A TIME TO SPEAK

Vol. III:5 (No. 29)

May 2003 - Iyar-Sivan 5763

SETTING SNARES

Proud men have hidden a snare for me,

They have spread out the cords of their net

And have set traps for me along my path.

                                                            -- Psalm 142:5

    "There is no safety for honest men except by believing

     all possible evil of evil men." -- Edmund Burke

After the United States declared War on Terror, it fought to bring down pro-terrorist governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now it is determined to invent a new Terror State to be called "Palestine". The Afghanis were set free from rule by the Taliban and Iraqis from rule by Saddam Hussein, but the Palestine-Arabs are consigned to the rule of Arafat and his ilk.

For the war in Iraq, Israel helped the United States with weapons and technology, intelligence, training of special forces, and other contributions scarcely acknowledged. The PLO, that had joyously celebrated the attacks of September 11, poured out upon the United States jeers, scorn, bluster, threats and loathing.

The follow-up is to clobber Israel and reward the PLO, by way of the much-touted Roadmap to Peace. Various analyses of the effect on Israel have termed the Roadmap "disaster", "hell", "sell-out", "the worst thing for Israel since the British 1939 White Paper", "assisted suicide", and "holocaust on the installment plan".

It has also been compared to Oslo, or called Return to Oslo, but this analogy is not fair, for there are many differences between the Oslo Accords perpetrated almost ten years ago and the present Roadmap to Peace that the Quartet means to perpetrate:

Oslo -- was a policy choice of a free though misguided government of Israel.

Roadmap -- is to be imposed on Israel by foreign entities, among them its most hostile enemies in Europe and the United Nations.

Oslo -- did not call for the creation of a PLO state inside the Land of Israel.

Roadmap -- demands it, and right away too.

Oslo -- did not define Israel's presence in the Land of Israel/Jewish National Home as "occupation".

Roadmap --  so defines it and demands an end to it. Thereby, it accepts and enforces Arab claims exclusively. and totally ignores Israel's legal, historic and moral rights.

Oslo  -- did not restrict much less forbid the right of Jews to live and work and build in their ancient homelands of Judea and Samaria.

Roadmap -- severely restricts it and points toward an eventual expulsion of the Jews. (The specific ban on "natural growth" in these communities would apply even to a family adding a room to its house. A State Department official opines that it bans Israel from repairing ancient synagogues deliberately wrecked during the Jordanian occupation.)

Oslo -- did not deprive Israel of any part of its ancient capital Jerusalem, much less of its holiest ground Temple Mount.

Roadmap -- is ignorant of the truth summed up by a Christian theologian that "Jerusalem is holy because the Jews made it holy".

Oslo -- reserved for Israel security control of the PLO-administered regions.

Roadmap -- forbids Israel to have any presence in those regions or to carry out any defensive actions against terrorism and aggression therefrom. (It is graciously permitted if attacked to file a complaint with the Roadmap Foreign Overseers.)

Oslo -- did not impinge on Israel's independence as a sovereign state

Roadmap -- in effect places all its most vital security concerns under the control of foreign monitors. Israel is not only forbidden to make its own policies, it is even forbidden to speak on its most vital concerns, and ordered to "cease incitement against the Palestinians".

Oslo -- did not sanctify the 1948 ceasefire lines as the limit to Israel. (Neither did the much-misquoted Resolution 242.)

Roadmap -- foresees withdrawal to those shrunken and vulnerable lines -- despite all previous promises to the contrary by the United States and Britain.

Oslo -- did not open the gates of Israel to a flood of hate-filled Arabs.

Roadmap -- recommends the "Saudi plan", which calls for such a "right of return" for millions.

Oslo -- permitted no international conferences or foreign meddling

Roadmap -- schedules two international conferences where Israel's non-friends will dictate its fate.

* * * * * * *

Many Americans, Christians and Jews, care enough about the betrayal of Israel to raise their voices against it. The authors and promoters of the Roadmap may find this irritating.

Early in May 2003, William Burns, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, made a trip to visit PLO officials and also held a joint meeting with PLO personnel and remnants of Israel's pro-appeasement factions. The meeting was supposed to be confidential, but Peace Now published the glad tidings.

Mr. Burns was annoyed by the "conservative and Christian" viewpoints of those who pointed out flaws in the Roadmap, and thereby made themselves obstacles to peace. He reassured his audience that "The common sense of all peoples will override the conservative and Christian viewpoints once they see the roadmap's potential." He also urged the group to carry on their political activities "as new peace attempts reflects the peoples' will and will result in fundamental changes."

Mr. Burns declined to meet with Israelis of non-appeasement persuasions.

"The Wake-Up Call To Banish Visions", by Wesley Pruden, Editor, The Washington Times, 20 May 2003:

George W. defers to his generals in all things. We have his word on this. So maybe he ought to see whether Donald Rumsfeld can find a general who knows how to read maps. They teach map reading at West Point.

The president vows to 'move forward' on 'the road to peace' in the Middle East, and he sounds like a man who is trying to look forward to the trip no matter where his road map leads.

'We're still on the road to peace,' George W. told reporters yesterday at the White House. 'It's just going to be a bumpy road, and I'm not going to get off the road until we reach the vision.' [Comment: The "bumps" were the five jihad-bombings in the two previous days, that murdered twelve Israelis and wounded and wrecked many more.]

A president has to be an optimist, but when even a president starts seeing visions that nobody else sees it may be time to wake him up.

Some of George W.'s most reliable friends set out yesterday, in the wake of the wave of suicide bombings with which our Palestinian friends are celebrating the return to the peace process, to do exactly that.

A group of evangelical Christians and Jewish Zionists, meeting in Washington, drafted a letter urging the president to rein in 'the Arabist cabal' at the State Department that is forever pressing the Israelis to kill themselves in behalf of peace. They urged Mr. Bush and his government to force the Palestinians to behave themselves - to quit killing women and children, for starters - before requiring the Israelis to make crucial concessions.

Pat Robertson, who preaches from the bully pulpit of his Christian Broadcasting Network, opened a second front against Foggy Bottom. He declared war on William Burns, the president's top Middle East diplomat, for undiplomatic remarks Mr. Burns made the other day about Christians. Mr. Robertson called the remarks 'insulting.' They were at least dumb, particularly from a man obviously overpaid to be smart.

'The common sense of all peoples will override the conservative and Christian viewpoints once they see the road map's potential,' Mr. Burns told a peacenik conference in Jerusalem. Mr. Burns, through a State Department spokesman, later sort of said he hadn't said it, but the denial was not up to the standard of the usual diplomatic lie. Nobody took the denial seriously.

'His name is Burns,' Mr. Robertson told his national television audience yesterday. 'I want you to go to the phone and call the State Department ... and the White House. They think they are somehow above the political process in America and they can insult more than 60 million Americans. They think that somehow or other the Christian viewpoint on Israel lacks common sense, and once common sense prevails the president will go forward with this kind of road map, which we have already heard is dead in the water.'

What he had just heard, of course, was the news that Ariel Sharon had canceled his trip to Washington to stay in Jerusalem and declare an all-out fight on terror, similar to the all-out fight on terror declared by George W. Bush on September 11. Israel, in fact, has suffered, proportionally, far greater casualties than the United States suffered on that early-autumn day of infamy.

The Israeli prime minister promised to fight the terror 'in any way possible,' but resisted his Cabinet's entreaties to expel Yasser Arafat from the region because he is widely believed to be encouraging the continuation of the violence to undercut the authority of Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister. But if Arafat is booted out of the West Bank town of Ramallah, where he has been confined for more than a year, he would tour the capitals of the European Union like a conquering hero, or at least a scourge of Jews. The French might even name a sauce or a particularly stinky cheese for him.

What the Israelis want does not strike a reasonable man as unreasonable. They want to stop the killing first. The road map prescribes 'parallel steps,' concessions by both sides. This might work as a plan to settle a dispute between Domino's and Pizza Hut, or even between Upper Glopp and Lower Slobbovia. But genuine peace talks require honorable men on both sides of a dispute, and George W.'s administration, if not the president himself, insists on looking for honor where there is only dishonor.

The president calls the violent Palestinian response to the resumption of the peace process, so called, 'sad and pathetic.' Secretary of State Colin Powell calls the violence 'tragic.' But these are words, words, words, and these words are no bargain at a nickel a pound.

The president's evangelical friends, driven by faith and thus alien to the experience of the State Department weenies who believe in nothing but their own sterile and discredited bigotries, understand what the president's men do not - that civilized men are dealing with a seventh-century culture that cannot comes to terms with civilization. All the road maps, however exquisitely drawn by all the president's men, lead only to dead ends.

JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), Washington, D.C, considers an oddity in State Department views, in "Accepting the Unacceptable?", 12 May 2003

After his visit with nominal PA PM Abu Mazen, Secretary of State Powell spoke with Israel’s Channel 2 TV. Asked how Abu Mazen could control terror in the PA, 'if Arafat still controls most of the Palestinian security organizations?' Mr. Powell responded, 'Well, Arafat controls some, (Abu Mazen) controls some. There is a bifurcated situation right now, which I would rather not see, but this is the way it is.'

'This is the way it is?' Did we say that when the Taliban gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda? Did we say that when Saddam defied the UN? Did we say that when the UN refused to back up its own resolutions? Why does Mr. Powell accept what is not acceptable when the issue is the security of Israel?

The sine qua non of President Bush’s 24 June 2002 speech was that the Palestinians would 'elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror.' It’s bad enough that Abu Mazen is compromised up to his eyebrows, and that he was hand-picked by Arafat in a way that had nothing to do with the Palestinian people electing anyone, but for an American Secretary of State to accept Arafat’s continued control of armed, terrorist factions as inevitable is outrageous.

But no less so than his response to the 'double standard' question regarding America’s targeted killings of Al Qaeda terrorists, roadblocks in Iraq and the inadvertent deaths of civilians in crossfire. Acknowledging Israel’s right to self defense 'if it sees somebody coming at them with the intent of conducting a terror act,' Mr. Powell nevertheless added, 'I think there is a difference… We were in an active war, declared conflict.' So, if the Palestinians don’t officially declare their war to be a war it doesn’t count? And those who indoctrinate, mastermind, arm and send the bombers on their missions should be immune to Israeli retaliation because their role is not what Mr. Powell called a 'real and present danger' but rather 'a more expansive set of targeted assassinations'? And, he asked, 'how effective is this in terms of actually moving forward with the process?'

Call it the return of the 'peace process' or the Son-of-Oslo process; call it whatever you like. We call it trouble. When the priority is how an action affects the 'process' rather than how it affects the security and legitimacy of Israel, or how it advances democratic institution building for the Palestinians, the US is back in the mode of pressuring Israel for real concessions or the Palestinians for phony promises.

If the best Mr. Powell can do is sigh over the way things are and be concerned about the 'process,' for better or worse for all concerned, the enterprise is doomed.

* * * * * * *

            "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious."

         -- George Orwell

Judge Abraham D. Sofaer, a former legal counsel to the Department of State and a senior fellow at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, subjects the Roadmap and the long-standing policies that led up to it to a long and sharp-witted analysis/

Excerpts from "Wrong Turn", Commentary Magazine, May 2003. Excerpts from The Wall Street Journal Online, 2 May 2003:

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the first Bush administration convened in Madrid an international conference on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This was an event that political leaders all over the world had been pursuing as if it were the holy grail of international diplomacy. It set in motion a decade of "peacemaking" that included the treaty between Israel and Jordan but whose most visible fruit was the Oslo accords of 1993.

In recent months, three years into the bloody Palestinian assault on Israel that the Oslo peace process became, the same dynamic has once again been in play, as international diplomats and government officials have scrambled . . . [pushing forward their preferred solutions. This is the famous 'road map' prepared by the 'quartet' [. . . . ]

In Phase I, the Palestinians are to 'declare' an end to violence and terrorism; undertake 'visible' efforts to prevent attacks on Israelis, consolidate all security forces under an 'empowered' interior minister, and restructure Palestinian institutions through numerous, detailed measures. Israel, for its part, is to call for an end to violence against Palestinians; cooperate in rebuilding a viable Palestinian security force; cease all actions 'undermining trust,' including deportations, demolition of homes and destruction of Palestinian infrastructure; take measures to improve the humanitarian situation; and 'immediately' dismantle 'settlement outposts erected since March 2001' and freeze all other settlement activity, including 'natural growth.'

All this is to happen by next month [June 2003].

Then comes Phase II, which foresees the 'option' of creating a Palestinian state, with provisional borders, attributes of sovereignty and maximum territorial continuity; the completion date for this phase is the end of 2003. Phase III, which is to result in a final agreement between the parties settling all outstanding issues, is to be completed by the end of 2005.  [. . . .]

Quite apart from its wildly optimistic timetable [. . . .] this road map, like many plans for Middle East peace, expects to bring an end to Palestinian violence against Israel without addressing the reasons why the Palestinians have deliberately and repeatedly chosen that path.

Dennis Ross, the former U.S. negotiator for the Middle East, recently admitted that ever since the last Gulf War, he and other U.S. negotiators failed to take seriously the Palestinian Authority's steadfast refusal to end violence. (As Mr. Ross put it in State Department doublespeak: 'The prudential issues of compliance were neglected and politicized by the Americans in favor of keeping the peace process afloat.') Instead, in the face of the continuing violence, the U.S. kept pressing Israel to make further concessions, thereby convincing Palestinians that they could go on cheating and killing and still procure the benefits for which they had been negotiating. In the end, it seemed reasonable to suppose that they might even force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza as it had been forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000.

But Palestinian violence is . . . the product of an environment that fosters, shelters, encourages and rewards acts aimed at nullifying Israel's very existence. And that environment is itself the creation not only of the Palestinians, or of the Arabs, but also of the international community--including the U.S. To change this situation requires changing not just the actions and attitudes of Palestinians but the policies and practices of others, again including the U.S. No recognition of these facts, let alone any acknowledgment of the need to do something about them, has been made part of the road map--which is again why it shares the basic flaw of every Middle East peace plan that has preceded it.

[. . . .] The United States portrays itself, properly, as leading the world-wide effort to combat terrorism. Some longstanding American policies, however, have contributed to terrorism, and especially to terrorism against Israel. Although steps have been taken to rectify matters in the wake of September 11, terrorists and supporters of terrorism continue to be abetted by the U.S. in their determination to control the destiny of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Consider, first, the longstanding strategy of Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization to keep as many Palestinians as possible living under horrible conditions in refugee camps, close to Israel. The camps, first set up after the 1948 war . . . are administered by . . . the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA now spends more than $400 million a year to assist a population that has swollen over the past half century to some 4.5 million, relatively few of whom are refugees by any accepted definition of the term. The whole system could not have been better designed both to endanger Israel's security and to damage its moral reputation. [ . . . . ]

Second, the Palestinian educational system is an abomination; it, too, is largely funded by the U.N., with the substantial support of American taxpayers. In their schools, Palestinian children are taught mendacious versions of their own history as well as of Jewish culture, history and beliefs. Generations have been fed on propaganda that denies the legitimacy of the state of Israel while simultaneously glorifying intolerance, fanaticism and 'martyrdom.'

Very little that is actually useful--engineering, computer technology, science, finance--is taught in these schools. In the private, religiously funded schools, things are still worse. There, in the words of Itamar Marcus [Palestinian Media Watch], 'children have been taught to hate, and to die for Allah. Their childhood has been destroyed by indoctrination to hate and kill Jews as well as Americans and Westerners in general.'

The U.N. and the U.S. have allowed these terrible practices to continue for years. . . . How can Palestinians realistically be expected to accept Israel as long as they continue to convey to their children that Israel is unacceptable, and that terrorism against it is a noble undertaking?

Third, our policies have worked to prevent Israel from defending itself against terrorism. Nowhere is this clearer than in our relations with the highest level of Palestinian political power. The Palestinian Authority has advocated, planned, financed and rewarded terrorism against Israel and Jews. And yet, during the Oslo years and for many months during the current intifada, the State Department persistently called on Jerusalem to go on turning over to the authority the sums collected by Israel for its use. Only Israel's refusal to go along prevented us from enabling the Palestinian Authority to increase the level of violence and thus forestalling the very negotiations we wanted to see resumed.

[. . . . ] Terrorists have also benefited from unreasonable efforts to restrict Israeli responses to their operations. The U.S., for example, has known for many years that in addition to those associated with the PLO, at least three major terrorist groups operate in Israel: Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Until recently, however, the State Department has joined in castigating Israel for capturing or killing leaders and members of these groups. The State Department was wrong to do so. . . . . Such conduct is part of every state's legitimate right of self-defense.

After 9/11, the U.S. recognized the need for an active defense against terror. We killed many terrorists in Afghanistan, and we continue to hunt down al Qaeda operatives and leaders. Where possible, they are arrested and held as prisoners; where necessary, they are killed. We have also undertaken to assist several states in similar defensive operations--even while criticizing Israel for exercising its sovereign right in this regard. Are we to deny to Israel the flexibility in protecting itself and its citizens that we demand in protecting ourselves?

Besides criticizing Israel, our government and others also repeatedly accuse it of using excessive force and improper methods. . . . . But Israel is clearly permitted by the laws of war to destroy homes used by terrorists when necessary to attack or capture them, or to protect Israeli soldiers or civilians from attack, or in any other military operation. Although one would hardly know it from the routine condemnations that issue from the international community, most of the destruction that occurs is in fact for these proper reasons.

Not only are most criticisms of Israeli anti-terror operations baseless, some are outright fabrications, as in the case of the alleged 'massacre' of 'thousands' of Palestinian Arab civilians in Jenin in the spring of 2002. This charge was endorsed by the U.N. envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, without even conducting an investigation. As was subsequently demonstrated, a total of 52 Palestinians died in Jenin, most of them fighters.

[. . . . ] Our government has also consistently failed to come to grips with the extent and seriousness of Palestinian terror itself. The annual State Department report, 'Patterns of Global Terrorism,' listed only nine terrorist attacks in Israel in 2001. In fact, there were 97. Among the 88 incidents omitted from the list were Hamas bombings in Haifa and Netanya in which 20 were killed and 140 wounded, as well as other devastating bombings by Islamic Jihad and Yasser Arafat's Fatah. This simple refusal to acknowledge reality underlies, in turn, the continuing demand by our government that Israel restore the PA's security forces--the same forces that we paid to build up in the 1990s, only to see them placed at the service of terrorism.

[. . . . ]

I now pass to a different class of issues relating to Palestinian violence. In negotiations between the parties, the U.S. has worked to keep some matters unresolved. Of these, a few are indeed so difficult as to be properly deferred. Others, however, clearly admit of only one possible resolution; if they have nevertheless been pushed off to some future date, that is because it is felt by our diplomats that they should not be foreclosed until the parties themselves come to an agreement on them. This tactic, however, has caused far more harm than good, allowing illusions to grow and take root that damage the practical prospects for peace.

Jerusalem. Every successful presidential candidate since at least Ronald Reagan has promised that, if elected, he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital city of Jerusalem. Yet, once elected, every president has breached this promise, announcing that current conditions do not yet favor such a move. [. . . .] But the claim is spurious. Moving the U.S. Embassy to the site designated for it in the western part of Jerusalem would merely acknowledge that Jerusalem is in fact the capital of Israel. . . . . Far from being an obstacle to peace, it would tend to force Palestinians to confront the real compromises they would need to make if they truly desired peace. [. . . .]

Right of return. At the Camp David negotiations in the summer of 2000, American diplomats were surprised by the fierceness with which Palestinian representatives insisted upon a 'right of return' for all Palestinian refugees to Israel proper. If acted upon by the millions claiming to be refugees, such a right of return would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. [. . . .]

The U.S. bears some responsibility for encouraging Palestinians in this regard. Specifically, we backed the Arab interpretation of a 1949 General Assembly resolution, No. 194, that has no legal weight, that was originally rejected by all Arab states, and that is but one small item in the great mass of anti-Israel declarations by that body. More recently, we were among those welcoming a February 2002 Saudi peace 'initiative' that explicitly invoked a right of return.

The road map, in turn, cites the Saudi plan in a positive manner. Though it does--finally--call in passing for a 'realistic' solution to the refugee issue, any plan seriously aimed at leading toward peace, and backed by the U.S., should make it crystal clear at the outset that a right of return is antithetical to peace, and must be renounced. Furthermore, any reference to the rights of Palestinian refugees should be balanced by one to the legitimate claims of the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries, which must be satisfied on the basis of the same principles. Justice requires no less.

Settlements and borders. Although the road map leaves the final borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state to final-status negotiations, it does insist on a complete cessation of all settlement activity by Jews, including 'natural growth,' beyond the Israeli side of the pre-June 1967 borders. State Department officials have long adhered to the notion that Security Council Resolution 242, issued in the aftermath of the June 1967 Six Day War, requires treating those borders as final; if, they say, Israel wishes any adjustment in them, it will have to compensate the Palestinians with some additional concession, probably in the form of land on Israel's side.

The State Department's interpretation of Resolution 242 is not only mistaken--the literature on this point is formidable--but it could end up presenting at least as great an obstacle to peace as Israel's policy of building settlements in areas heavily populated by Palestinians. In Israel's history, settlements have a central and necessary place. The road map disregards both this history and the plain legitimacy of building places to live in what Israelis regard as their historic (though not exclusive) homeland. The road map also errs in treating every Israeli settlement as equally troublesome, even though some are obviously defensible on security grounds and minimally disruptive to Palestinian inhabitants of the territories. It thereby once again creates unwarranted expectations among Palestinians. [. . . .]

By tacitly accepting interpretations of reality that unfairly put the onus on Israel--in this case by demanding a 'freeze' on settlements as if all settlement activity were either illegal or evidence of evil intent, or both--the United States helps to perpetuate Arab revanchism and works against the possibility of peace.

Beyond, above and behind every failed policy that has been devised to nudge forward the prospects of reconciliation in the Middle East there lies a simple if often unacknowledged fact: There can be no peace until the Arabs of the region openly accept the existence of Israel as a permanent, sovereign state. For 55 years most of Israel's Arab enemies have refused to do so. For 55 years the community of nations has tolerated, acquiesced in and thereby confirmed the propriety of that refusal.

To this day, Israel is treated in international affairs and by most members of the United Nations as a pariah state. The U.S., despite the generous and indispensable support it has extended to Israel, has too often gone along with that treatment. From time to time, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan documented in Commentary, it has even 'joined the jackals.'

The blanket exemption from treating Israel as an ordinary state and an equal member of the international community has had a pervasive impact on the calculus of war and peace. To Israel's enemies, it has sent a signal that the conflict between them may yet be resolved through Israel's complete delegitimization and destruction. To Israel itself, it has sent exactly the same dire signal. [. . . . ]

Israel as ally. In 1990, as we prepared to confront Saddam Hussein over his seizure and occupation of Kuwait, we built, under the authorization of the Security Council, a coalition of forces in which every state willing to participate was welcomed, except one: Israel. During the ensuing conflict, when Iraq fired 39 missiles at Israel in an effort to draw it into the conflict, the U.S. asked the Israeli government not to respond; in deference to us, and in violation of its cardinal principles of self-defense, Israel agreed. [. . . . ] Asking Israel to stay out of the coalition against Saddam in 1991 and then to refrain from exercising its right of self-defense was morally wrong, tactically shortsighted and very harmful to the goal of securing Israel's acceptance in the Middle East.

[. . . . ] The U.S. . . . granted validity to the notion that Israel should be excluded. . . . . The principle informing our action should be that Israel--our ally, remember--is a state with the same inalienable rights as all other states. ]. . . .]

The Jewish question. Some one million Palestinian Arabs--a fifth of Israel's population--live there as citizens. Jewish settlers in the West Bank number, at most, a tenth of the area's population -- but the guiding assumption of all international efforts to achieve peace is that no Jew should be allowed to reside in any Palestinian area.

Palestinians [have not] accepted Jews in their midst. They do not. On the contrary, they have attacked and killed Jews seeking to live in places like Hebron, an ancient and holy Jewish seat where Jews lived for centuries before being slaughtered and driven out in the 1920s.

The notion of a Palestine in which Jews are not allowed to live is anathema. It implicitly affirms the hatred and violence that has made the Arab and Muslim Middle East virtually Judenrein, and it thoroughly undercuts any hope for peace. It should be anathema, above all, to the U.S. [. . . . ] Judenrein should be an impermissible policy, everywhere.

As for the much larger and excruciating question of Arab anti-Semitism, this is not the place to comment at length on its frightening tenacity, its ferocity and its world-wide reach. What must be said, though, is that the failure of our government at the highest levels to denounce the genocidal teachings that issue regularly from the press, the mosques and the schools of Arab and Muslim regimes, some of them our longstanding allies, is shameful.

This failure has consequences in policy. Throughout Israel's history, and especially now, Palestinians have acted as though they have a perfect right to kill Jews with impunity. Little wonder: they live in a culture in which armed men, and men of God, publicly and routinely call for the murder of Jews. Fundamentalist Muslims and nationalist Arabs alike preach and practice a racist ideology based on the inhumanity of Jews. In their ravings, Jews--'dogs,' 'cockroaches,' 'filthy bacterial growth'--deserve to be killed en masse and uprooted from a land they have defiled by their presence. When Arab terrorists are themselves killed by Israeli reprisals, Palestinians parade through the streets of their cities with guns, masks and suicide-bomber outfits, crying to heaven for vengeance.

All this would be intolerable, and shocking beyond belief, in any society based upon law. Yet so pervasive is it in Palestinian society, as indeed in Arab society generally, that one doubts even Israelis have taken in its full dimension. About it, the road map utters not a word, and neither has our government. Instead, as I have already noted, some government spokesmen have unconscionably criticized Israel for targeting terrorists in order to prevent further homicidal attacks on its people.

[. . . . ] Western indifference to Saddam's public offer to pay for the murder of Jews, combined with the major increase in anti-Semitism in Western Europe itself, cannot but have reassured Israel's Arab enemies that they are not alone in regarding Jews as a lesser form of humanity, and Jewish life as an object of little value.

However much it may exasperate those bent on 'bringing an end' to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, decades of war, terror and hatred are not to be undone through declarations and deadlines. The problem is not one of borders and territory; it is not one of schedules; it is not even one of a Palestinian state. The problem is existential.

[. . . . ] That is what is meant by an existential threat--a threat to Israel's very existence, fueled by a radical and uncompromising hatred of that existence and by the implacable determination to liquidate it. Some Arab and Muslim states, along with private and religious groups around the world, have adopted the destruction of Israel as official policy. Others give sanctuary and active help to groups committed to that end. With support from Germany, France, Russia and other nations, states controlled by Islamic extremists or Arab radicals have acquired or are acquiring nuclear devices and other weapons of mass destruction. [. . . . ]

In the democratic West, no one wishes to believe this--it is too awful. And that, too, adds to the magnitude of the threat. By omission as much as by commission, the U.S. and other democracies have encouraged radical Palestinians and their supporters to cling to their dream of eliminating the Jewish state. They have acquiesced in and thereby promoted the separate and unequal treatment of Israel as a member state of the community of nations. They have truckled to, and pressured Israel to reach an accommodation with the most radical elements among its adversaries, while subsidizing and turning a blind eye to the culture of violence in which generations of those adversaries have been raised. When it comes to the workings of anti-Semitism, they have chosen not to absorb, and not to act upon, the indelible lessons of history.

In late March, Condoleezza Rice remarked that although the administration welcomed 'comments' on the road map, the document itself was not susceptible of 'renegotiation.' If true, that is a pity. A road map to peace is a fine thing, but if it is based in denial and wishful thinking it will be rightly doomed. [. . . .]

* * * * * * *

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's official Commission for the Advancement of Virtue and Suppression of Vice finds a threat to morals in the Barbie doll and that Barbie is Jewish.

END