We still do not fathom the larger issue of radical Islamism!

This is a summary of why there are so many recent spy accusations are floating around. Personally I doubt Sec. Gates is in the Middle East to co-ordinate a future attack on Iran.(See 1 below.)

Caroline Glick explains why Britain is the weakest link and why Britain has cost Bush a great deal of leverage. She also goes into some detail about why Britishers must be confused now that they have been humiliated by Iran, saw their pro-Palestinian reporter nabbed and possibly killed all the while their own hatred of Israel grows. What goes around comes around and now the Brits are beginning to find their love affair with Arabs is not paying off as they would have expected. (See 2 below.)

Jonathin Tobin goes after two Pennsylvania politicians for lending their support to CAIR whose policies are deemed anti-democratic and adverse to our national interests (See 3 below.).

A retired pathologist calls attention to the fact that the Iraq War is part of a bigger issue which we apparently still do not fathom. (See 4 below.)

Dick


1)Espionage Galore under a Middle East Nuclear Cloud


It sounded like a contest.

On Tuesday, April 17, the Shin Bet intelligence service reported Iranian intelligence had intensified its efforts to recruit Israelis as spies, targeting former Iranians applying for visas to visit their families. One young man had been snared and paid “expenses” for enlisting a friend in security and collecting information. The Shin Bet detained him on landing home, before he did any harm.

Two hours later, in Cairo, a nuclear engineer Mohammed Gaber, was accused by Prosecutor-General Abdul-Maquid Mahmoud of spying on Egypt’s nuclear program on behalf of the Mossad, which was said to have paid him $17,000. An Irishman and Japanese were sought in connection with the affair. Israel dismissed the charge as another of Cairo’s unfounded spy myths, whose dissemination was not conducive to good relations.

Neither case is isolated. Two days earlier, the Israeli-Arab parliamentarian Azmi Beshara admitted from a safe distance to the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV channel that he was under suspicion of spying for Hizballah during its war with Israel and would not be returning home any time soon.

Add on the US defense secretary Robert Gates’ visits to Jordan, Israel and Egypt this week reportedly to coordinate and oversee preparations connected to a potential military operation against Iran and, in the view of intelligence sources, these espionage rumbles denote a far greater upheaval boiling up below ground.

Most can be traced one way or another to the mysterious disappearance of the Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari from Istanbul in February. Tehran’s job description of the missing general – a former deputy defense minister, who also worked with the Lebanese Hizballah in the 1980 - is correct as far as it goes. But the failure to bring it up to date is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that, at the time of his disappearance, he headed Iran’s Middle East spy networks.

The cases disclosed Tuesday may be just the tip of the iceberg, with more spy dramas on the way. But even at this early stage of a potential intelligence earthquake, certain conclusions are indicated.

Firstly, Israeli will soon have no choice but to declare Iran an enemy state and ban Israeli travel to the Islamic Republic for the first time in the 28 years since Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. Surprisingly, Israelis are still legally permitted to visit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

The Shin Bet did not need to publicize Iran’s intense hunt for Israeli spies in order to stop those visits; there are other ways. The espionage case would not have been brought out in the open without the knowledge of the relevant ministers – certainly not a graphic account of how the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, whence Gen. Asgari vanished, doubles as the distribution center for visas to Iran and a recruiting center for spies. Israelis applying for visas are obliged to deposit their Israeli passports there and issued with travel documents which gain them entry to Tehran. This process is drawn out to enable Iranian intelligence agents to make their first pitch to the targeted Israeli. It is followed up after he enters Iran.

The Shin Bet’s sudden outburst of transparency indicates that the scene is being set for a major diplomatic, military or intelligence step in the summer. This time, the Israeli government will not repeat at least one of the mistakes committed in July 2006, when it refused to declare that Israel was at war and the Hizballah an enemy, even after its forces crossed in to northern Israel, kidnapped two soldiers and let loose with a Katyusha barrage.

Israel is now putting the horse before the cart and declaring Iran an enemy country before the event.

It is therefore vital to deter Israeli nationals from visiting Iran in advance of potential Middle East hostilities. If Iran is involved, even through its allies or the Hizballah, Israelis in the Islamic Republic would be in danger of being taken captive or hostage.

Israel’s latest posture and precautions are likely to have the dual effect of raising Middle East tensions and placing Iran’s ancient Jewish community, reduced now to 25,000, in jeopardy. “Israeli spy rings” may soon be “uncovered” by Iranian security agents.

Second, the Middle East has embarked on a nuclear arms race. It is no secret that at last month’s Arab summit in Riyadh, the Saudi ruler strongly urged his fellows to unite their national nuclear programs under a single roof. Though played down, this was the summit’s most important decision – not the so-called Saudi peace plan, although it made the most waves. It was a step intended to produce an Arab nuclear option versus the Iranian weapons program.

Every aspect of the unified Arab nuclear program is therefore extraordinarily sensitive and hemmed in with exceptional security measures. Each has become a prime intelligence target - and not only for Israel. Hence the song and dance the Egyptian prosecutor general made Tuesday of an alleged Israeli spy network said to operate out of Hong Kong, with an Irish and a Japanese agent charged with planting Israeli espionage software in Egyptian nuclear program’s computers, together with an Egyptian engineer. Egyptian intelligence was making sure to warn off any Egyptian tempted to work for Israeli intelligence, just as the Shin Bet was cautioning Israelis to beware of falling into Iranian intelligence traps.

The events of a single day brought Iran and its nuclear threat into sharp relief as the most pressing issues for Israel. Relations with the Palestinians and Syria, on which so many words are poured day by day, pale in comparison.

2) Caroline Glick: Britain - the weakest link


The British people could be forgiven if they feel bewildered by the poor
treatment they have been receiving at the hands of the Muslims of late.

Iran places Britain in the category of Satan, along with the US and Israel,
and eagerly kidnapped its servicemen and humiliated Her Majesty's Admiralty
and Government. But for all of Iran's anti-British rantings, the fact of the
matter is that Britain is the mullahs' most effective defender.

By working with France and Germany to fecklessly negotiate with the
ayatollahs regarding their nuclear weapons program, the British were more
responsible than anyone for giving the mullahs three years to work freely on
developing their nuclear weapons. If the French and Germans had engaged Iran
without the British at their side, the Bush administration would have
condemned the talks for the stalling tactic they were and set out to shape a
coherent, effective policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs.

When, last summer, it became impossible to ignore the fact that the
Europeans' jaw-jaw had failed, it was once again Britain who curbed
Washington by convincing President George W. Bush to empower the UN Security
Council to deal with Iran's nuclear program. Without Britain pressing the UN
route, it is difficult to imagine Bush agreeing to subordinate US national
security to a body more or less dedicated to demonizing, isolating and
eviscerating America.

THE IGNOMINY Britain suffered at the hands of Iran occurred a week after BBC
Gaza reporter Alan Johnston was abducted by Palestinian terrorists. After a
month of silence, Sunday his kidnappers announced that they had executed
Johnston.

Monday morning, the kidnapers had yet to produce their promised execution
film, and so Johnston's status was still unknown. But with or without a body
bag, the British could be excused for feeling even more confused by their
reporter's plight than by their servicemen's kidnapping in Iraqi coastal
waters.

After all, since the 1920s, the Palestinian Arabs have had no friend more
stalwart than the British. Until Israel declared independence 59 years ago
the British did everything possible to prevent the establishment of the
Jewish state. They even enabled the Holocaust by blocking the doomed Jews of
Europe from escaping to the Land of Israel.

Since Israel declared independence, the British have been unrelenting
detractors of the Jewish state and champions of the Arabs. In recent years,
British support for the Palestinians against Israel has been one of the
rallying cries not only of the Foreign Office but of British society as a
whole.

In a sharp departure from both British and EU official policy, Britain's
consul-general in Jerusalem Richard Makepeace held open talks with Hamas
terror commander and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on
April 5 in a bid to secure Johnston's release.

Last week, after declaring a "day of action" on Johnston's behalf, BBC
Chairman Mark Thompson went to Ramallah, where he met with Fatah terror
chief and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. After the meeting Thompson praised
Abbas and announced that Abbas claimed to have "credible evidence that
Johnston was safe and well."

POOR JOHNSTON was so biased in favor of the Palestinians that he could have
been forgiven for believing he would be safe from Palestinian terror. As the
BBC's Middle East Bureau chief Simon Wilson put it, Johnston "is regarded as
a Gaza journalist foremost and a foreign journalist second." The Palestinian
Journalists Syndicate said that Johnston is "famous for his opinions which
are supportive of the Palestinians."

Of course, there is nothing extraordinary about Johnston's anti-Israel
positions. The day before his execution was announced his colleagues in
Britain went out of their way to prove their anti-Israel animus. By a vote
of 66-55, Friday the British National Union of Journalists voted to boycott
Israeli goods.

It will be interesting to see how they manage to implement their boycott and
work as reporters at the same time. Since Israeli engineers developed their
cell phones, their Pentium chip computers, their voicemail and their instant
messenger software, boycotting Israel will involve giving up their ability
to quickly amass their anti-Israel propaganda, vomit it out on their
computers and send it off to their Israel-bashing editors.

But then, even if they figure out a way to work without technology, one can
still only wonder at their decision. After all, their Palestinian colleagues
don't seem too concerned with Israel these days. They have real tyrants to
contend with.

In response to Johnston's disappearance and in protest against the utter
lack of press freedom in the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian
Journalists Syndicate called a boycott not of Israel, but of the PA.

THE SAD truth is that British journalists are far from the worst
Israel-bashers in Britain. Anti-Semitism has increasingly become the
defining characteristic of British society.

First there are the non-governmental organizations. Last week, Oxfam, one of
Britain's largest charities, chastised Blair, claiming that both his
decision to participate in the US-led campaign in Iraq and his refusal to
side with Hizbullah against Israel in last summer's war have damaged
Britain's international clout. Oxfam is calling for the UK and the EU to
resume their transfer payments to the Hamas-controlled PA.

Yet Oxfam, which claims to "support Israel's right to exist alongside a
viable and independent Palestinian state," could be mistaken as an Israel
advocacy group compared to those tasked with educating British students.
Last year, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher
Education (NATFHE), the largest university and college trade union in the
UK, and the Association of University Teachers (AUT), agreed to institute a
"silent boycott" of Israeli universities, students and professors.

NATFHE urged its members to consider "the appropriateness of a boycott of
those [Israelis] that do not publicly dissociate themselves [from Israel]."
The organization also castigated the British media and government for their
response to Hamas's victory in the January 2006 Palestinian elections.
NATFHE decried the "hysterical reporting of the [election] result by most of
the British news media and the outrageous bias shown by UK government
statements against the outcome of a democratic process."

BRITAIN TODAY is in the throes of a noxious blend of virulent anti-Semitism
and indifference. An example is the willingness of school teachers to
abandon their professional duties in a bid to appease their Muslim students.
Rather than confront the Muslims' rabid anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial,
their teachers have opted to stop teaching about the genocide of European
Jews.

According to a study just released by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth
Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, another
product of this mix has been a steep rise in anti-Jewish violence in
Britain.

In one of the 136 "major violent attacks" against Jews last year in Britain,
last August, while riding a London bus, Jasmine
Kranat was brutally beaten by a gang of Muslims. The attackers refused to
believe her when she denied being Jewish. They beat her unconscious, then
continued to stomp on her chest and head, breaking the orbital bone in her
eye.
Not one of the bus passengers or the bus driver came to her defense.

It is true that the Blair government is criticized by the British people for
not following them in labeling Israel the greatest threat to global
security, and the US as the second-greatest threat to global security. But
the fact is that the Blair government has been responsible for turning the
Bush administration into a loud proponent of Palestinian statehood. And it
was Blair who brought the White House on board with both the so-called road
map peace plan and the Saudi peace plan. Were either of the plans to be
implemented, Israel would lose its ability to defend itself or to survive as
a sovereign Jewish state.

YES, IT is more than understandable for the British to wonder why they are
being targeted by the likes of the Iranians and Palestinians, whose
interests they have done so much to advance.

But to answer the question they need to look in the mirror. In their
relentless campaign to advance the interests of the Palestinians and
Iranians who daily call for their destruction, the British have made
themselves the most attractive targets for attack.

They are the weakest link in the alliance of so-called Satans. And as
members of the alliance, the British are in the best position to pressure
the US and Israel. Iran, the Palestinians and their allies understand and
exploit this fact.

The British will continue to be targeted for as long as they champion the
cause of their enemies and then react to attacks against them by redoubling
their pressure on the US and Israel to join them in appeasing those sworn to
our collective destruction.

If it wished, the Bush administration could try using the bully pulpit to at
least stem Britain's societal dementia. For its part, aside from warning
British Jewry to leave before it is too late, the Jewish state can do
nothing to influence England.

THE MOST urgent change that must be made in Israel's policy toward Britain
is to cease viewing it as an ally. As with France, it is possible for Israel
to cooperate with Britain on certain levels, but impossible to trust British
support on any level.

Although they share the same enemies and interests as Israel, the British,
blinded by their bigotry, are incapable of understanding this basic reality.
Until they do, Israel must keep its distance and watch its back when the
British come a-calling.

3) Two Fail Leadership Test on Terrorism
By Jonathan Tobin


Among the most important things public servants can do is to conduct themselves in such a way as to inspire public confidence in their ability to tell the difference between right and wrong. Unfortunately, the grades for this all-too-basic test of behavior for two leading political figures result in a resounding "F."


The men in question are Rep. Joe Sestak, the freshman member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Philadelphia suburbs, and Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania. By appearing at a fundraising dinner for the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations this past weekend, the two have allowed their personal prestige to be used to bolster a group whose conduct and goals remain anathema to democracy and the defense of the United States and Israel.


Though CAIR presents itself as a group whose purpose is to advocate for embattled American Muslims, it was founded a decade ago as the public-relations arm of American supporters of Hamas, a terrorist group declared as such by the U.S. government. It raised money for Hamas- front group, the Holy Land Foundation, which has since been deemed illegal by the federal government. Its members and leaders have been known to advocate for terrorist acts against Israel and the United States.


CAIR has declared its opposition to such things, yet it has remained a loyal supporter and apologist for Hamas and Hezbollah. A campaign on its behalf (funded largely by sources in the Arab world, whose antipathy to America and Israel are well-known), has sought to whitewash it. But there is no evading the fact that CAIR is a hate group, as well as a vicious opponent of both Israel and America's war on Islamist terror.


You would think that such a record would render the group's events off-limits to national leaders.


However, Sestak, whose planned speech was a source of controversy for weeks, and Rendell, who made an unscheduled appearance at the same event, defend their behavior as simply a matter of meeting with constituents. In particular, Sestak has claimed that it was his obligation to speak to CAIR, even if he disagreed with it.


To his credit, in his speech the congressman did chide CAIR for refusing to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. He rightly said that to do so was akin to those who "did not speak out against the perpetrators of Jim Crow laws." But by his presence there, Sestak has lent credibility to CAIR's laughable pretense that it is a "civil-rights group."


The truth is that CAIR has more in common with segregationists and other hate groups than it does with the NAACP. Would he — or Rendell, for that matter — show up at a Ku Klux Klan fundraiser and say it was just a matter of talking to voters?


Their appearance has also unfortunately helped bolster the false argument that the only opponents of CAIR are anti-Muslim extremists. Opposition to the group runs across the board among national Jewish organizations and anti-terror experts. Sadly, Sestak and Rendell's misjudgment also helps stifle the efforts of genuinely moderate American Muslims and Arabs who have been crowded out of the public square by extremists.


It must be clearly stated that although both these men are Democrats, this is not a partisan issue. Leading national Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others have stated on the record that they want nothing to do with CAIR. Like most Democrats, Sestak has an established record of support for Israel, as does Rendell, the longtime mayor of Philadelphia. But by helping to sanitize CAIR's image and to boost its already bulging purse, they have materially damaged the fight against terrorism and the efforts to defend the Jewish state.

4) Iraq: Part of a larger conflict
By SABA E. DEMIAN

Except for a handful of informed individuals in the administration and the media, almost all the Western world does not recognize the obvious fact that the events following 9/11 over the past four years, including the coalition’s part in toppling Saddam Hussein and the inevitable consequence of the resumption of the vicious feud between the Shiites and the Sunnis, is only a skirmish within a much more important conflict for the whole world.

The vicious war is the global activities of the Muslim fundamentalists or Islamists, extremists who resort to terrorism to achieve their nefarious goals. The agenda for these goals has been set decades ago, and they bided their time until a propitious moment to resume their activities at a much larger scale that trivializes the 9/11 catastrophe.

The Al-Qaida organization, chased from Afghanistan, found havens in multiple other areas of the world sympathetic to its beliefs and methods, at times despite the authority of the governments of the countries they are harbored in. Unfortunately, the so-called coalition for the Iraqi campaign is indeed composed of a piteous force of the United States, the United Kingdom and symbolic numbers of other militarily minor nations — with the distinct absence of France, Germany and Russia, who will rue the day they stood back and watched us hoist the banner almost single-handedly.

It is absolutely inadvisable to predict the end of a war in the middle of the fight. Not only is it frequently wrong but, more importantly, it can be demoralizing for both our fighting forces and the populace at home, who unfortunately are mostly uninformed about world affairs. On the other hand, it is very important to examine strategies and modify both military and political maneuvers to maximize the chances of victory, but having set the goal at the outset one must continue undaunted to the end to achieve it. Capitulating, retreating or disengaging militarily are not viable options.

A political solution in this morass called Iraq is wishful thinking. There is no alternative to our victory.

Our leaders erred in more ways than one in the recent campaign in Iraq. First, the stated goal for entering the foray was narrow and not well-stated or explained to the people. We cannot excuse the administration for its obvious failings in this regard, whether the sins were that of omission or commission.

I cannot imagine that the administration was unaware of the existence or nature of our real enemy, the terrorist extremists. Furthermore, the failure to recognize the global nature of the ongoing conflict or the vicious goal of our enemies is a more egregious dereliction of duty.

How is it possible to misread what Iran is and what its goals are? What are we waiting for, for Iran to reshape the geography of the Middle East and beyond? Or are we going to, in final desperation, nuke them when we already know that everything short of that will not work?

To commit the same error the Europeans committed, of ignoring the obvious inhumanity of fascist regimes and monsters like Hitler, by our refusing to decipher the obvious global goals of Muslim extremists is nothing short of suicide. It took a sole voice, that of Churchill, who was berated as a warmonger, to wake up nations on both sides of the Atlantic in time to resist these evil regimes.

The senselessness and childishness of the dialogue and confrontations between the administration and Congress in this country are a pitiful sight. The loss of precious time, which would be better-spent in learning the truth and magnitude of our enemies, and rallying the reluctant nations around the world, is an unprecedented fragmentation of leadership.

What we are sorely in need of at this sensitive juncture is understanding and nonpartisan cooperation between the administration and executive branches of government to conduct a successful war against a relentless enemy.

Dr. Demian of Columbia is a retired professor of pathology.