“Had the car bomb exploded, the majority of the cars in the parking lot would have gone up in flames,” a police source told the Israeli press after the attack was prevented. “The gas in them could have exploded. This would have been a major terrorist attack.”

Fortunately, the terrorists hoping to cause massive carnage with this attack failed to wire and detonate their explosives properly. When the first portion of the bomb fizzled, a shopper who heard a minor explosion notified security, which found the vehicle and called in Sappers to disarm the explosive.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

After being alerted by an employee of the Lev Hamifratz shopping center, who reported hearing an explosion at about 8:30 p.m., police sappers were dispatched to scan the area.

The sappers found a partially exploded bomb in the trunk of a white Subaru car which was parked outside the shopping center.

A further search of the vehicle uncovered several more unexploded bombs, which were neutralized by the sappers. No one was injured.

Police evacuated the mall and the population was put on high alert.

“As far as Israel is concerned, this was a terrorist attack in every sense,” said outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert Sunday morning at his weekly cabinet meeting. “Only the vigilance of citizens and the quick response by police and security forces prevented it.”

Israeli intelligence points to the attack having originated in the West Bank, where terrorist group Hamas has been actively working to reassert itself and even Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, heralded by Olmert and former U.S. president George W. Bush (among others) as the “rightful” leader of the Palestinians and as the best hope for a Middle Eastern peace, has recently called on the international community to treat the Israeli government to be “isolated” in an identical fashion to Hamas.

“We shouldn’t fool ourselves,” Olmert told the assembled cabinet members. “Attempts to carry out terror attacks in Israel continue. The launch bases include the West Bank, where Hamas wishes to strengthen its infrastructure and status, while continuing its terror activity and [efforts to] cause severe damage to Israeli citizens.”

Unfortunately, there is a large number of Iraelis (as well as members of the international community) who still refuse to recognize both the immediacy and implacability of the terrorist threat facing both the Zionist state and our civilization as a whole.

While Taliban fighters take over larger portions of Pakistan and use the border crossing there to promote chaos in Afghanistan; while Somalians in America are recruited to jihad against their adopted homeland; and while rockets are fired over the border fence into populated areas of Israel by Hamas militants, an increasing number of political leaders, advisors, pointy-headed academics, and other leftists are doing their best to force the rest of the population’s head into the same sand their own is buried deep within, claiming that every threat ignored and enemy appeased is both equal to victory and proof that there really are no threats in existence — particularly not those which warrant actually doing anything about.

Unfortunately, just as Israel pushes into a new era with ultra-realist Benjamin Netanyahu set to take over the reins of government, America is pushing backward, with a president who seems to have no grasp of any reality outside his own immediate circle and a newly-selected head of the National Security Council, Brent Scowcroft, who sees negotiating with Hamas as a perfectly sensible and reasonable course of action in the Middle East.

President Obama has yet to announce whether or not the U.S. will attend the conference, to be held in Geneva, Switzerland this year. Senior administration officials, including UN ambassador Susan Rice and national security council member Samantha Power, have reportedly been working to convince Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to commit the U.S. to the conference — an act which would reverse the Bush administration policy of boycotting future editions of the conference pending ironclad assurances that it would not be a repeat of the 2001 meeting which the U.S. and Israel walked out of due to the virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tone of the proceedings and the conference’s official resolutions.

In 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the nations in attendance used the opportunity of the U.N.-sponsored conference to slander Israel and propose the adoption of United Nations resolutions declaring Zionism to be the international legal equivalent of racism (in an ironic move, African countries like Nigeria and Zimbabwe ironically sought to pry a formal apology for slavery from the Caucasian West, as well).

Further, the NGO Forum held at the 2001 conference (for the purpose of “creating a worldwide anti-racism movement” and “to struggle against intolerance”) saw resolution language like the following proposed:

80. Appalled by the ongoing colonial military Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories [West Bank including Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip] declare and call for an immediate end to the ongoing Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing [as defined in the statute of the ICC] including uprooting by military attack and the imposition of any and all restrictions and measures on the population to make life so difficult that the only option is to leave the area and state terrorism against the Palestinian people. Recognize that all of these methods are designed to ensure the continuation of an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority and the expansion of its borders to gain more land driving out the indigenous Palestinian population.

82. Declare Israel as a racist apartheid state in which Israel’s brand of apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterized by separation and segregation, dispossession, restricted land access, denationalization, “bantustanization” and inhuman acts.

84. Recognize that targeted victims of Israel’s brand of apartheid. And ethnic cleansing methods have been, in particular, children, women and refugees. Condemn the disproportionate numbers of children and women killed and injured in military shooting and bombing attacks. Recognize the right of return of refugees and internally displaced people to their homes of origin as guaranteed in international law.

This “right of return,” as innocuous as it may sound in the excerpt above, is one of the most insidious concessions Palestinians (and their Arab and Persian “supporters” — I know, I know: with friends like these…) have demanded in their negotiations with Israel over the years. It does not refer, as the excerpt above may suggest, to a returning of those displaced by Israeli settlements established in the Territories for, in part, the purpose of creating a defensive buffer between Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza and the cities and citizens of Israel proper. Rather, the hotly-contested “Right of Return” refers to the claim that Palestinians uprooted by the creation of Israel itself in 1948 should be forcibly returned to the land they occupied before Israel came into being — thereby wiping out chunks of Israel itself, and making the Zionist state (currently 80% Jewish) a majority-Arab entity.

165. Call for the establishment of programs and institutions to combat the racist media distortion stereotyping and propaganda including the demonizing and dehumanizing of Palestinians as all being violent and terrorists and undeserving of human rights protections.

166. Call for the launch of an international anti-Israeli apartheid movement as implemented against African apartheid through a global solidarity campaign network of international civil society UN bodies and agencies business communities and to end the conspiracy of silence among states particularly the EU and the US.

167. Call upon the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargos, the full cessation of all links [diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military operation and training] between all states and Israel.

168. Condemnation of those states who are supporting, aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid state and its perpetration of racism crimes against humanity including ethnic cleansing acts of genocide.

These are simply a few of the statements endorsed by attendees at the 2001 version of the so-called “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” When it became apparent that this was the direction the proceedings were going to take, both America and Israel walked out of the conference, and President Bush made it U.S. policy not to attend the 2009 conference or any future editions unless guaranteed that it would not once again become a forum for little debate other than just how virulently Israel should be demonized.

Israel has declined to attend the 2009 conference due to the near certainty that the resolution officially equating Zionism with racism will once again be made a centerpiece of discussion. Canada is also refusing to attend, and is pushing members of the European Union to do likewise.

President Obama should emulate President Bush’s principled decision not to participate in such UN-sponsored bash-fests of one of America’s most stalwart, democratic allies. Unfortunately, given his obsession with being seen as a “citizen of the world” and reversing myriad elements of the supposedly-divisive Bush foreign policy — not to mention the pressure coming from advisors like Samantha Power, a vocal opponent of Israel who attended the 2001 NGO Forum at which the above resolution excerpts were proposed — it may be far more likely than not that the U.S. will officially participate in the 2009 version of a conference that, in reality, serves to highlight just what is wrong with the United Nations and everything it touches.

We’ve seen the shoddy workmanship on the part of Reuters and CNN, which have unquestioningly published faked photographs and videos provided by stringers and terrorist outlets simply because they fit in with those journalists’ worldview by purporting to show innocent Palestinian civilians being massacred by evil Zionist storm troopers.

We’ve heard former CNN head Eason Jordan admit Saddam’s atrocities were swept under the rug by Baghdad-based journalists out of a desire to keep that pointless “news” bureau open, and we’ve witnessed a nationwide mainstream media apparatus in fully operational Death Star mode with regard to a vice presidential nominee who made the mistake of simultaneously being the wrong sex, a member of the wrong party, incredibly popular, and an opponent of the Democratic candidate that media apparatus had decided must, at all costs, become the next President of the United States.

We’ve seen a major news magazine run with a story of the slaughter of Iraqi civilians at the hands of cold-blooded Americans before actually checking those facts, and then drop the topic like a hot rock rather than report that the results of an investigation showed the report, and alleged atrocities, were largely works of fiction from the outset.

We’ve seen a titan of print media go over a month with daily front page stories about a single flagrant but nonviolent act, perpetrated by duly prosecuted American soldiers serving in Iraq, and then seen that same paper and its print colleagues slash coverage of Iraq as a whole by 70% as soon as the friendly bodycount dropped and there were no new “scandals” to manufacture.

We’ve watched the American mainstream media spend eight years badgering and talking down their country’s commander in chief, declaring their job to be questioning every statement and figure released by an administration they decided could not be trusted with the truth — and now we see that same media sitting silently, waiting their turn to ask the incoming executive preselected, scripted questions, and declaring all to be right with the world when they are given a response, no matter how devoid of actual answers, details, or specifics that response may be.

We’ve watched the media respond to the 9/11 attacks and President Bush’s effort to prevent such an event from happening again by downplaying the risk, leaking information on classified programs, and referring to the Global War on Terror as “Bush’s “War on Terror”,” never forgetting to enclose the term in scare quotes.

We’ve seen a slew of journalists take to the airwaves and to the printed page to denounce Bush for every innocent Iraqi killed since March 2003, and to denounce Israel for every civilian killed in Lebanon or Gaza while serving as a human shield for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, yet we’ve heard barely a word about the almost daily calls by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for an internationally-recognized sovereign nation (which was created in large part for the purpose of preventing another Holocaust) to be “wiped off the map” and every one of its citizens slaughtered.

We’ve seen an Iraqi “reporter” insult his own countrymen by hurling his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad press conference, and watched America’s media breathlessly (not to mention incorrectly) report on this as an “insult” to Bush and a final sign of his failure as president.

Given the preponderance of evidence that journalists, whose profession was once respectable and worthwhile, are being even more cavalier about letting the mask slip and showing their true proclivities toward liberal activism, the events of Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s press conference in Washington, D.C. last Friday should come as no surprise whatsoever.

At the media availability, held after Livni and outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed Memorandum of Understanding on combating the massive proliferation of weapons into the Gaza Strip, the Israeli foreign minister — herself far more dovish than given credit for — faced a barrage of “questions” from international journalists which, if posed to a terrorist at Guantanamo Bay, would likely have resulted in the questioners being branded torturers by American leftists.

As anti-Western “peace” activists from Code Pink stood outside chanting “There is a war criminal in this building,” multiple “reporters” used their turn to ask questions as an opportunity to launch into their own versions of human rights sermons, lecturing Livni on the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and comparing Israel’s Olmert/Livni administration to Robert Mugabe’s tyrannical regime in Zimbabwe.

The crowning achievement of the liberal press at this conference (10:30 here), though, was when one “reporter” used his time to read aloud almost in its entirety a Human Rights Watch report on the situation in Gaza. You know the type: the ones that blame democracies for the fate of third-worlders who choose to live under, and to assist, terrorists (in this case, HRW accused Israel of sending messages to civilians to go to the center of Gaza City “for their own safety,” then of shelling the civilian-laden downtown with 155mm artillery). Livni responded by pointing out that the Israeli military has constantly traded away its tactical advantage for an opportunity to save civilian lives, warning civilians ahead of offensive operations by leaflet drop or cell phone call (“over 90,000 cell phone calls” have been made, according to Livni) “to get out of areas controlled by Hamas or areas where Qassam rockets are manufactured.”

Nonplussed by this response, the “reporter” interrupted Livni’s explanation by demanding that she confess to, and apologize for, the rampant “murder of innocent civilians in the Strip” (the ones who had been warned by leaflet drop and cell phone call to abandon terrorist hideouts and weapons caches before strikes by an Israeli military that has ). When asked to allow Livni to finish, he yelled — sans microphone, which had been turned off — “You are letting her speak for an hour, and you aren’t allowing us to ask questions. Since when have you hosted terrorists here?”

After that scuffle was broken up and the journalist, who was lauded on leftist websites as likely being a representative of the “progressive media” (an inference made because the line of questioning was apparently too insightful to have come from a member of the “corporate [mainstream] media,” escorted from the building, his colleagues followed up with further quotations from the HRW report and questions not about the situation in Gaza itself, but about when the Israeli administration would admit that it has brought all action by Hamas on itself by refusing to entirely ignore the terrorist-held Gaza Strip.

The proliferation of activist journalists is not a new phenomenon. However, it has become more apparent in recent years as a result both of the presence of an alternative media which can track the subjects of reporting and blow the whistle on outright forgeries like the Rathergate memos and the Aidnan Hajj photographs from Lebanon, and of the growing lack of care being taken by “news” personnel to shroud their political views, preferred candidates, and overall opinions in a cloak of faux-objectivity.

What is the cause of the media’s slide into activist irrelevance? There are probably several factors, but the last half-century has indisputably seen a pair of truths. First, new journalists are being cranked out of J-Schools not trained and ready to uncover stories and report the news; rather, they have far loftier aspirations. The question “Why choose journalism?” all too often receives the answer, “To make a difference — or even change the world!,” both from professionals and from students in training to be reporters. A fourth estate that is intent not on serving as a reportorial watchdog, but as an equality-and-rights-enforcing (in their view) fair play police has a very short road to go to become a truly activist, partial cheerleader for a cause that will not hesitate, if that cause is deemed important enough, to slant, skew, spin, or outright falsify the “news” in order to shape public perception and rally opinion to their cause.

Second, journalists today are still trying to get that One Big Story which would, like Watergate or Mai Lai, revolutionize public opinion about a person or effort and gain them not only the satisfaction of having successfully “made a difference,” but also of having proven the media’s preeminent place in the hierarchy of true power — as the ultimate watchdog who has no dog watching over it. Nixon and Vietnam remain rallying cries for the liberal media who not only want to replicate the fate of that president and that war through their own actions, but who are going to increasingly great and desperate lengths to do so.

A “reporter” standing in a press conference with the foreign minister of a sovereign, democratic country and shouting her down with demands that she admit to being a “terrorist” may appall those of us who remember what journalism once was (or respect that it was such at all). However, it’s fast becoming par for the course for the entire fourth estate, and as public reaction to such outbursts and actions continues to trend more and more negative, the desperation in such moves — from the interrogation of interviewees, to the rush to press or air without checking whether a narrative-supporting story or video is true, to the outright cheerleading and activism — will only continue to grow.

The mainstream media has dug the grave of its own irrelevance. Now, with its struggles to avoid being buried in that grave, it sinks farther and farther into the quicksand-like bed of its final resting place. The only question left is what self-induced outrage or scandal will cause the final shovelful of dirt to be thrown over the corpse of what once was a valuable and respectable media apparatus.

America should provide all of the support we can to Israel in their attempt to root out and eliminate the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza, just as we asked our allies to do when we retaliated against al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11/01. Much like our efforts in the global war on terror, Israel’s actions against the terrorists in control of the Gaza strip are an entirely legitimate effort to secure their own nation — something which cannot be done while Hamas is using the area to the Jewish state’s south as a launching point for attacks on the sovereign Israeli homeland.

The fact that this conversation is even taking place shows the folly of the age-old “land for peace” solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict offered by so many liberal elites and foreign policy naifs.

“Land for Peace”

In August 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, forcing over 9,000 settlers from their homes and abandoning the plot of land to Israel’s immediate south which had until that point been serving as a geographic buffer against attack. His good-faith attempt to concede land to the Palestinians in exchange for an end to violence was repaid in blood and blasts: since Sharon’s withdrawal, terrorists in Gaza have fired over 6,300 rockets over the border into southern Israel, wounding nearly 800 civilians in cities like Sderot, where hospitals, schools, and playgrounds must be covered with concrete umbrellas to prevent their being destroyed, and the historic coastal city of Ashkelon.

The majority of these rockets are of the homemade Qassam variety, constructed of water pipes Palestinian terrorists dig up from under their streets and homes (while publicly blaming Israel for their lack of infrastructure like running water), fitted with rebar, and filled with gunpowder and ball bearings (the latter for the purpose of causing as much destruction to human flesh as possible). They are fired by the dozens at civilian towns and, ironically, at the southern Israeli plant that provides the Strip with most of its power (though inhabitants of Gaza once again blame Israel for the rolling brownouts that result from their attacks on their primary source of electricity).

Ceasefire Violations by the Thousands

Despite their supposed agreement to a cease-fire with Israel — which it has used to resupply and rearm itself — Hamas has unleashed over 3,000 rockets on the tiny Levantine state in 2008 alone. It has also persisted in tunneling under its northern and southern borders, into Israel — where Hamas terrorists ambushed an IDF watchtower in June 2006 and kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, who to this day has still not been returned to his homeland — and into Egypt. Hamas is continuously rearmed and resupplied through the latter, as Egyptian sympathizers and Iranian benefactors ensure that the terror group, despite an Israeli blockade of the strip, remains well armed and supplied.

The EU is currently attempting to broker yet another ineffective “cease-fire” between Israel and the terrorist group to its south, thus making the dual mistake of (a) believing that concessions to terror groups can bring about peace and (b) conferring legitimacy on Hamas as a soveriegn equal of Israel’s in the international community. The claim that Hamas, despite being elected by Palestinian voters as a protest vote against the corrupt Palestinian Authority, is a legitimate governing organization is in itself farcical; after all, let’s not forget how they seized power in the Gaza strip: by throwing their political opponents, members of the corrupt and similarly terroristic Fatah party, off the roofs of high rise buildings in Gaza City.

Peace Not a Goal for One Side

Hamas’s goal in this process is neither peace nor sovereignty, though it does enjoy the legitimacy such negotiations confer upon it. What Hamas really seeks is two-fold: (1) the PR victories it earns every time it responds to Israel’s warnings to Palestinian civilians that a strike on a terrorist location is impending by filling that target with women and children whose bodies are later paraded on international television, and (2) the time yet another cease-fire would provide them to rearm and make further progress on their tunnels and their plans for future terrorist attacks on Israel.

Every time Israelis or Palestinians die, Israel loses and Hamas wins — and both know it full well. For the latter, this is the barbaric truth of terrorist operations: friendly and enemy deaths are both acceptable on massive scales, because each serves a different, but equally important, purpose. The fact that women and children are used as human shields is a source of pride for Hamas and its ilk. We have “created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine,” said a member of the Palestinian Authority’s legislative council earlier this year, “as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life” (contrast that with Israel’s actions, which have included eschewing tactical surprise to warn civilians of impending attacks and sending well over 100 truckloads of humanitarian aid into the strip after ground troops entered this weekend). As Israeli foreign policy scholar Barry Rubin wrote over the weekend, “even the Nazis didn’t put ammunition dumps in houses and use human shields — and up until now the blame for doing so would fall on those who deliberately and cynically sought to create civilian casualties in order to gain support for themselves.”

Hamas Deserving of al Qaeda Treatment

The fact that they take pride in doing so, taken with the fact that their response to Israel’s striking of terror leaders, ammunition stores, and illicit cross-border tunnels was to declare the beginning of a new campaign of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, demonstrates that Hamas deserves to be treated not as a legitimate political entity or as an opposition military force, but as an illegal and inhuman terrorist organization on the same level as al Qaeda and other groups and networks the U.S. and her allies have been fighting to destroy since 9/11.

Much to the chagrin of some of his most ardent supporters, President-elect Barack Obama has said that, if it were his country being affected, he would “do everything in his power to stop” attacks like those Hamas has subjected Israel to. We must hope that this position, unlike so many others formerly held by the incoming president, does not come with an expiration date. Support for Israel (like any other U.S. ally) in its effort to eradicate a direct terrorist threat to its homeland must be a sine qua non of American foreign policy. Rather than continuing the current Secretary of State’s stated commitment to arranging yet another one-sided cease fire between Israel and the human shield-using terrorists who want innocent Jews and Palestinians dead, the policy of the outgoing and incoming U.S. administrations should be to provide Israel whatever support and assistance it needs to take the fight to the barbaric terrorist group Hamas until there is nothing left of them to fight — just as we would expect of our allies in our current struggle against al Qaeda and other groups who engage in terrorist acts worldwide.

“Aren’t these oppressed Palestinians Arabs?” asked Ahmadinejad in a televised speech. “So when should the capacity of the Arab League be used? The Arab League should act quickly.” He also criticized the United Nations, saying, “Why don’t you even frown upon the Zionist regime?” (The eighteen anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly in 2007-08 seem to have gone unnoticed by the Persian leader, as does the fact that over half the total number emergency sessions of the General Assembly have been about Israel).

Ahmadinejad did not offer specifics about the action he desired the Arab League to engage in; however, if his frequent talk of “wiping Israel off the map” and of the wonders of “a world without Zionism” are any indicator, the Iranian president would be happiest with a 1948-style Arab League war against Israel itself (though he would doubtless prefer the one-sided outcome be reversed).

Meanwhile, Iranian judiciary officials are threatening to set up a War Crimes court to try Israelis involved in the offensive against the terror group Hamas in absentia.
According to the Middle East Star:

A spokesman said the court would be given the task “of dealing with the executors, planners and officials of the Israeli regime who have committed crimes.”

He said the court had been set up on the basis of a 1948 UN convention on the prevention of genocide to which Iran is a signatory.

In Iran, which does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state, a daily newspaper was shut down this week because it “published an article…in which it sanitized the Zionist regime’s crimes in Gaza.”

Also, students are violently protesting at the embassies and consulates of nations they see as being friendly to Israel and hostile to the Palestinians. According to Reuters:

Hardline student groups have written letters to the Jordanian ambassador and head of the Egyptian mission “giving them 48 hours to choose between clearly condemning Israel’s attack on Gaza or leaving Iran’s soil,” a newspaper reported.

Students also demanded Egypt open its border to Gaza, the daily Seda-ye Edalat said. Cairo sometimes lets wounded people and medical supplies through but Egypt’s border has been closed to ordinary traffic since Hamas took control of Gaza [Auth:in 2007].

The newspaper said the deadline expired at noon on Thursday. It said if demands were not met students would “carry out their revolutionary duty as happened on 13th Aban, 1358,” the Iranian date when students stormed the U.S. embassy in 1979.

It seems that, in many parts of the world, some things never change.

On December 4, Israel’s supreme court ruled that outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, “may continue negotiating with Syria and the Palestinians over peace agreements” despite the caretaker, or lame duck, status of their administration.

The High Court of Justice’s ruling negated a petition filed by Limor Livnat, a Knesset member of the minority Likud party, claiming that the concessions being offered Syria and the Palestinian Authority in the name of peace by the Olmert government were both dangerous and legally illegitimate.

“We are dealing with processes whose implications could significantly affect the country for many years to come,” Livnat said in the petition. “Such negotiations must not be conducted by a resigning prime minister.”

Olmert Facing Corruption Charges

Olmert resigned his post in September amid multiple charges of corruption. Foreign Minister Livni, who succeeded Olmert as head of the ruling Kadima party but was unable to form a coalition government in time to prevent the calling of a special election to replace the outgoing prime minister, has called on Olmert to leave office immediately, ostensibly so that he can face the charges against him as a private citizen, rather than as a member of the Knesset.

Should Olmert end up leaving office before the Israeli public votes on his replacement in February, Livni would become acting prime minister, thus giving her the advantage of incumbency in the coming election (not to mention the power to take over conduct of the peace negotiations Olmert is currently engaged in, and with whose direction she appears to be in complete agreement).

With the high court’s ruling, Olmert’s terminal administration once again has free rein to continue his indirect negotiations with Syria and other enemies of Israel, offering concessions that will, as Livnat correctly said, “limit the maneuverability of the next prime minister” for the sake of Olmert’s “inappropriate bid to leave his mark on history.”

Unilateral Cessation of Territory

Olmert’s “inappropriate bid” includes an offer to unilaterally withdraw from the Golan Heights, a strategically important 450-square mile plateau between Israel proper and Syria which has been under Israeli control since the Six Day War in 1967.

Syria, for its part, is reportedly holding out for the promise of a specific timetable for that withdrawal before agreeing to direct talks about a peace agreement. The current round of negotiations between Israel and Syria has been moderated by Turkey to date.

This has prompted opposite reactions from the two men who are effectively (or, more accurately, ineffectively) serving as America’s co-presidents at this time.

President-elect Barack Obama, according to the U.K. Times, “has said privately that the Israelis would be ‘crazy’ not to accept” Syria’s offer to consider participating in a conversation about peace with Israel in exchange for the latter’s surrender of an extremely significant strategic region.

Outgoing President George W. Bush, on the other hand, has expressed to Olmert his concern that Israel is offering to return the Golan Heights to Syria for nothing more than the promise of possible future considerations (which, along with four dollars or so, will purchase a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks).

Granting Syria Undeserved Legitimacy

Terje Roed-Larsen, a UN envoy tasked with overseeing the implementation of UNSCR 1559 (ending the foreign army presence in Lebanon), recently complained to Israel’s UN delegation that, thanks to Olmert’s efforts, “Syria is receiving legitimacy for free.”

Larsen is correct. It is in large part because of Syria’s indulgence of Olmert’s eagerness to engage in preliminary peace talks that the European Commission has decided to extend the offer of a Partnership Agreement, or normalized relations, to Syria. The process of forging that partnership agreement began in 2000, but was halted until now after the 2004 assassination of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, an act in which Syria played an as-yet unknown role.

Yossi Levy, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said Israel “regretted” the EU’s willingness to move so quickly to normalize relations with Syria, and warned Europe not to “act hastily toward reaching an agreement with Syria in a way that will grant them a gift they don’t deserve at this stage.”

Olmert has refused to change his current course, despite the fact that, as Larsen said to the Israeli delegation, “Europe is courting the Syrians because of the negotiations with Israel, and they are no longer being asked to give anything in exchange.”

Repeating Prior Mistakes

Olmert’s rationale for giving away such a strategically important area stems from his belief that conceding the Golan Heights to Syria at the outset of the peace process can provide a sufficient show of good faith to help pull the Arab state out of the grip of Iran and Hezbollah and into a more pragmatic alignment with Turkey, Israel, and other more moderate states.

Livni agreed with this view, declaring that a peace agreement between Israel and Syria would result in the latter cutting ties with Iran and Hezbollah, though Assad’s government denied outright that any such thing would happen. This statement by Damascus is most likely true, given the advantages in Lebanon and the region as a whole Syria gains from its alliances with the Persian state and its Levantine terrorist proxy – advantages Syria on its own, with little by way of importance or influence, would almost certainly never be able to gain.

If the past, and Damascus’ current promises, are any guide, giving away the Golan Heights – especially with nothing in return but a promise from Damascus to consider direct peace talks at some point in the future – will only serve to “turn the Golan into Iran’s front lines,” as Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu phrased it in an address to minority party members in May.

Pulling back to its 1967 borders would dramatically increase the danger to Israel’s homeland. In an era when Arab fighters are employing rockets and other standoff weaponry, such a move would, as Netanyahu pointed out, put the Iranian-allied Syria, and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, on Israel’s doorstep. This would not only endanger Israeli citizens living near that border, but would also put major cities like Tel Aviv well within terrorists’ reach.

Surrendering Golan not the Answer

On the whole, Damascus has done precious little to earn recognition from Europe or concessions from, and the trust of, Israel. After all, the Syria which Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni expect to “flip” from extremist to pragmatic as a result of Israel’s acts of good faith is the same nation which has worked with North Korea on an illicit nuclear reactor (which Israeli fighters destroyed in November 2007) and which has granted safe passage into and out of Iraq for fighters, weapons, and suicide bombers.

The notion that an Israeli withdrawal to the so-called “1967 borders,” surrendering the Golan Heights (as well as the West Bank of the Jordan River and the already-abandoned Gaza Strip), would precipitate something akin to peace in the region is sheer fantasy which, popular though it may be in diplomatic and left-of-center circles, belies a lack of the most basic understanding of history.

“Everyone agrees that the problem of the Golan Heights, taken from Syria by Israel in the 1967 war, is the main bone of contention between Syria and Israel and actually is not that hard to resolve,” wrote former U.S. Ambassador Dan Simpson in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week. What “everyone” conveniently forgets when suggesting that such a concession would miraculously end the tensions between Israel and Syria is the overwhelmingly important fact that the Golan Heights were captured from Syria as a direct result of the Arab state joining the ranks of Israel’s opponents in 1967 and attacking the tiny Jewish state.

That simple fact of history begs the question that, if Syria’s possessing the Golan didn’t stop it from waging war on Israel at the time, why in the world would Israel’s surrendering the heights to Syria suddenly mend relations between the two countries?

The Definition of Insanity

When in Jerusalem in 2007, I asked Olmert spokesperson Miri Eisen what her response would be to those who say that unilaterally making concessions is seen by Israel’s enemies as a sign of weakness which, like in Gaza, where the good-faith Israeli withdrawal of 2004 has been met with well over a thousand Palestinian rockets sent from the surrendered territory into Israeli cities, would serve only to embolden the fighters to strike harder.

Her response was altogether unencouraging. “We know that it is not weak,” she said, “because we know that there is strength in being able to make concessions even when it has not worked before.”

Wasn’t it Einstein who once said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”?

On December 4, Israel’s supreme court ruled that outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, “may continue negotiating with Syria and the Palestinians over peace agreements” despite the caretaker, or lame duck, status of their administration.

The High Court of Justice’s ruling negated a petition filed by Limor Livnat, a Knesset member of the minority Likud party, claiming that the concessions being offered Syria and the Palestinian Authority in the name of peace by the Olmert government were both dangerous and legally illegitimate.

“We are dealing with processes whose implications could significantly affect the country for many years to come,” Livnat said in the petition. “Such negotiations must not be conducted by a resigning prime minister.”

Olmert Facing Corruption Charges

Olmert resigned his post in September amid multiple charges of corruption. Foreign Minister Livni, who succeeded Olmert as head of the ruling Kadima party but was unable to form a coalition government in time to prevent the calling of a special election to replace the outgoing prime minister, has called on Olmert to leave office immediately, ostensibly so that he can face the charges against him as a private citizen, rather than as a member of the Knesset.

Should Olmert end up leaving office before the Israeli public votes on his replacement in February, Livni would become acting prime minister, thus giving her the advantage of incumbency in the coming election (not to mention the power to take over conduct of the peace negotiations Olmert is currently engaged in, and with whose direction she appears to be in complete agreement).

With the high court’s ruling, Olmert’s terminal administration once again has free rein to continue his indirect negotiations with Syria and other enemies of Israel, offering concessions that will, as Livnat correctly said, “limit the maneuverability of the next prime minister” for the sake of Olmert’s “inappropriate bid to leave his mark on history.”

Unilateral Cessation of Territory

Olmert’s “inappropriate bid” includes an offer to unilaterally withdraw from the Golan Heights, a strategically important 450-square mile plateau between Israel proper and Syria which has been under Israeli control since the Six Day War in 1967.

Syria, for its part, is reportedly holding out for the promise of a specific timetable for that withdrawal before agreeing to direct talks about a peace agreement. The current round of negotiations between Israel and Syria has been moderated by Turkey to date.

This has prompted opposite reactions from the two men who are effectively (or, more accurately, ineffectively) serving as America’s co-presidents at this time.

President-elect Barack Obama, according to the U.K. Times, “has said privately that the Israelis would be ‘crazy’ not to accept” Syria’s offer to consider participating in a conversation about peace with Israel in exchange for the latter’s surrender of an extremely significant strategic region.

Outgoing President George W. Bush, on the other hand, has expressed to Olmert his concern that Israel is offering to return the Golan Heights to Syria for nothing more than the promise of possible future considerations (which, along with four dollars or so, will purchase a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks).

Granting Syria Undeserved Legitimacy

Terje Roed-Larsen, a UN envoy tasked with overseeing the implementation of UNSCR 1559 (ending the foreign army presence in Lebanon), recently complained to Israel’s UN delegation that, thanks to Olmert’s efforts, “Syria is receiving legitimacy for free.”

Larsen is correct. It is in large part because of Syria’s indulgence of Olmert’s eagerness to engage in preliminary peace talks that the European Commission has decided to extend the offer of a Partnership Agreement, or normalized relations, to Syria. The process of forging that partnership agreement began in 2000, but was halted until now after the 2004 assassination of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, an act in which Syria played an as-yet unknown role.

Yossi Levy, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said Israel “regretted” the EU’s willingness to move so quickly to normalize relations with Syria, and warned Europe not to “act hastily toward reaching an agreement with Syria in a way that will grant them a gift they don’t deserve at this stage.”

Olmert has refused to change his current course, despite the fact that, as Larsen said to the Israeli delegation, “Europe is courting the Syrians because of the negotiations with Israel, and they are no longer being asked to give anything in exchange.”

Repeating Prior Mistakes

Olmert’s rationale for giving away such a strategically important area stems from his belief that conceding the Golan Heights to Syria at the outset of the peace process can provide a sufficient show of good faith to help pull the Arab state out of the grip of Iran and Hezbollah and into a more pragmatic alignment with Turkey, Israel, and other more moderate states.

Livni agreed with this view, declaring that a peace agreement between Israel and Syria would result in the latter cutting ties with Iran and Hezbollah, though Assad’s government denied outright that any such thing would happen. This statement by Damascus is most likely true, given the advantages in Lebanon and the region as a whole Syria gains from its alliances with the Persian state and its Levantine terrorist proxy – advantages Syria on its own, with little by way of importance or influence, would almost certainly never be able to gain.

If the past, and Damascus’ current promises, are any guide, giving away the Golan Heights – especially with nothing in return but a promise from Damascus to consider direct peace talks at some point in the future – will only serve to “turn the Golan into Iran’s front lines,” as Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu phrased it in an address to minority party members in May.

Pulling back to its 1967 borders would dramatically increase the danger to Israel’s homeland. In an era when Arab fighters are employing rockets and other standoff weaponry, such a move would, as Netanyahu pointed out, put the Iranian-allied Syria, and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, on Israel’s doorstep. This would not only endanger Israeli citizens living near that border, but would also put major cities like Tel Aviv well within terrorists’ reach.

Surrendering Golan not the Answer

On the whole, Damascus has done precious little to earn recognition from Europe or concessions from, and the trust of, Israel. After all, the Syria which Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni expect to “flip” from extremist to pragmatic as a result of Israel’s acts of good faith is the same nation which has worked with North Korea on an illicit nuclear reactor (which Israeli fighters destroyed in November 2007) and which has granted safe passage into and out of Iraq for fighters, weapons, and suicide bombers.

The notion that an Israeli withdrawal to the so-called “1967 borders,” surrendering the Golan Heights (as well as the West Bank of the Jordan River and the already-abandoned Gaza Strip), would precipitate something akin to peace in the region is sheer fantasy which, popular though it may be in diplomatic and left-of-center circles, belies a lack of the most basic understanding of history.

“Everyone agrees that the problem of the Golan Heights, taken from Syria by Israel in the 1967 war, is the main bone of contention between Syria and Israel and actually is not that hard to resolve,” wrote former U.S. Ambassador Dan Simpson in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week. What “everyone” conveniently forgets when suggesting that such a concession would miraculously end the tensions between Israel and Syria is the overwhelmingly important fact that the Golan Heights were captured from Syria as a direct result of the Arab state joining the ranks of Israel’s opponents in 1967 and attacking the tiny Jewish state.

That simple fact of history begs the question that, if Syria’s possessing the Golan didn’t stop it from waging war on Israel at the time, why in the world would Israel’s surrendering the heights to Syria suddenly mend relations between the two countries?

The Definition of Insanity

When in Jerusalem in 2007, I asked I asked Olmert spokesperson Miri Eisen what her response would be to those who say that unilaterally making concessions is seen by Israel’s enemies as a sign of weakness which, like in Gaza, where the good-faith Israeli withdrawal of 2004 has been met with well over a thousand Palestinian rockets sent from the surrendered territory into Israeli cities, would serve only to embolden the fighters to strike harder.

Her response was altogether unencouraging. “We know that it is not weak,” she said, “because we know that there is strength in being able to make concessions even when it has not worked before.”

Wasn’t it Einstein who once said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”?

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a columnist, a combat journalist, and a director emeritus of conservative weblog RedState.com.

Last Thursday, President Bush marked the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel by speaking to the country’s governing body, the Knesset. In his address, Bush sounded like a different man from the one who called Israel an “occupying force” at the Annapolis Conference on Palestinian Statehood last November, and demanded that the middle east’s lone functioning democracy make unilateral concessions to its terrorist enemies as a show of “good faith.”

Perhaps in hopes of bolstering his legacy by pushing the region toward a peace more lasting than any of his predecessors has been able to achieve, Bush invited Israel, the Fatah leadership of the Palestinian West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other regional players to the conference, and asked them to put their differences aside in order to work toward the best possible outcome for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The fact that the meeting took place at all was a demonstration of the administration’s willingness to subjugate consistency and the keeping of its word to the fleeting hope of achieving a boost in ephemeral legacy — for, in order to attract any states other than Israel to the meeting, the administration had to willingly drop several previously-required stipulations, including the most basic: that attendees simply recognize that Israel had a right to exist in the first place.

Not only was that most basic of requirements waived for attendance at the Annapolis, but President Bush used his address at the conference to betray not only his own word, but Israel’s rights as the besieged lone free country in the region as well.

The Israelis “must show the world that they are ready to begin” working toward peace, said Bush, by “bringing an end to the occupation that began in 1967 through a negotiated settlement.” Mr. Bush’s call for Israel to retract its borders to the indefensible 1949 armistice line not only served as a demand that Israel almost completely compromise its ability to defend its civilian population from attack; further, with this statement, Bush directly contradicted his 2001 promise to Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon that such a demand would never be made of the Jewish state.

By making that demand in his speech at Annapolis, President Bush put to rest any hope among supporters of the Jewish state that he would keep his promise to the former Prime Minister, and would support Israel’s right to defensible borders against the threats to their north, east, and south. Instead, encouraged by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush decided to ignore his letter to Sharon (as well as his 2001 promise that the Israeli concessions proposed by President Clinton in 2000 were “off the table”), and, echoing the language used by Israel’s enemies in the region, demanded that “occupation” be ended and the state’s borders be shrunk far past a defensible minimum simply as a starting point for peace negotiations — without, again, even requiring the other parties at the meeting to so much as acknowledge Israel’s right to exist at all.

Going forward from Annapolis, the “peace process” in the Levant has seen no progress. Israel, the lone free and successful nation in a region known for the opposite, still stands, a City on a Hill shining its light into a barren land, while those who would see it destroyed make their daily threats, and fire their rockets into its civilian towns. To the south, Hamas continues to wage its low-intensity war against the state to its north, with its fighters tearing up water pipes and firing them into the southern Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon, as well as at the Israeli power plant that supplies much of its electricity — then proceeds to complain to all who will listen about its lack of infrastructure. To the north, Hezbollah has reasserted its position of nongovernmental dominance in Lebanon, and continues to use the platform there to launch attacks to the south and to the east, where the U.S. continues to labor in hopes of pacifying and leaving free the country of Iraq.

Farther to the east is Iran, whose leaders continue to fight a proxy war against both Israel and Iraq,while being ever more vocal about the “coming end” of the “stinking corpse” that is the country that they refer to as the “Zionist entity.”

The President Bush who addressed the Israeli Knesset last Thursday appeared to be far more in touch with the reality of the middle east than the man who was lost in the temporary, disorienting fog that last fall’s consideration of legacy seemed to have induced. Rather than calling on Israel to make unilateral concessions to those who call daily for a genocide that would result in its citizens’ extermination, Bush praised Israel’s strong national defense. Rather than spending his time talking about the Palestinian people’s “many gifts and talents,” or echoing Dr. Rice’s repeated assertions that those same Palestinians who shower Israel with daily rocket attacks want the same things that both Americans and Israelis want for their own lives and children, Bush warned against any attempts to “explain away” the murderous words and actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk, saying:

[T]he founding charter of Hamas calls for the “elimination” of Israel. …[T]he followers of Hezbollah chant “Death to Israel, Death to America!” That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that “the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties.” …[T]he President of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Bush’s speech contained many more statements and warnings that seemed to show that he had learned his lesson from the failure of the Annapolis appeasement conference to provoke real results in the region, and seemed to signal a very public return to a view of foreign policy that is far more in touch with reality than was the one the fueled the legacy-minded approach last November. He pulled no punches in his verbal condemnation of Israel’s enemies, refusing even to spare the United Nations from criticism. “We believe that democracy is the only way to ensure human rights,” he said. “So we consider it a source of shame that the United Nations routinely passes more human rights resolutions against the freest democracy in the Middle East than any other nation in the world.”

Above all, President Bush used his platform at the Knesset to warn against attempts to appease those who cannot be reasoned with”Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals,” he said, “as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

He continued:

We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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.

That “false comfort of appeasement” has been “discredited,” as President Bush put it, as recently as last fall, when Mr. Bush and Dr. Rice’s attempt to purchase a middle eastern peace at the expense of Israel’s security went nowhere.

With this address at the Israeli Knesset, Mr. Bush appears to have learned his lesson, and to have returned to his rightful place, vis-a-vis Israel, in the pantheon of American presidents: one of the more stalwart supporters that the Jewish state has had, and the leader of the greatest international ally that Israel could hope for.

We can only hope, both for America’s sake and for that of Israel, that Mr. Bush has indeed found his way, and will not become lost again.

As predicted earlier this week, President Bush — formerly (and arguably) the strongest supporter of Israel to inhabit the White House in years — used his address at today’s Annapolis Conference on Palestinian Statehood to renege on his 2004 promise of “defensible borders” to the then-Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, and to demand that the Jewish state retreat to its pre-1967 borders as a show of good faith in its peace negotiations with the Palestinian government.

Three years ago, Bush wrote to Sharon that “as part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders.” He continued:

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

With this letter of assurance in hand, accompanied by no tangible evidence of the President’s commitment to stand by his word, Sharon proceeded to unilaterally force over 9,000 Israeli settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip, abandoning the territory to Israel’s immediate south which had been serving as a buffer against attack. The folly of that unilateral move has been made ever more clear in recent years; just since last November, the Gaza Strip — now known informally as “Hamastan” to some — has served as a launching point for over 400 Qassam rockets into civilian areas in southern Israel.

However, Sharon at the time accepted the President’s urging to make this move because of the language included in Bush’s letter. On April 22, 2004 — one week after receiving it — Sharon told the Israeli Knesset:

There is American recognition that in any permanent status arrangement, there will be no return to the [19]67 borders. This recognition is to be expressed in two ways: understanding that the facts that have been established in the large settlement blocs are such that they do not permit a withdrawal to the [19]67 borders and implementation of the term ‘defensible borders.’

In an era when Arab fighters are employing rockets and other standoff weaponry, withdrawing to the 1967 borders would move the edge of an unregulated Palestinian state up to the border of Israel. This would not only endanger Israeli citizens living in those areas, but would also put major coastal cities like Tel Aviv, which is a mere eleven miles (18 km) from what would be Palestinian land, well within range of Katyusha rockets.

The Temple Mount, dominated by the Golden Dome of the Rock, and Old Jerusalem, taken from the Mount of Olives to the East. The ‘peace agreement’ proposed by President Bush at Annapolis would transfer sovereignty over the Temple Mount and over East Jerusalem to the Palestinian government
(photograph by Jeff Emanuel)

Now, three years after promising Sharon that Israel’s concessions would be rewarded with America’s “steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats,” President Bush — faced with the looming specter of his Presidential legacy — has moved the goal posts well within the previously promised bounds.

Said Bush at Annapolis Tuesday:

The Israelis must do their part. They must show the world that they are ready to begin — to bring an end to the occupation that began in 1967 through a negotiated settlement [thereby retracting their borders to the very same 1949 armistice lines that Bush, in his letter to Sharon, promised would not be in play]. This settlement will establish Palestine as a Palestinian homeland, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. Israel must demonstrate its support for the creation of a prosperous and successful Palestinian state by removing unauthorized outposts, ending settlement expansion, and finding other ways for the Palestinian Authority to exercise its responsibilities without compromising Israel’s security.

With the above paragraph, nearly two thousand words into his address, President Bush put to rest any hope among supporters of the Jewish state that he would keep his promise to the former Prime Minister, and would support Israel’s right to defensible borders against the threats to their north, east, and south. Instead, encouraged by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush has apparently decided to ignore his letter to Sharon (as well as his 2001 promise that the Israeli concessions proposed by President Clinton in 2000 were “off the table”), and, echoing the language used by Israel’s enemies in the region, is demanding that “occupation” be ended and the state’s borders be shrunk far past a defensible minimum simply as a starting point for peace negotiations.

This paragraph’s inclusion was the reason that Syria and the rest of Israel’s invited neighbors and enemies agreed to attend the conference. Whether it was intentional or not, President Bush — by referring to Israel as an ‘occupier’ and by demanding the cessation of the land, gained in battle, that currently serves as a buffer to attack — gave those who would see the Jewish state wiped off the map exactly what they hoped for.

In requiring unilateral concessions as a show of goodwill, and in expecting Israel’s neighbors to respond in kind, the President appears to be repeating the grave mistake of applying his own worldview and values to a foreign population, and expecting their thoughts and actions to be similar to what a Westerner would do. “The Palestinian people are blessed with many gifts and talents,” said Bush in his address. He continued:

They want the opportunity to use those gifts to better their own lives and build a better future for their children. They want the dignity that comes with sovereignty and independence. They want justice and equality under the rule of law. They want freedom from violence and fear.

While this may be true in some respects, it appears, based on even a casual look at history, that peace with Israel is one thing the Palestinians and their leaders, as well as the surrounding nations, do not want.

Further, Secretary Rice appears to be similarly misreading the will of the Israeli people. On November 13, just two weeks ago, Rice said that she “believe[d] that most Israelis are ready to leave most of the – nearly all of the West Bank, just as they were ready to leave Gaza for the sake of peace.” 400 Qassam rockets and one kidnapped IDF Corporal later, we have seen how the withdrawal from Gaza “for the sake of peace” turned out. Further, according to the a study by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “public opinion polls actually show strong Israeli support for retaining strategic areas of the West Bank, like the Jordan Valley.”

Apparently, in the wake of the Gaza Strip disaster, there really aren’t that many Israelis – outside of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the supporters who make up his 9% approval rating – who are ready and willing to make similar unilateral concessions, and for very good reason. Unfortunately, Bush, Rice, Olmert, and the cast of countries that makes up Israel’s worst enemies are quite willing to overlook this fact in favor of pushing the Jewish state back into an undefensible geographic position.

If there was any doubt about the reason for President Bush’s sudden desire to insert himself so forcefully into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be put to rest by reading the conclusion of his Annapolis address:

The day is coming when Palestinians will enjoy the blessings that freedom brings — and all Israelis will enjoy the security they deserve. That day is coming. The day is coming when the terrorists and extremists who threaten the Israeli and Palestinian people will be marginalized and eventually defeated. And when that day comes, future generations will look to the work we began here at Annapolis. They will give thanks to the leaders who gathered on the banks of the Chesapeake for their vision, their wisdom and courage to choose a future of freedom and peace.

If only solving millennia-old disputes was that simple, and a legacy could be saved so easily. Then again, if that were the case, even Bill Clinton might have been able to do it — a proposition which begs the following question: Absent the opportunity to embark on a Quixotic second-term quest for the ever-elusive “Middle Eastern Peace,” what else would President Bush find to use in an eleventh-hour attempt to resuscitate what he clearly sees as his failing legacy?

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a columnist, a combat journalist, and a Director of conservative weblog RedState.com. He is a former leadership fellow at the University of Georgia’s Center for International Trade and Security.

Tel Aviv, Israel
A major idiosyncrasy (to Americans) of Israeli politics is the fact that, though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert currently enjoys an approval rating solidly in the single digits, he is perhaps more secure in his position at the top of the Israeli government than he has been at any time in his tenure as Prime Minister. Presiding over a broad coalition of parliamentarians, Olmert is sticking to his guns (as inapt a metaphor as can possibly be applied) and is doing his best to reinvigorate the Middle East “peace” process by repeating mistakes that made Israel’s position so precarious in the first place.

As Caroline Glick, Israel’s more dour version of Ann Coulter, said in a recent Jerusalem Post column, “Olmert and his ministers pursue diplomatic and security goals that bear no relation to the regional and global realities facing Israel.” The man whom few expected to make it through last year’s disaster of a “war” (the 33-day battle with the Iranian proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon) is continuing down the path that not only endangered Israel’s national security and led, in part, to that war in the first place, but that caused him to be looked at as a farce of a leader by over 90% of his own population.

Rebuilding an Arab newspaper building hit by rockets. On the left, you can see the virtually unblemished home of the two Arab Christian grandparents killed, while shepherding their grandchildren to safety, by ball bearings with which the rocket was filled. More here.
(photo © Jeff Emanuel 2007)

A year ago, during that war, Olmert said that Hezbollah could “never threaten this nation that it will fire missiles at it, because this nation is contending with these missiles and beating them” – also claiming that the IDF “had destroyed all of Hezbollah’s military infrastructures in south Lebanon” – the day before 231 rockets and missiles rained on the small Jewish state, marking the Iranian-armed group’s largest bombardment to date. Not outwardly rattled by the onslaught, Olmert pressed on with his dovish policies, saying that the next step would be a unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria – the two territories on Israel’s eastern border (across from the country’s nine-mile-wide “narrow waist”) which currently serve as buffers between Palestinian rockets and the civilian populations of Israel’s major cities.

Amazingly, Olmert then (as now) did not comprehend the obvious: the conflict he then sought, and now seeks, to dampen through unilateral concession was escalated to its current scale by the very policy he is currently advocating. In the Gaza Strip, Israel (under Ariel Sharon) unilaterally withdrew to the borders of the town of Sederot, leaving the Palestinians there to their own devices (although with power still provided to the territory by a southern Israeli power plant); under Olmert last November, a cease-fire agreement was reached between the two entities.

Just some of the hundreds of homemade (water pipe, rebar, soldered fins, ball bearings/nails, and explosive) rockets indiscriminantly fired from Gaza into the civilian town of Sederot on a daily basis. This collection, at the Sederot police station, is of rockets which have landed in the city.
More here. (photo © Jeff Emanuel 2007)

The result? Since the cease-fire was agreed to, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have launched over 330 homemade Qassam rockets (fashioned from water pipes – no wonder Gaza has no infrastructure – and rebar, and filled with nails and ball bearings) at Sederot – a town populated entirely by civilians – as well as at the plant which provides Gaza with its power. Further, in June of last year a tunnel from the Strip to an outpost on the border was completed (a three-year project), which allowed Hamas terrorists to infiltrate IDF defenses and to kidnap Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Over a year later, Shalit is still being held captive.

Olmert’s detachment from reality is palpable. In the south, he has released funds to the Fatah party, which is no longer in power after the dual blows of their loss to Hamas in an election last year, and their being thrown off of Gaza Strip high rises by the same in a recent uprising. In the north and east, he says, “live millions of people who want tranquility, a quality of life and quiet – just like we do.”

This is, of course, an entirely wrongheaded point of view, and is one which Americans such as Condoleezza Rice are guilty of holding, as well. The attributing of Western ideals and values to a foreign population is entirely erroneous, and is, in large part, the source of many of the ills not only in Palestine, but in areas like Iraq, as well.

The Mouse “Farfur” discusses with a Palestinian child the need to kill all Jews. From Palestinian state television. (Under threat of a lawsuit from Disney, the show’s creators had Farfur murdered by Jews and replaced by a Jihadi bumblebee).

A brief look at Palestinian state television will show just how different the Palestinians’ view of “quality of life” is from Americans’ and Israelis’. The glorification of suicide bombing, the triumphant refrain of “how many Jews did you kill?,” and the constant drumbeat of self-sacrifice in the act of murdering Israelis as a glory in itself – on children’s programming – is standard fare on both Hamas and Fatah-funded state television – and all of this is backed by the growing specter of Mahmoud “A World Without Israel” Ahmadinejad’s potentially nuclear Iran.

While Iran is, to many, a case in and of itself, the sense among the reality-based Israeli leadership is that it is the engine driving the Jewish state’s ever-growing security problems. Katyusha rockets, small arms, and Korean-designed surface-to-surface missiles all reach both Hamas and Hezbollah via the Persian state, and others in the area – such as Syria and Egypt – are falling further under its influence, as well.

Likhud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu explains the Iranian nuclear threat
(photo © Jeff Emanuel 2007)

“Iran is the problem,” Likhud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu told me when we sat down for a few minutes recently. “Either the US takes care of them or we do. But they can’t be allowed to continue.”

Dan Diker, a senior policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (headed by former Ambassador Dore Gold), had a similar view. As he told me, “Iran is the engine driving the current battle. They are funding our enemies, equipping them, and – in an unprecedented move – they have publicly called for the destruction of a fellow United Nations member state. And nothing is being said!”

Diker presented a map, assembled by his staff with the JCPA’s Defensible Borders Project, which showed the potentially deadly outcome of the combination of further unilateral withdrawal to the so-called “1967 borders” and the modern, far-reaching weapons that Iran has provided to the Palestinian “resistance.”

Olmert’s Defense Minister, former PM Ehud Barak, recently unveiled a plan to put in place a “missile defense” system which he envisions as being able to stop anything from ballistic missiles to homemade Qassam rockets – a sheer fantasy at best – which he claims will make vacating Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights both painless and danger-free. However, in presenting this, he glosses over the fact – shown by last year’s Lebanon “war,” in which the cross-bay city of Haifa was bombarded with missiles and with Katyusha rockets from a territory unilaterally abandoned by Israel (under Barak) in 2000 – that territory must be held as a buffer before any such defense can even begin to be put in place.

As Ambassador Gold put it, “We cannot give up Jerusalem, and we cannot give up our presence in the territories. Uprooting the settlers [from the areas near Gaza] was painful enough; we cannot put our population in further jeopardy by eliminating the one thing that keeps us most safe – our presence in those areas, both as security and as a deterrent to attack.”

Such sense appears to be falling on deaf ears with regard to Olmert and his ‘coalition.’ When meeting with her in Jerusalem, I asked his spokesperson, Miri Eisen, what her response would be to those who say that unilaterally making concessions is a well-known sign of weakness to Israel’s opponents, and, like in Lebanon and Gaza, would serve only to embolden the fighters to strike harder.

Her response? “We know that it is not weak, because we know that there is strength in being able to make concessions even when it has not worked before.”

All in all, that is not overly encouraging.