Senate, Once August Body - Mired in Muck!

Watch this and you will understand, perhaps, if you are objective why terrorists dig tunnels under homes,attachments:HamasCivillians.wmv (1992KB) also,
India understands. So does a Cuban born Spanish author. (See 1 below.)

How about this for proportionality - every IDF soldier killed is equivalent to 50 plus of ours. (See 2 and 2a below.)

This once august body now mired/stuck in muck. (See 3 below.)

Israel racing against time and takes out another senior Hamas leader.

My friend Toameh explains why Said Siam was so important.(See 4 and 4a below.)

Ceasefire same old song - where is Arab originality? Israel has been there and done that. (See 5 below.)

What we see and how we have caracterized them is far from who and what they are. (See 6 below.)

Mubarak has leverage but always works at cross purposes it seems. Why? Because he always walks a tightrope. (See 6 below.)

Victor Davis Hanson hope we do not waste a crisis. (See 7 below.)

Dick

1) 'Shelled UN building used by Hamas'
Yaakov Katz

Gunshots and an anti-tank missile were fired at IDF troops near the UN compound that was attacked by the IDF on Thursday, senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post.

According to the officials, the IDF responded by firing artillery shells at the location of the gunmen, causing damage to the UN installations. At least three people were wounded in the attack and the building was set on fire.

The IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration coordinated the arrival of five fire trucks to the compound to help put out the flames.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was in Israel on Thursday to promote a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, expressed "strong protest and outrage" at the reported shelling of the UN compound.

Ban also demanded an investigation into the shelling, and said Defense Minister Ehud Barak had told him it was a "grave mistake."

Palestinians reported that an IDF tank shell also struck one of the wings of the Gaza Al-Quds Hospital midday Thursday. Witnesses said part of the structure was on fire. The army said that the building was being used by Hamas men who were firing on IDF troops.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the damage caused to the Al Quds hospital was "completely and utterly unacceptable based on every known standard of international humanitarian law."

The Geneva-based group said the second floor of the hospital took a direct hit that caused fires in the pharmacy and severe damage in many parts of the building.

Its sister organization, the International Committe of the Red Cross, also issued a statement Thursday saying the shelling put the lives of patients and medical staff at risk.

Officials contacted at the Israeli mission in Geneva late Thursday could not immediately comment on the issue.

In total, IAF aircraft struck some 35 targets in the Strip throughout the morning, including armed cells and rocket launch positions.

IDF troops also opened fire at two UN vehicles in the Strip on Thursday. One of the cars had no markings identifying it as belonging to the organization. The other was marked as a UN car, but gunshots were fired from it at IDF troops, who returned fire.

On Thursday morning, IDF tanks fired shells at three high-rise buildings in the Tel Hawwa neighborhood of Gaza City, according to Palestinian witnesses.

Palestinian reports said that the IDF hit a multi-story media building that houses several media outlets, including Reuters, Al Arabiya and the BBC. Witnesses said that a Qatari journalist was wounded and that the building was evacuated.

Defense officials said Hamas operatives had barricaded themselves inside the press office in Gaza, and were using people there as human shields. There were 23 people inside, said the officials.

As IAF aircraft hammered targets in Gaza City, ground troops advanced into a crowded residential area on the city's outskirts. Thousands of residents were reportedly fleeing their homes as Israel ground forces were reportedly moving deeper into Gaza City. The targeted buildings are about 1.5 kilometers from the ground forces.

The move marked the deepest thrust into the city in the twenty days of Operation Cast Lead.

Earlier, the IDF observed a daily "humanitarian corridor" between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., to allow for the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Strip, and for Gazans to stock up on necessary supplies.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Defense Ministry spokesman Peter Lerner said that a total of 1,136 trucks of humanitarian supplies have been transferred to Gazans since the beginning of the IDF operation in the Strip, as well as fuel trucks and medical personnel.

The statement added that the electrical grid in the Gaza Strip was functioning at 74%capacity, up from 40% at the beginning of the operation.

Lerner said the state of the electrical supply was "a direct result of the coordination between the IDF, the Palestinian Energy Authority and the International Committee of the Red Cross."

In previous days, Hamas attacks on the South have continued during these pauses in operations.

While the number of rockets fired has dropped dramatically in recent day, at least 25rockets were fired at the western Negev by evening on Thursday.

Overnight Wednesday, IAF aircraft struck some 70 targets, including weapons positions, rocket squads and a mosque in southern Gaza that it said served as a rockets arsenal, according to the IDF.

Palestinian medical officials said seven people were killed in the strikes. Four of those killed were in the southern strip and three in Gaza City, according to Army Radio.

Also Wednesday overnight, the IAF attacked five armed Palestinians who turned out to be the personal bodyguards of senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar. The five men were reportedly guarding Zahar's house in southern Gaza City and were all killed, according to reports.

Eleven IDF soldiers were wounded overnight Wednesday in clashes with Hamas gunmen.



2) Israel’s Gaza Venture Hits Chord in Wounded India: Amity Shlaes
By Amity Shlaes


Israel hasn’t won much praise for invading the Gaza Strip. This unpopularity abides even though Israel is bombing Gaza to stop Qassam rockets from hitting its own towns.

Still, Israel has at least some supporters in what might seem an unlikely place: India.

Not official support, mind you. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee rejected any comparison between the two countries in a recent television interview. But individual Indians have been speaking out in the press and on blogs about similarities between the missile attacks from Gaza and the November attack by terrorists who killed 164 people in Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

Just as Iran backs Hamas in Gaza, many Indians suspect that Pakistan is behind the Mumbai attack. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said outright that Pakistani agencies were involved.

Shashi Tharoor, a former United Nations undersecretary general, summed up the attitude in a recent Project Syndicate column on “India’s Israel envy.”

Tharoor writes, “As Israel demonstrates anew its determination to end attacks on its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled territory, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks in November, have been asking: Why can’t we do the same?”

In the space of the next few paragraphs, Tharoor ticks off the obvious answers to that question: Israel maintains a higher permanent state of alert and has less porous borders, while India faces, in Pakistan, an enemy that is a member of the nuclear- weapons club.

Krav Maga

Still, a growing mutual admiration between India and Israel is showing up at levels both commonplace and lofty. Krav Maga, a form of hand-to-hand combat taught by the Israeli Defense Forces, has become popular in India, the Hindustan Times reported this month.

This Israel-India link is a change. Born at the same time, the two nations at first stood out for their differences. Israel was a U.S. ally from the beginning. India irritated the U.S. by disingenuously establishing the non-aligned movement, and that irritation only deepened as Americans saw the advantage that Moscow took of Indian non-alignment.

Until the 1990s, New Delhi didn’t welcome Israeli diplomats, so Israel had to content itself with a small outpost presence in Mumbai, then known as Bombay. “In Israeli diplomatic circles, Bombay is called the loneliest place in the world,” Bernard Weinraub wrote in the New York Times in 1974.

India ignored Israel in the hope of scoring at least some points with Arab neighbors in its Pakistan conflict. Even South Vietnam was permitted diplomatic representation in New Delhi. Trade was negligible.

More in Common

Over the next decades, a shift commenced. India discerned that it had little to gain by keeping Israel at a distance, since Arab nations would surely back Pakistan over India regardless of the latter’s policy on Jerusalem.

India began to feel that it had an enemy in common with Israel: fundamentalist Islam. Also, that international terror networks had, as Tharoor puts it, “added Indians to their target list of reviled ‘Jews and crusaders.’”

Arms trade between India and Israel flourished. Israeli representatives came to New Delhi.

Some less obvious factors were also at work. India isn’t especially rich in oil and minerals; Israel is a non-oil nation in a decidedly oily region. To grow, both countries therefore have had to become more entrepreneurial, to generate non- commodity wealth -- in short, to innovate.

In Israel in the 1980s and 1990s, newly arrived Soviet Jews led the transition from the kibbutz and factory to high-tech ventures. With the end of the old bureaucratic system known as “license raj,” India, too, placed new faith in tech and services.

Two Innovators

Led by Prime Minister Singh -- at that time finance minister -- India began to invent and create. Innovating Israel and innovating India were similar in a way that agricultural Israel and agricultural India had not been.

In a phone interview this week, Tharoor recalled that India became so comfortable with its trading profile that it unilaterally granted most-favored-nation status to Pakistan. Pakistan didn’t reciprocate, creating “the only instance of a non-reciprocal free trade agreement one can think of,” Tharoor says.

The old waterfront Gateway of India at Mumbai was an important symbol not only of Queen Victoria but also of India’s tolerant, trading future. The result of this affinity of innovators has been a higher standard of living at home and expanding trade.

Trade Partners

In the past decade or so, the volume of nonmilitary trade between India and Israel grew from millions to billions, as measured in U.S. dollars. In December, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the news that an Indian-made battery-powered car, the Reva, was coming to the streets of Israel.

The Indian press has suggested that the Mumbai attack was all about punishing the new trading culture. The terrorists, after all, arrived in Mumbai via a jetty at that symbol of trade, the Gateway. And an Indian paper noted that one target in the Mumbai attack -- the Chabad House Jewish center -- may have been selected to send a message that there would be a specific penalty for India’s commerce with Israel.

Still, as Tharoor notes, attacks on trading nations can backfire. Instead of halting exchange, such attacks can create new alliances of traders.

2a) Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States.

Gaza's True 'Disproportion'

The Current Discussion: What's the most likely outcome of Israel's invasion of Gaza? A wider war? A Hamas defeat? Just more of the same?

Israelis are being accused of suffering too few casualties in their confrontation with the Hamas terrorists. Those who reason thus usually speak the words "disproportion" or "asymmetry" in an indignant tone. While at this writing close to a thousand Arab Palestinians have died or been wounded as a result of the bombings, the Israeli losses amount to just over a dozen.

Tel Aviv's critics -- from whom an anti-Semitic stench often rises -- do not say whether Israel should increase its quota of cadavers or if it must reduce the Arabs' quota to achieve the reasonable proportion of blood that will soothe the peculiar itch for parity that afflicts them. Nor do they specify the morally permissible number of casualties to end the rain of rockets that for years has been constantly falling on the heads of Israeli civilians.

This demand for "proportionality" can only be called surprising. Until this conflict began, history books everywhere always expressed great satisfaction and a certain chauvinistic pride when a nation's army inflicted on the enemy a large number of casualties, vis-à-vis a trifling price paid by "our boys." Israel is the only country expected to behave differently and, in fact, it does; I know of no other nation that announces where and when it will drop its bombs, thus enabling civilians to evacuate the territory. Of course, in this it behaves asymmetrically, because the Hamas terrorists, forever eager to cause the greatest damage possible, never announce when or where they will launch their rockets against Israel's civilian population.

In turn, Israel has not the slightest interest in causing casualties. All it wants is to stop Hamas' attacks the only way it can: by eliminating the terrorists and destroying their arsenals. There's no other way to deal with them. Hamas is not a political organization with which agreements can be reached, but a fanatical gang intent on wiping Israel off the map. To achieve this objective, its members are even willing to turn their own children into human bombs, just to kill the hated Jews.

Here's another very important asymmetry. The Jews build underground shelters in all houses near the border; they close the schools and hide the children at the least sign of danger; they treat the death of a single soldier as a national tragedy; they do everything possible to rescue their prisoners, and protect the civilian population from the consequences of war. In contrast, the authorities in Gaza, drunk with violence, fire their machine guns irresponsibly into the air to express joy or grief (causing numerous injuries), do not hesitate to install their headquarters or hide their guns in schools, mosques or hospitals, use human shields to protect themselves, turn to suicidal terrorists and reward the families of such "martyrs" with money.

One week before Hamas broke the truce and stepped up its rocket attacks against the Jewish state (the spark that set off this conflict), I was in Israel, where I had been invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Tel Aviv. As part of the contacts organized by my hosts, I visited the Wolfson Medical Center to learn about the program "Save a Child's Heart." I was very moved. It is a foundation devoted to providing heart surgery for very poor children, most of them from the Arab world. As it happened, I witnessed the hurried arrival of a tiny 5-day-old girl, who had to be operated on at once to keep her from dying. She was brought in by her mother, a woman in a black head covering that allowed me to see only her tear-filled eyes, and her husband, a small, bearded man who watched with amazement the indescribable kindness with which a group of doctors and nurses treated the baby. The family came from Gaza.

Since the war erupted, I have asked myself constantly what became of them all.

3) The Descent of the Senate
By Bruce Walker

The United States Senate has produced remarkable Americans. Regardless of party or of ideology, this chamber of our national legislature has been the parent of true greatness. Mike Mansfield was wrong on many policy issues, but he was honorable, wise, noble, and good. Robert Lafollette was also wrong on many things, but not on courage and character.


Barry Goldwater was thought an extremist by many Americans, but when Goldwater died no one doubted that he was a giant. Robert Taft, son of a president and a chief justice, graduated first in his class at Yale and then first in his class at Harvard Law School. He was a strong conservative but, like Goldwater, he sometimes held controversial views: He opposed American entry into the Second World War and he opposed the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Yet Taft, known as "Mr. Republican," was considered by JFK, a Democrat, to be one of the five greatest senators in American history.


Look at the Senate today. Harry Reid appears genuinely silly. Robert Byrd, a former Democrat floor leader, was also a former official in the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans can hardly be proud of their most senior senator in the last Congress, the felon Ted Stevens, or Larry Craig, convicted sex offender who promised to resign from the Senate and then changed his mind. Why is anyone shocked that the crooked Blagojevich tried to auction off a Senate seat?


Perhaps most sickening is the unfolding nightmare in Minnesota. Al Franken is nothing but an unfunny joke. Once senators from Minnesota were a special breed. Hubert Humphrey was wrong on many political issues, but he opposed Democratic Party racism in 1948 and he carried himself with such good cheer in public life that he was known as the "Happy Warrior." Humphrey twice volunteered for military service in the Second World War and twice was turned down for medical reasons.


Eugene McCarthy was also wrong on many things, but opposed the Vietnam War on conscience, taking on his party leader and his president. He was a poet, an economist, a professor and someone who cared about what was right (even when his politics were mistaken.)


Those of us who opposed Paul Wellstone's liberalism did not doubt his goodness. He was yet another example of a Minnesota Democrat wrong on ideology but right in terms of his personal conscience and his genuineness in trying to do good.


Minnesota produced some wonderful Republican senators. Knute Nelson, who served as governor, congressman, state legislator (in Minnesota and in Wisconsin), and finally in the Senate (the crowning achievement of his career), had been selected to deliver the Oration of the Day at the United States Centennial in 1876 -- quite an accomplishment for a Norwegian immigrant.


Senator Kellogg was Secretary of State under Coolidge, President of the American Bar Association, a member of the French Legion of Honor, and a judge on the International Court of Justice. Kellogg is one of only three sitting senators to win the Nobel Peace Prize (all when these awards and honors really meant something.)


Rudy Boschwitz, a more recent Republican senator, fled the Nazis with his family when he was three. He established a successful business and became a true example of the American Dream, a popular and familiar Minnesotan. Boschwitz organized "Operation Solomon," through which over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were able to escape to Israel. Humphrey, McCarthy, Wellstone, Nelson, Kellogg, Boschwitz and others represented how seriously, once, Minnesotans took the office of United States Senator.


Seriousness about good government, interest in honorable politics, well-thought principals of public policy - - all these have been lost. Norm Coleman, a good mayor of St. Paul who has had a respectable career in the Senate, is about to lose his Senate seat to seedy Democrat partisans panting for any Democrat, even an absurdity like Franken, to replace a serious, moderate Republican. This perversion of democracy in Minnesota is about to be confirmed by a perversion of democracy in the United States Senate itself, where Franken indecently (but predictably) began his campaign to have Senate Democrats seat him even before the recount of the senate race in Minnesota.


Mike Mansfield must be rolling over in his grave. Hubert Humphrey must be looking at his beloved home state and weeping. Kellogg must be overflowing with contempt. Wellstone must be wondering what happened, in a few short years, to Minnesota Democrats. Good government was once a byword of Minnesota. The United States Senate used to be the most distinguished legislative body in the world. The unbridled lust for power, the cynical insistence on a Leftism that bears no resemblance to the liberalism of Humphrey, the willingness to sacrifice every principle to win - this is what has become of the United States Senate. The noble tradition of Minnesota senators has morphed into muck.

4)Israel air strike kills top Hamas leader, interior minister Siad Sayam


Palestinians sources confirm that Siad Sayam died in an Israeli aerial strike over Gaza, Thursday, January 15, as the third week of Israel's offensive ended. Killed with him were his brother, Salah Abu Sarah, head of the organization's security service and Mahmoud Watfa, commander of Hamas military wing. In Damascus, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal declared there would be no concessions for a ceasefire.

The Shin Bet security service discovered the top Hamas leaders' whereabouts in Gaza with exceptional speed since the hideout demolished in the Israeli air attack had been rented by Sayam's brother only two weeks ago when the war was already being fought. The precise targeting indicates that Israeli intelligence has penetrated the top Hamas echelon.

The dead leader planned and executed the June 2007 coup plot which ousted the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas from the Gaza Strip.

Israel is racing against time to prevail over Hamas before an enforced ceasefire cuts the campaign short before its goals are achieved.

4a) Analysis: Hamas's defense minister
Khaled Abu Toameh

Said Siam, the Hamas leader who was killed in an Israeli air raid on his brother's home in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, was considered by many Palestinians as the movement's "Defense Minister."

In his capacity as Minister of Interior in the Hamas government headed by Ismail Haniyeh, the 50-year-old Siam was in charge of all of the security forces and militias operating in the Gaza Strip.

Siam, who won the largest number of votes in his constituency during the January 2006 parliamentary election, was first appointed interior minister in the Hamas government that was sworn in by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But Siam clashed with the former Fatah security chiefs in the Gaza Strip who refused to operate under his jurisdiction and instead reported to Abbas.

In response, Siam established his own security force, known as the Executive Force, which served as another Hamas militia in the Gaza Strip. The forces, which consisted of more than 12,000 gunmen, reported directly to Siam and its men often clashed with rival Fatah policemen.

Siam resigned when Fatah and Hamas decided to form a "national unity" government in line with an agreement they reached in Mecca under the auspices of the Saudi ruling family.

When the Fatah-Hamas coalition collapsed a few months later, Siam returned to his former post.

In the summer of 2007, he played a major role in the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. Fatah operatives and leaders continued to regard him as a fierce enemy even after they were forced to flee to Egypt and the West Bank.

Siam, a former school teacher who graduated from a college in Ramallah, was first arrested by Israel in 1988. He was sentenced to four years in prison for security offenses and membership in a terror organization.

In 1992 he was among some 400 Hamas members who were deported by Israel to southern Lebanon in response to the kidnapping and murder of a border police officer.

Siam also spent some time in a Palestinian Authority prison after the PA was established in 1994.

The Fatah leadership in Ramallah considered Siam its No. 1 enemy, especially after he announced that Hamas had seized documents in the Fatah-controlled security headquarters that proved that the PA had been collaborating with Israel against Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

Siam also enraged the Fatah leaders by threatening to publish documents that were seized by Hamas and that showed that the PA security forces had been spying on the PA leadership and some Arab countries.

As in the case of Nizar Rayyan, another senior Hamas representative who was killed by Israel during Operation Cast Lead, it was hard on Thursday to find words of sympathy for Siam among Fatah members or the PA leadership in the West Bank.

On the contrary; a number of Fatah and PA officials privately expressed relief over the killing of Siam and said that his absence from the scene would pave the way for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

Siam was seen as the No. 2 man in Hamas in the Gaza Strip and some of his supporters considered him the future successor to Haniyeh.

The killing of Siam is not only a moral blow to Hamas, but also a personal setback for Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas "foreign minister." The two did not only lose a longtime friend, but also the man who was in charge of their personal security. In addition, Siam's main task was to ensure the stability and existence of the Hamas regime and thwart any attempt by Fatah to regain control over the Gaza Strip.


5) Emerging Gaza ceasefire allows Hamas to restock rockets - and fire them


Military sources sum up the Egyptian-Hamas ceasefire accord presented to Israel as no better than a repeat formula of last year's failed informal truce, which led to the outbreak of the current Gaza fighting. One senior officer told us: For this we didn't have to go to war."

Now as then, Egypt is fashioning separate understandings with Hamas and Israel. While tying Israel's military hands, these deals permit Hamas to claim it has come out of the fighting ahead, after Israel refrained from either toppling its Gaza government or extinguishing its missile capabilities.

Thursday, Jan. 15, two Israeli envoys headed out - the foreign ministry's director general Aharon Ambramovich to Washington and the defense ministry's political adviser Amos Gilead to Cairo - to hear about the proposed American and Egyptian ceasefire mechanisms for controlling weapons smuggling through Sinai and the Philadelphi Corridor. Hamas took this as a signal to intensify its assaults on the southern Israel population: 20 missiles and rockets were launched before 10:00 a.m.Thursday; 23 Wednesday, one of which landed more than 70 km from Gaza - the furthest distance ever reached by a Hamas rocket.

Even if the two mechanisms are agreed between the US, Egypt and Israel, it could be a year or more before they are in place. Only then, can their efficacy begin to be tested. All that time, Hamas will be free to restock its arsenal through the Philadelphi smuggling tunnels and calibrate its missile fire - in exactly the same way as Hizballah replenishedd its armory from Syria and Iran after the 2006 war and still shoots rockets at will under the noses of UN monitors.

Therefore, although easily vanquished on the battlefield, the Hamas terrorists are winning the diplomatic war against a compliant Israel.

6)Analysis: Egypt may help prevent Gaza smuggling, but only on its own terms
By Yaakov Katz

With Operation Cast Lead entering what appears to be its closing act, Egypt will soon need to prove whether it can provide Israel the security guarantees it is seeking in the form of a complete halt of weapons smuggling along the Philadelphi Corridor.

Since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, Israeli officials said that ultimately it would be up to Egypt to mediate a new truce with Hamas.

While France and Turkey took a swing at mediation, there was never a doubt in the Israeli defense establishment that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman had the most clout.

Egypt is in a unique position because it enjoys diplomatic ties with both Israel and Hamas. Suleiman, believed to be the second-most-powerful person in Egypt and a potential successor to the 80-year-old Mubarak, has been entrusted with the "Israeli file." His main interlocutor on the Israeli side is Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau.

The basis for a cease-fire with Hamas are well known: Israel wants a cessation of rocket and terror attacks, while Hamas wants the reopening of the border crossings, including at Rafah, as well as an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.

Israel's second demand - to halt the weapons smuggling into Gaza - is the most complicated. Without this condition, top IDF officers said last week that Hamas would have been prepared to sign on a new cease-fire.

Israel's insistence that the smuggling into Gaza be stopped is based on the lessons it learned from Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War but did not put an end to the smuggling of weapons from Syria into Lebanon.

Since then, Hizbullah is believed to have nearly tripled its missile stockpile from 15,000 to over 40,000, including missiles with longer ranges and larger warheads.

The fear in Israel is that if the smuggling into Gaza isn't stopped, then Hamas will do the same.

Since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead Israel has destroyed over 250 tunnels along the Gaza-Egyptian border. But at least 100 remain and Hamas, intelligence officials said this week, is still trying to smuggle advanced weaponry, including such items as long-range rockets and high-grade explosives, into the Strip to be used in the battle against the IDF.

Israel and Egypt do not see completely eye-to-eye on how to stop the smuggling. Ideally, Israel would like to see the deployment of a multinational force on the Egyptian side of Rafah to assist the Egyptians in detecting and destroying the tunnels.

Cairo immediately rejected the idea, saying it would never allow a foreign military presence on its sovereign territory.

Israel then hoped to extract a memorandum of understanding from the Egyptians in which they would commit to stopping the tunnels. This too, was rejected by the Egyptians, leading Israel to realize that the most it will get is a verbal commitment, as well as help from the United States, which will supply technology and come up with innovative ideas on how to stop the smuggling.

Israel has made several proposals, from building a moat along the border to erecting a barrier surrounding the Egyptian side of Rafah that will be manned by Egyptian soldiers who will not allow weapons smugglers into the village.

The US and Germany have already donated tunnel-detection technology to the efforts.

Despite all of this, Egypt has persistently asked Israel to allow it to increase the number of border policemen it has deployed along the Philadelphi Corridor.

Following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Egypt was permitted - in line with the Camp David Treaty - to deploy 750 policemen along the border with Gaza to be used to locate and destroy Hamas weapons-smuggling tunnels.

Egypt claims that it is impossible to effectively combat the smuggling with only 750 border guards, since only one-third are on duty at any given time, with the rest of the force either on leave or in training.

Israel has over the years rejected the request for an increase, but this week senior defense officials said that if Egypt wants more soldiers then Israel should just let it have them.

This way, the officials said, Egypt would not have any excuse not to cooperate, and Israel could see if Cairo was sincere or not.

6) When up is down, &c.
By Jay Nordlinger

In the last few days, I’ve been thinking a little about Dick Cheney’s image. This stems from a lunch a group of us had with him last week (and I wrote about it here). Cheney is an unusual person: very sensible, very measured, very trustworthy. No wonder he has been entrusted with so many sensitive government positions. He is a calm person, and he has a calming effect on others. He is the kind of man you want in public service — party or partisanship quite aside.


In the course of our lunch, he said that the recent Democratic victory was “part of the normal cycle of a competitive two-party system,” and “fundamentally healthy for the nation.” He also talked about how wondrous it was to swear in the first black president.

And what is his widespread image? He is a kind of Dr. Evil to people, although, unlike the Austin Powers one, not a comical Dr. Evil. He is a right-wing menace, a scourge of civil liberties, a Torquemada. This is absolutely perverse.

And what of President Bush’s image — at least one aspect of it? They say that he is less than bright: that he is stupid. And stupid is the last thing President Bush is. Call him willful, call him stubborn, call him petulant or cussed or difficult. Stupid, he is not.

Consider one more public figure: Sarah Palin. I keep hearing and reading, in various quarters, that she is a “bimbo.” That is the word I hear about her, rather a lot: “bimbo.” This is a woman, of course, who has been married since her early 20s. She and her husband, Todd, have five children. Sarah is governor of her state; Todd works in the oil fields. From what anyone can tell, they delight in each other, and in their family. They seem almost an advertisement for monogamy: for the married life. And yet people say “bimbo.”


In a nation full of bimbos, Governor Palin is one of the few who aren’t.


It seems to me that the Left has won: utterly and decisively. What I mean is, the Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher mentality has prevailed. They decide what a person’s image is, and those images stick. They are the ones who say that Cheney’s a monster, W.’s stupid, and Palin’s a bimbo. And the country, apparently, follows.

I have a friend who teaches at a prominent university, and she says that, when Palin’s name is mentioned, the people laugh. In the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, an extraordinarily accomplished woman — more accomplished than most of the rest of us will ever be — was turned into a laughingstock.

What are the shaping institutions of American life? The news media. Entertainment television. The movies. Popular music. The schools, K through grad school. In whose hands are those institutions? In what areas do conservatives predominate? Country music, NASCAR, some churches? (Talk radio too, I suppose — no wonder so many on the left want to shut it down.)

I will be talking more about this in the coming weeks, months, and possibly years. Sidney Blumenthal once wrote a book called “The Rise of the Counter-Establishment” (meaning conservative associations and institutions). The counter-establishment needs to be tended, and beefed up.

A country that believes that Cheney’s a monster, W.’s stupid, and Palin’s a bimbo is a country with its head up its . . .

A report from the Associated Press began as follows: “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday it is unlikely that ailing former Cuban leader Fidel Castro will ever appear in public again.” My question is, Will his political prisoners ever appear in public again? Or will they remain in their dungeons until they die?

And do opinion-makers in free countries care?

Jimmy Carter got himself known as a human-rights president, and he has created an image as a human-rights person all around. Very curious. He is certainly selective. Recently, he has been in China, praising that state to the skies. In his meetings with PRC rulers, he apparently said nothing about human rights — and this is a country, remember, with a gulag (called “laogai”). Untold numbers of people have disappeared into it.

Listen to a little of this AP report:


“The main thing is for the new administration to work harmoniously with China . . . and overcome those differences which are inevitable and seek out the best ways to cooperate as partners,” Carter said on the sidelines of a conference commemorating the establishment of ties [between the U.S. and the PRC] on Jan. 1, 1979.

Human rights issues have . . . been a consistent source of friction between the two sides, with the U.S. pushing China to improve its poor record, including its religious repression and silencing of political dissidents. But Carter, a recipient of the U.N. Human Rights Award and a fierce critic of [the] United States’ own human rights violations under the Bush administration, did not make any public comments on the issue on this trip.

Instead Carter praised China for its remarkable transformation over the past three decades.

“Not even Deng Xiaoping could have anticipated the glorious changes that have taken place in this wonderful country,” he said during his opening speech at the academic conference.


So, that’s Carter. If Chinese political prisoners are waiting on him, they will be waiting a long, long time. When people such as Carter urge free countries to “work harmoniously with China” and to “cooperate as partners” — what they mean is, “Shut up about human rights.” By the way, if the Philippines of Marcos, or the Chile of Pinochet, or the South Africa of the Boers had harvested organs — what would Carter and the Today show (to use a shorthand) have said?

And did you catch the AP, above? “Carter, a recipient of the U.N. Human Rights Award and a fierce critic of [the] United States’ own human rights violations under the Bush administration . . .”! Not even an “alleged”!

In Gaza, Tony Blair wants a ceasefire, the French government wants a ceasefire, everyone and his brother wants a ceasefire — well, almost everyone and his brother. I am struck by the difference in aims here — aims cherished by two sides. On one side are Blair et al.; on the other are the Israelis, or at least most Israelis. (Where the government stands is not entirely clear, because the government has maintained some ambiguity, and wisely.)

For one side, a ceasefire is paramount — the cessation of the current violence is paramount. For the other, the destruction of Hamas — or at least the hobbling of it, so as to prevent violence in the future — is paramount. These two goals are not reconcilable: a ceasefire (which would spare Hamas) versus the end, or crippling, of Hamas.

An elementary point, to be sure, but sometimes the elementary should be aired.

As we learn in this report, “French teachers hurled shoes and other objects at police Monday to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy’s high school reforms, prompting police to respond with tear gas.” Hurling shoes, eh? Nice — just the sort of people you want teachin’ the younguns.

“British PM condemns prince’s racial slur,” said the headline (over this article). The prince was Harry, and the slur was “Paki.” Let’s just say that slurs ain’t what they used to be.

It is common (or used to be) in geopolitical talk to refer to the Pakistanis as “the Paks.” Vice President Cheney did this on television. What a difference a syllable makes, apparently: “Paks” versus “Pakis.” It reminds me of something that Rob Long once said (or was it Mark Steyn?). Suddenly, it became trendy in America to have a little Hitler mustache on the lower lip — below the lower lip. An inch or two above that: not so cool.

What a difference an inch or two makes.

I was amused by something the AP’s (notorious) Jennifer Loven wrote, in her article about Bush’s final press conference. She said, “The news conference, held in the White House’s press briefing room, comes as Bush has been granting a flurry of legacy-focused interviews, often with niche interviewers and news outlets as he seeks to shape the view of his presidency on his way out the door.”

So, my officemates and I are “niche interviewers,” and NR and NRO are “niche news outlets.” I’ll buy that.

Reading that George Voinovich will retire from the Senate, I thought of a story Bill Buckley used to tell. Cardinal Segura, in Seville, was a severe type, who frowned on dancing and the like. After he died, a visitor asked a local, “How’s it going, now that the cardinal is gone?” Came the reply: “When Cardinal Segura left us, both he and we passed on to a better world.”

I hope that Senator Voinovich enjoys his retirement.

7) Don't Waste a Crisis?
By Victor Davis Hanson

Euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemia , which means "using the good word" -- usually in place of the accurate bad one. Recently we've become experts at it.

Printing trillions more dollars and growing government to cover new debts isn't so bad if we call it "stimulus." That is far smarter than saying something honest like, "I propose a new $1 trillion debt program."

The old-fashioned spendthrift policies we used to ridicule as congressional pork and "earmarks" are now justified under that ubiquitous nice word "stimulus." If funding another questionable museum in your district was once congressional pork barreling, it will now be a patriotic act to get the national economy moving again.

Yet much of what is driving this national hysteria in our reaction to the current economic downturn is psychological. After all, no plagues, wars or earthquakes have killed our workforce, destroyed our infrastructure or wiped out our computer banks.

Instead, for years now we have overspent and over-borrowed -- and must naturally pay up. And like any chastised debtor, panicked Americans logically have temporarily clammed up and are holding on to what money they have left.

In response, the government apparently doesn't only want to free up credit to get us back to our profligate habits of borrowing what we don't have so we can buy what we don't need. It also would like to create new programs to build infrastructure; guarantee new loans; and offer additional credits, bailouts and entitlements.

Or in the words of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Traditional conservative custodians of the budget can't say much. They are largely discredited on matters of finance. During the last eight years of Republican prominence in Congress and the White House, the government borrowed as never before.

Liberals in turn have suddenly rewritten their own economic history. They used to claim the great surge in government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression with deficit spending and federal jobs programs.

But many historians have argued instead that unemployment and slow growth remained high throughout Roosevelt's first two terms -- until the Second World War scared us all into a fit of national mobilization that alone ended the ongoing 13-year depression between 1929 and 1941.

Now here's the irony: Liberals suddenly agree that only the Second World War stopped the Depression, after all! So they now argue that we need a new New Deal far greater than the old New Deal. In other words, they want to re-create the urgency of World War II to get government to grow and spend big-time.

Their argument is that if FDR failed to stop the Depression, it wasn't, as conservatives insist, because he turned to unworkable government solutions, but rather because he didn't try big enough ones.

The government-affiliated, under-regulated and corrupt Fannie Mae may have collapsed. And it may have helped to cause the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. No matter -- the proposed "don't waste a crisis" cure seems to use that model of government-guaranteed corporations to absorb as much of the economy as possible.

Still, no one knows whether the present borrowing and printing of money to give short-term credits, cash grants and jobs to Americans will get the economy moving again -- or simply reinforce the bad habits that got us here in the first place.

But consider a few facts: Even in the current mess, recent unemployment figures are around 7 percent -- not the 10 percent of the recession of the early 1980s, much less the 25 percent rate that peaked in the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, energy prices have plunged, saving consumers and the country hundreds of billions of dollars. The existing pre-stimulus annual budget was already set to run about a half-trillion-dollar deficit. The present government debt, much of it to Asia and Europe, was nearing $13 trillion even before the latest borrowing plans.

We are going to have to pay these debts back by cutting federal spending and entitlements or raising taxes -- or both. Or we can convince panicky debt holders abroad to loan us even more money for years at near-zero interest rates. Or we can try simply printing trillions of new dollars to inflate the economy while hoping that creditors don't mind being paid with funny money.

What got us in this debacle was the lack of self-control on the part of consumers who borrowed to spend more than they could pay back, rapid growth in government debt, and Wall Street speculators who wanted obscene returns they had not earned.

It would be a pity if the government now trumped these bad examples and turned some helpful federal loan guarantees of troubled banks into a permanent state-run economy with crushing debt for generations to come.

Victor Davis Hanson






Don't Waste a Crisis?
By Victor Davis Hanson

Euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemia , which means "using the good word" -- usually in place of the accurate bad one. Recently we've become experts at it.

Printing trillions more dollars and growing government to cover new debts isn't so bad if we call it "stimulus." That is far smarter than saying something honest like, "I propose a new $1 trillion debt program."

The old-fashioned spendthrift policies we used to ridicule as congressional pork and "earmarks" are now justified under that ubiquitous nice word "stimulus." If funding another questionable museum in your district was once congressional pork barreling, it will now be a patriotic act to get the national economy moving again.

Yet much of what is driving this national hysteria in our reaction to the current economic downturn is psychological. After all, no plagues, wars or earthquakes have killed our workforce, destroyed our infrastructure or wiped out our computer banks.

Instead, for years now we have overspent and over-borrowed -- and must naturally pay up. And like any chastised debtor, panicked Americans logically have temporarily clammed up and are holding on to what money they have left.

In response, the government apparently doesn't only want to free up credit to get us back to our profligate habits of borrowing what we don't have so we can buy what we don't need. It also would like to create new programs to build infrastructure; guarantee new loans; and offer additional credits, bailouts and entitlements.

Or in the words of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Traditional conservative custodians of the budget can't say much. They are largely discredited on matters of finance. During the last eight years of Republican prominence in Congress and the White House, the government borrowed as never before.

Liberals in turn have suddenly rewritten their own economic history. They used to claim the great surge in government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression with deficit spending and federal jobs programs.

But many historians have argued instead that unemployment and slow growth remained high throughout Roosevelt's first two terms -- until the Second World War scared us all into a fit of national mobilization that alone ended the ongoing 13-year depression between 1929 and 1941.

Now here's the irony: Liberals suddenly agree that only the Second World War stopped the Depression, after all! So they now argue that we need a new New Deal far greater than the old New Deal. In other words, they want to re-create the urgency of World War II to get government to grow and spend big-time.

Their argument is that if FDR failed to stop the Depression, it wasn't, as conservatives insist, because he turned to unworkable government solutions, but rather because he didn't try big enough ones.

The government-affiliated, under-regulated and corrupt Fannie Mae may have collapsed. And it may have helped to cause the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. No matter -- the proposed "don't waste a crisis" cure seems to use that model of government-guaranteed corporations to absorb as much of the economy as possible.

Still, no one knows whether the present borrowing and printing of money to give short-term credits, cash grants and jobs to Americans will get the economy moving again -- or simply reinforce the bad habits that got us here in the first place.

But consider a few facts: Even in the current mess, recent unemployment figures are around 7 percent -- not the 10 percent of the recession of the early 1980s, much less the 25 percent rate that peaked in the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, energy prices have plunged, saving consumers and the country hundreds of billions of dollars. The existing pre-stimulus annual budget was already set to run about a half-trillion-dollar deficit. The present government debt, much of it to Asia and Europe, was nearing $13 trillion even before the latest borrowing plans.

We are going to have to pay these debts back by cutting federal spending and entitlements or raising taxes -- or both. Or we can convince panicky debt holders abroad to loan us even more money for years at near-zero interest rates. Or we can try simply printing trillions of new dollars to inflate the economy while hoping that creditors don't mind being paid with funny money.

What got us in this debacle was the lack of self-control on the part of consumers who borrowed to spend more than they could pay back, rapid growth in government debt, and Wall Street speculators who wanted obscene returns they had not earned.

It would be a pity if the government now trumped these bad examples and turned some helpful federal loan guarantees of troubled banks into a permanent state-run economy with crushing debt for generations to come.