Bowling Ball and Dukakis in the tank - de ja vue!

The Obama camp's reaction to President Bush's speech in Israel suggest it hit a raw "appeasement" nerve as it did with the entire Democrat Party. It wasn't even aimed at them so they must be feeling deep deserved guilt pangs and extreme anxiety. Olmert should have felt more in the line of fire but it went over his head as well i he applauded.

Funny how thin skinned Obama has become. He has postured himself as being above reproach - how dare you question my patriotism, how dare you aim anything at me because I am the Messiah. I bring hope where despair exists, I bring change where it is needed but I can't define anything or choose not to because then I would have to explain myself.

Obama needs to use more sunscreen because things will heat up and get more intense as the campaign gets rolling.

Does anyone wonder how Obama might respond to all those dictators he intends to entertain and confront while they and chat and chew should he become president? These thugs play hardball. If Obama's recent experience at the bowling alley is any clue it may not be a pretty scene. As his ball rolled into the gutter less than half-way down the alley I saw visions of Dukakis in the tank- de ja vue - all over again.

I know I dwell on Obama but I can't help but think of him as a subdued Rev. Wright. No he does not flail his arms, wear gold braided heavenly uniforms and use bombastic language but he does hop upon the stage, moves his arms about and speaks in a cadenced and staccato style reminiscent of a gentrified Rev. Wright. Obama then proceeds with speeches signifying sound and fury but saying nothing. Yes, Obama is the untouchable Messiah who mesmerizes the unwashed masses with meaningless pap and assures them he feels their pain without mouthing the words. He is modern equivalent of Kahlil Gibran's heaven sent "Prophet" who has all the answers -hallelujah, let all bow to the coming of the lord.

For more behind the scenes action. (See 1 below.)

Dr Lerner goes after Olmert hoping Olmert will awake from his stupor and questions his lack of moral authority. (See 2 below.)

Patrick Casey makes the point I tried to make in a previous memo. (See 3 below.)

Contrast what GW and bin Laden had to say. (See 4 and 4a below.)

The taste of Cinnammon on why academics waste their time constructing failed solutions. (See 5 below.)

Meanwhile more talk about Iran. Does this signify anything beyond just that - talk.

Is it conceivable GW's trip to Israel, viewing the "Dead Sea Scrolls" will reinforce GW's own belief he is the real "Messiah?" (See 6 below.)

Dick

1) Would Obama come to terms with Iran as a nuclear power?


It was obvious president George W. Bush’s denunciation of those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” had put the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, on the spot. Minutes after the words had been spoken on Thursday, May 16, in a special 60th anniversary session of the Israeli parliament, Obama shot back with an attack on the president: “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists.”

Some of the flak which landed on the senator was directed against his lobbyists, whose arrival to woo Israeli and Jewish support was timed to coincide with the presidential participation in Israel’s anniversary celebrations.

Bush felt that his gesture to honor Israel had been used for internal American political sparring and he struck back.

According to political sources, Bush was furious when he found out that both Obama and Hillary Clinton had sent representatives to the international conference in Jerusalem to solicit campaign supporters in Israel.

Clinton’s was ex-ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and Obama’s was Dennis Ross, formerly of the US state department and ex-special Middle east envoy, and Dan Kurtzer, another former ambassador to Israel.

Whereas Indyk kept a low profile, Ross and Kurtzer were in and out of the offices of Israeli leaders including prime minister Ehud Olmert, They promised Israel had nothing to fear from Barack Obama as president, or his offer to meet the leaders of Iran and Syria for face to face discussion on the issues outstanding between them and the United States. They insisted this offer did not apply to Palestinian terrorists like Hamas.

Granting the prospects of talks with those leaders were slim, the ambassadors stressed that if they did indeed materialize, Obama would stand by the supportive positions on Israel articulated by President Bush and Republican candidate John McCain.

The sensitivity of the Obama campaign to this issue prompted Ross and Kurtzer to leave the Knesset visitors’ gallery before the end of Bush speech to brief the senator on the passages denouncing would-be negotiators with “terrorists and radicals” in the context of those who appeased Hitler in 1939. They urged him to respond strongly without delay else all their lobbying efforts on his behalf would be wasted.

Obama took their advice.

The president’s exact words in the relevant passages were:

“America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. And America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

And: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” he said. “We have heard this foolish delusion before.”

“As Nazi tanks crossed in Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Obama responded in an e-mail to reporters, saying it is sad that president Bush would use Israel’s 60th anniversary to launch a false political attack. “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally, Israel.”

The word “never” was inserted in the final version when Kurtz and Ross insisted on the statement being strengthened. What Obama left out tellingly was a reference to “radicals,” namely Iran. By leaving “the world’s leading sponsor of terror” out of his response, he allowed the president to underscore his lack of an organized policy position on Iran.

Republican senator John McCain quickly picked up on his rival’s lack of clarity on the key Iranian issue.

While denying coordination with Bush on the speech, McCain said he wholeheartedly agreed with the gist of his remarks.

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain.” Asked if he considered Obama an appeaser, he said: “I think that Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for killing brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel of the map, who denies the Holocaust.”

Obama’s lobbyists, sources report, made a point of talking to most of the American Jewish leaders attending the international conference and asked them to support the Democratic senator’s bid for the presidency. Sources heard from some of them that their chief concern is that, if Obama wins the nomination, Clinton’s Jewish supporters will be lost to the Democrats and drift all the way over to the Republican candidate instead of voting for Obama.

2) Dr. Aaron Lerner

"There aren't enough casualties. It wasn't a mega attack," he said with a
tone of frustration in his voice in a live telephone interview broadcast on
Israel Television Channel Two shortly after the Ashkelon mall/medical center
was hit by a rocket.

No. It wasn't an Arab spokesman. It was an angry Israeli explaining why he
didn't expect the latest attack to break the Olmert team out of its ongoing
stupor and finally take serious measures to defend the residents of
Ashkelon, Sderot and the rest of the communities within striking distance of
the abandoned Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip that have been
transformed into rocket launching areas.

And the Olmert team makes no bones about this.

This is what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in his prepared remarks as he
met with President Bush moments before the rocket attack:

"We hope that we will not have to act against Hamas in other ways with the
military power that Israel has not yet started to use in a serious manner in
order to stop it."

That's right. He admitted, for the record, that Israel has yet to use the
IDF "in a serious manner" to defend the citizens of Israel.

Reality check: Rabin's Labor Party trounced the ruling Likud back in the
Summer of 1992 with an election campaign that blamed Shamir for failing to
address a wave of terror attacks.

No. They weren't rocket attacks.

They weren't bombings.

They weren't sniper attacks.

They were some knifings.

That was before Oslo.

But instead of learning from the serious deterioration of conditions as a
direct result of Oslo and policies in its spirit, there are those who
doggedly insist we ignore reality.

We stand at the edge of the abyss and they call for "movement forward" as
the Olmert team fails to fulfill the fundamental obligation of any ruling
authority: to act to defend its public.

The Olmert team can, as FM Livni frequently does, talk on a theoretical
level about Israel's requirements.

But a government that cannot figure out how to protect its citizens has
neither the moral authority nor the practical ability to negotiate a
genuine, robust, agreement with the Palestinians.

3)If The GOP Wants To Govern Like Democrats, Why Have a Separate Party?
By Patrick J. Casey

Republicans are and should be panicked over the fact that conservative Democrat Travis Childers just defeated Republican Greg Davis by a margin of 54%-46% in the race for a vacant Mississippi congressional seat. That seat is in a conservative district that had given President Bush a 25-point margin of victory over John Kerry in 2004 - it never should have flipped Democrat. This is the third double-digit loss in a row for Republican candidates in conservative districts across the United States.

Childers' victory came one week after Rep. Don Cazayoux won a House seat in the Baton Rouge, La., area that had been in Republican hands for three decades. Over the winter, Rep. Bill Foster won an election in Illinois to succeed former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who had been in Congress more than 20 years.

What we're watching is the culmination of the decade-plus deterioration of the conservative Republican brand. Put simply, no one, including base conservatives, trusts the Republicans to govern effectively while following anything even faintly resembling a conservative platform.

That's unfortunate, since the only time that the Republicans really took the country by storm was in 1994, when they all ran on a set of firm, well established conservative values and issues. When the GOP strayed from that, falling back on the Democratic Party tradition of retaining power through excessive pork barrel spending and questionable ethical practices, they first lost seats - then lost their majorities. To regain what they have thrown away they must return to those conservative principles. If successful, they then must reject the compromising allure of power and promise to govern in the future as conservatives, not as the Democratic Party Lite.

Pollsters such as Gallup and the Pew Foundation have measured the voters' party identification for decades. Concurrent with the GOP's move away from conservative governing principals has been the increase in voters' self-identification as either being a Democrat or someone who leans Democrat, with a comparable decrease in self-identification with the Republicans. Is that merely because of changing demographics, as many political scientists suggest? Or is it because there have been no national leaders that continually challenge the Democrats on an ideological basis and promote widespread conservatism in the Republican ranks? The last nationally recognized GOP leader that did that was Newt Gingrich - ten years ago. Without such leadership, without such an enunciated conservative agenda for people to believe in, without a Republican Party that does what it promises, is it not natural for voters to wander - looking for something else to believe?

The aforementioned disparity between self-identified Democrats and Republicans doesn't fully explain the losses suffered by the GOP in 2006. The Dems had to run conservatives to win their majority that year. They had to run conservatives to win the three most recent House special elections. Isn't the natural home of many of those voters who elected conservative Democrats really the Republican Party, rather than the party of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama? The GOP's problems have gotten so bad that even a prominent national conservative, Sean Hanitty, is now publicly speaking of his plan to leave the GOP and re-register in New York's Conservative Party.

That conservatism is no longer an effective belief system and governing method for the Republicans is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without anyone in the GOP publicly promoting conservative ideology and a true conservative agenda as a solution to our problems, how do we know that it won't work? When it's been tried in the past, it's attracted enthusiastic supporters and voters - and been quite successful.

Waiting for another Ronald Reagan is foolish - he was one of a kind. But there are new conservative leaders on the horizon, such as Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. The problem is that up and coming national leaders like Jindal are in the future, not present. The current GOP leadership is merely treading water. The House Leadership just announced their "new" message in the wake of the GOP's special election losses: "Change You Deserve". Unfortunately, their message sounds suspiciously similar to the message that the Democrats used to win in 2006 and are working on today. And lost upon the Republican leadership is the irony that the faces behind their latest "change" are the same faces that "changed" the GOP from the majority party to the minority two years ago. Voters will recognize that.

The national GOP has fallen for the media lie that voters across America want a 'moderate', as opposed to a conservative, Republican Party. Unfortunately, that's also the philosophy behind the Presidential campaign of John McCain. McCain might very well become the next President, but it will be more because of the inadequacies of his opponent than any wellspring of support for his governing philosophy or ideology.

This moderation trend is nothing new, nor is the Republicans' refusal to deal with it. By their actions, or inactions, the Republican leadership has permitted the Democrats and the media to define down the GOP, recreating the word "conservative" as a pejorative. Think family values and the image is of Mark Foley and Vito Fossella. Think wasteful pork barrel and earmark spending - and the image is of Ted Stevens. Think corruption and the public thinks Randy Cunningham. Think "against tax cuts" and the image is of ... John McCain.

All of these issues define the Republicans as a party that promises to both reform government and to address the major problems that the country faces today, but delivers no more and acts no better than Democrats. As such, are we supposed to be surprised that the voters would rather have the real Democrats, rather than the fake?

Republicans, and conservatives in particular, won't be able to benefit much from their Presidential candidate's coattails this year either. For an example, just look at Senator McCain's newly launched climate change tour. In a national poll conducted by Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg released earlier this month, only 4% of respondents replied that the environment as a whole was one of the most important issues in this election. More surprisingly, only 6% of Democrats thought so! So why is McCain so focused on climate change? Because it is one of the mainstream media's pet issues, and McCain is trying to get in the media's good graces again. By doing so, and prominently embracing issues that the Democrats own nationwide, McCain feels that he'll attract some swing votes.

That's not going to work. The media will never be in John McCain's corner during a Presidential general election, no matter how hard he tries. They will be firmly in Obama's back pocket, and will be the primary enablers for Howard Dean's upcoming viscous attack machine against McCain. And the voters who view global warming as a major election issue? They're so far Left that they'll be repulsed from voting for McCain by his other stances on issues such as the War in Iraq.

So what other good might come of John McCain's tack to the left? Will his road to 'moderation' help Republicans overall this fall? To answer that, I'll just relay something that Fox News' Carl Cameron said in his report from 5/13/08 on Brit Hume's show about McCain's global warming tour. Cameron quoted a McCain aide on the candidate's plan to distance himself from the GOP and President Bush by Election Day:

...By the time the November elections come around, it'll be hard to tell that they were even in the same party.


Seeing as this statement was made in the context of the Senator's climate change tour, it's safe to assume that McCain isn't talking about moving the image of the party to the right. How that will serve to help other Republicans this fall escapes me, unless McCain's real plan is to remake the party in the image of himself and former politicians like former Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. While that does take care of most ethical issues, it throws the rest of Republican conservatism under the bus. If he does that, the GOP will be in the minority for generations to come.

McCain will be all over the map this fall - conservative on some important issues like the war and judges, but liberal on other issues such as the global warming, immigration, and perhaps even taxes. The past few years has shown that such vacillation - such an inability to enunciate a clear set of conservative governing principles across the policy spectrum - might work for an individual GOP candidate here and there, but represents disaster for the overall political party.

John McCain might win this crucially important Presidential election, since the alternative would be disastrous for the United States and the world. The war issue alone, and the ramifications worldwide and domestically if we should lose, should be enough to bring the conservative base out to vote for the Senator in an election that many of them might otherwise be tempted to skip. But the message so far from McCain to down-ballot Republicans this fall is clear: "Don't expect any help from me, unless you are prepared to repudiate much of your conservative beliefs".

That's not the way for the GOP to rebuild the party. And that's certainly not the way for the GOP to win.

4) Bush at end of Israel visit: 'What's on my mind is peace'

US President George W. Bush wrapped up his two-day visit to Israel Friday with a tour and discussion with a group of Israeli youth leaders at the Bible Lands Museum. His second museum visit of the trip, this one illustrates cultures of all civilizations mentioned in the Bible.

Bush on Islamic extremism

"What's on my mind is peace," Bush told the group. "I believe it's possible. I know it will happen when young people put their minds together."

According to the youngsters, Bush also told them that just as the US changed its treatment of minorities, he hoped that Israeli society could also change the way it treats its minorities.

Following the discussion, the US president was flown by helicopter from Givat Ram in Jerusalem to Ben Gurion Airport.

He then departed on Air Force One for Saudi Arabia to spend a little less than a day with King Abdullah at his desert horse farm outside Riyadh. He will spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday in Egypt before returning to Washington.

At Ben Gurion, President Shimon Peres said that Bush's visit generated much excitement, the like of which Israel hasn't experienced for many years. "The state of Israel seemed to have forgotten how to get excited," Peres told Israel Radio.


He said it was an exciting week from many perspectives, stressing that the Bush visit and the 'Facing Tomorrow' conference, were a successful hasbara (public diplomacy) coup for Israel and demonstrated the country's recent impressive developments.

Peres went on to say that he was a little surprised by the US president's Knesset speech on Thursday in with he came out so staunchly in support of Israel.

"If any Israeli has any doubt to the value of Bush's remarks, he should try and listen to them with Arab ears, then he will understand the power of the speech," said the president.

Peres said Bush's message to terrorists was crystal clear. "The message was that we are not scared of you, we are more than you, we are stronger than you and don't think you can do whatever you want. The strongest message was that we are 307 million, not two isolated nations of seven million and 300 million."

During Thursday's Knesset address, Bush had said, "Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you."

"Don't forget," continued Peres, "he is now going to Saudi Arabia, an Arab country. He knows exactly to whom his words are directed," adding, "he sent a strong and unequivocal message of peace."

Peres said that he asked Bush to pass on a message to Abdullah that Israel believed the Saudi king's proposal for a three-way religious summit was of vital importance.

Bush is paying a second visit to Abdullah in four months in part because he considers him crucial to achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Bush has said he expects this to happen before he leaves office in January, though his optimism has waned recently.

Saudi Arabia is the most powerful Sunni Arab state that has not made peace with Israel, so its backing of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and any concessions he will have to make in negotiations with Israel is seen as key.

The Saudis feel Washington leans unfairly to Israel's side in the dispute with the Palestinians.

When Air Force One landed in the Saudi capital, the president got a red carpet welcome on the tarmac and was warmly greeted by Saudi leaders.

The White House says the president's visit to Saudi Arabia is intended, in part, to celebrate 75 years of formal US-Saudi relations. It will mark the conclusion of several agreements, laying out intentions to cooperate on nuclear energy, infrastructure protection and nonproliferation.

But the rising price of oil undoubtedly will overshadow the talks.

Bush concedes that raising output is difficult because the demand for oil - particularly from China and India - is stretching supplies. Besides, any production hike might not lower prices that much as some economists say they're being driven up by increased demand, not slowed production.

4a) 'Holy war until Palestine liberated'

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden said in a new audio message released Friday that the terrorist organization will continue its holy war against Israel and its allies until it liberates Palestine.

The terrorist leader's third message this year came as US President George W. Bush was wrapping up his visit to Israel to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state.

Bin Laden said the fight for the Palestinian cause was the most important factor driving al-Qaida's war with the West and fueled 19 Muslims to carry out the suicide attacks against the US on September 11.

"To Western nations ... this speech is to understand the core reason of the war between our civilization and your civilizations. I mean the Palestinian cause," said bin Laden in the close to 10 minute message.


"The Palestinian cause is the major issue for my (Islamic) nation. It was an important element in fueling me from the beginning and the 19 others with a great motive to fight for those subjected to injustice and the oppressed," added bin Laden.

The authenticity of the message could not be verified, but it was posted on a Web site commonly used by al-Qaida and the voice resembled the one in past bin Laden audiotapes.

IntelCenter, a US group that monitors al-Qaida message traffic, said the audio message was accompanied by a photo of bin Laden wearing a white robe and turban next to a picture of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. It was unclear when the photo of bin Laden was taken.

The al-Qaida leader said the Western media managed to brainwash people over the past 60 years by "portraying the Jewish invaders, the occupiers of our land, as the victims while it portrayed us as the terrorists."

"Sixty years ago, the Israeli state didn't exist. Instead, it was established on the land of Palestine raped by force," said bin Laden. "Israelis are occupying invaders whom we should fight."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel dismissed bin Laden's new message.

"We do not relate or pay attention to the words of this terrorist lunatic," he said. "The time has come for him to be apprehended and pay for his crimes."

Bin Laden criticized Western leaders like the US president who participated in Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations, saying they were insincere in their expressed desire for Israeli-Palestinian peace and failed to criticize Israel for its attacks against the Palestinian people.

"Peace talks that started 60 years ago are just meant to deceive the idiots," said bin Laden. "After all the destruction and the killings ... your leaders talk about principles. This is unbearable."

"You describe Palestinian organizations as terrorists and you boycott them and punish them while Israelis are killing civilians, women and children," added bin Laden.

The terrorist leader mentioned former prime minister Menahem Begin, who he said ordered a Jewish militia to attack the Arab village of Deir Yassin in 1948. The attack during Israel's push for statehood killed more than 100 Arabs and forced the rest of the village to flee.

"Instead of punishing him (Begin) over his crimes ... he was awarded a Nobel prize," said bin Laden.

Begin won the Nobel peace prize for negotiating a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Israel's first with an Arab nation. The Israeli leader shared the prize with former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who was Begin's negotiating partner. Israel has only signed one other peace treaty with an Arab nation, Jordan.

"We will continue our struggle against the Israelis and their allies," said bin Laden. "We are not going to give up an inch of the land of Palestine."

Bin Laden's message Friday followed an audiotape released in March in which he lashed out at Palestinian peace negotiations with Israel and called for a holy war to liberate the Palestinian lands.

The March audiotape was the first time bin Laden spoke of the Palestinian question at length since the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.

5) Appeasement Finds a Home in the Academy [on William O. Beeman, Augustus Richard Norton, Sara Roy]
By Cinnamon Stillwell

Instead of providing moral clarity in a time of war, too many academics busy themselves inventing strategies to get along peaceably with genocidal terrorist groups and the governments that aid and abet them. Among the appeasers, three professors of Middle East studies stand out: the University of Minnesota's William O. Beeman; Boston University's Augustus Richard Norton; and Harvard University's Sara Roy.

William O. Beeman, professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, as well as president of the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Association, apparently thinks the bloody, belligerent Iranian regime can be placated by politeness. In a recent article (scroll down), Beeman counseled the U.S. to negotiate with Iran using "language" that is "unfailingly polite and humble."

Humbleness toward a regime hell-bent on building the bomb, funding terrorists worldwide, threatening to wipe Israel off the map, seizing U.S., British and Canadian citizens as hostages, and supplying weapons that kill American servicemen in Iraq?

"Politeness," is hardly the best tactic for dealing with opponents who clearly hold strength in the highest regard, but such is Beeman's recommendation. Unfortunately, it's advice that the Bush administration, and the State Department in particular, appear to be following, and the lack of desirable results thus far point to its ineffectiveness. The recent decision to consider classifying Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization provides hope that realism may yet prevail.

If appeasing Iran's mullahs wasn't bad enough, Boston University professor of international relations and anthropology Augustus Richard Norton wants to do the same with their proxy, Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah. Funded in part by the Iranian regime and responsible for the deaths of untold civilians, Hezbollah hardly provides the foundation for civil society.

Yet, Norton's recently published book, Hezbollah: A Short History (2007) repeats all the usual talking points aimed at softening both the group's image and the West's response. In his review of Norton's book, the Jewish Policy Center's Jonathan Schanzer elaborates:

Norton, a former observer with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, states in his prologue that he seeks to provide "a more balanced and nuanced account" of Hezb'allah, which he calls a "complex organization." Of course, there is little that is complex or nuanced about a group that receives an estimated $100 million a year from the radical Islamic regime in Iran to carry out violence, and has used violence as its raison d'être dating back to the 1980s.

Extending his regard to the new terrorist thugs on the block, Norton, along with Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies scholar Sara Roy, penned an article for the Christian Science Monitor in June titled, "Yes, You Can Work With Hamas." As they put it, "There can be no peace process with a Palestinian government that excludes Hamas." Norton and Roy assert that international recognition and diplomacy will somehow obscure the fact that Hamas is dedicated to wiping out Israel-an inconvenient fact that they simply ignore.

Roy has long been invested in forging the idea of a "New Hamas" by attempting to downplay the group's openly genocidal ambitions and picturing them instead an enlightened group of do-gooders interested only in social services and education-a sort of Salvation Army with real guns. Unfortunately, reality doesn't support this depiction, and the push for normalization of relations with Hamas favored by Roy and Norton represents nothing more than wishful thinking with lethal results.

Such willful blindness is rooted in the reflexive anti-Western nature of many of today's Middle East studies academics. Their eagerness to put the best face on groups and governments widely known for practicing the art of deadly deception parallels their instinctive distrust of their own country and, in a larger sense, the West.

But these academic appeasers are playing a dangerous game. For, as history has repeatedly proven, weakness in the face of aggression only leads to further bloodshed.

6) Israel, US see need for "tangible action" on Iran

'Both countries understand tangible action required to prevent Islamic Republic from moving forward on a nuclear weapon,' PM Olmert's spokesman says after Bush visit, adding that diplomatic efforts to press Iran are 'insufficient'


The United States and Israel agree on the need for "tangible action" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said after a visit by US President George W. Bush.


Islamic Republic
Iranian defense minister: Israel too weak to attack / Dudi Cohen
Israel has raised the claim of attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran mostly to cover up its weak points and harsh domestic crises,' Mostafa Mohammad Najjar says

"We are on the same page. We both see the threat ... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said on Friday.


Regev described diplomatic efforts so far to exert pressure on Iran as "positive", but added: "It is clearly not sufficient and it's clear that additional steps will have to be taken".


Asked about the option of using military force, Regev said:


"Leaders of many countries have talked about many options being on the table and, of course, Israel agrees with that."


'Harsh domestic crises'

Bush ratcheted up his rhetoric toward Tehran in a speech to Israel's Knesset on Thursday, saying critics' calls for talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were comparable to the "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler before World War Two.


Bush vowed that Washington would stand with Israel in opposing Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying it would be "unforgivable" if Tehran were allowed to get the bomb.


Iran has said it will not stop uranium enrichment, which it says is for generating electricity only. In a separate development on Friday, the United States said it would sign an agreement with Saudi Arabia to help the kingdom develop peaceful nuclear energy.



Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) as saying Thursday that Israel was too weak and vulnerable to attack Iran.



"Israel has raised the claim of attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran mostly to cover up its weak points and harsh domestic crises," Najjar said, adding that "the Israelis have made the claims on the 60th anniversary of their establishment to divert public opinion from broad corruption and weakness of Israeli officials."