; and it did so
not by reinvading Gaza, but with air strikes against militants and
launchers. Palestinian civilians were hurt; Europeans vocally reproached
us; the rockets kept coming. Then came the recent assault on soldiers
stationed within Israel, killing three and kidnapping one. Hezbollah of
Lebanon, wholly unprovoked, simply liked the idea and sent a force into
northern Israel and two follow-up ambushes, killing a total of eight
soldiers and kidnapping two. Both assaults breached a fully legitimate
international border, in the aftermath of a full Israeli withdrawal --
just in case some media consumers have forgotten. Possible lesson: A sense
of right still counts for something amidst all the smoke.

Which leads to a second clearheaded point. Why is Israel's response not
"proportional," and why don't we rush to negotiate with the kidnappers, as
so many peace-lovers in the Western world would like us to do? Let me be
blunt: A "proportional" response would please many Europeans no end, but
would scarcely move a hair in the beard of a Hamas or a Hezbollah leader.

They are not set to be gently pushed into moderation, or to hammer out an
exquisite compromise with the Jewish state, but to wipe it out as soon as
they can. If we shoot a little, they will shoot back all the way into
Islamic eternity. If we "negotiate," cave in to blackmail and release
Hamas and Hezbollah militants held in Israeli prisons in return for our
three kidnapped soldiers, they will send them back to bomb schools and
buses and pizza parlors in no time at all.

Negotiation? For sure. It worked with Egypt and Jordan. It would work with
Saudi Arabia. It would work with moderate Palestinians -- as soon as they
recapture their own polity from Hamas and Hezbollah. But it would not work
with the latter, who along with their Iranian allies openly declare that
they want us dead, not merely complacent. Possible lesson: Compromise with
ultra-extremists usually misfires.

And here is a sad, third clearheaded point: Democracy, in the Middle East
as elsewhere, is not just about universal suffrage. The Palestinians
brought Hamas to power, and Hezbollah is a coalition partner in the
Lebanese government. Please reflect on this, dear Western lovers of
democracy: Is majority vote truly the sole gist of it all? Here is a
painful truth: Israel is killing civilians -- inadvertently, though
arguably too freely -- as it targets militants in Gaza and Lebanon. Yet
the hair-raising aspect of it is that many of those civilians voted Hamas,
and some voted Hezbollah, into their own governments. Democratically
elected, these groups care little for the lives of their own citizens,
even less for the Israeli Arabs they have bombed and killed in recent
days, and null for Israeli civilians. Yet their voters keep applauding.
Gazan and Lebanese children are innocent victims of this policy, and many
Israelis -- I must assert this even in the face of disbelief -- truly
grieve for them.

But the adults? Are these men and women hostages of live-in terrorists,
dumb natives managed by shrewd colonialists, or are they perhaps
accountable civil agents who made a very bad choice in one of their first
democratic performances? Possible lesson: Reread Pericles.

Arab democracy is not hopeless, a fourth clearheaded reflection suggests.
The Middle East is divided between those who jeer with any rocket hitting
Haifa, and those -- in Lebanon, Palestine and Saudi Arabia -- who secretly
hope for both Hamas and Hezbollah to vanish into the limbo of lost
lunatics and make way for better and saner Arab regimes. In the aftermath
of the current war, Ehud Olmert's Kadima-Labor coalition government would
promptly talk with a peace-seeking Palestinian government; this is why a
majority of Israelis voted them in to begin with. Possible lesson:
Moderates don't easily lose their nerve these days.

My final point may be news to both friends and foes of Israel: This
society is holding strong. Opinions here are divided, for sure, about the
wisdom and morality of using force, and about the wisdom and effectiveness
of withholding force. The public argument keeps sizzling as the north of
Israel, including my own Jewish-Arab university of Haifa, is under fire.
For some reason, going beyond Israel and deeply linked to Pericles, I take
this to be good news.

Ms. Oz-Salzberger is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115318772562109435.html

9. Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Leftist Hooligan "Rabbi" at Hillel
http://www.metnews.com/articles/2006/neuw071706.htm

Monday, July 17, 2006

Page 1

Court of Appeal Allows Suit Over Rabbi.s Alleged Attack on Writer

By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer/Appellate Courts

A Jewish writer who claims that a prominent local rabbi attacked and
injured her after they argued about Middle East politics can sue the
organization he works for, the Court of Appeal for this district has
ruled.

Reversing a contrary ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James A.
Bascue, the panel said Wednesday there was sufficient evidence for a jury
to decide whether Chaim Seidler-Feller was acting in the role and scope of
his employment when he allegedly attacked Rachel Neuwirth three years ago.

Neuwirth sued Seidler-Feller along with Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish
Campus Life and the Los Angeles Hillel Council. The rabbi has headed the
UCLA affiliate of Hillel, which serves Jewish students on more than 500
campuses throughout the world, for more than 30 years.

The suit resulted from a brouhaha outside Royce Hall on the Westwood
campus, following an address by Harvard Law School.s Alan Dershowitz, who
was promoting his book .The Case for Israel..

Outside the hall were some Palestinian or pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
The rabbi stopped to talk to one of them about an upcoming event involving
Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian involved in an ongoing
non-governmental peace effort.

Controversial Writings

Neuwirth, who has suggested in her writings that peace between Israel and
the Palestinians is an impossibility, that responsibility for the
Palestinians should be placed on the Arab nations, and that President
Bush.s .road map. for Mideast peace is doomed to failure, attended the
speech and overheard the rabbi.s conversation.

She alleges in her complaint that she .calmly. told the rabbi that
Nusseibeh had been identified by Israeli intelligence during the Gulf War
as having phoned Iraqi officials and urged them to .send the Scud missiles
not to the Negev, but to more effective places..

Neuwirth claims that Seidler-Feller then .flew into a rage,. called her .a
liar,. grabbed and twisted her right hand and scratched her thumb and
index finger with his fingernails. Neuwirth said she was shocked and
outraged, causing her to exclaim that Seidler-Feller was a .kapo..the
title given to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis by helping administer
concentration camps.

The rabbi had to be pulled off Neuwirth by .three or four large college
men,. Neuwirth claims.

Neuwirth alleged causes of action for battery and infliction of emotional
distress against the rabbi and claimed that Hillel was vicariously liable
on those claims and directly liable for negligent retention.

Violent Tendencies Alleged

The plaintiff asserted that attending the Dershowitz event, of which
Hillel was a co-sponsor; recruiting attendees for the upcoming event, and
engaging in public discussion on issues of Jewish interest were within the
scope of the rabbi.s duties. She also contended that Hillel should have
been aware of Seidler-Feller.s tendency towards violence.

Bascue sustained Hillel.s demurrer to the claims of vicarious liability,
finding that Seidler-Feller was not, as a matter of law, acting within the
scope of his duties at the Hillel event. He overruled the demurrer as to
the negligent retention cause of action, but later granted summary
adjudication to the defendants on that issue.

Neuwirth appealed, but only as to the issue of vicarious liability.
Justice Fred Woods, in an unpublished opinion for the Court of Appeal,
said she had shown enough evidence for the panel to conclude that the
issue was triable.

He cited a case in which the Court of Appeal held that a car rental agency
had ratified an employer.s assault on a customer because it knew the
employee was volatile, yet placed him in a sensitive situation where
customers were likely to get emotional.

.Although the alleged attack here was not as directly related to
respondents. business, it cannot be determined as a matter of law based on
the allegations of the SAC that the attack was purely a personal attack
such as if it had occurred in similar circumstances in a supermarket,. the
justice wrote. .It is not clear from the allegations whether the attack
was personal or business-related. Consequently, whether the attack was
attenuated from Seidler-Feller.s work, i.e., whether the attack arose out
of Seidler-Feller.s employment or whether he substantially deviated from
his duties for personal purposes, and whether the attack was unusual or
startling given this rabbi.s duties and his prior history are fact issues
which cannot be determined at the demurrer stage..

Attorneys on appeal were Charles L. Fonarow for the plaintiff and Matthew
J. Trostler and Casandra P. Cushman of Borton, Petrini & Conron for the
defendants.

The case is Neuwirth v. Los Angeles Hillel Council, B18505.

10. Too little too late:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107679

11. From columnist JAMES TARANTO
in his Opinion Journal (see
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008668 )

"Some have criticized Israel for not responding proportionately to
the attacks, but we'd counsel patience. After all, the Israelis
aren't done yet."

12. A Cycle of Nonsense:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell071806.asp

13. Prager sums things up:
http://jewishworldreview.com/0706/prager071806.php3

14. Hollywood Airhead:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTVmYTI5ZjQzNjlkMWVmYjliMzE3MDg0M2Q3Y2FlNDc=