Never Forget and I trust Bolton versusThe NIE Report

In Memorial

This week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because
it 'offended' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.

This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
This is posted in memory of the:

six million Jews,

20 million Russians,

10 million Christians

and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and

humiliated while the German and Russia peoples looked the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,'

it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

Barak publicly challenges the NIE report and John Bolton was interviewed and found it distressing as well. The Administration seems to have lost control of the intelligence community and the more I read and hear the more I am too am convinced there was a lot of political motivation behind its release. It certainly has undercut GW's ability to put any "holding" strategy together, not that he ever had one. (See 1 below.)

While Olmert has been diddling, Hamas has been improving its ability to make large parts of Israel uninhabitable. (See 2 below.)

The U.S. wants information regarding the expansion of homes in a portion of East Jerusalem. If Olmert had any guts he would tell the U.S. and Abbas that as long as rockets come Israel's way and terrorism continues against its citizens there will be no cessation of expansion by Israel. (See 3 below.)

James Lewis asks whether important Iranian defectors can be believed and raises some doubts. (See 4 below.)

Bolton has his say on the NIE Report. I trust Bolton more than many of the NIE participants.(See 5 below.)

Dr. Lerner suggests Rice lives in a fantasy world. (See 6 below.)

In many ways Netanyahu is Israel's Bolton but perhaos not as brilliant. (See 7 below.)

Dick

1) IDF to present Iranian nuclear evidence to US military chief
By YAAKOV KATZ



Disappointed after failing to make their case on Iran and influence the outcome of the United States's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released this week, Military Intelligence will present its hard core evidence on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program on Sunday to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff during a rare visit he will be making to Israel.


Admiral Michael Mullen will land in Israel Sunday morning for a 24-hour visit that will include a one-on-one meeting with IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

According to a Time magazine article published Wednesday, Mullen is a member of the Pentagon's "anti-war [with Iran] group" that includes Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral William Fallon, current commander of the US Central Command.

In a recent press briefing in Washington, however, Mullen took a hard-line approach, refusing to rule out the possibility that military force will be used to stop Iran's race towards nuclear power.

"I would never take the military option off the table," Mullen told reporters, although he stressed that his remark did not mean that force would be used. Diplomacy, he added, was very important.

Mullen's visit to Israel will be exactly a week after the publication of the NIE report that claimed Iran had frozen its nuclear military program in 2003 and has yet to restart it. During his visit, Military Intelligence plans to present him with Israel's evidence that Iran is in fact developing nuclear weapons.

"The report clearly shows that we did not succeed in making our case over the past year in the run-up to this report," a defense official said Thursday. "Mullen's visit is an opportunity to try and fix that."

In addition to Iran, Ashkenazi and his staff will also discuss with Mullen America's commitment for Israel to retain its qualitative edge in the face of the sale of advanced JDAM missiles to Saudi Arabia.

In the past, Israel had asked the Pentagon to permit the sale of the F-22 fifth-generation stealth fighter jet - also known as the Raptor - but the request was rejected.

Mullen will be met by an honor guard at the Kirya Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv and will sit through a day of presentations by IDF generals, including Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin and OC IDF Planning Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

Sunday night he will be honored at a festive dinner hosted by Ashkenazi and will leave Israel Monday morning.

The presentations that Mullen will hear will be on a wide range of topics - including the Hamas buildup in the Gaza Strip, Egypt's failure to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, Hizbullah activities in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

Israel plans to take advantage of Mullen's visit to Israel to reinforce the already strong ties the IDF has with the Pentagon and the US armed forces. Appreciation for the IDF has increased within the Pentagon in recent months following the Israeli air strike on the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor.

Mullen's visit will be the first time a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has visited Israel in the past decade. Mullen was in Israel with his wife two years ago when he was the commander of the Navy.

He met Ashkenazi at the NATO military commander conference in Brussels last month, and the two have already established an effective work relationship, defense officials said.

Also Thursday, China's government said it was studying the US intelligence review and remained steadfast in its opinion that talks were the way to end the standoff with Iran.

"We will earnestly study the report and make communications with relevant parties," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters at a regular briefing. "China's position on the Iranian nuclear issue is that we support the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, and oppose proliferation of nuclear weapons, and we uphold a peaceful and stable Middle East," Qin said.

Earlier this week, China's ambassador to the United Nations said the report raised concerns about new sanctions.

"I think the council members will have to consider that, because I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed," Chinese UN Ambassador Wang Guangya said Tuesday when asked whether the release of the intelligence estimate made the prospect of new UN sanctions less likely.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the change in the US's intelligence assessment vis-à-vis Iran was based mainly on notes acquired last summer from discussions between Iranian military officials. The notes reportedly detailed conversations in which certain army officials complained about Iranian leaders' 2003 decision to shut down efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

The notes gave no clue as to why Iran had decided to stop weapons development. The information contained in the notes was supported by other intelligence, including conversations between Iranian officials which had been intercepted in recent months, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, US Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday said he had no reason to doubt the intelligence assessment.

"There's always the possibility that circumstances will change. But I think they've done the best job they can with the intelligence that's available," Cheney told Politico.com.

The vice president stressed that the administration would not change its policy towards Iran. "We still think there's a need to continue the course we've been on to persuade the Iranians not to enrich uranium," he said.


2) Defense officials fret as Hamas upgrades Qassam arsenal
By Amos Harel

Hamas has recently upgraded its Qassam rocket capability in the Gaza Strip, raising grave concern in the Israeli defense establishment.

Senior defense officials say that Hamas is now able to store the rockets for a relatively long period, which would allow the organization to launch a large number of Qassams at one time.

Over the past year, the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) have said that two developments could prompt a major Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip. One was an improvement in the range of the Qassam rockets, which would place Ashkelon within range. The other was an ability to store the rockets for a longer period of time. It seems that Hamas has already achieved the latter, and is close to achieving the other.

Until recently, Hamas had difficulty in storing the rockets. The Qassam is a relatively primitive device, assembled on improvised production lines in the Strip. The explosive charge installed on the rockets is volatile and might explode if kept for more than a few weeks. This is one of the reasons behind Hamas' haste to launch most of its rockets as soon as it gets them.

When firing rockets is politically inconvenient, Hamas hands them over to smaller organizations such as the Islamic Jihad, various Fatah factions and the Popular Resistance Committees to launch them in its place.

In previous periods of escalation between Israel and Hamas, such as last year's Independence Day, Hamas fired almost 300 rockets in a few days before running out of supplies.

The defense establishment is now concerned that Hamas may accumulate several hundred or even thousands of rockets, building up a large arsenal. Under this scenario, Hamas would be able to fire hundreds of rockets a day at Sderot for several days, prompting Israel to take extreme measures.

The Second Lebanon War showed that the Air Force is incapable of overcoming short-range rockets launched from a small area, not to mention a densely built area like Gaza. In the absence of an aerial solution, the IDF may have to mount a ground operation that would lead to heavy casualties on both sides.

The improvement in rocket-storage capability followed the entrance into Gaza in recent months of Palestinian terror experts, mostly via the Rafah crossing from Egypt. These experts, members of Islamic organizations, trained with Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and Iran.

Alongside the ability to store rockets for longer periods, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, with Iran's help, are expected to increase the Qassam rockets' 15-kilometer range, which would place Ashkelon and dozens of small communities in the northern and western Negev within rocket range.

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai met Thursday with mayors and regional council heads from Ashkelon, Sderot, Netivot and the communities bordering on the Gaza Strip. He advised them to prepare their communities for an escalation in the area, including increased rocket fire.

3) U.S. wants details on plan to build homes in East Jerusalem
By Barak Ravid

The U.S. has requested that Israel provide clarifications on its plan to build more than 300 new homes in an East Jerusalem neighborhood, Israeli officials confirmed to Haaretz on Thursday.

The new housing would expand Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in an area Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state. The Palestinians call the area Jabal Abu Ghneim, and Palestinian officials have appealed to the U.S. to block the project.

The officials said U.S. diplomats who met with senior government officials in Jerusalem this week said that Washington hoped to gain insight on what the construction project would mean for the peace process.

According to the officials, the Americans said they wanted to know "what this thing is exactly and where it's coming from." The officials told Haaretz that they had explained to the Americans that the construction of the 307 housing units was approved long before the Annapolis peace summit that took place last month.

"We told them this was nothing new, and that anyway this was a construction project inside Jerusalem, which is Israel's capital, and that we regard this as perfectly legitimate."

According to the road map, Israel is supposed to cease all settlement construction. But Israel does not consider construction in East Jerusalem to be settlement activity.

UN, Arabs condemn plan
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon slammed on Thursday Israel's plan to build more than 300 new homes in an East Jerusalem neighborhood.

"This new tender for 300 new homes in eastern Jerusalem, so soon after the Annapolis Middle East peace conference, I think is not helpful," Ban said, noting that the United Nations had a consistent position on the illegality of such settlements.

The new housing would expand Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in an area Palestinians claim as capital of a future state. The Palestinians call the area Jabal Abu Ghneim.

The future of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues facing Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in peace talks that are supposed to resume this month, following the landmark Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

An Israeli government spokesman has said the plan does not contravene Israel's commitment under a U.S.-sponsored "road map" for peace with the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials say it could damage the peace process re-launched under U.S. patronage at the peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland last week. Palestinian officials have appealed to the U.S. to block the project.

Under the road map, Israel has committed to stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, but distinguishes between that area and Jerusalem, whose municipal boundaries were expanded after the 1967 war and included a number of Arab neighborhoods and villages around the city.

The site of the new building lies between Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem to the south.

Jordan also condemned Israel's housing plan, the official Petra news agency said.

Jordanian State Minister for Information, Nasser Judeh, said the Israeli measure contravenes international resolutions that consider the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as occupied territories.

He said the Israeli move would increase tension and threaten efforts to start direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, build confidence between them and push the peace process forward leading to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and a just and lasting peace in the region.

Judeh urged the Israelis to immediately halt the buidling plans.

Judeh added Jordan totally rejects the Israeli action and believes that the Jewish state's failure to meet its obligations under the road map peace plan and persistence in building settlements, are major obstacles to achieving serious progress in the peace process.
4) Was General Ashgari a Double Agent?
By James Lewis

In March of 2007 Iranian Revolutionary Guards General Ali-Reza Ashgari defected to the West through Turkey. General Ashgari is the highest-ranking defector from Iran ever, a huge bonanza for our understanding of the Khomeinist regime's intentions and capabilities with regard to nuclear weapons.

If he is for real. Troubling circumstantial evidence suggests that he is not.

This week, a public summary of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran made worldwide headlines. Contrary to endless public statements made over three decades from Khomeini to Ahmadi-Nejad, contrary to the 2005 NIE, contrary to the recent UN report, and contrary to Israeli intelligence, the new NIE claims that Iran's nuclear weapons program was stopped in 2003 and, by implication, has not been restarted since then.

We're safe! Nothing more to worry about from maniacs with nukes.

So -- what happened between the National Intelligence Estimate of 2005 and today's NIE to give the US intelligence community "high confidence" to confirm an end to Iran's nuclear bomb program in 2003?

The defection of General Ashgari (along with several other high-ranking Guard officers) is a plausible explanation for the new Intelligence Estimate. We don't know what Ashgari reported to Western intelligence. Chances are that much of his information was accurate, if out of date. He would need to give that much to gain credibility.

But there is a famous history of the CIA jumping on Soviet double agents -- Golitsyn and Nosenko -- who poisoned the wells of US intelligence with great success. These phony Soviet defectors could be the model the Iranians are emulating.

Iran might have dropped phony defections to give ammunition to the many liberal opponents of President Bush's Iran policy, who are sprinkled throughout our intelligence and foreign policy apparatus.

The new NIE might be the result of Iranian phony defector reports. Since we seem to have very poor human intelligence inside the Khomeinist regime, the Guard defectors (there were several of them) might be greeted by Democrat partisans in the bureaucracy like manna from heaven. The new phony intelligence would confirm their passionately held biases - a routine technique in disinformation ops.

Dropping phony defectors would be a smart strategy, and the A'jad regime prides itself on such things.

Defectors can paralyze US intelligence. It's nearly impossible to tell truths from lies or paranoid exaggerations, a maze that famously destroyed the career of CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton in the 1960s. Phony defectors do not even have to be believed, as long as they confuse US intelligence enough to undermine truthful information. They kick sand in our eyes.

A few public facts suggest that Ashgari may have been a plant. He left a wife and children behind in Iran, ready blackmail victims to control his behavior abroad. His defection coincided with other high Guard officers disappearing, perhaps to confirm Ashgari's phony message. In Tehran there was no visible purge, or even public expressions of heightened suspicions, after the spectacular loss of face due to a high-level defection -- contrary to Ahmadi-Nejad current accusations of "treason" against his pragmatist enemies in the regime. And finally, after the biggest (presumed) scandal revealing treachery in the trusted Guards, there was no loss of power or prestige for the massive Guards faction of the regime.

Ahmadi-Nejad just seemed to shrug off the Ashgari defection. The obvious question is why?


5) The Flaws In the Iran Report
By John R. Bolton


Rarely has a document from the supposedly hidden world of intelligence had such an impact as the National Intelligence Estimate released this week. Rarely has an administration been so unprepared for such an event. And rarely have vehement critics of the "intelligence community" on issues such as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction reversed themselves so quickly.

All this shows that we not only have a problem interpreting what the mullahs in Tehran are up to, but also a more fundamental problem: Too much of the intelligence community is engaging in policy formulation rather than "intelligence" analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it. President Bush may not be able to repair his Iran policy (which was not rigorous enough to begin with) in his last year, but he would leave a lasting legacy by returning the intelligence world to its proper function.


Consider these flaws in the NIE's "key judgments," which were made public even though approximately 140 pages of analysis, and reams of underlying intelligence, remain classified.

First, the headline finding -- that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- is written in a way that guarantees the totality of the conclusions will be misread. In fact, there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE. Moreover, the distinction between "military" and "civilian" programs is highly artificial, since the enrichment of uranium, which all agree Iran is continuing, is critical to civilian and military uses. Indeed, it has always been Iran's "civilian" program that posed the main risk of a nuclear "breakout."

The real differences between the NIEs are not in the hard data but in the psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives. The current NIE freely admits to having only moderate confidence that the suspension continues and says that there are significant gaps in our intelligence and that our analysts dissent from their initial judgment on suspension. This alone should give us considerable pause.

Second, the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point. Moreover, the risks and returns of pursuing a diplomatic strategy are policy calculations, not intelligence judgments. The very public rollout in the NIE of a diplomatic strategy exposes the biases at work behind the Potemkin village of "intelligence."

Third, the risks of disinformation by Iran are real. We have lost many fruitful sources inside Iraq in recent years because of increased security and intelligence trade craft by Iran. The sudden appearance of new sources should be taken with more than a little skepticism. In a background briefing, intelligence officials said they had concluded it was "possible" but not "likely" that the new information they were relying on was deception. These are hardly hard scientific conclusions. One contrary opinion came from -- of all places -- an unnamed International Atomic Energy Agency official, quoted in the New York Times, saying that "we are more skeptical. We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran." When the IAEA is tougher than our analysts, you can bet the farm that someone is pursuing a policy agenda.

Fourth, the NIE suffers from a common problem in government: the over-valuation of the most recent piece of data. In the bureaucracy, where access to information is a source of rank and prestige, ramming home policy changes with the latest hot tidbit is commonplace, and very deleterious. It is a rare piece of intelligence that is so important it can conclusively or even significantly alter the body of already known information. Yet the bias toward the new appears to have exerted a disproportionate effect on intelligence analysis.

Fifth, many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as "intelligence judgments."

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

6) Reality check:

Nov 19, 2007 - three Palestinian cops murder Israeli Ido Zoldan.

Israel cracks the case by the next day, capturing two of the cop-terrorists,
Abdullah Baram and his brother Dafar, who confess and reveal where the
murder weapons are hidden as well as the identity of their ringleader, PA
cop Fadi Jama, who still remained at large.

Now, if we lived in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's fantasy world, the
"moderate" PA leadership would have jumped at the opportunity to clean
house, public denouncing the incident while capturing and prosecuting Fadi
Jama to the full extent of Palestinian law (the PA "justice" system has
capital punishment).

But we don't.

We live in the real world.

The PA isn't prosecuting Fadi Jama. They aren't even going through the
motions. Instead he is being held in protective custody so that Israel
cannot bring him to real justice.

If we lived in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's fantasy world, the
"moderate" PA security forces now being armed to the teeth would be busy
clearing out the illegal arms and ammunition from the West Bank.

In the real world many of the bullets that were supposed to strengthen the
PA Police have already flooded the Palestinian black market, where they
depressed ammunition prices, just as the large number of smuggling tunnels
connecting between "peace partner" Egypt and the Gaza Strip is cutting into
smuggling profits.

If we lived in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's fantasy world, the sole
purpose of the "moderate" PA security forces would be to maintain order
within the PA.

In the real world, the "moderate" PA has already warned that if we dare to
launch a major operation to finally put an end to the escalating terror
emanating from the Gaza Strip that they will join with Hamas to battle the
Jewish State.

There is no question that the PA will be able to provide the photo ops that
jibe with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's fantasy world. Photo ops
that American officials anxious to sign off on Palestinian compliance could
readily embrace.

But it won't be reality,

Fantasy based policy may be convenient in the short run, but it ultimately
brings disaster.

7) Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu's Knesset Speech - Commemorating November 29
Our existence does not depend on the willingness of the Palestinians to make
peace with us. Our existence is secured by our right to live in this land
and our capacity to defend that right.

The UN resolution of November 29, 1947 recognizing a Jewish state was an
important moment in the history of our nation, and an important moment in
the history of all nations.

Since then, we have made peace with Egypt and Jordan, but the obstacle to
widening the circle of peace remains what it has always been: the refusal of
Israel's enemies to recognize the Jewish State in any borders.

Our enemies do not want an Arab state next to Israel. They want an Arab
state instead of Israel.

Time and again they were offered an Arab state next to Israel: first, in
the partition plan of 1947; then, indirectly, in the Oslo accords; later,
unequivocally, at Camp David in 2000; and finally, in the countless
declarations since then by both Israeli and international leaders which have
called for two states for two peoples.

And how did our enemies respond to these offers? Time and again they
violently rejected them. In 1947, they launched terror attacks and then an
all out war to annihilate the Jewish state. During the Oslo peace process,
they terrorized Israel with suicide bombers; after Camp David, they
orchestrated the Second Intifadah in which over 1,000 Israelis were
murdered; since then they have fired thousands of Katushya rockets on the
Galilee and thousands of Kassam rockets on the Western Negev in order, they
say, "to liberate occupied Palestine" - in other words, "occupied" Haifa,
"occupied" Acre, "occupied" Sderot and "occupied" Ashkelon.

In doing so, Hezbollah and Hamas are merely following the words of Jamal
Husseini, a cousin of the Mufti and a member of the Arab High Committee, who
said four days before the UN partition vote: "Palestine will be filled
with blood and fire if the Jews receive even a part of
it."

Regrettably, even the more moderate Palestinians refuse to support making
peace with Israel as a Jewish state. They support two states for one
people: A Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, and a bi-national state that
they hope to flood with Palestinians according to what they call the "right
of return."

Until they truly recognize and internalize the right of the Jewish people to
a state of their own and until their leaders show the courage of President
Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, it is doubtful that we will
have a real partner for a genuine peace.

In this context, we can understand what happened - and what didn't happen -
with the adoption of the UN partition resolution in 1947.

The resolution did not fix for all time the contours of a final settlement
between us and our neighbors. After all, the Arabs rejected the
establishment of a Jewish state and sought to destroy it. The day after
the vote the Mufti himself said, "what the UN wrote in black ink, we will
write in red blood."

Arab leaders cannot come today, 60 years later, and demand to turn back the
clock as if nothing happened. They cannot demand that we accept an agreement
that they themselves tore to shreds because, having failed to destroy
Israel, they have now concluded that its provisions would spell Israel's
doom.

Ben Gurion understood this well when he said in one of the first meetings of
the government of Israel: "The decisions of November 29 are dead. The
borders of partition are dead. Jerusalem as an 'international city' is a
mere fantasy." He repeated these ideas in his speech to the Knesset on
December 12th, 1949 when he said that the UN decision was null and void.

Thus, neither the borders of partition nor the internationalization of
Jerusalem are the enduring features of the UN vote.

What is enduring is the international recognition of the right of the Jewish
people to their own state, a right anchored in the Balfour Declaration which
recognized the right of the Jews to a national home in the Land of Israel
and which was reaffirmed by both the San Remo conference in 1920 and by the
League of Nations in 1922.

But the UN partition vote is seared in our memory because immediately
following the vote Britain began to leave the country, opening the way to
the fateful battle that almost snuffed out our existence.

The UN partition vote did not establish the state of Israel. It merely
recognized the historic right of the Jewish people to return to their
homeland and restore their sovereign existence.

But had it not been for the millennial longing of the Jewish people for the
land of Israel, the continuous presence of Jews here across the centuries
and the seventy years of intensive Jewish settlement in the land that
preceded the UN vote, this historic right would never have been realized.

And even these would not have sufficed had not the sons of a tiny nation, in
the wake of the horrific Holocaust, raised the sword of the Macabees and
with incomparable heroism repelled an Arab onslaught that was about to
overwhelm the fledgling state.

The enduring belief in our historic national rights, the settlement effort
that realized those rights and the military struggle that defended them-
these are what established the Jewish state.

The UN vote merely gave international recognition to this. Yet the UN vote
was an important and historic decision, and it is right that we commemorate
that vote today with the distinguished ambassadors of the nations that
supported it.

But consider this: What would have happened to the UN decision if we would
have been defeated in the War of Independence?

The key to Israel's existence has always been rooted in strengthening
Zionism and our ability to defend ourselves - and this remains the key to
our existence and the key to forging a genuine peace with all our Arab
neighbors. Only when some of them recognized Israel's permanence and
indestructibility did they reconcile themselves to making peace with us.

That is why I was shocked to hear in the press that the prime minister said:
"If there will not be two states, Israel is finished."

Mr. Prime Minister: The State of Israel will never be finished! Our
fate will be determined by us, and us alone!

Our existence does not depend on the willingness of the Palestinians to make
peace with us. Our existence is secured by our right to live in this land
and our capacity to defend that right.

We built up our country for 31 years before the peace agreement with Egypt,
we continued to build it for another 16 years before the peace agreement
with Jordan, and I hope we will not wait long before we can achieve a peace
agreement with the Palestinians and with others in the Arab world.

But we do not condition our existence on their agreement. That was the
policy of all Israeli governments until now, and it must be the policy of
all Israeli governments in the future. Let me repeat: Our fate will be
determined by us and us alone!

In the Middle East, peace and security go hand-in-hand. In fact security,
which stems from Israel's strength, precedes peace and peace agreements.
Whoever does not understand this will be left without security and without
peace.

Only a strong Israel, confident in the justice of its cause and led by a
strong leadership, will be able to achieve the lasting peace with our
neighbors for which we all yearn.