Iran is the target so shoot at Israel!

Our departing Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, warned Iraqi leaders Americans are growing weary of supporting politicians who drag their feet and they should move with greater haste in making necessary decisions to defend themselves and stop their own internal violence towards each other.

If we are at war certainly we have every right to expect those we are defending to carry their load and more and if we are at war then we should take whatever steps are necessary to win. Anything less is a disgrace. Thus, another reason I find it difficult to embrace Democrats who want to enact time tables. When did Congress ever do anything on a timely basis beyond speedily voting for pork or pass laws to which they are not themselves subjected?

When will the American people wake up and learn to distinguish between their understandable frustration over progress from the fact that we are in a fight with Islamic terrorists who want to destroy our way of life and support decisions accordingly?

What will we gain by leaving Iraq at this time? The answers are really simple.

We will destroy any future credibility in our commitments.

We will have abandoned a potential ally in a region where we already have few we can rely upon.

We will have created a vacuum which will serve to strengthen Iran and other radical Islamists all to the long term detriment of our own ongoing interests in the region.

We will have nailed our own coffin because by doing so we eventually will bring the battle to our shores, which may be inevitable in any event.

If Democrats have an answer for the aftermath of a precipitous pull-out they have not expressed it so I can only conclude they continue to display an opportunist and defeatist DNA.

I too wish things were going better. I too wish mistakes had not been made. I too wish we were not caught in a battle against Radical Islamists while at the same time having to fend off a sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis. I too wish the cost to our nation in human sacrifice and funding was not what it has proven to be.

I also wish Democrats had some backbone, would quit playing defeatist politics in hope of gaining power and demonstrated some leadership. Perhaps that is too much to ask or expect of petty politicians.

In time, Democrats will pay a heavy price for their duplicity and when it comes they will have no one to blame but themselves. They are surf riding the current crest of discontent but they will eventually be swamped when the voters, they are presently deluding, come to their own senses.

That reliable ally - Egypt - has put their tail between their legs once again and run like frightened camels away from their commitments. (See 1 below.)

Caroline Glick, pretty much sees it the way I do. Glick argues Iran should be the target. What Glick reminds us is that somehow Israel becomes the victim of our misplaced aim.(See 2 below.)

A subtle battle continues on university campuses to get, what could become another lost generation of students activists, to understand the complexities of the Middle East and to realize their support of terrorism will boomerang. That anti-Semitic Jewish apologists are leading them down an unwise path is an even greater tragedy. (See 3 below.)

Dick

1) Egypt's military has quietly abandoned the Gaza Strip.

Israeli sources said the 100-member Egyptian military advisory delegation
that arrived in the Gaza Strip in mid-2006 has been recalled. They said two
generals have remained, but spend most of their time in Israel to ensure
their safety from Palestinian attacks.

"The Egyptians have lost influence with the Hamas government and found that
they were under constant threat," an Israeli source said. "Under such
conditions, it was better to pull out the advisers."

The sources said an Egyptian security delegation formally remains in Gaza
Strip. They said the delegation, led by Maj. Gen. Burhan Hamad, was
comprised of a handful of personnel attached to the Egyptian Representative
Office in Gaza City.

2) An embrace of jihadist “peace”
By Caroline B. Glick




Recent history shows that the US and Israel will both pay heavily for the opportunism of our weak political leaders. It can only be hoped that the Israeli and American people have learned enough from our experiences to demand that our leaders stop their reckless behavior before the price of their cowardice and perfidy become unbearable


In an open act of war, Iran Friday kidnapped 15 British soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Iran's act of aggression occurred just as the British voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution imposing increased sanctions against Teheran for its illicit nuclear weapons program.

Several theories have been raised to explain Iran's behavior. Some say that the Iranians acted against the British in the hope that Britain would respond by abandoning its alliance with the US and swiftly pulling its forces out of Iraq.

Another theory is that in kidnapping the sailors the Iranians are seeking to reenact their ploy from last summer. Then, Iran ordered its Lebanese proxy Hizbullah to kidnap IDF soldiers in order to divert the international community's attention away from Iran's nuclear program. As is the case with the British servicemen, so last summer's attack on the IDF took place as the Security Council was expected to convene and discuss sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Yet another theory has it that Iran kidnapped the sailors to use as a bargaining chip to force the US military to release Iranian operatives who the US has arrested in Iraq in recent months. Whatever the case may be, it is absolutely clear that the Iranians intentionally fomented this international crisis with the expectation that their aggression would in some way be rewarded.


AGAINST THIS backdrop, and given the stakes involved, it could have been expected that the US and its allies would be concentrating their attention on how to weaken Iran and its terror proxies and curtail Iran's ability to acquire a nuclear arsenal. But, alas, the US is doing just the opposite.

The Iranians acted as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was en route to the region. Since Friday, Rice has shuttled between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and is on her way to Saudi Arabia. She is not working to coordinate moves to check Iran's increasing bellicosity. Rather, Rice is laboring to empower Teheran's terrorist allies in Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Fatah. This she does by promoting the so-called Arab peace plan, which demands that Israel agree to dangerous and strategically catastrophic concessions to the Palestinian terrorist government.

In behaving thus, Rice is walking in the well-worn footsteps of her predecessors. Indeed, it seems almost axiomatic that when the going gets tough for US administrations, administration officials get tough on Israel.


AFTER THE Republicans won control of the Congress in 1994, then president Bill Clinton was hard-pressed to advance his domestic agenda. And so Clinton — who had almost no interest in foreign policy in his opening years of office —turned his attention to Israel and the so-called peace process, in which Israel was expected to give land, arms and legitimacy to the PLO in exchange for terrorism.

Clinton's penchant for forcing Israeli concessions to the PLO in the name of peace became more pronounced as things became more difficult for him during his impeachment hearings in 1998. As the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment, Clinton twisted then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's arm until he signed the Wye Plantation memorandum, in which Israel pledged to transfer wide swathes of Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat's terrorist government.

Clinton forced Netanyahu's hand in spite of the fact that, by 1998, it was clear that Arafat was actively enabling Hamas and Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to wage jihad for Israel's destruction.

But negotiating with Netanyahu was inconvenient. Netanyahu refused to implement the Wye agreement in light of Arafat's support for terrorism and forced Clinton to acknowledge that Arafat was doing nothing to combat terror. Unhappy with this state of affairs, Clinton set out to overthrow Netanyahu's government.


IN AN ACT of unmitigated contempt for Israeli democracy and electoral laws, Clinton sent his own election advisers James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Robert Schrum to Israel to run Labor party leader Ehud Barak's campaign in the 1999 elections.

The culmination of Clinton's campaign was the failed Camp David summit in July 2000. There, and in subsequent desperate discussions with Arafat at Taba, Barak agreed to hand over the Temple Mount to Arafat in addition to Gaza, Judea, Samaria and a pile of money.

Israel paid dearly for Barak and Clinton's behavior. In the Palestinian jihad that followed Arafat's rejection of Barak and Clinton's plaintive offers, more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered — more than 70 percent of whom were civilians. Israel's international standing fell to all-time lows as global anti-Semitism rose to levels unseen since the Holocaust.

America too, paid dearly for Clinton's behavior. Rather than pay attention to the burgeoning terror nexus which had placed the US directly in its crosshairs — in 1993 at the World Trade Center; in 1996 at the Khobar Towers; in 1998 at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and in 2000 at the USS Cole — Clinton remained scope-locked on the so-called peace process.

Rather than acknowledge the existence and threat of the global jihad to US national security, Clinton pressured the global jihad's primary victim — Israel — into transferring its heartland and capital to the godfather of modern terrorism.

But while Israel and America bled, Clinton himself paid no price for his behavior. Rather than be blamed for the war he contributed so richly to enabling, Clinton is upheld as a hero at best, or at worst a tragic figure who devoted his presidency to the cause of peace.

Today, Rice's newfound mania for peacemaking comes when local conditions negate any possibility of peace. Just last month the Saudis promised the Palestinians a billion dollars and so paved the way for the Mecca accord, where the Iranian-sponsored Fatah terror group surrendered to the Iranian-sponsored Hamas terror group. In so acting, the Saudis brought about the formation of a Palestinian government openly committed to the use of terrorism as a tool to ensure Israel's destruction.

International conditions also ensure that Rice's peacemaking will fail to make peace. Regionally, Iran ups the ante daily against the US-led coalition in Iraq. Domestically, the Democratic-controlled Congress works daily to prevent the US from fighting its enemies. Globally, states as far-flung as Russia, China and Venezuela make deals with terror governments to check US power.

The program that Rice has come to the region to advance does not even have the benefit of a peaceful facade. The Palestinians make clear every single day that they do not and will not accept Israel's right to exist in any borders, and that they will not work to combat terrorism against Israel. The Arab League, and its member states, for their part, have repeatedly announced that they will brook no change in their "peace" plan which, if implemented will bring about Israel's rapid destruction.

In behaving as she does, Rice, like Clinton before her, is aided by a politically weak and strategically incompetent Israeli government that is willing to sacrifice Israel's long-term security for the benefit of prime-time photo opportunities with bigwig American leaders and Arab potentates.

Sunday, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has announced that it is open to negotiating on the basis of the Arab plan. As one government official told The Jerusalem Post, Israel will "not dismiss" the plan.


THIS IS Israel's position in spite of the fact that the Arab plan calls for Israel to surrender east, north and south Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights to Hamas and Syria and for Israel to permit four to five million hostile, foreign-born Arabs posing as Palestinian "refugees" to immigrate to its truncated territory. As the "peace" plan makes clear, all these suicidal Israeli moves must come before the Arab states will be willing to have "regular" (whatever that means) relations with the indefensible, overrun Jewish state.

Commenting on the government's position, the official explained, "We would not reject this out of hand."

It is not surprising that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are behaving in this manner. After all, these are the same leaders who brought about Israel's defeat in Lebanon in last summer's war at the hands of Iran's Hizbullah proxy army. Last summer, Olmert followed Livni's lead in rejecting military victory as an option. Heeding Livni's unwise, defeatist counsel, Olmert postponed the essential ground offensive in south Lebanon until it was too late to make a difference and instead opted for a negotiated cease-fire.

As is the case with the Arab "peace" plan, the cease-fire Israel enthusiastically acceded to last summer was strategically disastrous for the country. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 placed Israel on the same plane as the illegal Hizbullah terrorist organization; prevents Israel from taking steps to defend itself; does not require the safe return of IDF hostages Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser; enables Hizbullah to rearm and reassert its control over south Lebanon; and lets Hizbullah's state sponsors Syria and Iran completely off the hook for their central role in Hizbullah's illegal war against the Jewish state.

Recent history shows that the US and Israel will both pay heavily for the opportunism of our weak political leaders. It can only be hoped that the Israeli and American people have learned enough from our experiences to demand that our leaders stop their reckless behavior before the price of their cowardice and perfidy become unbearable.

3) Educate Students to Counter Voices of Hate
by Asaf Romirowsky


"Israeli Apartheid Weeks" are becoming an accepted norm on many college campuses across the nation, during which a series of events staged by anti-Israel activists are held and the Jewish state is equated with the racist regime of apartheid-era South Africa.

Moreover, awareness weeks devoted to Islam are also held in order to "educate" the campus. The problem is that many times these are skewed presentations that teach an alternate reality.

In an effort to counter examples of the above, the pro-Israel community has similarly initiated "Israel Weeks," as well as daylong seminars, devoted to empowering students with the necessary tools to properly advocate for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

In a combined effort of the Center of Israel and Overseas of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Hillel of Greater Philadelphia and the Israeli Consulate in Philadelphia, just such a conference will be taking place at Bryn Mawr College on Sunday, March 25.

It will draw on the six campuses that Hillel of Greater Philadelphia serves, as well as other campuses reaching as far as Lehigh University and the University of Delaware. Keynote speaker will be Charles Krauthammer, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary and syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.

'Complexities of the Situation'

Andrew Mener, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the student committee that helped plan the program, states that the event "will provide students with an understanding of the complexities of Israel's situation from varying perspectives -- all in one day."

The conference will challenge students to think about Israel in a new light and encourage them to ask questions. In fact, the conference agenda has been formulated after careful conversations with student leaders on all the regional campuses, with the explicit goal of providing useful information that speaks to the needs of today's college students.

Unfortunately, opposition is never too far behind and, coincidently or not, three days after this conference wraps up, Norman Finkelstein will be speaking at Bryn Mawr. Finkelstein is a Jew who willingly collaborates with neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites.

In fact, when The New York Times reviewed his book, titled The Holocaust Industry, it described it as "a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' [The Holocaust Industry] verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites around the world."

People like Finkelstein help student campus groups such as "Jews for Justice in Palestine" gain credence as a "Jewish example" of credible criticism of Israel, and so widen the divide within the Jewish community.

Furthermore, such individuals sympathize and support radical Islamist groups like Hezbollah. As Finkelstein has written, "the honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hezbollah, as the United States and Israel target it for liquidation. Indeed, looking back, my chief regret is that I wasn't even more forceful in publicly defending Hezbollah against terrorist intimidation and attack."

Today, those who are anti-Israel insist that they are not anti-Semitic -- only anti-Zionist. That's the message that Finkelstein helps fuel.

Students must recognize that there is never justice in terrorism. It is unacceptable that some should even speak of eliminating a living and breathing state like Israel.

However, you would be surprised how pervasive such statements have become on campus. These advocates are the ones that should be on the defensive, not those working hard for the good of the Jewish state.