Arab hatred lamentably makes the world go round!

Noose getting tighter for Olmert. (See 1 below.)

Novel use of man's best friend. (See 2 below.)

An Israel Col., Nir Peres, has the unfortunate job of getting Gaza Palestinians to understand Hamas is the problem and is why their ability to conduct commerce is so restrained. The facts actually show that under Israeli domination Gazans actually did well economically and their longevity increased. (See 3 below.)

It is one thing to overthrow a government. It is another to operate a government. Caroline Glick explains Hezballah and its strategy. Another brilliant piece by a gifted writer. Israel's enemy is not interested in governing. It is interested in perpetuating the war against Israel. (See 4 below.)

John Bolton can't wait for Obama to debate McCain on foreign policy matters. Is McCain as anxious and if so when does it begin? After Hillary concedes and not before so stick around. (See 5 below.)

Dick

1) Prosecutor: Talansky personally handed Olmert money
By Tomer Zarchin and Jonathan Lis


State Prosecutor Moshe Lador said Monday that American millionaire Moshe Talansky personally handed money to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on several occasions.

"While Olmert served as a minister in the Israeli government, he allegedly received funds from Talansky, in Israel and abroad, sometimes through [Shula] Zaken," Lador said speaking at a High Court hearing over a petition submitted by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his former office manager, Shula Zaken, against the Jerusalem District Court's decision to hear preliminary testimony from American millionaire Morris Talansky, Lador also said that Talansky's testimony included details of specific amounts transferred to Olmert, and descriptions of visits to Israel in which he handed Olmert money in envelopes.


Olmert's lawyer, attorney Eli Zohar, said Monday that the decision to accept early testimony from American millionaire Morris Talansky is a blatant disruption of the balance between the right to fair trial and public interest.

"The Prime Minister's trial opens on the day that Talansky is scheduled to testify in court. This creates a situation that would almost obligate the prosecution to indict the prime minister," Zohar said.

The High Court held a hearing Monday on a petition submitted by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his former office manager, Shula Zaken, against the Jerusalem District Court's decision to hear preliminary testimony from American millionaire Morris Talansky.

Police suspect that Olmert received illicit funds from Talansky, making him a key witness in the latest investigations surrounding the prime minister. Zaken is also a suspect in the case.

The prosecution is demanding that Talansky testify now, before an indictment is filed on grounds that Talansky, a close friend of Olmert, may refuse to return to Israel. Talansky announced earlier this week that he refuses to stay in Israel after May 26.

In an interview with Army Radio, Zaken's attorney said that if the court allows Talanksy's early testimony, they will ask for a delay in the proceedings so that they can read the prosecution's case.

While the prosecution said Sunday that the suspicions against the American businessman are not serious enough to justify keeping him in the country against his will any longer, the fact that he remains a suspect arouses concern that he would not return to Israel to testify against Olmert if the premier is indicted, for fear that he might face charges himself.

The State Prosecutors also noted that if Talansky's prior testimony indeed undercuts Olmert's right to a fair trial, as his attorneys argue, Olmert has the option of summoning Talansky back to the stand himself once the trial begins. If, as he claims in his petition, Olmert has no doubt that Talansky would agree to return, that option ought to suffice, the prosecution argued.

On a more technical note, the prosecution argued that Olmert and Zaken do not actually have the right to appeal the lower court's decision to depose Talansky, because this was an interim decision. By law, interim decisions made by trial courts cannot be appealed directly; they can only serve as a basis for appealing the final verdict. Nevertheless, the brief continued, due to the public importance of the case, the prosecution is not asking that the petition be rejected on technical grounds. Instead, it will argue that the lower court's decision was correct, and should therefore be allowed to stand.

2) Israeli jails use dog barks to spot prison break

A senior prison official says Israeli jails are using a custom-built computer program to interpret the barks of guard dogs and distinguish between everyday woofs and warnings of a breakout.

Noam Tavor, head of the Israel Prisons Service canine unit, says the program fixes shortcomings where guards have either not heard dogs sounding an alarm or failed to speedily identify its significance.

"It collects the dogs' barks through microphones...and sorts and grades them," Tavor told Army Radio on Monday. "It relays only the barks that are significant in terms of security - barks that reveal stress or aggression in the dog."

The radio said prison staff monitor the system through loudspeakers and TV cameras that automatically zoom in on suspected hot spots.

3)Amir Oren: IDF General Staff dropping need for Gaza exit strategy

The no-return point of a return to Gaza

Colonel Nir Peres has one of the most frustrating jobs in the Middle East.
He heads the Israel Defense Forces' Coordination and Liaison Administration
at the Erez border crossing. Peres' efforts are aimed at preventing a large
humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and he is trying to get the local population
to blame Hamas for its distress. He must convince the IDF's top brass to
show restraint and use force for immediate operational needs only, in order
to maintain a chance of a calmer future within a generation or two. And he
must show the Palestinians the price they are paying for their willingness
to allow rocket-based terrorism to operate from their midst.

Last week Peres traveled to the UN Headquarters in New York to explain
Israel's situation. His audience, national representatives and
administrators, heard his words and were impressed by them, but they reacted
with helplessness. The camel is fated to carry its heavy load; at most, the
final straw can be kept away from it for a while. The time for doing so is
running out rapidly. Israel has already launched the first phase of the
operation, the verbal journey to the starting point. When liaison officials
in the territories, including those in Gaza, try to urge Israeli restraint,
they stress the need to drive a wedge between the suffering population and
the radical, indifferent leadership, which is now sprouting symbols of high
authority like those that characterized Fatah's rule; Ismail Haniyeh's
motorcades are even longer than those of Yasser Arafat.

Colonel Peres has told the Palestinians that they face a choice between
"flowers for export or mortar shells," "strawberries or Qassams."
Palestinian farmers, who support one-sixth of Gaza's population, expected to
make handsome profits because of the shmita year [when Jews are required to
leave the ground uncultivated], and due to the shortage of produce in
Israel. But these expectations, they know, became victims of terrorism.
Instead, they incurred major losses. While the cost of cucumbers and
tomatoes in Tel Aviv market stalls rose to nearly NIS 10 a kilo, Hamas'
attacks on the border crossings brought about their closure, flooding Gaza
with crates, each costing NIS 5 and containing 14 kilos of produce. There is
a method to the madness of attacking the vital arteries of civilian life:
Suffocating the passages to Israel will increase the pressure to open the
Rafah crossing into Egypt.

As uncomfortable as it is to admit, the data suggests that the Israeli
occupation did well by Gaza. Life expectancy in the Strip has risen from 48
years in 1967 to over 72 years now, higher than the life expectancy in
Egypt, which was not very kind to Gaza when the Strip was subject to its
military rule. According to a study conducted by Daniel Nadav of the Defense
Ministry, the introduction of Israel's health-care system into Gaza, the
adoption of local hospitals by Israeli medical centers, and the transfer of
Palestinian patients to hospitals in Israel resulted in a sharp and
immediate drop in the mortality rate. This positive development had negative
consequences - a growing population density caused by a high rate of natural
increase, and diseases that are more common in societies that have changed
their consumption habits and aged (in 1967 only one in 70 people in Gaza was
elderly).

Almost three years after the disengagement of Jewish settlers from Gaza,
there can no longer be any doubt: The military evacuation has failed, even
if the civilian evacuation was necessary - after all, the settlement
activity was unacceptable from the start. Gaza is a testimony to the ongoing
failure of the defense establishment, from the years-long dismissal of the
need to invest in the research, development and acquisition of missile
interception devices; through the abandonment of the Philadelphi route and
the northern buffer zone near the Erez crossing and Moshav Netiv Ha'asara;
to the neglect that led to the loss of visual contact with the kidnappers of
Gilad Shalit, because no continuous surveillance was used. Today, too, the
rocket and mortar warfare is mainly a matter of resources and priorities. A
constant presence of Israeli aircraft would save lives, but it would be
extremely costly, cutting into the budget for other activities. Yet it could
suppress the rocket attacks - just as an ongoing police patrol in all
violent neighborhoods would minimize criminal activity there, but weigh
heavily on the public pocket.

The primary mission of the Israel Air Force, to protect the country's skies
from attack (be it by planes, missiles or rockets), has not been met. Former
prime minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave in to
President George W. Bush's pressure and agreed to include in the Palestinian
elections a movement that opposed - and still opposes - the recognition of
Israel, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and any form of
compromise.

One thousand days after the disengagement, the "point of no-return" that the
instigators of the withdrawal wished to establish has disappeared. Instead,
a new "point of no-return" has emerged, pointing in the other direction: a
"return" to Gaza. The diplomatic payback Sharon demanded - Bush's consent to
leave the settlement clusters in the West Bank, along with the dubious
interpretation of an American blessing for their further expansion - all
these will vanish once John McCain or Barack Obama take office. Hamas'
conditions for a cease-fire are nowhere near those set by Israel.

So far, Israel's military entry into Gaza has been delayed because of IDF
demands that the political echelon first formulate an "exit strategy." Now
the General Staff has stopped waiting for a reply. If the disengagement was
the strategy for exiting Gaza, the only plan now really being put together
is the strategy for exiting the exit strategy.

4) Understanding Hizbullah's power play
By Caroline B. Glick



It only took Hizbullah a week to bring the government of Lebanon to its knees. The Saniora government's decision Wednesday to cancel its decisions to ban Hizbullah's independent communications system and sack Hizbullah's agent from his position as chief of security at Beirut airport constituted its effective acceptance of Hizbullah's preeminent role in Lebanon.

What is interesting about Hizbullah's successful overthrow of the elected government in Lebanon is that after his forces defeated their foes, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah ordered his men to retreat to their customary shadows. Why didn't Hizbullah just overthrow the government? Understanding why Hizbullah refused to take over Lebanon is key not only for understanding Hizbullah but also for understanding Hamas, Fatah and the insurgency in Iraq.

A compelling answer to this question is found in David Galula's classic work, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Galula, who died in 1967, was a lieutenant colonel in the French Marines. He served as a company commander in Algeria during the FLN's insurgency there. Counterinsurgency Warfare, which he wrote in 1964, is based largely on the French experience in Algeria and Indochina and on Chinese Communist revolutionary theory. In Counterinsurgency Warfare, Galula provides a clear and concise description of insurgent or revolutionary movements, their strategies and tactics. Conversely he provides clear guidance for counter-insurgents for defeating them.

As Galula explained, one of the main advantages that insurgents have over the governments they seek to overthrow is their lack of responsibility for governance. Far from seeking to govern the local population, the goal of insurgents is simply to demonstrate through sabotage, terror and guerilla operations that the government is incapable of keeping order. And it is far easier and cheaper to sow disorder and chaos than to maintain order and secure public safety.

In Hizbullah's case, Nasrallah and his Iranian bosses have no interest in taking on responsibility for Lebanon. They don't want to collect taxes. They don't want to pick up the garbage or build schools and universities.

Hizbullah and its Iranian overlords wish to have full use of Lebanon as a staging area for attacks against Israel and the US. They wish maintain and expand Hizbullah's arsenals. For this they need unfettered access, and if necessary, control over Lebanon's borders, its seaports and airport.

They need to raise and train Hizbullah's army and cultivate Hizbullah's loyal cadres among Lebanon's Shiites in order to fight Israel. And so they need to cultivate loyalty and dependency among Lebanon's Shiites in order to use their villages as launching pads for attacks on Israel, as cover to hide from Israeli counterattacks, and as recruitment centers to fills their lines with fighters.

Over the past week, Hizbullah secured this freedom through its successful attack on the Saniora government. Today no one will utter a peep of complaint as Hizbullah imports ever more sophisticated weapons systems from Syria and Iran. No one will say a word when Hizbullah openly asserts control over the border with Israel, or places its commanders in charge of Lebanese army units along the border.

Galula argues that the primary goal of insurgents in the early stages of their long campaigns is to secure the support of the local populations. In light of this, it could be claimed that by attacking the Saniora government and its supporters, Hizbullah was acting against its interests. But we are no longer in the early stages of Hizbullah's insurgency. At this advanced stage of its game, Hizbullah considers the sentiments of Lebanese Druse, Christians and Sunnis irrelevant. None have the power to challenge its primacy.

Hizbullah's refusal to take responsibility for the country that it effectively controls confounds the logic that has guided Israeli governments since 1993. From the onset of the "peace process" with the PLO in 1993, through the IDF's withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000, to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 to the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's current transfer of control over the Palestinian cities in Samaria to Fatah militias and curtailment of IDF counter-terror operations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, successive Israeli governments have argued that Israel can compel its non-state foes — the Palestinians and Hizbullah — to end their asymmetric warfare and take responsibility for public order by retreating.

The repeated assertion is that once Hizbullah and the Palestinians were placed in charge of territory, and didn't have Israel to kick around anymore, they would transform themselves from insurgents into respectable civilian authorities that would be compelled to abandon war in favor of building economies and keeping public order.

The basic problem with this Israeli strategic assertion is that it ignores the basic interests of the other side. Hizbullah and the Palestinians have no interest in instilling order in the territories they wrest from Israeli control. They wish to use those territories to continue their war against Israel and use the local populations to advance their war efforts.

To the latter end, their aim is not to develop local economies but to foster dependency among the local population. The only ones permitted to become prosperous in areas they control are their senior officials. The masses are made dependent on the insurgents for their basic welfare services. And through the provision of welfare, the insurgents indoctrinate the locals to their cause.

That is, successive Israeli governments have failed to recognize the simple fact that the absence of Israeli control on the ground can no more compel Hizbullah, Hamas or Fatah to act responsibly and peacefully than the hapless Saniora government can compel Hizbullah to accept its authority.

Galula explained that the starting point of all insurgencies is finding and advancing a political cause or ideology. "The best cause for the insurgents' purpose is one that by definition can attract the largest number of followers and repel the minimum of opponents," he wrote.

In both Lebanese and Palestinian societies and indeed throughout the Arab world, that cause is the destruction of Israel.

Recognizing the inherent hostility of its enemies' cause, until 1993 Israel used classic counterinsurgency tactics to defeat them. It sought to instill order in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and in its security zone in South Lebanon and to a large degree, it succeeded. The Palestinian uprising of 1987 was fairly tame and by 1991, it was defeated and discredited. South Lebanon, under Israel's security umbrella and controlled by the South Lebanese Army was the most prosperous area in civil war-wracked Lebanon.

But then the Israeli peace movement took over. At base, the goal of the peace movement is to legitimize the cause of Israel's enemies, de-legitimize Israel's own cause and so force the government and Israeli society to capitulate to our enemies in the interest of "peace." By 1993, the peace movement had asserted its ideological preeminence over Israel's governing classes and so inserted Israel directly into the trap of insurgent ideology. Galula explained, "The [insurgent] cause must be such that the counter-insurgent cannot espouse it too or can do so only at the risk of losing his power."

Israel cannot successfully embrace its enemies' cause because their cause is Israel's destruction. Yet that is essentially what Israel has done for the past 15 years. In the Palestinian case, the thinking has been that Israel can compel the Palestinians to accept its right to exist by giving the Palestinians a state. Yet here too, Israel has failed to acknowledge the nature of its enemies or the rationale of their cause. Both the Palestinians and Hizbullah are supported by states whose support for them stems from what is perceived as their role as the vanguards of the global jihad. Israel is perceived by Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others as the Little Satan who must be destroyed in order to bring down the Great Satan — America.

Writing in the 1960s, Galula's insurgents were largely sponsored by the USSR and Communist China. They fought in the name of global Communism in its war against capitalism and imperialism. This global nature of local insurgencies barred all possibility of reaching an accommodation between insurgent and counterinsurgent. As Galula explained, "A local revolutionary war is part of the global war against capitalism and imperialism. Hence a military victory against the local enemy is in fact a victory against the global enemy and contributes to his ultimate defeat."

This statement is equally true if Communism is replaced with Islam and capitalism and imperialism are replaced with democracy and Zionism. Given the war against Israel's crucial role in jihadist ideology, there is no way the insurgents can reach an accommodation with it. All Israeli retreats must be perceived as capitulations.

On the surface, Hamas's takeover of Gaza from Fatah militia tends to argue against Galula's thesis. If Hamas wants to sow chaos then why did it run for office and so presumably tether itself to territorial and economic responsibilities?

The fact is that neither Fatah nor Hamas have used their control over territory and local populations to facilitate order. To the contrary, under both Fatah and Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has refused to accept responsibility for anything. It has required Israel and the West to finance, feed and care for its population while the PA leadership builds terror armies and indoctrinates Palestinian society to the cause of Israel's destruction. If in Lebanon the central problem is that the Saniora government is no match for Hizbullah, in the PA the central problem is that everyone is Hizbullah. And in the unlikely event that Fatah's leaders were to accept Israel's right to exist, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has far less power to take action against Hamas than Saniora has against Hizbullah.

US President George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted that the antidote to insurgencies is freedom. And there is much truth to this claim. One needs only to look to the stunning developments in Iraq over the past year — where Shiites and Sunnis are standing up to insurgents and the Iraqi government is conducting a successful counterinsurgency in Basra and Baghdad to see that liberty can trump jihad. Yet the difference between Iraq and Lebanon and the PA is that the US military in Iraq is combating insurgents and thereby enabling Iraqis to choose liberty. Until 1993, Israel fought Palestinian insurgent groups and enabled rank-and-file Palestinians to make that same choice. And until 2000, Israel enabled residents of South Lebanon to choose freedom as well. Israel only failed in the end because it convinced itself that its enemies had justice on their side.

What we learn from Hizbullah's retreat to the shadows, from Hamas's use of Gaza as a launching pad to bomb Israeli maternity clinics and schools, and Fatah's jihadist kleptocracy then is that there is no way to force insurgents to change their nature through retreat or by empowering and legitimizing them. The only way to enable freedom to trump jihad is for forces of freedom to take control of insurgent enclaves, defeat them and so empower local populations to choose to be free. In Iraq, the US military is bravely advancing this near Sisyphean task. In South Lebanon, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the only force capable of successfully defeating the jihadist insurgents is Israel. Until it does, Hizbullah, Hamas and Fatah will continue to sow chaos in their societies, terrorize Israelis, and confound the Israeli peace movement by refusing to take responsibility for their people.

5) Bring On the Foreign Policy Debate
By JOHN R. BOLTON


President Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset, where he equated "negotiat[ing] with the terrorists and radicals" to "the false comfort of appeasement," drew harsh criticism from Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. They apparently thought the president was talking about them, and perhaps he was.

Wittingly or not, the president may well have created a defining moment in the 2008 campaign. And Mr. Obama stepped right into the vortex by saying he was willing to debate John McCain on national security "any time, any place." Mr. McCain should accept that challenge today.

The Obama view of negotiations as the alpha and the omega of U.S. foreign policy highlights a fundamental conceptual divide between the major parties and their putative presidential nominees. This divide also opened in 2004, when John Kerry insisted that our foreign policy pass a "global test" to be considered legitimate.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the "what can we lose?" mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.

When the U.S. negotiates with "terrorists and radicals," it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.

Moreover, negotiations – especially those "without precondition" as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated – consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush's reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power.

In today's world of weapons of mass destruction, time is again a precious asset, one almost invariably on the side of the would-be proliferators. Time allows them to perfect the complex science and technology necessary to sustain nuclear weapons and missile programs, and provides far greater opportunity for concealing their activities from our ability to detect and, if necessary, destroy them.

Iran has conclusively proven how to use negotiations to this end. After five years of negotiations with the Europeans, with the Bush administration's approbation throughout, the only result is that Iran is five years closer to having nuclear weapons. North Korea has also used the Six-Party Talks to gain time, testing its first nuclear weapon in 2006, all the while cloning its Yongbyon reactor in the Syrian desert.

Finally, negotiations entail opportunity costs, consuming scarce presidential time and attention. Those resources cannot be applied everywhere, and engaging in true discussions, as opposed to political charades, does divert time and attention from other priorities. No better example can be found than the Bush administration's pursuit of the Annapolis Process between Arabs and Israelis, which has gone and will go nowhere. While Annapolis has been burning up U.S. time and effort, Lebanon has been burning, as Hezbollah strengthens its position there. This is an opportunity cost for the U.S., and a tragedy for the people of Lebanon.

President Bush is not running this November, no matter how hard Mr. Obama wishes it were so. Mr. McCain will have the chance to set out his own views on when and where diplomacy is appropriate, and where more fortitude is required. In any event, from the American voter's perspective, this debate on the role of negotiations in foreign policy will be critically, perhaps mortally, important. Bring it on.