Thursday January 5, 2012

Column:

Let's talk Republican primaries. It seems to be the only topic that almost every pundit and poll taker and news commentator can talk about lately - so I'll just plunge right in.

To be perfectly blunt, I find a great deal of the discussion and punditry to be so irresponsible and so far from realistic it frightens me to even refer to it as political commentary.

The first thing the public should realize is that gone are the days when Iowa and New Hampshire set the tone for the national election. This should not be news. Think back four years. Mike Huckabee won the last Republican primary in Iowa. And now, rather than president, he's a pundit. Winning Iowa did not make him a candidate, it just separated him from the non-candidates.

Now think back a little farther. In 1996 Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary and we all know that winning that "key state" primary hardly made Buchanan more electable.

Iowa and New Hampshire get attention as they should - but they deserve that attention because they are the first, not because they set the tone. The votes cast by the responsible voters of Iowa and New Hampshire is not in any way, shape or form representative of the national trend. On the contrary, they are exceptional in as many ways as they are quirky.

All presidential candidates have foibles and the idea of a campaign is to minimize the ugly and put forward the attractive. Iowa and New Hampshire are given first chance to tell the candidates how they are perceived by the public, and then it's up to the candidates to refine, revise and reposition themselves.

The 2012 Republican pack is filled with characters, but it is not filled with candidates. The men and woman who have put forth their candidacy have roles to play and serve different purposes. Ron Paul is not a Republican candidate, he is a Libertarian and the purpose of his candidacy is to educate voters, not to win the nomination. For example, a former Ron Paul staffer who worked with him for twelve years says that Paul is not an anti-Semite or a racist, but that Paul definitely thinks too much US time, energy and money are dedicated to Israel and that things would be better if Israel was not there. That's just another reason to scratch Paul off the real candidate list.

Newt Gingrich is now becoming a contender. He will self destruct. But from the beginning it was clear that he was not a real player. Behind the scenes his campaign shows poor organization and tension. And as people see more of him, Gingrich will again slip back into the position he is more comfortable with and appropriate for, speaker, thinker and critic. He is a gadfly and that, by definition, ousts him as a candidate.

Honestly, intelligence is way overrated in a presidential candidate.

More important than intelligence is the ability to build assets - to assemble and then to listen to what smart, informed advisers are telling you. That requirement for successful leadership has been underplayed in this campaign. But assembling and listening to advisers is one of the most important character traits we need to have in a president.

A president need not be the smartest person in the room. But the president must assemble the best minds for advice and integrate that information and then make decisions.

That does not mean that we should vote for the charismatic candidate and be content to have uninformed men or women cloaked in the mantle of the presidency. A candidate should have new ideas and should be able to work them through and bring them to fruition. And at every meeting, advisers should be presenting hundreds of those new ideas to the candidate just as they will do when that person becomes president - and then the candidate cum president ferrets out the most salient and runs with them.

Basic issues fall by the wayside during election years and we are entranced by smoke and mirrors and big words and promises of bigger ideas and great debates. But simple organization and teamwork should never be minimized as they were, for example, from the Gingrich campaign when the Gingrich team neglected to register in Virginia - and Virginia is the candidate's home state. That type of mistakes tells it all. And then after failing to get the required ten thousand signatures needed for the ballot the campaign responded by saying they would launch a write-in campaign in Virginia. But, oops, it is not permitted to have write-ins for Republican Party presidential primaries in the state of Virginia.

On the bright side, it is better to see examples of massive disorganization, poor foresight and frankly amateurish leadership during a campaign than it is to discover it all after the election. Meeting deadlines and getting the paperwork done is just as important as turning a cute comeback line.

The voters are starting to intuitively understand the subtext of these Republican primaries. They know that brilliance, interesting ideas and fresh points have their limitations. They know that the constant challenge to debate for endless hours without a moderator is stimulating some candidates to make large, expansive, impossible to fulfill, statements.

Time flies when it comes to electioneering and November 2012 is, in election terms, upon us. As soon as the non-candidates deplete their election coffers, the real race will begin. It can't happen too soon.

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Monday November 21,2011

Column:

Ghadaffi is dead and that should not have happened.

Moammar Ghadaffi, the Colonel as he preferred to be called, was murdered. Not in battle or a shoot out, the thug-hero who ruled Libya was murdered, in cold blood, after he surrendered.

Rules of war, as well as the rules of Islam, require that when a person surrenders, he be taken prisoner. Even tyrants. Even despots and dictators. Even Moammar Ghadaffi. But that is not what happened.

The question that needs to be asked is this: Was the murder of Moammar Ghadaffi the best outcome. In other words, was it best to drag him, beat him and kill him or should Ghadaffi have been arrested and then tried in a court of law?

Any established democracy would respond by saying that the tyrant should be brought to trial and be given legal representation - but Libya never was and is still not, a democracy.

In all probability, with almost certainty, had Ghadaffi been brought to trial he would have been given a death sentence, a sentence which he rightfully deserved. That is not the issue I am debating. My issue is whether or not this death, dealt in this fashion, was the best course of action to be taken by a developing country emerging from forty-two years of oppression.

The rules of war are very clear. The ethical and just ways of acting in war are also clear. Killing in war is justified, not simply because the clich of 'kill or be killed' is true, but because war is about survival. In this case, the war was about eliminating the dictator who ruthlessly oppressed and maimed and killed the people of Libya over an extended time. It was about ousting an oppressive murderous tyrant.

As long as the Ghadaffi was fighting, killing was justified by those in opposition to his rule. But as soon as the dictator stopped fighting, the equation changed. That is when killing as an act of war turned into murder. After that, the only way to take a life is by way of trial, conviction and then execution.

It is the role of the soldier to protect the life of his prisoner once that prisoner surrenders. That is the case regardless of the horrific extent of the prisoner's crimes. So says the rules of war and so says the rules of Islam.

Ghadaffi knew the rules. That is why, on the tapes, we hear his voice shouting: 'You are wrong.' 'You do not know right from wrong. 'You do not know Islam.' 'You sin.'

Ghadaffi was counting on this eventuality. He had thought it through. He knew that there was a chance that he would be captured and not killed in battle. And if that were to happen he wanted to make certain that he would receive protected status as a prisoner. But it didn't happen. Instead, the angry crowd reportedly sodomized him with a combat knife before lynching him. We heard only one voice saying: 'Do not kill him' as Ghadaffi was dragged off and murdered.

Rules aside, there are other reasons why it was wrong, morally, ethically, historically and financially wrong to murder Ghadaffi. Unfortunately, these reasons were never made clear to the opposition fighters, Libyans interested only in exacting immediate revenge for the gruesome acts committed by the tyrant who ruled over a thugocracy in Libya.

From the very beginning, as the rebellion started and the no-fly zone was erected, opposition leaders should have made clear to their fighters that capturing a live Ghadaffi was more important than displaying a dead Ghadaffi. They should have explained that the cathartic experience of recording the hundreds of thousands of atrocities perpetrated by Moammar Ghadaffi, of recording each and every one and entering them all into the historical archive, was essential for national healing.

A public trial, where the horrific acts would be articulated, broadcast, written down as part of the history, even if it took years, would eliminate the possibility of the re-writing history, or questioning of the veracity of events, years later. It was for this purpose that Adolf Eichmann was captured, brought to Jerusalem and tried publicly. The objective of Israel was to enter events as part of the legal and historical record. Had Ghadaffi been brought to trial his trial would have been an educational tool and a historical catharsis for a country that suffered under a brutal tyrant.

Then there is the subject of money. $200 billion or more is socked away. No one knows where. That is money that should be used to rebuild Libya. It is money for education, health and retraining. It is money that the families of those Libyans tortured, terrified and murdered by their leader could use.

This $200 billion, or it's equivalent, will now come out of the pockets of Western democracies, of Western tax payers who will foot the bill for the lion's share of the first stages of reconstruction Libya so desperately needs after the rebellion. Certainly, the Libyan oil industry will help offset the cost - but only later on. If Ghadaffi were still alive and able to reveal where this $200 billion is, that money could be put to use immediately.

But these Libyans were not interested in history. These Libyans were out for revenge. And that is just what they got. And that is not good news for the future of Libya.

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By Micah Halpern
Wednesday November 16, 2011

Column:

Internal divisions within the Muslim world are as old as Islam itself. Disputes and conflict have resonated throughout history.
This period of the Muslim year is known as Id al Adha. It is at the end of the month long Hajj, the Pilgrimage is no different from any other internal Islamic conflict. It all boils down to the conflict between the Shiites of Persian Iran - and the rest of the Sunnis of the rest of the Muslim world.

Mecca is the most holy site in Islam. In Mecca sits the Kabbah, a massive black stone, the focus of prayer for all Islam and the site to which 1, 500,000,000 Muslims from around the world yearn to make a Hajj, a pilgrimage.

The city of Mecca is located in Saudi Arabia and for some Muslims that is a problem.

There is a movement underway to re-orient Islam away from Mecca. The person at the forefront of this movement is a well respected Iranian Shiite cleric named Ahmad Alam al Hadi.

This Shiite cleric has his supporters. Al Hadi is trying to convince the greater world of Islam that Muslims should not pray towards, nor visit holy sites in, Saudi Arabia or Iraq because those countries are controlled by infidels. He asserts that the leadership of Saudi Arabia is empty of Islamic value and interested only in its own self preservation. He asserts that Iraq is run by the West. And al Hadi attacks the prevalent form of Islam in Saudi Arabia, Wahabism, as extremism and as not representative of true Islam.
Ahmad Alam al Hadi proposes an alternative site. He suggests replacing Mecca, the centerpiece of Islam, with Mashhad.

Do not pray to Mecca, he says, pray toward Mashhad. Do not make pilgrimage to Mecca, make pilgrimage to Mashhad. Reorient yourselves, he says, towards Mashhad which has been a spiritual capital of Islam for hundreds of years. These are very powerful statements coming from a respected religious leader and they have sparked significant debate.

The truth is that Mashhad is and has been a Muslim holy site, primarily for Shiite Muslims, but it also holds importance for Sunni Muslims. Al Hadi claims that Mashhad already accommodates 20,000,000 Iranian pilgrims and 80,000 foreign pilgrims every year and can certainly accommodate the greater onslaught of pilgrims who would be making their way to Iran.

On paper, the plan works. But Islam is not about progress or about change. Islam is about tradition. Even the use of the verb "to orient" is based on tradition. The word "orient" means "to the east." Every Muslim place of prayer contains a mikhrab, a prayer niche, and that prayer niche points in the direction of Mecca. Moving away from Mecca, replacing Mecca, would be a revolutionary move in the world of Islam - and a move that would foment an Islamic revolution.

The irony behind the choice of Mashhad as the new holy site in Islam should not be lost. Imam Raza, the 8th Imam and one of the most influential leaders in the development of Sufi Islam, is buried there. After Imam Reza was murdered in the year 818, probably poisoned to death, there was massive conflict over who should take control his Abbasid Empire. The fight was between his two sons. One son was the son of his Arab wife, the other was the son of his Persian wife. The Shiite Persian son won.

Internal historical conflicts between Islamic groups have very deep roots. So do linguistic traditions. Saudi Arabia is called the land of "Hijaz," an expression which really means the lands of the Hajj, the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. Iran can try to unseat Mecca as the holiest of holy sites, but they will fail - there are too many direct links to the Koran and Mohammed. When the move to change is approached from the perspective of serious Muslim scholarship which begins every investigation by examining the written word of the Koran and the teachings of the prophet Mohammad the argument to replace Mecca with Mashhad appears very, very weak.

Iran wants to take over the world. But first, the Iranians will have to conquer the Islamic world.

This is a good - even if unsuccessful, try. They will try and try again. Iran does not shy away from conflict and dispute.

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Wednesday October 12, 2011

Column:

No one person, neither a president nor a prime minister, can destroy the relationship between the United States and Israel.

The relationship is, simply put, complicated. It is a relationship deeply connected by history and shared values. The relationship is so unique that these two countries, vastly separated by continents, have often been likened to siblings. As so often happens between older brothers and younger brothers, tensions arise some more significant, some less significant, than others.

Part of that relationship has to do with the Jewish Community that lives in the US, a community that is very well organized, very protective of Israel and while admittedly less blind to Israel's faults than they once were, still extremely pro-Israel.

Jews make up about two percent of the population of the United States and account for roughly three percent of the vote. Jewish votes are important only in a very few swing states, like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. A high percentage of Jews come out to vote each election day and historically, they have voted Democratic overwhelmingly Democratic.

So when politicians and their handlers begin to smooth over relations and lobby the Jewish community for support, it is not about getting their vote. It is about getting their money.

The Jewish community is extremely generous. They make up anywhere between thirty and sixty percent of Democrat fund raising dollars. And anyone who has been part of an election will tell you - the person with the biggest war chest, usually wins.

The Obama Administration has earned a reputation for having put undue pressure on Israel. As a result Jewish money is not as quick to flow into the president's war chest as it did four years ago. That's not to say that Jewish donors aren't giving. They are giving, but much less. Much less to the Democratic party and much less to the Republican party. No donor wants to completely shut the door in the face of a politician.

Donors want access even if they disagree with the policies, decisions and voting patterns of the politician.

They show their displeasure by not being as free with their monetary gift. They give enough to maintain access, not so much that they can be counted upon for unwavering support.

This time around, no one is certain that Barack Obama is slated to return for a second term. And since no one wants to back a losing candidate, donors are being extremely cautious in allocating their funds.

The president knows all that and his carefully worded speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations was a very important step in the proper direction for many Jewish contributors.

And then, continuing his policy of gentle appeasement of the Jews, the Obama Administration sent Vice President Joe Biden to speak to a select group of fifteen rabbis in Boca Raton. Biden has an iron clad history of support for Israel. He is the perfect choice to send to a friendly crowd of rabbis in Southern Florida, a crowd that unabashedly loves and supports him. The objective of the meeting was to smooth over differences with the White House and to secure more donors, in essence, to free up the flow of money into Democratic election funds.

Biden spoke about how the Obama Administration had made some mistakes. That's a gross understatement when it comes to Israel and the Jewish community, but it broke the ice and showed that Washington is ready for a reality check.

And then the subject turned to Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish American analyst was convicted of spying for Israel.

Biden told the group that President Obama was considering clemency for the spy who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987. And then the man of too many words said that he, Joe Biden, friend of the Jews, had advised the president, even using the term 'over my dead body" not to allow Pollard to get out before his sentence is up.

Considering that Biden was sent by the White House to smooth over issues with the Jewish community and to pave the road for campaign funds to come rolling in, this was an unfortunate admission.

The question of Pollard's actions and his early release are hot buttons within the American Jewish community. The Jewish community is very sensitive about Pollard. His early release has been on and off the table during the tenure of several presidents. While the best method of dealing with the issue is to confront it directly, Biden took it to the extreme.

The first rule of diplomacy is exactly the same as the first rule of medicine. It is the rule brought down through history by the great Greek philosopher Hippocrates and known as the Hippocratic Oath: First do no harm.

Joe Biden, though he later softened his remarks about Pollard, did great harm to the relationship between the Jewish community and the man who wants to remain president of the United States. Unlike the relationship between the United States and Israel, the relationship between a politician and the Jews of the United States can be easily destroyed.

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Wednesday October 5, 2011

Column:

Sometimes, truth comes from the most unexpected, unlikely source. And that source almost always offers not only unimpeachable information but also clear, sharp and most important, revealing, insight.

The latest source in this category is al Qaeda. That's right, I am referring to the al Qaeda condemnation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The condemnation that came after Ahmadinejad delivered his speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The speech was long and rambling typical of the Iranian president. The part that really irked al Qaeda was when Ahmadinejad spoke about 9-11 and said that the attacks were part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the CIA and other Western groups, including the Israeli Mossad.

Al Qaeda was not the only party to be upset by this theory. As soon as Ahmadinejad began to spout his anti-Western rhetoric the United States walked out of the great hall. When Ahmadinejad began his diatribe against 9-11 many other countries left as well. The United States bristled at the accusation. Israel, for their part, has gotten used to false accusations and hateful tirades from Ahmadinejad.

The essence of his presentation was that 9-11 was fabricated in order to make an excuse for the United States to invade Iraq and continue their colonial Western presence in Islamic lands. In this new chronicle of history as imagined by Ahmadinejad, al Qaeda pays no role -- and that they find extremely offensive.

9-11 put al Qaeda on the map in the Islamic world. To take that away relegates them to a miror organization.

In their most recent edition of Inspire, the al Qaeda English language web zine they call Ahmadinejad's assertions ridiculous, wrong and a fabrication, nothing more than a simple conspiracy theory. "The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government."

"So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"

The author of the piece then explains that the reason Ahmadinejad chose to alter history is because al Qaeda and Iran are battling for the same Muslim souls and explains that: "For them, al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world." Al Qaeda's PR agent goes on to outline the dramatic differences between their organization and Iran and then takes the gloves off: "Al Qaeda ... succeeded in what Iran couldn't. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories." For the Iranians, he exclaims, jihad is just an idea while for Al Qaeda it is a physical war.

An interesting aside is that a footer on the article asks for volunteers to help out. Al Qaeda, it turns out, is looking for people "with any skills - be it writing, research, editing, or advice" and ask that they volunteer for the cause.

In the end, it's all about jihad. Jihad under the Iranian flag or Jihad under the al Qaeda flag. Let them battle it out amongst themselves. They are both dangerous and they are both enemies of the West. But for now they both hate one another.

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September 12, 2011

Column:

Seldom in history can we look at a single moment and say with complete and unwavering conviction that because of the events that transpired during those specific moments on that particular day, history was transformed. Seldom can we pinpoint the specific event that transformed our future.

The world is a different place today because of the acts of willful and mass destruction that shattered the early morning of an otherwise insignificant Tuesday ten years ago.

As much as the world was effected and is now changed, the powerful United States of America, her financial and cultural center New York City and her seat of military power, the Pentagon, were even more profoundly affected and have, as a result, been dramatically transformed.

The unthinkable occurred. The unimaginable became real. Fantasy turned into cruel reality.

The horror we, citizens of a free and democratic world, are still reeling from as a result of the atrocity called 9 -11 is not just about the sheer numbing number of dead and injured. There have been larger atrocities. It is not just about the fact that the United States was the target. That, too, had happened a decade earlier when the same World Trade Towers were targeted by the same al Qaeda terrorist organization in a partially successful attempt to bring down the building that housed the business center of the world.

For the United States and for the West this was a jarring wake up call.

Americans could not understand why they were chosen to be the targets, why they, the great defenders, had become the victims of attack. It has taken a long time to internalize the message. The United States, the symbolic Big Brother of the Western World, was targeted for what the West represents - not for any specific actions it took or did not take. The Western world represents ideas that are so deeply antithetical to the mindset and teachings of the Islamic terrorist that the terrorist has only one way in which to respond - by attempting to destroy the West. And the United States represents the West in all of its incarnations. In the eyes of the terrorists the United States is the most acclaimed representative of the world of the heretic, the Western world.

Before 9-11 Americans were blithely and innocently unaware about how they were perceived and what they represented to the non-Western world. Proud and chauvinistic, Americans could not even imagine that a large part of the world did not share their convictions about freedoms and democracy. People, even people who were knowledgeable of and familiar with world events, had never heard of Osama Bin Laden or of al Qaeda. Terror happened in other parts of the world, other countries and populations were targets of terror, not them, not super power Americans.

Ten years ago Americans felt that the values of freedom, women's equality, equality among all races, agreeing to disagree on issues of religion, recognizing that differences make for a more exciting dynamic and productive society, were universally held. Ten years later, Americans still hold true to those beliefs. But now, they understand that their own Western beliefs are not universally held. They know that they must fight for their beliefs and they are up for the challenge.

The terrorist struck at what they considered to be the heart and nerve center of the West - Wall Street. They saw their attack as a great victory and as a lethal blow to the US and the West. The blow was painful, but it was not lethal, it was not the death blow al Qaeda has intended.

The United States had always understood that a certain modicum of terror was acceptable. It was considered the cost of doing business. Until 9-11 Today, US policy has shifted into a no tolerance policy, a policy of seek and destroy. Trillions of dollars have been dedicated to finding the new enemy, the Islamic terrorist. Wars are being fought and countries have been invaded all in order to get a handle on the elusive enemy, the enemy that has no borders and respects no borders.

There have been successes and there have been many near success. There would never have been a worldwide approach to confronting terror had the Western world not been awakened as it was on 9-11. Terror would have simply been one of those unfortunate world events the Israelis deal with on a regular basis and the Europeans deal with every once in a while.

9-11 it changed us all. It awakened Westerners to a new reality.

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Monday August 22,2011

Column:

We are now in the Muslim month of Ramadan. But what is Ramadan? Let's clear up some misconceptions.

Ramadan is the 9th month of the Muslim calendar. Every day, throughout this month called Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset and break their fasts only at night. The fast is referred to as sawm, the breaking of the fast is called iftar in Arabic.

Ramadan is a month dedicated to introspection and repentance. According to Islamic lore it is thought to be an extremely auspicious month, a month during which through prayer and fasting, believing Muslims are moved even closer to Allah, God.

Conceptually, Allah is the same as the monotheistic God of Judaism
and of Christianity. In fact, in Judaism, one of the classic names of God is Al, exactly the same name as the God of Islam - it is in the English language and in Christianity where the name God is altered. The word God comes from the middle German "Gut" meaning "good", as in all good. In English we use a descriptive word explaining what God is rather than by a name itself, a decision most probably taken so as not to violate the commandment against using the Name in vain.

In Islamic tradition great events took place during the 9th month of Ramadan. It is understood that the Koran was given to the Prophet Muhammad during the month of Ramadan. And during Ramadan the first major battle against the pagan tribes of Badr, a battle that highlighted the powers of Muhammad as a great leader and military thinker, took place in the area around Mecca. And it is at the close of one of the odd-numbered days of the last ten days of the month, a time called Laiylatu Qadr, the Night of Power, during which Allah evaluates the deeds of each person and seals their destiny.

The month-long fast concludes with a three-day holiday called Id el Fitr which is best translated as the Festival of the Breakfast Feast. This is the centerpiece of the Muslim calendar. It is believed that celebrating the Id with music and dance will bring families together and so families erect tents and sit and visit and entertain and gifts are presented to Muslim children. Many Muslims remember the breaking of the fast of Ramadan on the three day festival of Id el Fitr as the most memorable part of their childhood.

In Arabic, the word zakat means purity and growth. Zakat is the charity given by Muslims, it is what is called alms in the Christian world and zedaka in the Jewish world. It is important that every Muslim participate in the act of zakat and there is a special calculation made to determine how much each family or individual should give. It turns out to be 2.5 percent of your wealth and for farmers it is 5%-10% of the annual harvest. Ramadan is a particularly important time to give zakat and the charity given during Ramadan is understood to be 70 times as powerful and as important as the same zakat given at any other time of the year.

There is no doubt that Ramadan, like so much else in Islam and like many things in Christianity, emerged out of Jewish tradition. In fact, Muhammad made an appeal to the Jewish tribes living around the cities of Yatrib and Mecca to join his newly-created movement called Islam. They rejected his approach.

Muhammad then modified or changed several components of Islam that he borrowed from Israel. He, quite literally, turned his back on Jerusalem and chose to pray to Mecca. The Jews pray toward Jerusalem, the Muslims pray to Mecca. He upped the ante and instituted prayer five daily times instead of the original three times a day Jewish prayers are offered. And he transformed a single day of introspection, repentance and prayer into a full month. He turned the day of Yom Kippur into the month of Ramadan.

Like the rest of the Muslim calendar and unlike the Gregorian calendar, Ramadan floats. The Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar with months that are either 29 or 30 days long. The Gregorian calendar is linked to the sun and is called a solar calendar.

Ramadan moves around, it falls back in time and in a course of 34 years Islam will have lost an entire year. According to their calendar, Muslims age slower than non-Muslims so when a non-Muslim reaches the age of 68, a Muslim will be only 66 years old.
The Jewish calendar is also a lunar calendar. Because of the Biblical decree that Passover be celebrated in the spring, the High Holidays of Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur and Succot be celebrated in autumn and because Chanukah must fall in winter, the Jewish calendar instituted corrections and leap years to make certain that the holidays match their seasons. The Islamic calendar did not.

Actually, even today the Islamic calendar is not standardized within itself. Muslims will start Ramadan and celebrate Id el Fitr on different dates depending on where they live and who determines the dates.

Despite the fact that some followers of Islam believe that if a Muslim dies on Ramadan while defending Islam in Jihad, that person will be rewarded with an even more special place in heaven, Ramadan is not is a time to fight. Ramadan is a time to pray and a time to evaluate. It is a time for peaceful introspection.

Ramadan is a lot of things. It is certainly a very special time of year for Muslims.

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Wednesday July 20, 2011

Column:

In the year 1930 a new emperor was crowned in Ethiopia. He took the name Haile Selassie and, like all emperors in Ethiopia, he traced his roots all the way back to wise King Solomon and his wife, the African beauty, Queen of Sheba.

This emperor, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassia I, also known as the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the Elect of God, was thought to be a messianic figure among followers of the Rastafari movement. The movement, begun in the slums of Jamaica, believes that Africans are the true Israelites sent to exile in Jamaica as divine punishment.

On a visit to Jamaica in 1966 the emperor, who denied any divine abilities, was unsuccessful in convincing Rastafari supporters of his mere mortality. Upon his arrival on the island a long drought broke -it finally rained. Among the many people transfixed by Haile Selassia and moved to convert to Rastafari was a woman named Rita Marley, the wife of Bob Marley.

Bob Marley changed the world through his music. He introduced the beat of Jamaican music to the West. And as he popularized reggae music in the Western world he taught our world about what it means to be a follower of Rastafari - not just the dreadlocks, but the religion and the politics. Marley was not the first to combine music with politics, but he was one of the best.

The tradition begun by Bob Marley is carried on today by his son, Ziggy Marley. Ziggy follows in his father's footsteps in music, in culture and - in accordance with Rastafari belief, in being a major proponent of the use of marijuana.

This summer, Ziggy will perform two concerts in Israel, one in Tel Aviv and the other in Jerusalem.

In a recent interview with YNET, Israel's premier internet news provider, Ziggy, whose middle name is David, as in King David father of Solomon, described how he was jealous of Jewish tradition and how he celebrates all the Jewish holidays.

In the interest of full disclosure - Ziggy Marley is married to an Israeli woman named Orly and together they have three children who are, according to Jewish law, all Jewish. Ziggy's wife and children all have biblical Hebrew names. Orly means my light. Their daughter is named Judah Victoria, their eldest son is named Gideon and their baby boy is Abraham Selassie.

Ziggy went on to explain that he has had a strong connection with
Judaism, with Israel and with the Jewish people since childhood. He said that the teachings of his father and learning Bible stories and the connection with Rastafari thought and Halie Selassie's message were inspirational. He said they combined to instill in him a message of love and affinity. Marley admitted that he participates in Jewish holiday observances because his wife and his children are living the Jewish experience. He says that he is jealous of Jewish culture.

Ziggy Marley, although he knows he is not Jewish, is very comfortable with Judaism and Jewish traditions. Jewish culture and the Jewish calendar are a big part of his life.

He would never think of boycotting Israel the way so many other big name entertainers have done. Ziggy Marley, like Bob Dylan who just wound up a concert tour in Israel, are not about to be swayed by the scare tactics and virulent hatred spewed by the organizers and supporters of the most recent boycott against Israel. They are not afraid of the call to blackball anyone who does business of any kind with Israel.

BDS stands for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. It is an umbrella organization that helps groups organize anti-Israel programs especially boycotts of Israel on campuses around the world.
In this day and age of electronic media, campaigns can be waged and wars won and lost all by way of the internet. It is easy for a pop star or for a company or a politician to fall from popularity because they sided with the wrong cause.

It is not popular to be vocally pro-Israel today. Ziggy Marley is taking a risk. But he understands the risk. It is something he believes in. Marley believes in the uniqueness of the Jewish people and in their unique connection to the land of Israel. He has known it since childhood, he was taught it at his father's knee.

Ziggy Marley is carrying on the message of his father. He conveys the message through his actions and through his music. It is a message about culture and history that is interwoven into the fabric of Israel. The message is that Israel represents lofty, heavenly ideals of truth, covenant and connectedness. The earthly Jerusalem may be flawed, but it remains a light unto the nations.

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Wednesday July 13, 2011

Column:

The revolution in Egypt, one of many that rocked the region, came to its conclusion five months ago. And we still do not know when - or if, stability, peace or democracy will come to the country that dethroned a long time dictatorial leader and replaced him with military rule.

It is impossible to predict what will happen in Egypt in the near or in the distant future. The information we have is contradictory and confusing. The signals we are receiving both from the people and the ruling government are mixed. The only certainty is that Egypt today is a state in flux.

For example, in Egypt, for the past months, Muslims have been attacking Christians. Brutally beating them and burning their churches. And the perpetrators of the attacks are being given protection under the army.

And then, about as far to the other extreme as you can get, an official poll conducted by the government of Egypt and released by the government of Egypt shows that 67% of Egyptians want to continue the peace treaty with Israel. 67% is equal to two-thirds of the population. A small 2% of the Egyptian population wants to revise some aspects of the treaty and only 11% want to scrap it entirely. 20% would not answer the question.

The survey of 1062 people was conducted by the Cabinet Information Decision Support Center - the research arm of the Egyptian cabinet.

Significantly, this the first time we have been made privy to the inside opinion numbers of Egypt's decision makers.

Given the tensions and the rhetoric that has been emanating from Egypt since January, the solidarity with the Jewish state is the aberration, not the war against Christian countrymen.

There's more. The poll also asked Egyptians if they were willing to vote in the upcoming election. An overwhelming 87% of those asked said they will vote - as opposed to the underwhelming 18% who voted in the last election. Remember, this is an internal, official, Egyptian poll. Their poll, their numbers and their press release - not a leak intended to embarrass or weaken the government.
So should we be hopeful, or should we be worried.

Here is one more example of life and day-to-day activity in Egypt circa summer 2011: Government officials, aka guards, sit by and watch as a truck with a handful of men armed with machine guns pulls up to a natural gas pipeline relay in the Northern Sinai Peninsula.

The armed men intimidate the guards, forcing them to leave their post, and then set explosive charges on a natural gas line and blow it up. The facility is government owned and controlled.
This act of terror and sabotage took place in Bir Abid, 60 miles east of the Suez Canal. The intent was to stop Egypt from providing natural gas to Israel. It was the third attack on a gas line and the fifth attempted attack to shut down the gas flow from Egypt to Israel. But the gas from the line that services Israel does not flow exclusively to Israel - it also flows to Jordan.

There is a very vocal movement in Egypt to renegotiate the Camp David
Treaty which articulates a special relationship between Egypt and Israel and includes the natural gas provision. But here's the catch.
Israel, it turns out, was much more heavily dependent on natural gas from Egypt before January when unrest took over the country than it is today. Before January, Israel received over 35% of its natural gas needs from Egypt, since the uprising Israel has weaned itself off Egyptian natural gas and Egypt now provides only 12% to 15% of their gas. That number, too, is dropping.

Jordan, however, has not found creative alternatives. Jordan remains 85% dependent on Egypt for natural gas. Damaging the pipeline to Israel hurts the Arabs of Jordan significantly more than it hurts the Jews of Israel.

To complicate matters even more, the line that was blown up was not the correct line. The destroyed line, according to a highly knowledgeable source, was an internal natural gas line.

In Egypt today there is general acceptance of the status quo. There are some very vocal and very well organized groups who want to change that status. On the one hand the government and the army is neither interfering in those plans nor stopping the organizers from putting their plans into action. On the other hand, the government itself is initiating actions that indicate a willingness, at least, to test the waters of democracy and stability.

The pipe line situation is a perfect metaphor for Egypt today. The stations are obvious targets. They need to be shorn up and better secured. They need to be secured because it is in Egypt's best interest to do so. It is in the interest of regional affairs and it is in the interest of a healthy and viable economy. By not securing their pipelines, the Egyptians are sending a message to all foreign investors that Egypt is insecure and that investment is risky and unreliable.

I am certain that the army can control the situation. I am not certain that they want to control the situation. That difference frightens me.

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Monday June 27, 2011

Column:

Last week Iran hosted a two day international conference on nuclear non- proliferation called "Nuclear Energy for All - Nuclear Weapons for None." Honest. Only the Iranians could make up something like this.

The purpose of creating and hosting this conference was two-fold. Iran's first and real reason was to call the world's attention to Israel's nuclear program which has always been cloaked in secrecy. The second and more obvious reason was to deflect attention from Iran's own and very problematic nuclear program and nuclear aspirations.

Representatives from forty countries were in attendance at this, Iran's second conference on nuclear non-proliferation. The first took place just a few months ago and, not surprisingly, that conference, too, was called "Nuclear Energy for All - Nuclear Weapons for None."
Apparently, the Iranians believe in sticking with a good thing when you find it. Not only were they not laughed out of the international community of interested nuclear watchers when they named and called their first conference, but they actually had attendees. I won't be surprised to see more of these same-named conferences in the coming months.

Iran has mastered the art of worldwide public relations.

Pointing the finger at Israel and deflecting attention from themselves are important enough reasons to hold these conferences, but for Iran, there is more. Ultimately, Iran wants to topple United States hegemony and influence in the world. To get there, Iran is taking advantage of a double standard in US foreign policy.
Iran wants to invert the pyramid. One of the central objectives of Iran's own foreign policy is to position itself as leader of the world and topple US dominance. The world, as Iran sees it, is unjustly configured and as a result, unjustly policed. The United States and friends have an advantage and no one else even gets a fair hearing.

Only a few countries sit at the top of the pyramid along with the United States, the masses are positioned at the base. Iran thinks it can invert the pyramid so that the voices of the many are heard and so that the favoritism of the US - with all its special relationships, is relegated to nothing more than a distant, unpleasant memory.

Iran's argument resonates in many countries around the world. In the Middle East it resonates especially powerfully where the classic example of this perceived imbalance is Israel's nuclear program. Precisely because Israel chose not to be a signatory on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel is able to deny unfettered access to their nuclear installations with no repercussions or, pardon the pun, fallout.

This is what Iran is calling the double standard and it is eating them up.

The obvious fault in the Iranian argument and with Iran's point of view is that it compares Israel, the only Western democracy in the Middle East with Iran - a theocracy. In Israel there are checks and balances and rule of law. In Iran there is no equivalent, the ultimate head of everything, the unquestioned leader of it all, is the Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah. But fact and logic have nothing to do with Iran's objective or argument and little to do with the stated and unspoken purposes of the conference.

For Ahmadinejad and for Iran, it is all about illusion. Israel is the aggressor and Israel is the only country in the Middle East with advanced nuclear technology. Therefore, Iran will help and will sponsor any other country interested in obtaining or advancing nuclear technology

The plan is working. Ahmadinejad is slowly and effectively chipping away at the foundation of the agenda set by the West. Whether we like it or not, Iran is successfully challenging the United States for the position of leader of the world.

They are dividing the world in to nations who support the West and nations who support Iran. Stay tuned for many more Iranian machinations that will rally nations against US and Western goals.

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Monday May 30,2011

Column:

Barack Obama has made over nine hundred public presentations and speeches since assuming office. Every one of them has received media coverage. Obamacare aside, few have received the coverage given to his two most recent talks about the Middle East.

In the first of these speeches, a policy speech presented to the American public-at-large, the president spoke of Israelis and Palestinians returning to the borders of 1967 and thereby achieving a peaceful status quo. In the second speech, publicized yet delivered before the select group called AIPAC - the American Israel Public Action Committee, the president eloquently said that's not really what I meant. In plain English, the president flip-flopped.

The president of the United States is not supposed to flip-flop. He is supposed to gather information, weigh options and say what he means. The American people and the world need to be able to trust the president's instincts and rely on his decision making skills.

Officially, according to the administration, the first speech was a policy speech. The redefined speech before AIPAC was not. So why try to change what was said to the public when speaking to the Jewish group?

Because the Jewish world was livid with the president's original remarks and when the Jewish world is livid, their political contributions dry up.

When Obama referred to the '67 borders he spoke with the full understanding that the topic was a lightening rod for supporters of Israel - especially on Capitol Hill and especially within his Democratic donor base.

What he should have known is that while the '67 borders might be the foundation of the discussion about peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the desire of those requesting Palestinian statehood, those borders would ultimately be the end result of the negotiations and the ideal conclusion for the Palestinian side, not the starting point of negotiations. And even though the president did make mention of agreed upon land swaps, Jewish leaders were very upset by his choice to include the borders in public pronouncement and policy statements.

The conservative estimate is that Jewish contributions to the presidential election campaign fill one-third of the Democratic coffers. Other estimates put that number at fifty percent. Then there are Congressional donation dollars. That's a lot of money from a small minority of voters.

In 2008, Obama received 78% of the Jewish vote. But that's not what put him over the top. Almost one hundred percent of Jews come out to vote. And that still amounts to only about 2.2% of the population and 2.5% of the vote. Jewish contributions to the Democrats and to the presidential election campaign far exceed their numbers. That's what makes the difference. That's why this president and every other has courted Jewish voters.

In this era of soft money it is very hard to determine the exact figures, but the implication is very clear. Even a ten percent drop in satisfaction by the American Jewish community can result in a huge loss to the democrats. And fairly or not, everyone knows that the chances of winning an election are often based on the amount of money in the campaign fund.

Those running for election in November of 2012 have to find their money, too. And the Jewish donors who were outraged by the president's first speech and unsatisfied by his second speech, are going to ask 'where were you when the president was making statements about 67 borders?" Congress has to decide whether to follow the president or withhold funds to the newly minted unity government between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

It is the pragmatic element that upsets Jewish donors more than any other single dimension of the president's policy as articulated in his speech. To urge Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority that has just partnered with Hamas, a terrorist group bent on Israel's destruction, suggests that deep under this president the White House does not fully understand the meaning of peace process.

The 1967 border between Israel and the Palestinians truly is indefensible. At its thinnest point it is only about seven miles across to the Mediterranean Sea. The late statesman Abba Eban, who served as Israel's foreign minister during the Six Day War, dubbed the pre-1967 border 'The Auschwitz Border.'

For Obama, it's about dollars. For Israel and the Jewish world, it's about security and defense. For everyone, it's about survival.

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Monday May 23,2011

Column:

The United States simply does not understand the Middle East. It doesn't make a difference who holds the reins of power - the past few administrations have not understood the Middle East and neither does this administration. From the president to the West Wing, from the State Department to ambassadors on the ground -- the Middle East remains elusive and misunderstood.

As a result, US foreign policy in the Middle East has, for decades, been an abysmal failure. America's leaders have come up with one catch-all solution for almost every problem in the Middle East. Riots and uprisings - throw money. Tensions and terrorist attacks - throw money. Poverty and poor schooling and an undeveloped economy - throw money. Everyone in the Middle East wants and accepts US dollars, but no one wants to be the "front" to advance US interests.

So the United States throws out more and more money with little expectation of return on their dollar.

Meetings are arranged, leaders gather, agendas are set, requests are made – and Middle East leaders shake their heads in agreement and smile through photo ops and then return home with filled coffers and unfulfilled commitments. And the United States, rather than castigating these countries, calls for another round of meetings and offers more money.

Money is leverage - or it could be if the United States chose to use it as such. The United States wants to bring about change in the Middle East but is fearful of using their clout to make demands on the monarchs and rulers and leaders of countries with belief systems vastly different from Western belief systems, thought and practice. Instead, the United States backs away from making real demands on Middle East countries and from following through on agreed upon commitments.

From all Middle East countries, that is, except Israel. When it comes to Israel, the only Western country in the Middle East, the United States exerts leverage and exacts promises. With Israel and no other.

From the point of view of the United States, Israel has the most to give and the least to lose. While Egypt and Pakistan and every other country in the region feel free to disregard not only requests put to them by the United States but also the commitments they have made to the United States, Israel is held responsible for every handshake and every nuanced nod of the head. Unlike her neighbors and her enemies, Israel receives from the United States and Israel gives in return.

Mahmoud Abbas - chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, the political head of the newly declared national unity government between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority - knows exactly where the United States stands on the issue of Hamas. And yet, Abbas forged ahead creating a formal, political and military alliance with Hamas with the expectation of continued revenues and financial aid from the United States. Abbas has no doubt that after only minimal and pro forma hesitation, the United States will continue to funnel through regular cash infusions.

The Palestinians cannot conceive of a situation where the United States will not support the Palestinians cause. And they may be correct. Unless Congress refuses to allow monies to go to the Palestinians as long as they remain united with Hamas, the money will come.

There is a hope that Congress will stop sending funds to the new Palestinian unity government, but the White House is doing its best to counter the argument. Congress understands better than anyone in Washington just how dangerous a nexus with Hamas can be. But Congress is also stuck in the mire of DC decision making. They understand the tradeoff - they know that change in the Middle East requires US aid and that change in the Middle East includes peace between Palestinian and Israelis and that peace is predicated on continued aid from the United States to a group partnered with Hamas.

The White House is propelled by politics. They set goals and go about accomplishing them. Congress concentrates on history and law. It is Congress that, in a similar situation, passed the law making transfers of US aid to Hamas illegal. It will take a lot of fancy foot work and arm twisting to change that point of view - even for the Palestinians.

The United States will make concessions, but sending money to an acknowledged terrorist organization is wrong. Even if sanctioned by the president it is morally, ethically and politically wrong - and it is illegal.

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Thursday April 28, 2011

Column:

The pipeline that delivers natural gas from Egypt to both Israel and Jordan has been blown up. Terrorists blew up the control station located just outside of the city El Arish.

When terrorists blow up a natural gas pipeline, heads should turn.
It is an act of destruction that has the ability to alter a region.

It is an act that should force regional countries - and the international community, to respond immediately and harshly. Inaction, passivity, sends out a message to the terrorists and spurs them on to commit other terrorist acts that could also endanger the already fragile power structure of the region.

The explosion was so effective that succeeded in not just damaging the line, but in putting it completely out of commission. Egyptian authorities are saying that it could take weeks before the fire is under control and the gas line can start flowing again. Pictures show flames as high as 65 feet tall.

This is not the first time the pipeline and this station has been the target of terrorists hoping to scuttle the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel. And it is not the second.

The first explosion took place of February 5th of this year. That attack was ineffective in terms of damage, but very effective in providing the terrorists with the information and know-how they now used to execute this third and very effective attack. Had it not been for the diligence of Egyptian authorities who thwarted the second attack, the pipeline would probably have been successfully blown up on March 27th.

Clearly, the Egyptian military know that this site is a target. The attack on the natural gas monitoring station took place at 3am, in the dark of night. The army should have had this location under very tight surveillance, this attack should never have happened - but it did. Finger wagging is permitted in cases of gross negligence.

Based on the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, Israel received 40% of its natural gas from this pipeline. A part of this treaty even provides for a special relationship between Egypt and Israel concerning the price of the natural gas. The relationship is special - but not cheap. Israel still pays twice as much for the gas delivered to them by Egypt than the Syrians pay for the same natural gas.

There is no coincidence between the timing of these attacks -attempted and successful - and the activity taking place in Egypt. There should be no doubt that it is the rhetoric of politicians in the new Egypt that has set the ground for this terrorist action. Days before the explosion Egypt arrested their former energy minister, Sameh Fahmy, along with five other former bureaucrats from the ministry.

They were arrested because according to the 1979 peace treaty Egypt was supposed to guarantee Israel a set amount of natural gas at a set price. Now, under the new regime, under the current prosecution, according to many newly influential Egyptians politicians vying for popular support, that deal is tantamount to treachery. Too much gas for too little.

Actually, the deal is the backbone of the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel. But Israel saw what was happening in Egypt and as tensions rose, the Israelis reduced their dependency on Egypt for natural gas. Now Israel gets only about 29% of its natural gas from Egypt - down 11% from the original 40%. These saber rattling pronouncements, prosecutions and arrests are fueling an already tense and volatile environment within Egypt. A full blown anti - Western, anti-Israel front is overtaking the country.

We are looking at one prominent example of the new Egypt. The army running Egypt has done very little to clamp down on terror, in fact, it is almost as if the military wing is helping stimulate anti-Israel attitudes and subsequent actions. When you couple acts of terror against symbols of oppressive outsiders and perceived cultural colonialists with aggressive political rhetoric you are creating a dangerous environment. When terrorists search out and destroy the symbols cum targets the masses who may have been sitting on the fence become emboldened.

The only reason for putting out the fires - literally, not at all figuratively, is the fact that Jordan relies heavily on the natural gas they receive from the now destroyed pipeline. The same pipeline that supplies Israel with 29% of its natural gas, supplies Jordan with 80% of its natural gas. Jordan cannot survive for long without the Egyptian pipeline.

Maybe when Jordan cries out for help the international community will come out and, at least symbolically, pay attention to the acts of international destruction being perpetrated in Egypt. Maybe.

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Monday April 18, 2011

Column

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salim Fayyad is going public with his economic plan for Palestinian statehood. His goal is to declare Palestinian statehood by September 2011. His intention is to achieve that goal by way of a straight up vote in the United Nations General Assembly.

By all estimates, the decision to grant statehood to the Palestinians will fly through the United Nations. But that doesn't mean that the Palestinians don't have to first engage in some pretty fancy preliminary diplomatic tap dancing.

The Fayyad Plan, a very detailed three-year plan, has already been distributed to those donor nations scheduled to meet in June. The prime minister hopes to collect $5 billion to jump start the process of Palestinian statehood. He actually lists dollar amounts required to build, stimulate and create a stable economy that will become self sufficient over time.

The declaration of statehood and recognition by the world as put forth by Fayyad is pretty straight forward. The PA will ask that a Palestinian state be established in the post '67 West bank and Gaza areas - the terminology used by the Palestinian Authority is the post 1967 occupied territories.

There are two significant glitches to the plan. One glitch is that the United States does not want a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Washington wants a negotiated agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. A unilateral declaration supported by the UN does not define borders, does not delineate defenses and does not detail the new state's orientation. A declaration almost certainly guarantees continued tensions that can escalate into war with Israel and even result in Israeli conquest which would set back Palestinian statehood indefinitely.

The second glitch in this plan is that Fayyad speaks in detail about Gaza - both in terms of economic growth and the bureaucratic role Gaza will play. But Gaza is not controlled by Fayyad, Gaza is not controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Hamas controls Gaza and in 2007, Hamas tossed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in a violent, bloody, coup.

The truth is that the Palestinian plan for statehood is not a two-state plan, it is a three-state plan, but the Palestinians refuse to acknowledge that harsh reality. The only way a workable Palestinian state can be declared is with three independent states living side-by-side. One Israeli state, one Palestinian state in the West Bank and one Palestinian Hamas state in Gaza.

Three, not two.

There is little doubt that most of the Western world, including a majority of Israelis and the United States are in favor of a two-state solution. But two states is not what they will get.

As far as Hamas is concerned, the plan put forth by Salim Fayyad holds no value. For Hamas, Fayyad is symbolic of the tensions and the enmity that exist between West Bank Palestinians and Gaza-s Palestinians. When Palestinian elections were held in 2006, Hamas won. Unhappy with the results, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ousted Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyah, and put in his place a trusted ally named Salim Fayyad.

Fayyad was never elected to office and he has no authority - other than being appointed to a position that someone else was elected to. There have been no Palestinian elections since and until this is resolved, Hamas will not honor any future elections.

In the meantime, donor nations will dig into their coffers and provide the Palestinian Authority with the $5 billion they are asking for their three-year plan. It is a very nice plan, but it is a plan that is destined to fail. It will fail because it is built on a fallacy. The Palestinians are not one people, they are two peoples. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority hate each other almost as much as they each hate Israel. That is not going to change by September 2011.

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Sunday April 17, 2011

Column:

Gaza is just one more place that the United States and the West do not understand.

The senseless execution of Victor Arrigoni, an Italian human rights activist, at the hands of Palestinian terrorists is a perfect example of just how little is known about how Gaza thinks and how totally out of their element Western thinkers when trying to make sense out of this Hamas stronghold.

In 2008 Victor came to Gaza in order to help, he was the proverbial aid giver. In 2011 he was hanged - because he was an outsider.

Victor Arrigoni was kidnapped. He was kidnapped by a terrorist group operating out of Gaza, but not Hamas. His kidnappers threatened to execute him if their leader and fellow terrorists were not released by Hamas. The deadline was quick and obviously not set up for negotiations, there was no desire for negotiations or even dialogue with Hamas. This led most analysts to conclude that Victor was executed very soon after he was kidnapped. The point of the kidnapping was to shine a spotlight on Hamas.

The Italians applied full-court press on Hamas to find and free Victor but that went nowhere. Embarrassed, Hamas made the effort to find the house where Victor was being held and stormed it, but by then, he had already been executed. They were way too late to save him. When they entered the House they found him hanging.
Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. The Palestinian

Authority was ousted in a bloody coup. Today's Gaza is not a monolith. Hamas is the ruling party, but not the only armed group attempting to intimidate Gazans and enforce their own rules. Gaza is splintered, filled will fractions and divisions, mostly defined by clans and family lines. While certain groups do share common objectives, their differences are far greater than the things that unite them. The kidnapping of Victor Arrigoni is but one example, a glaring example, but only one of many.

These smaller groups within Gaza are often unknown to Western diplomats. Sometimes a cell from a clan will simply make up a name for a particular operation and then after the operation, it will disappear. In real terms this means that there is almost no way to deal with the group. Understanding the workings of internal clans within Gaza is as crucial as it is difficult . In this case, in the kidnapping of Victor Arrigoni, a group called al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad initially claimed credit and responsibility for the action. They have now recanted.

Initially, Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad issued a statement saying that they had executed Victor, then claimed his death was the result of Hamas' leadership. They said" "Even though we have no connection to the kidnapping, we would like to stress that what happened is the natural conclusion to the Hamas government policy against other organizations within the Strip."

In Gaza, foreigners are pawns and they are always in extreme danger.
That includes diplomats. That includes aid workers. And that includes builders and doctors and all kinds of well-intentioned supporters. There is almost nothing that can be done to insure their safety. Journalist, diplomats and activists can have the support of Hamas and a safe passage guarantee, but a small splinter group can easily launch an operation. In Gaza, no foreigner is safe.

And unfortunately this is what happened with Victor. A well intentioned do-gooder who thought he was protected - but whose death illustrates how deluded that dream really is.

Hamas' lack of control, their inability to bring safety or unity to Gaza is the reason why almost all efforts to create lulls, ceasefires and any other forms of negotiation fail. Negotiations with the Palestinian Authority fail. Negotiations with the West fail. Negotiations with Egypt and with local, indigenous, warring, freedom fighting factions fail. Hamas cannot police their own. The Palestinian Authority attempted to police Gaza and they were ousted.
Gaza is a perfect example of organized anarchy.

Victor went to Gaza to help, he went to protect Gazans from the Israelis. Victor Arrigoni was consumed by the internal conflict which engulfs Gaza and baffles the Western world. Gaza's internal conflict may be a far less sexy topic to discuss, but it is far more critical to our understanding of the region and much more dangerous than the usual headline grabbing events.

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Column

Thursday March 31, 2011

Freedom is always preferred to slavery. And yet, diplomacy cannot be exclusively motivated by ideals. The real life expression of diplomatic ideals is what we call realpolitik.

In the perfect world allies share values and enemies are clearly defined. But we do not live in a perfect world, we live in a world in which our friends have their own priorities and our enemies sometimes have resources and information that we are in crucial need of.

And that, my friends, is a thumbnail history of United States foreign relations in South America, Central America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Libya is no exception. Libya may, in fact, become the text book example of modern day US foreign policy relations.

Through example and through influence, the United States - the greatest democratic power in the world today - has a responsibility to nudge the world towards freedom. The US has that responsibility even with the clear cut knowledge that freedom, without prosperity, wealth and power - the ideals of freedom, will have almost no impact. Norway, Denmark and Sweden may be democracies, but they hardly have an impact on world events or influence freedom movements.

When it was diplomatically convenient the US exploited dictators like Muammar Ghadaffi and Hosni Mubarak with one hand and with the other hand, urged the dictators to reform their oppressive regimes. In the end, the urging had almost no impact and the all too important dollar, profitable trade and oil revenue, triumphed.

That would explain our frustration with China, too. China is one of the worst human rights abusers in today's world and yet, the United States needs the Chinese so badly because they hold the US debt in their proverbial hands that our great democracy is willing to look the other way when it comes to the atrocities perpetrated by the Chinese on the Chinese. If the Chinese were to call in the debt, the United States would go belly up, go bankrupt, immediately.

How then does the United States handle these seemingly contradictory needs? How does the United States balance the business-side need to maintain prosperity and power versus the ethical and moral needs of freedom?

The dilemma is resolved by living a diplomatic contradiction. The United States does what it must to remain prosperous, i.e., the US talks the talk of freedom while doing business with despots.

The world is a complicated place. Americans feel bad about atrocities and try to prevent them. Interventions in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are the perfect examples of US involvement, perfect examples of how the US walks the extra mile and tries to improve the situation on the ground. The reality, however, is that the United States is better at throwing money at problems than at intervening and trying to solve those problems.

Armed intervention is part of the resolution of the ethos of the US contradiction between values and prosperity.

At times the seething debate within the US boils over. That's when actions are taken, even without total knowledge of the situation and with only scant background about what is happening on the ground. Sometimes action is essential, not simply to save lives but because the cost of inaction is so high - because risks aside, the cost of actually saving lives can be so small and the reward so great.

The people of Darfur are livid at the speed with which the US acted to intervene in Libya relative to the inaction and speechifying that they were treated to. But Darfur is not Libya. It is very important that the United States intervened in Libya in principle alone. It is important because the United States sets the tone for the rest of the free world - not just for the dictators.

For too long the thugs have felt that they can get away with it all.

They knew that the cost would be nothing more than a diplomatic tongue lashing or slap on the wrist. No one would have ever believed that the UN Security Council would okay international intervention in an internal dispute in order to save human lives.

It was Ghadaffi who changed the equation - not the United States and not the United Nations. Atrocities are being perpetrated throughout the Middle East and atrocities are the norm in many parts of Africa.

But not like in Libya. Ghadaffi upped the stakes - his access to fire power was far greater than the access of the opposition fighters and the numbers of people he intended to murder was staggering.

The United States did what the United States had to do - albeit too little and too late, but what had to be done.

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Column:

Monday March 28, 2011

The revolutions that are taking hold in the Middle East have become more about ousting thugs than about inculcating values of freedom, equality and democracy.

That said, it is important to analyze the resolution to authorize international intervention into Libya. The United Nations Security Council passed the resolution, ten member countries voted in favor, five abstained. The abstentions were: China, Russia, India, Brazil and Germany.

Each of the five countries has an individual and collective reason for casting their vote in that manner and now they are each publicly condemning the attacks by the international body as it patrols the No Fly Zone. Collectively, they wanted to make certain that Libya did not use its own air-force in this battle of wills and wits, but what they did not want - and what they now have, is international strikes against Libya.

Any serious military strategist will confirm that in order to create a real No Fly Zone it is necessary to destroy air command centers in order to eliminate mid-air dogfights that place pilots and aircraft in harm's way. It means taking out anti-aircraft batteries and tanks so that the playing field is made more even.

The steps necessary to create a true No Fly Zone are more than problematic - they are truly abhorrent, for China, India, Russia, most of the Arab speaking and Muslim world and most UN member states. And yet, that is what they, albeit inadvertently, created. Now they are asking "how?" How can the West, under the leadership of the United States, simply intervene in the domestic activities of a member state?

China and India combined constitute most of the world's population. Then add on the Arab world. Most of the world, it now becomes apparent, is distraught over the sanctioned actions of the United Nations in Libya. Again, they are wondering "how?" How can Western nations get so involved in the inner workings of other nations just because they do not like their human rights agenda?

This is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the Security Council has intervened in the domestic affairs of a member state who has not attacked, threatened or violated another member state. The five abstaining countries and the Arab and Muslim world are seriously worried about the precedent that has been set. And rightly so.

Had the five countries voted "no"rather than abstained, the resolution would not have carried. In uncharacteristically politically polite moves, they forced through the resolution. In the Security Council a "no" vote is a no, an abstention goes over to the "yes" side.

So, given the current climate of internal turmoil, in order to try to obviate and stymie any international intervention, Syrian President Bashar Assad placed calls to many of his fellow Arab dictators and monarchs, i.e. thugs, to make certain that they will stand with him against international intervention - should it come to that. And indeed, he was given the assurances.

The Germans are maintaining that the United States and the other Western states have been misled. They claim that it is Libya's right to put down internal insurrection without international intervention. Most importantly the Germans are pointing out that they simply do not know that opposition forces represent what we hope them to represent. The German rationale is that they are fearful that, in the end, the Middle East may become even more anti-Western and the entire situation will blow up.

China thinks that the intervention is the height of US arrogance.

How dare the United States intervene with weapons because they do not like the leader of Libya, they ask? How un-democratic. Most member states in the UN are not democratic and the United States should not be given carte blanche to intervene.

The situation now can best be described as a diplomatic earthquake. The tremor is felt around the world - the tremor is the aftershock of the intervention into Libya. The situation is growing out of control. Countries are beginning to align themselves with Libya, countries fearful that they will end up in the same situation.

The aftershock in a diplomatic earthquake, just like in a real earthquake, can be more damaging that the quake.

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Saturday March 26, 2011

Column:

Jordan is next in line.

The feeling of unrest is palpable on the Jordanian street and in the Middle East, unrest is followed by revolution. King Abdullah of
Jordan knows with utmost certainty that his future and the future of his Hashemite Kingdom are hanging in the balance. He knows that he must navigate the balance beam between brutal crackdown and overthrow.

As a rule even, in more liberal thugocracies there is unrest. There are always groups, be they political, religious or cultural, wanting to oust the dictator. In all cases, again, even in the most liberal of thugocracies, these groups are monitored and then punished.

Often, the way in which the ruler manages these groups is through public humiliation and intimidation. The hope is that the mainstream population will realize how marginal these groups are and how much better it is to keep the dictator in power.

The message to the people is pretty straight forward: these groups are radicals, see what happens to radicals.

In Jordan radicals groups have traditionally been a loose web of religious extremists. This is not dissimilar to Egypt. Religious radicals, many with ties to al Qaeda, are real dangers not only to Jordan and the Arab world but also to the greater world. Now added to the mix is a growing group of disenfranchised radicals - highly educated, technically adroit, Facebook savvy friends and students and unemployed graduates.

And Jordan has begun to respond.

As the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt began, King Abdullah of Jordan was at the very beginning stages of reforming his economy. The King was removing subsidies on necessities like milk, cheese, bread and eggs. This economic reform was planned to get Jordan on its feet and enable it to compete in international markets. But there is an iron clad rule in the Middle East: when people are hungry they are impassioned and they join the cause.

As soon as the unrest began elsewhere, the King put an immediate stop to the reforms, put subsidies back on food and ran to the United States asking for $100 million to defray the cost of these subsidies. Abdullah got his money - but protests began anyway. His next step was to shake up the Jordanian cabinet and introduce a more liberal cadre of policy and law makers. King Abdullah made a promise to the people of Jordan, he promised them reforms.

But small protests continued. And now, the protests are getting bigger and the response of the police is getting even harsher.
Jordan is no stranger to attempted coups. Yasser Arafat attempted to take over Jordan in September 1970. That resulted in a mini war when King Hussein, Abdullah's father, declared martial law and massacred 10,000 to 20,000 Palestinians. Arafat's objective was to oust the Jordanian monarchy and establish a Palestinian state in its place.
King Hussein, a mere young thirty-five year old at the time, did not flinch. He swept down and began a rampage against Arafat's supporters and men. The massacre lasted eleven days and it served to secure Hussein's kingship and protect his kingdom from Arafat who survived the massacre of his people in comfort and luxury in the Intercontinental Hotel.

King Abdullah II knows the history of his country and of his family well. At forty-nine years old, he has significant experience as the son of a king and as king. Now he needs to gather all that collective experience, all the wisdom he can find in the lessons of his forefathers, and decide how to balance the needs of his people against the need to reform while maintaining the ruling family line and his own eminent position as Hashemite King of the Jordanian Empire.

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Wednesday November 17, 2010

Column:

The Hajj is here. The Hajj has begun.

The Hajj, a central component of Islam, leaves many in the West befuddled.

Simply stated, Hajj means Islamic religious pilgrimage. But it is much more than the simple translation. Understanding the Hajj can help us better understand Islam.

Hajj is one of the Five Pillars, the five most essential tenets, of Islam. These tenets are enormously important for followers of Islam. According to this pillar, or tenet, Muslims are obligated to make the journey to important Islamic sites. That means that at some point before they die, Muslims must make pilgrimage to Mecca - one of those holy sites.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Hajj is neither grounded in nor revolves around Mohammed. The Hajj revolves around Abraham, known in Islam as Ibrahim, and around his son Ishmael.

Even the name proves this. The word "Hajj" comes from the shared Biblical and Koranic story of Ishmael. In the biblical version, Ishmael's mother was named Hagar. In Arabic Hagar is Hajjar.

Interestingly (but not importantly), Hajjar is never actually mentioned in the Koran. Nothing too much should be read into that because neither is Sarah mentioned in the Koran. Actually, in the Koran, very few women are mentioned.

The Koran refers simply to "Ishmael's mother." The name of Ishmael's mother, Hajjar, only enters Islamic tradition through the Hadith, the sayings and teachings of Mohammed as handed down and recorded after the Koran.

In both the Hadith and the Koran we see the combined story of Hajjar and Ishmael - and that story is a central component of Islam. Hajjar and Ishmael are abandoned by Ibrahim in the desert and eventually, while searching for water, they find a well. According to the most commonly accepted story, the well sprung forth when the angel Jibral tapped his heal. According to other versions, the angel Jibral tapped his wing. Still other versions of the Hadith tell of the child Ishmael crying and explain that the child pounded his foot on the ground in frustration and from there spouted a spring of water. That spring, in all versions, is called Zamzam

The spring symbolizes life. The spring symbolizes salvation. Because of the spring, Ishamel and Hajjar will live. Hajjar then walks back and forth and back and forth between the mountains seven times. She circles the well seven times. And that is the origin of another important Islamic tradition called the Tawaf ceremony - the circling of the Kaabah, the site located right next to the Zamzam well, seven times.

As the Hajji, the Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Hajj encircles the Kaaba, he (it is always a "he", no women are counted in the Hajj) says: "In the name of God, God is Great, God is Great, God is Great and Praise be to God" In Arabic: "Bism Allah Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar wa lil Lahi Alhamd."

And on the following day the Hajji goes to Mount Arafat.

It is no coincidence. The first and foremost leader of the Palestinian people, Yasser Arafat, chose his name from this part of the Hajj. To not successfully fulfill this segment of the Hajj is to invalidate the entire Hajj.

Mount Arafat is also called Jabal al Rahmah, the mountain of forgiveness. Arafat means mountain of contemplation. It is at this spot that the Hajji must spend an entire afternoon until sunset reading from the Koran and praying privately. According to Islamic tradition Mount Arafat was the site of the Garden of Eden.

When The Hajji finishes his prayer, he is instructed to ceremonially stone the devil named Ramy al Jamaray. This is the devil who tried to challenge Ibrahim the father as he was taking his son Ishmael to sacrifice. The Biblical and Koranic stories of the sacrifice differ in names only.

When all the steps involved in performing the Hajj have been successfully completed, the festival of Id al Adah begins. Id al Adah reenacts the saving of Ishmael when a ram was found and offered as the sacrifice in place of the son. For Muslims, Id al Adah symbolizes Allah's mercy in having saved Ishmael. This festival, during which Muslims slaughter rams and partake of festive meals, is celebrated around the world.

Religiously, historically and ideologically, the Hajj is of central import to followers of Islam. It behooves us to understand what matters to Muslims. It weakens us when we do not.

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Monday November 8, 2010

Column:

For the past decade United States foreign policy wonks, those so called advisers within several Administrations, have failed to understand and correctly predict events in the Middle East. They have failed miserably.

The most recent and glaring example of US ignorance in Middle East maneuverings and politics can be seen in Egypt. The United States has been caught completely off guard by the announcement that there will be elections in Egypt in November. Yes, this November, November 2010.

If the United States ever hopes to get a handle on the Middle East, Washington must expand its pool of knowledge and broaden its circle of advisers.

For the past decade the United States has been focusing on the transition of power in Egypt. Washington has been pushing Egypt to liberalize, to open up, to become more and more democratic. Washington has been pushing political Egypt to become more Western. Washington has refused to even consider what Egyptian leadership knows for a fact - that liberalizing Egypt is synonymous with a big win for religious extremists in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of al Qaeda.

The US has paid no attention to the potential price Egypt would have to pay in the name of democratization. Egypt could easily go the way of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. The United States is not even remembering how when, in the name of democracy, Hamas was permitted to stand for election and then promptly and very successfully routed Fatah from office and then ousted the PA from Gaza.

Hosni Mubarak of Egypt may be called President but it is just another way of saying all - powerful dictator. And although there are periodic elections in Egypt, they have no significant impact on what happens in Egypt - because in Egypt, Mubarak is in charge.

All these years US advisers and wonks were convinced that things were changing in Egypt. Why? Because DC thought that it was time for change in Cairo. Because DC thought that Cairo understood that it was the perfect time to transition. After all, the thinking in Washington went, President Mubarak's health has been in question, he is eighty three years old and has ben in power since Anwar Sadat's October 1981 assassination at the hand of Muslim extremists. It's time for a change.

And that thinking explains why Washington went reeling when they discovered that not only will there be elections in November, but that Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, has put himself up for election yet once again. There is no time for challengers to prepare their strategy and there is no chance of their winning even if they did.

Washington has assumed that Mubarak's successor would be his son. And for the past two years analysts said that the true test of Egypt's move toward democracy would be seen in how open the next Egyptian elections were. And they assumed that the winner of the next election would be Gamal, son of Hosni.

The foreign policy people in Washington had no idea that Hosni Mubarak had another plan in mind. That's because Washington has no understanding of the politics and practices of the Middle East.

Of course Mubarak is going to run for office again. Mubarak can't retire and no transition in Egypt will happen through the electoral process. A change in Egyptian leadership will occur only through an official handing off of the baton. Hosni Mubarak must articulate the transfer of the mantle of leadership publicly and while he is in good health. This must happen so when Mubarak's time does come there will be no questions. The Egyptian people do not decide, the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak decides.

If the mantle does go to Mubarak junior there will be no chance of failure and no question as to who controls the font of Egypt's power, politics and military. Mubarak might talk about liberalizing his country but he cannot in fact actually liberalize Egypt. In the eyes of Mubarak transitioning power and liberalizing are impossible while maintaining stability.

You see, Mubarak understands the Middle East. Not to see this coming was downright irresponsible.

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Saturday August 28, 2010

Column

The attitude adopted by Turkey towards Israel should never have surprised the security, political or foreign policy communities. Pay attention and you know what to expect.

The Turks are fed up and they are reacting instinctively by lashing out. Many people lay the blame for this new attitude and behavior on the Islamic orientation of today's political leadership in Turkey. That it true, but it is only part of the answer. Many blame the steady increase of Islamic political parties leading right up to the ruling party in Turkey. Again, true, but only a partial answer.

Turkey has been misunderstood for decades. Because of the natural western bias of Israel and the United States, it was assumed that Turkey was moving towards the West. It was assumed that Turkey was a Western-oriented state.

That assumption is incorrect. Turkey is a split state - and only a very small part, the part the West has concentrated on, is European. The remainder of Turkey, the vast majority of Turkey, is a part of Asia and of the Middle East.

At one point Turkey did display a serious desire to move toward the West, and while that desire was embraced by the Western world, it was only a blip on the social conscience of Turkey. To understand the stance the Turks have now taken, one must view this split state in the context of the overwhelming anti-Western sentiment that has always permeated Turkey and has slowly peeked out and reared its head over the past few years.

Turkey refused to allow the United States and other Western allies to headquarter on their turf during the second Gulf War. That was the first sign. It should have become clear and apparent that Turkey was more concerned about their internal, local and regional tensions as they were about their international issues. Preventing the United States Air Force from flying out of Turkey did not hinder the war effort, but it did bolster Turkey's standing in the Muslim world.

In January of 2009, at World Economic Forum in Davos, the leader and mouthpiece of Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lambasted Israel's President Shimon Peres about Operation Caste Lead. This, too, was a very clear foreshadowing of things to come.

Because Western leadership was either blind to these glaring messages or perhaps, too hopeful to call them on the carpet, Turkish leadership felt confident that they would be able to successfully walk the tightrope - open their markets, sell their goods and reap the benefits of the Western economic group that would catapult them into a growth market and even, into a major player in the region.

And then, Turkey's hopes were dashed. For years Turkey dreamed and waited to join the European Union. But here was no possible way Turkey would be admitted as a full member of the EU - Greece would never hear of it. It is in that vein that Prime Minister Netanyahu visits Greece, Turkey's arch enemy, to cultivate the Greeks now that the Turks have displayed their true leanings.

Turkey needed new friends and new markets. Iran and Syria were the ideal partners.

So at this point Turkish leadership is less likely to respond as quickly or jump as high when the US calls. Tensions with the West are high. While the military is still a very important stabilizing feature of Turkish national power, it is not the army that makes public statements. The US and Israel are despised on the streets of Turkey today. The flotilla incident further strengthened resentment towards the West. In Turkey, Israel is the metaphor for the West.

Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, understood the need to break away from the shackles of the Middle East. He knew that the tiny parcel of European land that bridges Europe and Asia in Turkey was a springboard into a new modern world. That is why Ataturk recreated the Turkish language and dropped Arabic lettering, recasting it with English letters.

Ataturk was a political prophet. He pounded Turkey into the modern world and kept the Muslim religious issues at bay. Everyone knew those tensions would always remain. The question was only how long they could be controlled and sublimated.

We have the answer. Today's leadership in Turkey uses anti-Western feelings as a fulcrum to motivate domestic politics and to add serious international swagger. Turkey has given up the charade, Turkey is no longer playing another game. In many ways they have switched sides.

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Friday August 20, 2010

Column:

The burning question in European democracies is this: Is it appropriate for a European democracy to prohibit the wearing of the burqa, the Islamic headdress worn by women that covers almost their entire face (most leave slits for the eyes, some cover the eyes with a mesh veil). Debates over the wearing, or non-wearing, of the burqa are spreading like wild fire throughout the continent.

More important than the passion these debates generate is the context in which they are held. The first country to pass a law forbidding the burqa was Belgium. France recently passed its own law. In a poll conducted in England asking 2,000 people what they thought about passing a similar law, 67% were in favor. The Spanish Parliament took up and then rejected the debate.

Surprising as it may seem, the reason for banning the burqa is not religious. This is not a case of religious discrimination. It is, on the contrary, a call for freedom. The mandate to cover a woman's face in public flies in the face of the women's movement. It takes away a woman's freedom and equality. It is also - and importantly, a call based on issues of safety and security. It is impossible to identify someone whose face is covered - it is a security risk.

Democracies do not come without limits. Regardless of one's belief, one person does not have the freedom to subjugate another. That is the thesis behind the enactment of laws forbidding the burqa in European countries.

Theocracies and non-Western democracies have even more limits. And yet, there are also Muslim countries that have outlawed the burqa. Turkey and Egypt are two examples. Both back up their ban with cogent historical and religious evidence that the burqa is a pagan influence on Islam. More than that, they warn that it is the Taliban who brought the burqa back into popular Islamic culture and for that reason alone the wearing of the burqa should be rejected by mainstream Islam.

These arguments are right, and they are wrong.
The term burqa means to patch or sew. It is used to refer to the headdress worn by women, but it is an improper, inaccurate use of the word. Niqab is the best term for what we call the burqa. In Arabic, niqab translates to mask.

Another word used in Islamic culture that denotes a head covering is hijab, which means curtain. Hijab also refers to the Islamic concept of modesty and privacy, giving it a far deeper theological meaning than burqa. It refers to the separation between the world of man and the heavenly world.

The Koran makes reference to the headscarf using the term khimar, which today, is translated as a body cover. There is a long history of body covering and head covering in Islam. Most of those traditions are a response to and a rejection of pagan tribes and tradition in Arabia.

A rose is a rose is a rose. A burqa is a niqab, is a hijab. And the head covering is being outlawed in more and more European countries. There is sure to be a backlash. The first people to suffer the results of this backlash will not be the European parliamentarians and countries, it will not be Islamic leaders.

It is the women who will suffer. Women stuck between their need to fulfill their religious doctrine and living in a modern European state. Figuratively, maybe even literally, it is the women who will be the ones to burn.

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Friday August 13, 2010

Column:

The burning question in European democracies today is this: Is it appropriate for a European democracy to prohibit the wearing of the burqa, the Islamic headdress worn by women that covers almost their entire face (most leave slits for the eyes, some cover the eyes with a mesh veil). Debates over the wearing, or non-wearing, of the burqa are spreading like wild fire throughout the continent.

More important than the passion these debates generate is the context in which they are being held. The first country to pass a law forbidding the burqa was Belgium. France recently passed its own law. In England last week a poll was conducted asking 2,000 people what they thought about passing a similar law; 67 percent of those polled were in favor. Now the Spanish Parliament has taken up the debate.

Surprising as it may seem, the reason for banning the burqa is not religious. This is not a case of religious discrimination. It is, on the contrary, a call for freedom. The mandate to cover a woman's face in public flies in the face of the women's movement. It takes away a woman's freedom and equality. It is also a call based on issues of safety and security. It is impossible to identify someone whose face is covered - it is a security risk.

Democracies do not come without limits. Regardless of one's belief, one person does not have the freedom to subjugate another. That is the thesis behind the enactment of laws forbidding the burqa in European countries.

Theocracies and non-Western democracies have even more limits. And yet, there are also Muslim countries that have outlawed the burqa. Turkey and Egypt are two examples. Both back up their ban with cogent historical and religious evidence that the burqa is a pagan influence on Islam. More than that, they warn that it is the Taliban who brought the burqa back into popular Islamic culture and for that reason alone the wearing of the burqa should be rejected by mainstream Islam.

These arguments are right, and they are wrong.

The term burqa means to patch or sew. It is used to refer to the headdress worn by women, but it is an improper, inaccurate use of the word. Niqab is the best term for what we call the burqa. In Arabic, niqab translates to mask.

Another word used in Islamic culture that denotes a head covering is hijab, which means curtain. Hijab also refers to the Islamic concept of modesty and privacy, giving it a far deeper theological meaning than burqa. It refers to the separation between the world of man and the heavenly world.

The Koran makes reference to the headscarf using the term khimar, which today, is translated as a body cover.

There is a long history of body covering and head covering in Islam. Most of those traditions are a response to and a rejection of pagan tribes and tradition in Arabia.

A rose is a rose is a rose. A burqa is a niqab, is a hijab. And the head covering is being outlawed in more and more European countries. There is sure to be a backlash. The first people to suffer the results of this backlash will not be the European parliamentarians and countries, nor Islamic leaders.

It is the women who will suffer. Women stuck between their need to fulfill their religious doctrine and living in a modern European state. Figuratively, maybe even literally, it is the women who will be the ones to burn.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=halpern%2C+micah

Wednesday August 4, 2010

Column:

Much of foreign affairs is about re-inventing the wheel. The same can be said about much of politics, in general. One has to ask why people appointed and elected to important office feel the need to re-try what others have tried before them - and expect a different, improved, outcome.

In foreign affairs creativity and outside-the-box thinking just don't cut it. That's unfortunate.

The approach of the current White House towards Iran is the perfect example of re-inventing the wheel. This White House was certain that if Iran was approached with a proper attitude and by anyone other than George Bush, the Iranians would whole heartedly change their point of view and adopt the US stand on how to develop their nuclear technology.

George Bush has been seen by the current president the American electorate as the resounding cause for the Iranian rejection of the United States' world view. It was assumed - however presumptively, egotistically and, alas, erroneously, that the new president, i.e. Barack Obama would be able to bring Iran around to the American point of view.

That did not happen.

Now, after the fact, the present administration will argue that they were always skeptical of Iran. But public proclamations and overt actions prove otherwise. In truth, the Obama administration simply started from the beginning and did much of what the Bush Administration had done. And the result is that the Obama administration has brought the US/Iran relationship right back to where it was ... just 20 months later.

The mistake that both administrations have been making is in thinking that the problem lies between our current administration (whoever that may be) and current Iranian leadership. No one has bothered to take a historical look at Iran. No one has thought to study or analyze Iranians and their history of reactions to change. Had anyone spent the time they would have concluded that there is no way that Iran could have been convinced that the Obama administration is any different than the Bush Administration.

Iranians have not changed and will not change because the Iranians do not change. Is that outside-the-box thinking, well then excuse me, please.

The metaphor of "reinventing the wheel" is so powerful and so appropriate for this analysis. The wheel is the archetype of human ingenuity. It is one of the earliest of all inventions and is the foundation point of nearly all subsequent inventions. The wheel has enabled man to take giant strides forward. Re-inventing the wheel, is, literally and figuratively a step backwards.

The problem is not unique to the arrogance of the United States vis a vis Iran. Turkey, too, has fallen into the diplomatic trap of assuming they can re-invent the Iranian wheel.

Turkey and Brazil sponsored a deal with Iran to export Iranian uranium to Turkey and, in return, Turkey receives 19.6% enriched uranium. According to the way the Turkish government thinks, this deal will push everyone back from the brink of war. In exchange for the deal Turkey and Brazil, who both sit on the United Nations Security Council, promised to vote with Iran against the new 4th set of international sanctions against them.

From the point of view of the Turks this was a perfect win, a spectacular negotiating feat. They are now positioned as major players in the world and their philosophy that the West cannot conceptually deal with Iran has been legitimized.

But - and it's a big but, when Turkey recently asked Iran to commence their detailed discussion of the agreement as was promised Iran said "not now maybe at the end of the summer." Now Turkey is livid. They sided with Iran and went to bat for Iran and now Iran has not changed their stance at all despite all the promises and the agreements.

Turkey should have known better. The United States should know better. Iran develops strategies that help Iran. Iran does not change.

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Friday July 16, 2010

Column

Israel has become the scapegoat for nearly all problems in the Muslim world. Certainly, Israel is the scapegoat for all problems Palestinian.

It's always: Why did Israel do that, or, why didn't Israel do this. If Israel were not there, the regions would be so serene ... the lives of Palestinians would be so much better ... If Israel would only change policy, terrorism would be down ... there would be peace in the Middle East.

What sounds like platitudes and wishful thinking is nothing more than veiled anti-Semitism. Blaming Israel is the excuse for Palestinian failures and ineptitudes. Holding Israel responsible is the way in which leaders of the greater Arab/Muslim world absolve themselves of all guilt, responsibility and shame.

A simple example of just how guileful the international cabal is in their hatred of Israel can be determined by examining the current electricity crisis in Gaza for which Israel is being blamed.

Here's the story: The original electricity agreement for Gaza was for the European Commission to pay Israel and for Israel to deliver electricity to Gaza. Israel is to provide 70% of Gaza's electricity, Egypt 5% and Gaza's own power plant the remaining 25%. After an initial trial period the European Commission chose to transfer all money and all responsibility to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority refuses to pay Israel for Gaza's electricity. Hamas is livid.

It is the PA that has turned off the lights - and air conditioning and ice makers and refrigeration in the 100 plus degree heat of the Gaza summer, not Israel. In response, anger and frustration, Hamas has begun publicly attacking Palestinian leadership. But the PA is not budging, they are keeping Gaza hot, bothered and in the dark. Adding figurative fuel to the flames is the fact that the actual fuel that runs the Gaza power plant is also imported from Israel and the PA is refusing to pay that cost, as well.

So why is there an electricity shortage in Gaza, because of the staunch rivalry between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority ruling and running matters from Ramallah in the West Bank. A little power in the hands of Fatah run Palestinian leadership is turning into a very dangerous tool.

Electricity in Gaza worked perfectly well all the while it was under the administration of the Europeans, but turned to a trickle as soon as it came under the control of the Palestinians. So much for Europe's grasp of the Fatah/Hamas dynamic.

In general, it is almost unheard of for foreign aid organizations to blame the Palestinians for anything - for anything at all. But now, one lone and important voice has spoken out. The voice speaks out of frustration.

The following comes from the transcript of a press conference with John Ging, head of UNWRA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

"It is such a tragedy that, on top of all the other crises that we have in the Gaza Strip, we now have a crisis of electricity."

"It's an unbearable situation here at the moment, and it needs to be solved very quickly. It's a Palestinian problem, made by Palestinians, and causing Palestinian suffering. So let's have a Palestinian solution."

John Ging realized that the entire electricity crisis in Gaza is Palestinian produced. It was not easy for Ging to concede that fact. It was not easy for the head of UNWRA to acknowledged that Gazans continue to suffer only because the PA hates Hamas.

UNWRA has been one of the outspoken leaders in anti-Israel attitude and behavior over the past decade. For UNWRA to go public against Palestinian infighting was a calculated decision, undoubtedly intended to embarrass the PA into changing policy and turning on electricity.

It is time for Palestinians to take responsibility for their mistakes, time for the world to hold them accountable. It is far too easy to cast blame and say simply that Israel and "the occupation" are the cause of all ills that befall the Palestinian people.

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Thursday May 27, 2010

Column:

There is a synapse between the assumed nuclear power possessed by Iran and Iran's goals for their nuclear capability and the reality of Iran's nuclear arsenal.

# 1: If Iran were to attack Israel, especially with a non-conventional weapon like a nuclear warhead, Israel would destroy Iran. Attacking Israel is tantamount to committing national suicide and Iranian leadership does not have a death wish.

# 2: Iran's advancement in nuclear technology does not imply an increase in nuclear weapons.

Iran today is a far cry from Russia in the 1970's. Self preservation was the driving force keeping the Russians and the United States from engaging in a nuclear encounter. The expression used at the time was "avoiding a nuclear holocaust." The reasoning went: if they shoot then we will shoot, and in the end, both of us will be annihilated. It was also called MAD for Mutual Assured Destruction. This concept became the foundation of nuclear deterrence.

The Middle East is not Europe and Iran is not Russia. There are many reasons why decisions are made by leaders in the Middle East, not the least is pride and machismo. The need to prove religious superiority is another top reason.

Iran does not have a history of attacking. Iran has a history of either utilizing their proxies or of provoking attacks in order to initiate counter attacks. So the scenario would play out like this: Israel would be the first to strike. Israel would hit Iran's nuclear resources and nuclear sites with conventional weapons. Iran would then counter strike. If Iran counters with even one non-conventional warhead, Israel would strike back again. The deterrence argument that was so powerful in the 70's has no play in the year 2010.

And the Middle East is not Japan. Nuclear energy does not mean nuclear weapons. Right now, we truly have no idea Iran's nuclear objectives. How large, or how small, Iran's nuclear program is and how large they intend to enlarge it?

It is wise to assume that Iran's leaders will not follow in the footsteps of European and American leaders. They will follow in the footsteps of that other Middle East leader Saddam Hussein when he launched his scuds into Israel.

The problem we in the West have in analyzing and understanding Iran is that we in the West apply Western logic to a very, very, non-Western country.

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Thursday May 13, 2010

Column:

Piracy, that blight on the open seas, must be eradicated.

The economic impact of the current spate of piracy launched out of Somalia is immense. After the ransoms are calculated, the insurance is totaled, defense and security measures are factored in, the cost of piracy probably tops $16 billion per year.

Sixteen billion is not that much relative to the $7.8 trillion dollars of yearly maritime commerce - but that sixteen billion dollar cost is not profit, it is cost that is all passed on to you and me, the consumer.

Other numbers are equally as staggering. There are only between 600 to 1,000 modern pirates making their living off the seas. That's all. The amount of ransom paid to these gun-toting, bad-guy, entrepreneurs in 2009 was put at only about $30 million. Ransom is the cheapest part of piracy, it is the other costs that add it all up.

Today's pirates are equal opportunity hoodlums. They do not care if they attack oil tankers or ships carrying children's toys, if the ships are British, American, Swiss or Syrian. They take over a ship and leave after their ransom has been paid. And a significant amount of the money they receive now fuels the economy of their motherland, Somalia.

Just this week a Greek ship was taken by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Twenty four hostages were taken, two of them Greek, the remaining Filipinos. The captured ship was carrying iron from the Ukraine to China making a stop in Singapore. The Gulf of Aden is the most troublesome spot on the seas for merchants, the most lucrative for pirates. It is where the vast number of piracies takes place.

The funnel between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea is the Gulf of Aden. The Red Sea leads to the Suez Canal which opens into the Mediterranean Sea and from there to Europe.

The Gulf of Aden gets its name from the Yemenite port city of Aden situated at the mouth of the gulf. Yemen sits on the east side of the Gulf. On the west side of the Gulf is Somalia. Next to Somalia is Djibouti and then Eritrea. The Gulf of Eden turns into the Bab el Mandeb, or the Straits of Mandeb, as it narrows to an area only twenty miles wide. All shipping going from Asia to Europe must pass through the Gulf of Aden and the Mandeb Straits and make its way up into the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

The ships sit there, caught in a massive traffic jam at sea, like the proverbial sitting ducks, all lined up and waiting to be picked off by pirates. The pirates make their way from the Gulf to the Straits and onto the ship of their choosing. When I say traffic jam, I mean traffic jam. The numbers are staggering. 15,000 - 20,000 ships pass through the narrow Straits of Mandeb each year. That means that, on average, the Straits accommodate 1,500 ships every month.

Is there no other alternative? For ships traveling from Asia to Europe there is. But time means money and shipping companies are willing to run the Gulf of Aden risk, hoping that some other ship will be boarded. They opt to take the shorter Straits of Mandeb route because it saves them days of travel over the longer, safer, trip around the Horn of Africa. The extra days it takes going around the Horn costs an extra $2 million per ship in fuel and an extra $100,000 in security fees. Every ship needs security teams whether it travels through the Horn of Africa or the Gulf of Aden. The money saved translates into cheaper goods and more efficient uses of energy, time and resources.

Pirates take advantage of their home field. They have no fear of capture and no fear of punishment even if captured. The laws of the seas are unequipped to deal with their crime, there is almost no way of prosecuting them. Ships may be owned by corporations but they fly "flags of convenience." That means they fly flags from Liberia, Panama and the Bahamas - countries that have no teeth, no legal standing to prosecute the pirates who board them and demand ransoms.

An entirely new approach to stopping piracy is needed. Aggressive naval and police tactics backed by special international courts that have the power to prosecute and convict is part of the answer. For the sake of the world's economy, for the sake of international justice countries must join together and invest the time, money and energy required to stem acts of piracy.

The world should not continue to support the pirates of Somalia. But we will, unless changes are made. Pirates have no incentive to change what they are doing. We must create that incentive.

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Wednesday May 5, 2010

Column:

The terrorist suspected of planting the car bomb in Times Square has been apprehended. Now is time for us to look carefully at what was really going on.

Thankfully the bomb did not ignite. That was providence. The rest was hard work well done.

The fifty three hours it took from the time a potential bomb was discovered to the time Faisal Shazhad was taken off the Emirates Airline jet is collaborative police and federal agent work at its best. As New York City Police Chief Ray Kelly said, it was a scene right out of the wildly popular TV series "24." Even Jack Bauer, he of the cell phone battery that never runs out, would have required a few more hours to collar this bad guy before he disappeared into the protective, collective, cocoon of the Muslim Middle East.

Let's get down to basics:

The bomb. The bomb was large but very crude. It was technically flawed. It was the kind of bomb that is unlikely to cause the massive damage that one would expect from Taliban-trained bomb makers and operatives.

So why even engage in such a sloppy operation? There are several good reasons for that.

# 1: Quite simply, to terrify and terrorize. Even a dud in Times Square is a success from the point of view of Taliban and al Qaeda.

# 2: To use as a research tool, to allow Taliban and al Qaeda to check the emergency response time for such an attack.

# 3: To prove to Taliban and al Qaeda adherents around the world that they can strike at the very heart of the US at will.

The attack: This was not a suicide attack. Suicide attacks tend to have higher efficiency because the bomber gets right into the center of the target. In this case the bomber, who was also the engineer, walked away. That small item made a very big difference in the effectiveness of the operation.

So why was this not a suicide terrorist attack? It is harder to successfully recruit a suicide bomber here in the States than it is in Muslim countries. Few Americans are willing to kill themselves. They might make the bomb, plant the bomb even help the bomber, they may engage in a terror attack where the possibility exists that they will be killed in the act - but intentionally blowing themselves up along with defenseless others, not yet. The commitment it takes to be an American home grown suicide bomber has not yet crossed the ocean from the other side.

The success of the operation: From the point of view of the terrorist and his handlers in Pakistan and in al Qaeda, this botched operation was a resounding success. It could have been more successful but it was great.

So what makes a botched attack with a bomb that did not explode and a terrorist who was dramatically apprehended a success? More than anything else, the Pakistani branch of Taliban is now on the map. Shazhad already admitted in the charge sheet to being trained in Pakistan.

Now for some background and perspective:

This is not the first car bomb in NYC planted. In 1993 al Qaeda planted a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The attack was a dud. The intent was to kill tens of thousands of people and while 1,042 people were injured, only six were killed. That attack used 1500 lbs of urea nitrate hydrogen and was lit by a 20 foot fuse. It blew a hole through four floors of the World Trade Center.

And it set the stage for 9-11.

This attack is Times Square was successful. This attack in Times Square was not a one-time event. It is essential that we understand that. Not to glorify al Qaeda. It is essential that we understand what this attack was and what it truly represents so that we can better protect ourselves.

They will not stop trying. Neither can we.

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Thursday April 29, 2010

Column:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be in attendance at next week's Nuclear Non Proliferation-Treaty Conference Review in New York, at the United Nations.

If this proves true, it will be not merely a very gutsy move on the part of Ahmadinejad, but a very effective political maneuver for Iran, as well. It moves Iran off the defense and positions Iran squarely on the offense.

As of this writing I can confirm that Iran has put in an official request for the special travel visa required for dignitaries like Ahmadinejad when they come to the United Nations and the White House has indicated that the request will not be blocked. This visa permits dignitaries who are unwanted on US soil to travel only within a very short radius of the United Nations building. Without that visa, there is no way this Iranian could attend.

The conference is scheduled to begin on Monday May 3rd. The Islamic Republic is scheduled to present at the debate in the 7th slot. As of now, the person scheduled to speak is the Iranian foreign minister. That can be easily changed. The line up for the session is even handed. The opening speaker is the Non-Aligned Group represented by Egypt who will insist that Israel come clean with their nuclear secrets. Preceding Iran is the United States and Canada in the 5th & 6th slots and then Australia follows Iran in the 8th slot.

Showing up at the Conference is a classic Iranian move. Take the fight to the enemy. Take advantage of the surprise factor and make certain that most of the people around actually support you - and not your opponent. It would behoove the United States to learn a few of these tricks. If Ahmadinejad comes, he will win over many of the still undecided countries, countries the United States and her allies are trying hard but not very successfully to woo, and he will score big victories against the West.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was initiated by the United Nations in 1970. The Review Conference was only instituted twenty years later, in 1990. Scheduled to meet every five years the Review Conference is charged with discussing the status of the NPT and monitoring NPT movement around the world.

With Ahmadinejad at the head of his country's delegation, Iran will be able to successfully respond to all Western rhetoric aimed at discrediting and criticizing their nuclear behavior and intentions. If Ahmadinejad is present at the Conference, the media will pay attention. When that happens, Ahmadinejad is in his element and his messages to the Muslim world and his anti-West propaganda will be broadcast around the world.

Never forget that Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And should you forget, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will remind you. At the Conference he will assert Iran's right to safe nuclear energy and the right to develop medical nuclear isotopes for cancer treatments.

If Ahmadinejad does not attend the Conference and if, as planned, Iran's Foreign Minster Manoucherh Mottaki represents his country it will be business as usual at the United Nations. Mottaki does not have the same draw, he does not have the same appeal. He does not have power that Ahmadinejad has. Mottaki will make the event interesting, but he will not make international headline news.

Ahmadinejad likes the limelight, he likes controversy, he likes to demean the West, he especially likes doing it all on good ol' United States soil.

It's still too early to know. Stay posted, we'll see what happens.

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Thursday April 22, 2010

Column:

Iranian National TV announced that their Elite Revolutionary Guard is planning a new set of military maneuvers in the Straits of Hormuz. That's news, that's international news.

When Iran announces military maneuvers they do it for the obvious reason - keeping their military up-to-speed and creating effective war games-style practice. And they do it for international consumption. By announcing that they are engaging in military maneuvers, Iran is announcing to the world that they are mean and mighty and not to be messed with.

The region gets their point and so, too, should the West.

The Straits of Hormuz is not a simple water passage. While small in size, through this strait passes some of the most important cargo in the world today - oil. Nearly one-third of the world's oil and forty percent of the world's shipped oil passes through the narrow Straits of Hormuz each year. The country that controls the Straits of Hormuz is ultimately the country in control of the movement of oil all around that world. Iran contends that they control the Straits and Iran intends to keep it that way.

Israel will be watching Iran's maneuvers very carefully. What kinds of weapons will Iran bring out and what kind of speed boats will be used. Along with the rest of the world, Israel is interested in knowing what types of new surface-to-air missiles Iran actually has. This will be a strategic game of show and tell.

The United States has pledged to keep the Straits of Hormuz open at all costs. But the United States, as Iran well knows, cannot deliver on that pledge. In fact, Iran could not care less what the United States has to say. The Straits is theirs, it is theirs to control, it is in their control - it is Iranian home turf.

In actuality, the Straits of Hormuz are so narrow, that all ships that pass through have no choice but to pass through the territorial waters of Iran on one side and of Oman on the other. The one and only lane that is deep enough to allow large tankers is only about six miles wide. There are two lanes that are two miles wide, one in each direction, separated by a two mile wide median. That's tiny.

As it now stands, tankers pass through Iranian waters under the "UN Convention of Law and of the Sea." The agreement for passage is called a "transit passage."

The United States is flexing muscles in a region where the international shipping lane is actually Iranian waters. Not only does the United States have no diplomatic jurisdiction over the Straits of Hormuz, the United States doesn't even have a clean transit record. The US has been downright klutzy passing through the Straits.

In March of 2009 a United States nuclear sub collided with an amphibious dock injuring fifteen sailors and dumping 25,000 gallons of fuel into the Straits. In January of 2007 a US submerged nuclear sub collided with a Japanese tanker. So far, the United States has been lucky. Iran has steered clear of US ships. Not so with the British. In March of 2007 Iran captured fifteen British sailors by quickly swarmed the UK cruiser with their tiny, but very swift, rubber boats.

If threatened, Iran would have no compunction about shutting down the Straits of Hormuz. The United Nations could invoke their Convention with a capital "C," but we already know how little Iran thinks of international diplomacy and how much they enjoy flying in the face of international convention with a small "c."

Not only do the Iranians have tremendous home court advantage, they also have their rubber speedboats which can outmaneuver larger ships and which can dart in, out and around, striking and retreating, against any target they choose to attack. Iran can destroy vessels and take prisoners. If they chose to sink a single ship - an oil tanker or any other ship passing through - it would wreak havoc on the world economy for weeks.

I know that the United States understands the significance of the Straits of Hormuz. But I do not know that the United States has a plan that is serious enough to counter potential actions by Iran. I do not think that the United States has a plan for re-opening the Straits should it ever come to that. I do not think that the United States has a plan to handle the crisis.

Iran has a plan, of that I am certain. And part of the Iranian plan is based on their certainty that the United States does not have a plan. Iran understands that the United States will attempt to police only the specific area, or lane, within the Straits of Hormuz that is at risk. That means that a serious strike against Iran will be out of the question.

That means that, once again, the Iranians have run circles around the United States.

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Thursday March 18, 2010

Column:

Jerusalem is the capital city of three monotheistic religions. Judaism, Islam and Christianity all have a stake in Jerusalem's past, ergo, they all have a stake in Jerusalem's future.

It was in Jerusalem that Abraham bound and prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac and it was in Jerusalem that King Solomon erected the temple. And so, the bond between Jerusalem and Judaism was forged. It was in Jerusalem that the prophet Mohammed, on a white stead, ascended to heaven and created the bond between Jerusalem and Islam. And it was to Jerusalem that Jesus made his pilgrimage and sparked a bond between Jerusalem and Christianity.

In Jerusalem, emotions run high.

The inauguration and re-opening of an old / new synagogue in Jerusalem, a synagogue that has been in ruins since its destruction by the Jordanians in 1948, has touched not only the soul but also the nerves of everyone who cares about or is involved with the City of Jerusalem. The synagogue, called the Hurva, which literally means destruction in Hebrew, has remained a hollowed out shell for well over half a century.

The Hurva synagogue has a long and repetitive history. The name tells it all, the Hurva has almost since it was first erected, been a symbol of destruction. When the Jordanians destroyed the synagogue in 1948 the explosion could be seen for miles. The dome crowning the Hurva was the highest architectural structure in the entire city. The building was the tallest and most magnificent in the entire Old City of Jerusalem.

In cities like Jerusalem battles are often fought building by building. The tallest building is a symbol. The height of the Hurva synagogue was the Jewish check against the Moslem holy sites the Dome of the Rock and the Christian Church of the Sepulchre.

The Muslim Dome was only visible from certain angles. The Church was built even lower in the city. The dome of the synagogue could be seen by almost everyone, everywhere - even outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Hurva is and was situated high up on a plateau and center stage in the Jewish Quarter of the city. That is why it had been desecrated and destroyed in 1721. And that is why the Jordanians had to destroy it, again, in 1948.

According to Islamic law it is forbidden to build any local building taller than the local mosque. The law is clear, it is stated in the Pact of Omar. Christianity has similar laws and rulings. Building the Hurva as they did was an act of arrogance. The same is the case when the Altneu Shul, a synagogue in Prague, was built. The architectural design was to dig deep down in to ground - and then up. The building, instilled with grandeur, is one of the most spectacular buildings of Europe and circumvented the law.

The re-opening of the Hurva Synagogue has stoked the flames of an already flammable situation. The call to violence and Jihad has been announced by Arab leaders and Imams. Many of their followers are preparing to rise up in defense of holy Muslim sites, to protect them from the Jews.

There are those in the Muslim world who say that the new / old synagogue is breaking the foundation of the holy site al Aqsa on the Temple Mount. On al Jazeera television a cleric explained that the footing of the shrine known in Islam as Haram al Sharif, the holy sanctuary which is itself crowned by a golden dome, is threatened. Geographically and archaeologically the cleric is incorrect, but this is not about fact and accuracy- it is about symbolism.

The Imams and Islamic leaders are correct when they talk about how Israel is destroying the foundations of Islam in the Holy City. But it is their symbolic foundations that Israel is checking. The holy ground is not being uprooted, destroyed or sullied, it is the Jerusalem skyline that Judaism is recapturing.

The Hurva has always been a threat to the Muslim world. Not because it is a synagogue in Jerusalem, because it is such a tall synagogue in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, literally and figuratively, symbols taken on heightened significance.

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Thursday March 11, 2010

Column:

"Better to be smart than right."

The world of foreign policy runs on its own set of rules. Unlike in the real world, in the world of foreign policy the opposite of smart is not necessarily not smart, or dumb. The opposite of right is not necessarily wrong. The idea that in the midst of a dispute the right decision will inevitable emerge, the right action will ultimately be taken, does not hold in foreign policy decisions. In the real world there is no argument that can trump the ability to do, or implement, the right thing. In the world of foreign policy, that argument does not hold true.

In foreign and even in domestic policy, being right is not always the best way to go. The smart way is the way to go. Just because the argument is correct, or right, does not make it the appropriate thing to say or wise action to take.

When Eli Ishai, the Israeli minister of the interior and leader of the right wing Shas party, chose to make an announcement about the projected building of 1,600 apartments in Jerusalem in the midst of an extended visit by United States Vice President Joe Biden, Ishai chose right over smart.

As a result of the announcement the vice president was forced to issue a strong, serious, public statement condemning Israel's action and decision. Biden labeled Israel's decision as not productive. And when Biden met with Palestinian leaders shortly after the announcement was made topping their list of gripes against Israel was Israel's deliberate defiance of pre-set conditions and terms, Israel's desire to be contrary and to engage in non-productive behavior - all as exemplified by their announced intention to build new housing units. They say they are halting settlement activity, yet they announce a new project. Israeli leaders, say the Palestinians, are really closet settlers.

The Palestinian complaint about Israel is the same complain that Israel makes about the Palestinians - that they cannot be trusted.

Shas and Eli Ishai defend their announcement. They maintain that they were correct, i.e. right, in acting as they did. Their argument goes that this announcement reflects the reality - that Israel does what is best for Israel and will not be dictated to by the United States. Ishai and Shas believe that Jerusalem is 100% under Israeli control and that there is no compromising when it comes to Jerusalem. They believe that Jerusalem neighborhoods need to expand if only because of natural growth and demand.

Because of Shas' conviction and their impulsive desire to pursue the right way, an unconditionally positive public relations event now, suddenly and completely avoidably, has a black cloud hanging over it. A decision to say nothing or to wait for another opportunity to make this announcement would not have been a case of right versus wrong. It would have been the smart thing to do.

When the vice president of the United States visits Israel, he arrives with full court press. Every where he travels in Israel all foreign press stationed in Israel travel along. Every journalist covering the Middle East from Israel latches on to his entourage. China, Japan, India, Denmark, Norway, Sweden - they all have their correspondents follow every movement of the vice president, each one hoping to get a moment's access with the man perceived to be the second most powerful person in the United States. And they were all there to cover Joe Biden's biting critique of Israel.

Interior Minister Eli Ishai will not be muzzled. The Shas party will not be punished. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu does not have the backing to bounce them out of his coalition government. With all the safety and security issues facing Israel, with all the neighboring countries hoping to wipe little Israel off the map, it's shameful that right now Israel's worst enemy comes from within.

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Thursday March 4, 2010

Column:

The Arab League has spoken. The twenty-two country members and four observer members of the Arab League have decided to support the plan put forth by the United States to jump start the stalemate between Palestinians and Israelis.

On Wednesday, the Arab League voted to support indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians. They will meet again in July, four months from now, to determine if, or what, progress had been made. What they discover four months from now might just take the United States by surprise.

It's all about game playing - and in this game, each player plays by a different set of rules.

On the one hand, Israel is pleased that the Arab League has taken this initiative and is encouraging indirect talks. Israel welcomes the Arab League's involvement. On the other hand, Israel is not at all fond of deadlines. According to Israel's rule book, deadlines usually force one party to make hasty decisions on issues that are of vital importance, decisions that would not otherwise be made, decisions that will later be regretted.

Palestinians are looking at the Arab League vote somewhat differently. On the one hand, indirect talks are intended to lead to direct talks and if that is what is accomplished at the end of these four months, the Arab League's mission will have been accomplished. On the other hand, somewhere in the fine print of the Palestinian rule book it is written that now that the Palestinians have the attention of the greater Arab world, a privilege they are often denied, at the end of these four months, they might just be able to finagle independence and statehood out of the deal. And they will do it without the direct support of the United States and the United States will be too diplomatically polite to dispute it, even if it is not what Israel wants.

The player with the most complicated rule book is the Arab League. It turns out that the Arab League, however well intentioned, has no authority to make decisions about Israel and the Palestinians. They have no jurisdiction here. Going into the meeting, the Palestinians declared that they would respect the decision of the Arab League. Note the use of the word "respect" and not the choice of the word “follow.” In the end, it behooves the Palestinians to both respect and follow the decisions of the Arab League which is a far more conservative body than those pro-Western countries usually dictating policy.

Delegates to the Arab League are the foreign misters of their countries. Not only does the Arab League not have authority in this matter, the Arab League - according to a decision made by the delegates themselves - does not even recognize Israel's right to exist. That is not only a rule they have played by for a long time, it is a rule they just recently re-confirmed. And here they are, suggesting indirect talks with Israel.

The Syrians, with another set of rules, broke the Arab League code of unity that requires all member nations to stand together behind all League decisions, by publicly rejecting the decision to light a fire under Israel and the Palestinians. Syria has said that there is no reason to support any dialogue with Israel at any time.

Talks between Israel and the Palestinians disintegrated when the Obama administration came on the scene. The new and inexperienced administration demanded that Israel put a "total" stoppage to all building in the settlements. The Israelis said that they will not comply, citing natural growth and the special status of Jerusalem as reasons for their non-complicity. The Palestinians, however, grabbed onto this diplomatic blunder with great passion and have not yet released their grip. The United States has since realized how myopic it was to expect such a stoppage even in Jerusalem, but the damage has been done.

And now the Arab League has come to the rescue of both the United States and the Palestinians. This vote, this decision, provides Palestinian leadership with a safe and secure route back to the negotiating table with Israel. Now Palestinian leadership has the ammunition it needs to stand up to Hamas when they are critiqued for succumbing to decisions dictated not by their own needs, but by the wants of Washington, DC and Tel Aviv. Now Palestinian Authority leadership can come back to the table with their heads held high and the hope that, this time, their dream of statehood might just come true.

The funny thing about this whole game is that it's really a pre-game. All this posturing and all these machinations are just to get from the point of indirect talks to the point of direct talks. Imagine what will happen if everything falls into place and Palestinians and Israelis really do make it to direct talks.

Four months is not that very far away.

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Wednesday February 24, 2010

Column:

Mention Dubai and Israel in the same sentence and the first thing that comes to mind is the assassination of a Hamas terrorist leader ... in Dubai ... at the five star luxury Bustan Hotel ... by Israel's Mossad ... allegedly. Unless, of course, you are an avid tennis fan.

While much of the world has focused attention on Israel, Dubai and murder, the annual Dubai Invitational Tennis Championships has been under way.

Last year the Dubai Championships made big news for unceremoniously withdrawing the entry visa of Israeli tennis pro Shahar Peer. Dubai was fined $300,000 and informed that the next year, if Peer qualifies, she must be permitted entry. In protest over Dubai's discriminatory action and in support of a fellow tennis professional, tennis great Andy Roddick boycotted last year's event and Venus Williams, last year's winner, said she would not compete this year unless Shahar Peer competed as well.

Shahar Peer is ranked twenty-two in the world on the women's tour. This year she received her visa and participated in the games making it as far as the semi-finals where she was defeated by Williams. The fact that we, outside of Dubai, did not see or hear coverage of Peer's performance is one thing, but neither did the people in Dubai, neither did the people following the games.

The Israeli tennis star was allowed to participate in the Dubai Championships only against a backdrop of accusations and while shrouded in diplomatic smokescreens. Peer was blanketed by a team of twenty five personal security guards that included former members of the United States presidential secret service detail. Her matches were held on secluded, separate courts. She was confined to her hotel room and allowed out only to go to the matches.

That's how Israeli athletes, are treated in Dubai.

It's not how Israelis, especially Israeli athletes, are treated in the United States.

A horrible hatred of Israeli athletes has been festering in many parts of the world over the past few years. At the Australian Open Shahar Peer was greeted by very loud, very obnoxious, protests. But not in America, not in New York, not at Madison Square Garden.

Omri Casspi is the first Israeli in the NBA, playing for the Sacramento Chiefs. During his premier game at Madison Square Garden against the very popular NY Knicks, Casspi, # 18, was cheered and treated like a regular hometown player. The Garden can be daunting for any player, but the Israeli was welcomed with open arms. It didn't hurt that he was playing on Jewish Heritage Night, but according to a local Sacramento paper, even members of the Arab community in Sacramento have taken a liking to the new player on their team.

Why was Shahar Peer jeered and Omri Casspi cheered? It's not the difference between tennis and basketball, it's the difference between the United States of America and the rest of the world. The United States views the Middle East and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict very differently than does the rest of the world. In the United States, there are almost no traces of anti-Semitism, the same cannot be said for the rest of the world.

The United States is not completely free of prejudice, pre-disposition and venom. Ironically, one of the only places where Jews and Israelis are regularly taunted in the United States today is on college campuses. In colleges, there is a no-holds-barred attitude and faculty, as well as students, express attitudes more closely resembling Western European political sentiments than those that reflect mainstream US perspectives. The same age demographic that protests against Israelis on campus allows sporting events to be their great equalizer.

Today it happened in Dubai, tomorrow it will happen somewhere else. As long as there are people willing to take a stand, big name people like Andy Roddick and Venus Williams and boisterous people like New York basketball fans - there is still a chance.

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THE DUBAI ASSASSINATION: A MODERN DAY WHODUNIT
Thursday February 18, 2010

Column:

Israel has not said an official word about the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouh. The Arab press is doing the talking for them.

In more than one oped, in more than one Arabic language newspaper, Israel has been praised and applauded for the professional and efficient manner in which Mabhouh was assassinated in his hotel room in Dubai. The authors spoke with respect of the Israeli team and the way in which the team dealt with Israel's enemy far away from home. They acknowledged the sophisticated intelligence gathering techniques necessary to pull off the operation and the decision to put this particular assassination into operation.

Does Israel deserve that praise? We can't be sure. But as far as assassinations go, these assassins, whoever they really are and wherever they are now, are certainly worthy of note for carrying out an almost flawless operation. We've all read the books and seen the movies, it is not easy to carry out a mission as sensitive and as complicated as the mission they undertook and successfully completed.

It is Israeli policy not to comment on assassinations, targets, hits. The Israelis say nothing, which leads everyone else to speculate. It is possible that the operation was executed by Israelis. It is also possible Israel commissioned an outside team to execute the operation. Or perhaps Israel provided details to another agency, or even country, to perpetrate this strike against Hamas.

Israel did not stand alone in preferring a dead Mabhouh to a live, functioning, terrorizing Mabhouh. Other countries and other governments, including Arab countries, breathed a collective sigh of relief upon hearing of the death. And despite the news reports, none of these governments is asking too many questions.

From the picture that is emerging, it seems clear that Mahmoud al Mabhouh was interrogated and that during that interrogation he gave up a lot of important, even crucial, information. The information that was gleaned during this operation is more important than the assassination itself - which is now being portrayed as either an act of revenge or of justice delayed.

According to Lt. General Dahi Tamim, Chief of Police in Dubai, twelve people participated in the operation, ten men and two women, and they all entered and left Dubai within nineteen hours. Security footage at the airport and the hotel attests to the fact that the assassins were all professionals. They arrived on separate planes, checked into different hotels and changed their appearances wearing floppy hats and wigs, looking like tourists or businessmen and they entered Dubai on passports from several friendly European countries, even one from the United States.

We are now learning that most of the names used on the forged passports are the names of real people and the countries of origins on the passports are the countries from which these people hail - and that most now live in Israel. Dubai is threatening to issue arrest warrants but that would be futile and Interpol will not issue a warrant for a ghost. There is no tracing the faces and the faces do not match the names. The assassination team has disappeared.

The Arab world feels the public need to show that they are doing something to catch the bad guys, so two Palestinians were arrested in Jordan and extradited to Dubai. According to the Police Chief Tamim the men were involved in the operation and after their interrogation, many more details will emerge.

If these Palestinians were involved, they were probably only procurers, the people who provided weapons or materials. They probably knew nothing about the target, the plan or, for that matter, the team. The person dealing with these Palestinians would be so far removed from the team of eleven that there is no way to connect them. Operations like this are compartmentalized - you are told what you need to know and only what you need to know, not as television action dramas would have us believe, the whereabouts of others or their schedules, certainly not their names.

If the Israelis really are the perpetrators of this assassination, Mabhouh was probably given a truth serum and then executed with a drug that mimics a heart attack. Both drugs are hard to detect and the longer it takes to discover and autopsy the body, the harder and harder it becomes to find traces. He was probably not tortured, that takes too long and makes too much noise and would alert authorities in an luxury hotel.

We may never know the details. But Hamas knows that their operation has been compromised, that one of their best is now dead. That's enough.

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Thursday February 11, 2010

Column:

Iranian leadership is afraid of freedom. Freedom of speech petrifies them. And what scares them most of all is the freedom to access information and news.

In other words, the boogey man in the closet of Iranian leadership is the world wide web.

Every citizen of Iran has the ability to both receive and deliver information about anything and everything to anyone in the world -just like you and me. Because of the internet, Iranians can exchange recipes, talk about music and discuss Islam and the Koran and what makes a better Muslim and even, what Allah has commanded them to do. And they can chat about sex.

And that is why Iran is starting its own internet system. It is why Iran has begun blocking Google.

Thanks to Google, Iranian reformers have effectively communicated over the past year. They text message and they email. And they have also mastered the use of other, non-Google communication tools like Twitter. They do it all behind the back of Iran's authoritarian, obsessive, religious leadership.

Now Iranian leadership feels the need to put a stop to internet freedom. They are made uncomfortable by the comfort level Iranians have attained through their Google gmail accounts. They have blocked those accounts and they have admitted to blocking them. Surprisingly, Yahoo has not been hit by Iranian cyber blockades, at least, not yet hit.

Iranian youth, like their comrades the world over, have become very adroit at retrieving information and using gmail. In Iran, by necessity, the younger generation has also become proficient at bypassing the lulls and service problems that Iranian religious leadership has tried to impose. Iranians youth will log on to a protected internet system and access their internet from there, or they will bounce and forward their gmail email to the new, "friendly" internet system.

Iran is a highly educated and technical society. Technology and science are Iran's lifeline. Scientists working for the government on internet issues, however, have not been granted the kinds of budgets needed to clamp down on the hackers and techno-geeks and marauders parading across Iranian cybersphere. Iranian reformers have better skills and better help from abroad than do government scientists. The techno-geeks at Google and Yahoo and hackers around the cyber world are lending a hand to try to aid Iran's reformers take down the Iranian establishment.

As a rule, major internet cyber uber mentschen are apolitical personalities. They are live and let live about almost every issue - except for freedom of speech, except for Iran's decision to shut them down. For them, freedom of speech is more than a religion right, it is the holy grail. And they will not stop until they have crippled the oppressive Iranian regime.

The cyber war has begun.

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Thursday February 4, 2010

Column:

The Iranians took a rat, a turtle, a few worms and put them in a rocket ship and launched it into space. It sounds like the opening line of a good joke, but this is nothing to laugh about.

The Iranians really did put a rat, a turtle and worms into a rocket ship and sent it off into space. And with that launch the Iranians have catapulted not only a rocket into space, but Iran itself to almost the very head of the class of global space travel. The funny part was watching the launch and hearing the countdown and seeing nothing happen. The count down was begun again and this time the rocket took off - at the count of five.

The rocket is a Kovahshgar 3, also called an Explorer 3. It is Iran's third generation of space satellite rockets. What makes this rocket significantly different from other Iranian space ships is that the Kovahshgar 3 is a two-stage rocket system. This machine will travel 320 km into space.

Once a country achieves the ability to develop multi-stage rockets there is no limit to the distances their rockets will travel and the tasks their rockets will be able to perform. In a two-stage rocket the first, or spent, rocket detaches itself after lift off allowing the second, or next stage, rocket to launch again as a lighter space ship with more energy.

A long term objective of Iran's space program has been to move to any orbit that requires them to launch to 1000 km into space. Now that they have achieved the status of staged rockets, reaching their objective is only a matter of time. The satellites that Iran launches from here on will allow them the ability to monitor everything that happens in every corner of the entire globe. Everything.

Just prior to this launch Iran unveiled three new satellites called the Simorgh, or Phoenix. The unveiling and launch were televised on Iranian national TV and promoted as a part of Iran's anniversary celebration commemorating the Islamic Revolution. At the ceremony, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at length about the importance of these launches and these satellites. The president spoke about study and technology and the information that will be gleaned from this experiment of sending living organisms into space. The rat, the turtle and the worms will, he said, provide important information for scientists to analyze.

More frightening than the two-stage rocket, more frightening than the launch, is the knowledge that this despotic, demonic, extremist regime is in possession of this technology. The technology that launched the Kovahshgar 3 is the same technology that will allow Iran to provide a delivery system for non-conventional weapons.

This public launching in Iran is a watershed. While the West and the IAEA were running around trying to determine Iran's nuclear capability, Iran was legally building satellite rockets that easily convert to ballistic delivery armaments.

This launch demonstrates how advanced science and technology are in Iran, how fast they have developed over the past few months. It shows how deaf and blind the world has been to the significance of Iranian threats, how laissez faire the West has been in monitoring the aerospace industry in Iran, one of the most important elements of a nuclear delivery system.

And it shows how proud the Iranians are of their accomplishments - so proud that the Iranian government itself released a video of the launch on You Tube. Iran knows how to play the West - literally and figuratively.

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Thursday January 28, 2010

Column:

There is no debate as to whether or not Iran is racing toward nuclear productivity. About that there is no question. There is, however, serious debate in the halls of world leadership over the question of Iran's motivation in their race to attain nuclear technology.

The debate is divided into three sides. There are those who say that Iran should be taken at their word and there is no reason to believe that their ultimate goal is a nuclear bomb. Those who say that Iran should be carefully watched because we have no way of knowing if they are telling the truth or saying only what is diplomatically expedient. And those who say that Iran's ultimate goal is a nuclear bomb.

The first group, those who say that Iran is not ultimately interested in the bomb, theorize that what Iran really wants is to be a leader in the new age of energy. For that, of course, they need nuclear technology. This group, led by the Chinese and the Russians, suggest that Iran has never shown any real desire for nuclear weapons and that there is a significant difference between attaining nuclear energy and transforming that technology into nuclear weapons.

The second group, those who say that Iran should be watched because of the obvious potential to transform nuclear technology believe that while the Iranians cannot be trusted, it is not yet too late in the game. This group, led by the United States, has determined that there is still significant time to monitor Iran's nuclear development and gauge whether the technology is being turned into the bomb. They believe that it is too late to stop Iran's nuclear technological development so their real energies should be devoted to monitoring Iran's nuclear program to make certain that what Iran creates is a safe program, not one that is transformed into a weapon's program.

The third group, those who say that there is no doubt that the objective of the Iranians is to create a nuclear bomb, is led by the Germans and the Israelis. They believe that Iran has one and only one objective in developing nuclear technology and that any movement Iran makes in a nuclear direction is a move toward attaining the nuclear bomb.

This week, theorists were given important new information regarding Iran's nuclear plans. Der Spiegel, Germany's premier news magazine and website, published a damning expose. They uncovered an intelligence dossier revealing exactly who was doing what in the world of Iranian nuclear development. Rather than publishing the file in its entirety, Der Spiegel delivered it to the International Atomic Energy Agency and to the governments of Germany the United States and Israel. What they did publish was a significant outline of the material.

According to the material released by Der Spiegel a new office has been created in Iran specifically to develop nuclear weapons. The office is headed by Kamran Daneshjoo, the new Iranian Minister of Science, Research and Technology, is known as the Department for Expanded High Technology. Also included in this project is an important player in Iran's push toward nuclear technology, a nuclear physicist named Moshen Fakhrizadeh, a senior scientist and officer in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard. These two characters are said to head up the "secret heart" of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Der Spiegel made specific note of the fact that the officials they spoke to confirmed that indeed this is proof positive that Iran has real nuclear weapons aspirations and not simply energy goals. The final piece of evidence revealed in the expose is that Iran already has the ability to produce a crude nuclear devise. According to the report this rudimentary devise is the size of a truck. The next objective of the Iranians is to shrink the size of the devise so they are able to mount it on a delivery system.

Regardless of the evidence, China and Russia will probably not be convinced of Iran's motives until it is too late.

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Wednesday January 20, 2010

Column:

When the chief of Israel's military intelligence agency speaks, we should pay careful attention.

Amos Yadlin briefed the Knesset's Committee on Defense. The general chose to brief his select audience on three areas - Turkey, Iran and the Palestinians.

According to Yadlin, the breakdown of the strategic relationship that Israel and Turkey had tried so hard to forge had nothing to do with Israel or even with anti-Israel sentiment - and a whole lot to do with Syria.

Turkey established a relationship with Israel because they had strategic interests. What the Turks really wanted was a closer trade relationship with Western European nations and with the United States. Israel was their way in. Israel was always Turkey's way to agitate and aggravate Syria for being such a bad neighbor.

The attempt to make inroads into Western business communities was a colossal failure. But Syria did come around and now Turkey no longer needs Israel. As a matter of fact, Israel is now a liability in Turkey's relationship with Syria. What's left for Turkey now is to find a way in to Iran and for that, Turkey certainly does not either need, or want, Israel hanging around.

Flip-flopping comes naturally to the Turks who live lives somewhere in between East and West. They geographically live on the border, part in Asia and part in Europe. For Turkey, it is all about expediency and strategic goals. They are easily swayed from one side to the other and right now Iran is the country offering Turkey the best incentives to deal.

On the subject of Iran, Yadlin recalled his earlier analysis. The head of Israel's intelligence community repeated that he does not see Iran either slowing down its pace or modifying its goal. Iran wants to become nuclear, wants to nuclear technology and Iran wants the bomb. And Iran is showing no signs of caving under pressure from the international community.

Perhaps more importantly, Yadlin does not believe that the international community nor pressure from more serious sanctions will change Iran.

As for the Palestinians, the head of Israeli intel had some encouraging news. According to Yadlin, Abbas and his Fatah party are beginning to crack down on Hamas in the West Bank - and not as a favor to Israel. Fatah is cracking down on Hamas for their own benefit. They do not want the West Bank to go the way of Gaza and to that end they are willing to go to great lengths.

Yadlin explained that the current stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians is crucial for Abbas. The Palestinian leader is intent on convincing the international community to pressure Israel to stop all building in Jerusalem and to ease restrictions throughout the West bank.

On this issue in particular I could not agree with Yadlin more. The Irony of it all is that the Western world will side with Abbas and will, economically and diplomatically, attack Israel. And the reason the West will feel comfortable attacking their long-standing friend is because Israel has been so successful in their own war against terror. For an entire year there has not been one successful suicide attack. Had Israel been less successful in their pre-attack capture of terrorists, the world would be less likely to swallow the lies that Abbas is circulating.

Would Israel prefer to be victim to terrorist attacks in order to gain short term international political benefits? The answer is obvious.

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Wednesday January 13, 2009

Column:

The recent assassination of a high level Iranian nuclear researcher should raise flags for everyone keeping watch on Iran.

To recap: Professor Massoud Mohammadi was blown to smithereens outside his Teheran home by an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle. Two cars and two motorcycles were destroyed and a whole slew of homes had their glass windows blown out. Massoud Mohammadi was a significant player in the development of the Iranian nuclear program.

Naturally, all fingers are pointing at Israel.

In the past Israel has utilized the same explosive devices against terrorist leaders all over the world. So to suspect Israel makes perfect sense.

But ... This was overkill in the most literal sense of the word.

This explosion was so powerful and out of control it was designed to kill, maim and damage in a wide circumference around the bomb. This was not the work of a Western intelligence force, it was not even the work of a Western assassin. Israel has perfected the art of destroying their target and their target only - a car and the people in the car, nothing else at all. Israel goes the extra mile to make sure the damage is restricted and does not injure people or property around the explosion site.

This explosion was the work of others, it was not the work of Israel and neither was it the work of the United States.

So whose work was it, whose signature is on this assassination?

There is a long list of people, parties and organizations that would benefit from the death of Mohammadi, a long list of people who could have planned or hired a team to blow up Massoud Mohammadi.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Israel, the United States or another Western agency hired locals to organize and perpetrate this attack - but it is not likely, Israel and the US have different types of assets in Iran and France and Germany have better contacts in Iran.

This kind of operation requires hands-off supervision. Whoever ordered the assassination of Mohammadi gave a carte blanche to the killer, granting permission to kill in as wide an arc as possible. That type of blessing does not come easily in the intelligence agency halls of Washington, DC, Jerusalem, Berlin, London or Paris. This type of operation does not smell like Moscow or Beijing. It smells much more like the operations ordered by Middle East agencies, like agencies that want to stop Iranian nuclear research cold in its tracks.

Attacks against very specific Iranian scientists can grind all of Iran's nuclear development to a halt. Even a single attack against one scientist can slow down the process. Frightening others in the scientific community, upsetting them and making them nervous, makes them less productive and slows down the pace of their work.

So who did it? If I were to venture a guess I would say that the countries with the most to gain from Mohammadi's death are Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other, smaller, countries in the region. That these countries are angry about Iran's nuclear development is well known. A nuclear Iran makes them sit on edge, petrified that a nuclear Iran will cause the downfall of their personal regimes and destabilize the entire region.

Regional leaders have much more to lose if Iran becomes a nuclear power than anyone else in the world. Iran would have absolute reign over the region. The Persians, a non-Arab nation, Shiites a minority in the sea of Sunni Islam, would take charge. This explosion was probably a local operation, perhaps even an anti-government operation.

Massoud Mohammadi is dead. Iran's nuclear community will feel the loss. The rest of the world just bought a little bit of time.

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Thursday January 7, 2010

Column:

Terror is not our enemy. Terror is the strategy and acts of terror are the tool that our enemy uses against us.

Nine years after 9-11 and Western political and military leadership, specifically United States leadership, still treat terror as an enemy like all other enemies. Their problem is conceptual. They have not yet begun to understand the terrorist mindset. Until that synapse is bridged our protectors will never figure out how best to act and counteract, respond and counter respond, to terrorists.

Terror is not the goal of our enemies. The total capitulation of the Western world and all Western culture, the complete submission of the Western world to Islam is the goal of our enemies. Had they truly studied Islam our leaders would know that.

The meaning of the term Islam is total submission. Literally and figuratively, the agenda of our enemy has never been hidden from us, we are just too preoccupied with our own agenda, too narrow and too focused on Western thought and action to see the obvious.

We are defending ourselves against terrorists without really knowing what they want, who they are, why they make their decisions and how they intend to carry out their goal. The relative safety we have experienced until now has much more to do with lady luck and the ineptitude of terrorist operatives than it does with Western politics or Islamic regimes. The safeguards that were in place even before the acts of 9-11 that made it difficult for non-Western foreigners to negotiate easily and freely in potential target areas were an accidental stroke of genius.

Our counter-terror system relies on a good defense and that is its major flaw. We need a good offense, too.

A good offense means hitting people in their home countries.

A good offense means collateral damage.

A good offense means being immune to the names and curses and threats hurled at us by the countries that host and house terrorists.

At this stage in history the United States cannot have it both ways - the United States cannot both be loved and effectively protect American citizens from the terrorist threat. The changes in airport security policies that require added checks for people coming from and holding passports from fourteen additional countries is a good start. It is a late start, but it is a good start.

If you have to wait for the terrorist to infiltrate your airport before your can stop them, you are too late.

If TSA officials at local airports and their x-ray machines are the only barrier that separates American citizens from acts of terror, terrorists will succeed.

If there is only one security significant security fence, it will be breached.

The TSA is not there to stop terrorists from boarding planes. Their emphasis is on paperwork and luggage, not passengers. Bringing contraband, i.e. explosive materials and devices, into an airport is a simple matter of understanding the limits of the machinery. It is not rocket science. Almost everyone knows what an x-ray machine can and cannot see, more importantly, what it cannot distinguish. That is why travelers are asked to separate their toiletries into plastic bags, so that all liquids and vials that appear either full or empty can be checked.

And to think that airports are the greatest venue for terrorists to attack is, once again, to think like a Westerner, not like the enemy.

In the near future our enemy will not take us down. The goal of our enemy is too lofty to be successful. Our job is to prevent our enemy from causing too much damage. Our job is to prevent our enemy from taking too many of our lives.

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Thursday December 31, 2009

Column:

It's a simple fact: There are people who want to destroy us and there is nothing we can do to change their minds.

It's a disturbing fact, it's a scary fact, but it is a proven fact and the sooner we acknowledge it, the better off we will be.

All terror is not alike. Political terrorists can be swayed - Islamic terrorists cannot. Vengeful terrorists can be swayed - religious terrorists cannot.

Al Qaeda terror is Islamic terror - it is religious terror. We do not have the power or capability to stop al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists from hating us and wanting to destroy us. We can stop their actions, we cannot change their minds.

And yet, there are people who refuse to see the fact. And some of those people are in positions of power, some of those people are our leaders. They are simply unable to wrap their minds around an idea that terrifies them. That, too, is scary.

Here's another simple fact: Fighting terror is an offensive, not just a defensive, mission.

Many of those people in power who refuse to accept that fact that we cannot change the minds of terrorists who want us destroyed have no problem sending out helicopter gun-ships to destroy known enemies, gun-ships that might accidentally kill civilians along with their intended targets. They have no problem dispatching soldiers to attack enemies who we know have concrete plots to attack us.

It is the abstract versus the concrete. Religion is abstract. Maps and plans are concrete. The terrorist who has not yet put pen to paper, hand to grenade, explosive to body, is as dangerous and intent upon killing us as the terrorist who has. In the world of terror, thought and action are synonymous.

Religious i.e. Islamic terrorists cannot be educated by us, neither can they be re-educated by us. They hate us because they hate us and there is nothing we can do to change their minds, nothing we can do to prove that we are not worthy of their hate. They cannot be convinced and they cannot be bribed. They want to cause us pain, they want to destroy us and they want to destroy the symbols that represent us.

It's nice to see that there are people who believe that there is good in everyone - but in a leader, it is dangerous. It is kind to give people the benefit of a doubt - but not when those people are mass murderers.

I understand the mind and the world of Islamic terror. Unfortunately, our president, the president of the United States of America does not.

These terrorists will never be moved by compassionate pleas or promises or acts of good will and kindness. These terrorists are not like Anarchists or Maoists, they are not the Weathermen or the Uni-bomber or Timothy McVeigh. The politics of Islamic terror dwarfs these anti-establishment sentiments in America.
They do not want to change America, they want to destroy America and destroy American values.

These terrorists dream of a world where everyone accepts their values and teachings - fundamental Islamic teachings. They will not compromise, they cannot. Until they have the world that they want, they will not rest.

Here's the final simple fact: The only way to fight terror is by guarding ourselves, by searching out the terrorists and by destroying them.

We, the United States and the Western world cannot do this alone. We must convince those who host terrorists to help us. Hosts of terror, as opposed to their guests, are open to argument and bribery. They can shut down the terrorists' bases of operation and force them out.

Not all of Islam teaches a hatred of non-believers. Believers who subscribe to those other, more peace loving, Islamic teachings will be the first step in bringing religious, Islamic terrorists towards embracing other forms of Islamic tradition. They can do it. We cannot.

Note: In deference to certain people in positions of power I have refrained from speaking about the War on Terror and chosen, instead, to use the term fighting terror.

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Wednesday December 23, 2009

Column:

Mainstream Western press has taken proper note of the death of the Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Even his funeral was covered in a significant and respectful way in major, national, newspapers in the United States.

This Iranian cleric deserved our notice. He deserved our praise.

The Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri had a clear and forward thinking vision for Iran. He helped shape Iran - not the tyranny that envelopes Iran today.

Montazeri functioned as the right hand of the original Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Revolution. Montazeri was his protege and it was Montazeri who drafted the Iranian laws that empowered religious life in Iran. It was he who created the framework enabling parallel lines of leadership, one religious the other political. This Ayatollah's vision, however, took on a life of its own. Montazeri believed that religious leadership should serve on an advisory level for the political leadership and not be involved in the day to day happenings in the newly established Islamic Republic. The ultimate power of the clergy in Iran today is antithetical to all that he believed and gave root to.

Our press is correct in noting that Montazeri was the first person chosen to become successor to the first Supreme Leader. When that decision was made, he was, without a doubt, the most learned and most widely respected of all Shiite thinkers. But then the cleric overstepped his bounds as both adviser and protege to the Supreme Leader.

He dug his own premature grave when he went on record renouncing a spate of public executions. Later that same week Montazeri started hammering the nails into his own coffin when he went public again, this time rejecting the death sentence that had been issued against British author Salman Rushdie. In his own defense the cleric responded to the outrage over his pronouncements saying that he was fearful that the world would see Iran simply as a society that glorifies killing, nothing more.

Montazeri was immediately stripped of his position and of his future position. The Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was demoted from Grand Ayatollah to a simple Ayatollah. He was placed under house arrest in the holy city of Qom.

After the death of the Ayatollah Khomeni and the subsequent appointment of his heir, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei, it became clear that a sub par leader had been placed in leadership and that there were far more superior Islamic thinkers than the Grand Ayatollah chosen to lead.

Montazeri had always asserted that the Supreme Leader must be accountable to an earthly body and not, exclusively, to heaven. In many ways this man was not only wise, he was prophetic.

Unlike Khatami and Mousavi, Montazeri had a real and fundamental respect for leadership and cultural for power bases. He spoke without fear of punishment from the establishment because he was indisputably the greater Islamic thinker of our time. Unlike Khatami and Moussavi, the relationship this Ayatollah had with the people of Iran rang genuine, he was their hero. He will be missed by his people. Montazeri's death, the mourning period and the mourning rituals surrounding his death will be significant and will allow us a window into the hearts of Iranians.

The Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri will be missed. And not only be the people of Iran.

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Wednesday December 16, 2009

Column:

No problem. It's an expression often heard in the Middle East, specifically within the Palestinian Authority. Since Arabic does not have a "p" sound, the words come out sounding more like "no broblem." To the untrained Western ear this response to a vast array of questions is amusing. Trained Western ears, however, know that whenever those words are uttered it signifies not just a problem, but a very big problem.

The Palestinian Authority has a broblem, a big broblem.

The most pressing of the myriad political issues confronting the PA right now is the looming election. In January, just a few short weeks away, the term will end for both the Palestinian president and the Palestinian Parliament. The Palestinian Liberation Organization's Central Council has just met to draft and lay out a direction that will begin addressing the challenge. The elections has been postponed.

President Mahmoud Abbas has declared that he will not run again, he reiterated his statement during the Council's meeting. The Council, for their part, has asked Abbas to stay on - at least until a new, new election can be called.
Abbas is their only hope.

If Abbas stays on, the question of the Palestinian presidency will be relieved, even if only for the short term. That still leaves the question of the Parliament. Hamas now controls the Palestinian Parliament and Hamas is hoping for a new election because, according to all polls, Hamas will rout out Fatah for both Parliament and the presidency. Will the Council ask all parliament members to remain on, as well?

The Palestinian Liberation Organization's Central Council, in their infinite wisdom - or perhaps out of sheer desperation, has come up with a different solution. The PLO Central Council has suggested replacing outgoing elected members of Parliament with an appointed committee somewhat representative of the demographic reality and accountable to the president.

This is not a very good idea. The Palestinian Authority purports to be. This is a common practice in thugocracies, whether controlled by benevolent dictators or monarchs, which is what the Palestinian Authority is on the verge of becoming.

Do not get me wrong, I am not in favor of Hamas taking power and Hamas will most certainly get a landslide victory whenever the elections take place. But neither can I support a suspension of democracy because one does not like the potential results.

The political failure of Fatah and the PLO can be traced to the fact that they have never successfully shed their mantle of corruption and a reputation as politicians who hold office in order to better serve themselves, not their public. They have failed in their mandate to provide the Palestinian people with a vision for the future and have provided no alternative to poverty and despair.

Hamas will win not because the Palestinian people favor their form of government. Hamas will win because they will receive the anti-vote. They will receive the anti-Fatah vote and they will receive the anti-US/Israel vote. They will get those votes because there are still a significant number of Palestinians who respect Hamas for rejecting US and Israeli influence.

The PLO still has a chance. There is still time to sway those anti voters who are more discouraged by the status quo than they are pro-Hamas and the way to do that is through social not political means. The PLO must start providing services for the Palestinian people. But I don't think that the PLO will seize the opportunity and run with it. The PLO Council continues to make poor choices.

For example, look at the demand the PLO Central Council has laid down regarding the peace process: that the world recognize the Palestinian state within pre 1967 borders. Abbas, in his statement outlining the demand, made it perfectly clear that there can be no compromise on this issue, that the state be entirely within the 1967 border - without exception. The announcement runs contrary to years of dialogue. The dominant theme has always been that the 1967 border would be the model, and that when it became unfeasible the alternative would a land swap for mutually agreed upon land of equal size and arid-ability. That announcement dramatically set back the negotiation process and any hope for a resolution in the near future.

The Palestinian state will wait. But what about the election? Fatah and their PLO Central Council have a history of raising expectations to the point of unreasonable and creating situations where compromise is nearly impossible. They do not have a history of learning from their mistakes.

It's almost January and the parliament will soon disolve. Hamas is waiting in the wings. It's a problem, a big, big problem.

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Tuesday December 1, 2009

Column:

Many myths pervade the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. None is more powerful and more convincing than the claim made by the first and still most effective leader of the Palestinian cause. Yasser Arafat used to boast that the secret weapon of the Palestinian people is the Palestinian womb.

The assumption is that over time the Arab birth rate will outstrip the Jewish birthrate. The inevitable will simply happen, there will be a Palestinian Arab state within Israel - and Israel will cease to exist.

This myth is the foundation for much of the Israeli nationalist propaganda that espouses the transfer of Arabs out of Israel. And it is this myth that fuels the canard that Israel is a racist state that promulgates racist policies to maintain a Jewish majority. But myth are myths and statistics are statistics and the two rarely coincide.

Population surveys over the past decade paint a very different, a seriously different, picture of Arab population growth in Israel.

Muslim growth in Israel since 2000 has dropped from 3.8% per year to 2.8% per year in 2008. In real numbers that means that there are only 34,000 more Arabs in Israel today than there were a year ago. In round numbers there has been no change, the Arab population in Israel stands still at 1,240,000 people.

Even the fertility rate of Arab women in Israel dropped significantly over the past eight years. Fertility rate is number of children a women is expected to have in her lifetime. In 2000 that number was 4.7, in 2008 it is 3.8. Not surprisingly, the Arab population in Israel is young. 41 % is under the age of 15 and only 3% is over the age of 65. This is a very significant statistic because 7% of Arab married couples living in Israel are childless.

What does this all mean? It means that the Arab womb is not the secret weapon. It means that Israel is not in danger of loosing its Jewish identity. It means that one long time problem facing Israel is gone, off the table - but Israel still has many real and serious threats with which to contend. In addition to the threats Hamas and Hezbollah pose to Israel's physical existence, Israel is contending with the threat posed by Iran's expanding nuclear frontier.

And Israel has many challenges ahead. Israel has not yet found a balance between traditional society and modern democratic issues. And Israel must push that envelope in the fields of business and technology in order to continue to be a player in world markets in the decades to come.

Israel will struggle to make the mission and vision of an independent Jewish state exciting and attractive to future generations of Israelis. And hopefully, all Israelis, Jewish and Arab, will reap the rewards of Israel's struggles and Israel's triumphs.

Yasser Arafat is probably turning over in his grave.

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Wednesday November 25, 2009

Column:

In the areas of foreign outreach and diplomacy, Iran is masterful.

The Iranians are on a mission to build bridges across the world. They are creating alliances in places most Americans would be too geographically challenged to find on a globe.

President Ahmadinejad of Iran recently paid a visit to Bolivia, a very poor country in the Andes. Ahmadinejad was there to show support. More importantly, he was there to invest. Lithium is a natural resource, it is a very light weight metal and Bolivia possesses more than one half of the world's lithium.

Lithium is an essential component in the manufacture of long lasting batteries. It is not just used in flashlights and ipods, lithium is the element used for alternative energy car batteries and electronic devices like the computers that have come to control our world.

Ahmadinejad forged an alliance with a country that has been neglected and ignored by most of the world. And to secure that alliance, Ahmadinejad opened a hospital that Iran will fund and inaugurated two milk processing plants. And Iran will invest in investigating how to best move the lithium from the mines to the industries.

It was a subtle diplomatic exchange. In return for the extravagance shown his country by President Ahmadinejad, Bolivian President Evo Morales issued an extravagant statement proclaiming that Iran has the right to develop its own nuclear program without the intruding intervention of Western nations. Let's examine the balance: facilities that provide health and nutrition on one side, nuclear facilities on the other side. And both sides are happy.

Iran is running circles around the United States. In truth, Iran does not have to run very fast - US foreign policy has not even stepped off the starting gate when it comes to reaching out to countries with untapped natural resources, countries in need of the financing to capitalize on the natural gifts they have been given, countries that can enhance our own natural resources with theirs.

I have learned not to be surprised by the inactions of our foreign policy decision makers. I am surprised, however, that America's private investors did not lunge for lithium, one of the greatest sources of alternate energy.

Granted, many countries - primarily poor and underdeveloped countries, have a natural predisposition towards Iran and against the United States. These countries see the United States as exploitive and condescending. And Iran plays that card very successfully. But isn't that what diplomacy is all about?

If the United States government or interested parties from the United States or US investors had knocked on Bolivia's door before Iran arrived, Bolivia would have welcomed them in and gladly joined forces. Bolivia and countries like Bolivia choose to side with Iran because the United States has not provided them with the other option. In truth, these countries would rather follow the US model and be transformed into a mini United States than into a mini Iran.

I know why Iran has plotted this foreign policy path. I know why Iran is building these bridges. I do not understand why the US is not doing the same. This is a race for world domination and a race to have unrestricted access to necessary natural resources. It is also a race for the hearts and minds of the nations of the world.

It is a race that Iran is winning.

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My Tunnel Vision for Gotham and Gaza

by Steven Sher

Tough times make for strange bedfellows. Take the MTA's latest gambit to raise the subway fares and President Obama's initial overtures toward peace in the Middle East. The timing of both may pose that rare conjunction of events needed to instill hope among fiscally-challenged New Yorkers and to restore America to respected mediator status throughout the Middle East while alleviating the bleak situation of the world's self-proclaimed most suffering people.

If there is one positive that we can take from the recent war in Gaza, then it is that the Palestinians have a particular skill that would be a boon to New York. They know how to build tunnels. A great maze of tunnels. In a few short years, they have built and maintained one thousand tunnels in an area that is less than half the size of all of Gotham.

What if the MTA could bring a cadre of these two-legged burrowers to the boroughs?
Here is the ready-made, skilled labor that we need to complete projects such as the long-delayed Second Avenue Subway within the current budget. Bring them in as guest workers. Offer everything from green cards (Hamas colors: a nice touch) to private jets. This would have the added benefit of curtailing their attempts to sneak into America-s porous borders.

Say this about Hamas: they are the world's poster child for underground survival. And no workers are more cost-effective.The MTA can forgo expensive equipment in favor of pick-axes, mules and crude blasting tools.

U.S. cash would trickle back to Gaza too, jumpstart an economy decimated by an unemployment rate seven times greater than New York's and a crumbling infrastructure.

Moreover, the Arab world would see that we are serious about talking with terrorists. Perhaps it could lead to our inviting the Iranians to beef up our hometown nuke, Indian Point, make it impervious to attack, or our hiring private contractors such as al Qaeda as Park Service guides (no one knows caves and mountainous terrain better than they do) and Homeland Security agents (greeting each ship that docks in our ports).

Further, the more jobs we offer Hamas, the more quickly Gaza will be rebuilt, giving Israeli jets welcome new targets during the next incursion, thereby lessening the possibility of a ground invasion. Many lives will be saved.

Even the EU and the Arab League would have to admit that the U.S. is anything but a passive peace broker. President Obama can score big foreign policy points early in his tenure. Combatants in conflicts around the globe will vie for American contracts.

Think of the photo ops too: the celebrities who will venture down into the subway tunnels to pose with Hamas workers. Great goodwill will be restored.

Maybe we can get the Egyptians, those ancient admirers of massive public works projects, whose firsthand views of Gaza's tunnels make them the natural choice, to host the negotiations.

Just to be on the safe side though, the MTA had better dust off station cameras. Get out the metal detectors. Call in the National Guard. Recording to passengers: If you see an unattended backpack--take a cab.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Column:

The decision has been made to seek the death penalty for Khalid Sheik Mohamed and his co-conspirators for the attacks known simply as 9-11.

The decision has also been made, by the Army, to seek the death penalty for Major Nidal Malik Hassan, aka the Fort Hood Terrorist.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Attorney General Eric Holder and most of the media have weighed in with their opinions, advice and counsel. Most of the always heated discussions swirling around the 9-11 trial center on the decision to try the terrorists in the New York area, in the shadow of the downed World Trade Centers.

Those passionate discussions are certainly important, but there are other issues that concern me more than the venue of the trial.

I am concerned that these terrorists be afforded - even awarded, a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal. Civilian trials give defendants more power on issues of evidence, procedure and the all-important question of "beyond reasonable doubt" than do military trials. The threshold for conviction is much higher in a civilian trial than in a military trial. No matter how confident the Attorney General is about the case, every civilian trial is a crap shoot and this is one case neither he, nor we, can afford to lose.

And I am concerned about press coverage during the proceedings. The eyes of the world will be on this trial no matter where is it conducted, no matter if it is civilian or military, but the press will have a much more difficult time turning the trial into a media event if it is held in a military court than a civilian court.

In a military trial the defense does not subpoena witnesses, they must ask the prosecution to do so as a favor. In a military trial judge, jury and even the defense lawyers are part of the officer corps - they are people who are cogently aware of the significance of the trial and of the inherent dangers in confronting terror and the nuances of controlling terrorists and terrorist rhetoric. That, too, concerns me about a civilian trial.

But of all my concerns, what concerns me more than the venue, the latitude, the coverage and the guilt is the punishment.

These defendants want to die.

Last year Khalid Sheik Mohammed asked to stay his trial so that he could plead guilty and be executed. He wants to leave this world as a martyr, a shahid. And I have little doubt that the Fort Hood terrorist assumed he would be killed as he perpetrated his heinous acts of mass murder.

By seeking the death penalty we, the intended victims of their terror, are granting these terrorists their ultimate prize. We, the infidels, the non-believers, the targets and objects of their holy crusades, are granting them the ever after. We are elevating these men to great heights in their own eyes and in the eyes of their supporters around the world. We are accomplishing for them what they did not accomplish themselves.

Acts of terror warrant the most severe forms of punishment. But what happens when the punishment is the fulfillment of the original mission? Those terrorists who by surviving, failed in their mission, will be redeemed by their execution.

Of less concern to me but of import to the world of the terrorist is the stupendous cost of civilian trials. The al Qaeda web sites have underscored this time and again.

Try these terrorists. Convict them. Punish them. But do not try them in a civilian court. And do not reward them with death. And remember, a public trial provides a platform. And during the trial the methods we use to capture, monitor and bring terrorists to justice will be visible to all. We will be handing over our secrets to terrorist organizers who will monitor, learn and adjust their own training techniques. We will do it all in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

This time, in this case, that is not the right way to go.

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Tuesday November 10, 2009

Column:

The time has come to properly define the term terror.

The decision not to call the Fort Hood shooter a terrorist is self-delusional and self-deceptive. Nadil Malik Hassan is as much a terrorist as are those men and women who strap bombs on their bodies and enter crowded malls and restaurants. He is as much a terrorist as the people who drive explosive laden vehicles into marine barracks and through barricades. The only difference is the choice of weapon, the intent is the same.

Deliberately identifying murderous acts like the one perpetrated by Hassan as psychological breaks rather than calling them what they are - lone wolf terrorists, removes the threat from the sphere of security forces where it belongs and places it in the netherworld of law enforcement and forensics. Maintaining that self-delusion will, in the end, hurt the security of the United States and of United States citizens at home and abroad.

Here is the problem: The FBI defines a terrorist as a person who is part of a group or a participant in a conspiracy. That is a bias and the bias impedes investigations and precludes the need to understand individual terrorists who are influenced by the media or by their teachers and mentors.

The ostensible reason for not immediately classifying an act of terror as what it is - an act of terror, is to calm the masses. So, nine months after the El Al airlines terminal at LAX is shot up one July 4th by a lone Egyptian gunman with no links to any organization, the FBI finally classifies the shoot-out as an act of terror. Think about the uni-bomber, about Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

To require that a terrorist be a member of a group or a participant in a conspiracy eliminates the lone wolf terrorist. And the lone wolf is the hardest terrorists to stop.

Nadil Malik Hassan did not crack under pressure, just ask one of his colleagues, ask any psychiatrist. His was a premeditated act. He bought his laser sited high tech weapon the first week he arrived at Fort Hood. He plotted and planned his attack. He scoped his target. He knew where to go to wound and to kill the largest amount of people. He prayed early that morning. He said goodbye to his friends, went to the terror site, and prayed again. Then he began his mission of terror.

The Fort Hood shooter did not see his mission as mass murder or as a sin. This was a man who dedicated his life to helping others. And this was a man who saw life through the eyes and mind of a terrorist. The terrorist in him won out. The terrorist in him perceived his action as the fulfillment of his religious duties. That is why prayed and that is why all terrorists pray. They are not praying for forgiveness for murdering innocents and then committing suicide.

They pray that their act will be seen and received as the greatest act of faith. They pray to be accepted as martyrs, to become shahid, martyrs who die while fighting to protect Islam. There can be no doubt that Major Nadil Malik Hassan expected to be killed during his attack. - he began his shooting rampage by shouting "Allah hu Akhbar," God is great. Not dying is the worst indignity of all.

The actions of Hassan come right out of the al Qaeda handbook. They are in the section that deals with what we call Lone Wolf terror attacks. Perhaps he owned a copy of the CD, perhaps he was told about it, perhaps these behaviors come intuitively to a person warped enough to consider and commit an act of terror. The al Qaeda CD goes down a check list that includes saying goodbye to friends and family especially those with whom you pray. It also instructs to make certain that you explain that you will be going away, traveling. And it instructs to be sure to pray before perpetrating the act.

Calling the shoot out perpetrated at Fort Hood an act of terror is not an indictment of Islam or Muslims. It is only an indictment of those who support the act. Calling it terror recognizes the act for what it is and the perpetrator of the act for the terrorist that he is. Those who are offended are those who would justify and explain away terror as an act of rage. Those who explain it away are apologizing for terror.

There is no apology for terror.

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Thursday November 5, 2009

Column:

Internal divisions within the Muslim world are as old as Islam itself. Disputes and conflict have resonated throughout history. This period is no different.

Mecca is the holy most site in Islam. In Mecca sits the Kabbah, the focus of prayer for all Islam and the site to which 1, 400,000,000 Muslims from around the world many of whom make a pilgrimage there. The city of Mecca is located in Saudi Arabia and for some Muslims that is a problem.

There is a movement underway to reorient Islam away from Mecca. The person at the forefront of this movement is a well respected Iranian Shiite cleric named Ahmad Alam al Hadi.

This Shiite cleric has his supporters. Al Hadi is trying to convince the greater world of Islam that Muslims should not pray towards, nor visit holy sites in, Saudi Arabia or Iraq because those countries are controlled by infidels. He asserts that the leadership of Saudi Arabia is empty of Islamic value and interested only in its own self preservation. He asserts that Iraq is run by the West. And al Hadi attacks the prevalent form of Islam in Saudi Arabia, Wahabism, as extremism and as not representative of true Islam.

Ahmad Alam al Hadi proposes an alternative site. He suggests replacing Mecca, the centerpiece of Islam, with Mashhad. Do not pray to Mecca, he says, pray toward Mashhad. Do not make pilgrimage to Mecca, make pilgrimage to Mashhad. Reorient yourselves, he says, towards Mashhad which has been a spiritual capital of Islam for hundreds of years. These are very powerful statements coming from a respected religious leader and they have sparked significant debate.

The truth is that Mashhad is and has been a Muslim holy site, primarily for Shiite Muslims, but it also holds importance for Sunni Muslims. Al Hadi claims that Mashhad already accomodates 20,000,000 Iranian pilgrims and 80,000 foreign pilgrims every year and can certainly accommodate the greater onslaught of pilgrims who would be making their way to Iran.

On paper, the plan works. But Islam is not about progress or about change. Islam is about tradition. Even the use of the verb "to orient" is based on tradition. The word "orient" means "to the east." Every Muslim place of prayer contains a mikhrab, a prayer niche, and that prayer niche points in the direction of Mecca. Moving away from Mecca, replacing Mecca, would be a revolutionary move in the world of Islam - and a move that would foment an Islamic revolution.

The irony behind the choice of Mashhad as the new holy site in Islam should not be lost. Imam Raza, the 8th Imam and one of the most influential leaders in the development of Sufi Islam, is buried there. After Imam Reza was murdered in the year 818, probably poisoned to death, there was massive conflict over who should take control his Abbasid Empire. The fight was between his two sons. One son was the son of his Arab wife, the other was the son of his Persian wife. The Shiite Persian son won.

Internal historical conflicts between Islamic groups have very deep roots. So do linguistic traditions. Saudi Arabia is called the land of "Hijaz," an expression which really means the lands of the Hajj, the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. Iran can try to unseat Mecca as the holiest of holy sites, but they will fail - there are too many direct links to the Koran and Mohammed. When the move to change is approached from the perspective of serious Muslim scholarship which begins every investigation by examining the written word of the Koran and the teachings of the prophet Mohammad the argument to replace Mecca with Mashhad appears very, very weak.

Iran wants to take over the world. But first, the Iranians will have to conquer the Islamic world. This is a good - even if unsuccessful, try. They will try and try again. Iran does not shy away from conflict and dispute.

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Friday October 30, 2009

Column:

Once upon a time, there were many super powers. There was China, Russia and the Untied States. There was Great Britain, France and Germany. Now there is one super power. Iran.

We are not quite there yet, but we are pretty close.

Iran has successfully blind sided, out maneuvered and trumped not only the permanent members of the Security Council but also the rest of the United Nations, most of the Western world and the International Atomic Energy Agency. And none of them saw it happening and most of them still don't realize it has happened.

Just look at Iran's response to the draft agreement proposed to them regarding nuclear development. The countries offering the proposal - the UN Security Council members, truly believed they were handing Iran a dream package. They took a proposal originally initiated by Iran, re-wrapped it and handed it back on a silver platter.

According to this new/old proposal, Iran would send 75% of its uranium to France and Russia to be enriched. The uranium would be returned and Iran would use it for the purposes of cancer research conducted at a nuclear facility originally built by the United States. That uranium would be enriched at the low levels of 5%-8%. This deal would, at the same time, insure that Iran retains the right to develop nuclear technology and prevent the Iranians from increasing enrichment to the higher levels required to create a nuclear weapon.

The ultimate objective of the proposal was to gain time. The West would continue negotiations with Iran and if lucky, keep the discussion on-going for a year. In that year, hopefully, Iran would be prevailed upon to keep their nuclear program in the experimental scientific stages and Israel would become convinced that Iran is not a threat. The clock would slow down, pressure would be relieved, Israel would take the option of a military strike off the table for a while and the world would be a safer place all around.

And Iran turned down the proposal.

Not only did Iran turn down the proposal, but Iran turned it down a week after deadline. Iran was instructed to respond to the proposal by last Friday. They responded the following Thursday, following their own timetable and asserting their independence.

The Iranians know that they are in control. They know that they will survive sanctions and they laugh in the face of censure. Iran considers itself to be not an equal among nations, but a superior nation - and that is exactly how they conduct the business of diplomacy and the art of negotiations.

Iran has a counter proposal to the draft agreement that was put before them, an opening salvo to what will inevitably be a long series of negotiations during which Iran will probably, ultimately, receive most of if not everything Iranian leadership wants.

Iran countered by suggesting that the 75% of the uranium they are to send to France and Russia come out in stages, that they retain the ability to enrich uranium and that they have the right to import enriched uranium as they see fit. It is certainly an interesting counter proposal and not only because it flies in the face of pre-existing UN resolutions which forbid the exportation of nuclear materials to Iran. But, then again, Iran always labeled those resolutions illegal.

A large part of the world holds the United Nations in high esteem. Iran does not. A large part of the world either fears or respects the United States. Iran does neither. Iran knows how important it is not to draw Israel into an air strike, but they will handle that. And Iran has already figured out the problem of sanctions against them by instating a new monthly limit of 50 liters of gasoline per driver and by lining up gas imports from Venezuela and China.

It is time for world leaders to take Iran seriously. Otherwise, this story will not have a happy ending.

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Friday, October 23, 2009

Column:

The Goldstone Report fails on moral and legal grounds. I'll explain.

The Report's conclusion can be summed up in a few short words: Israel and Hamas should both be censored for crimes against civilians. Eleven words. It took Goldstone and his cohorts 875 pages to get there. Most of those pages were filled with harsh, damning critique of Israel and a carefully crafted attempt to create a sense of fairness - equating Israeli actions with those of Hamas.

The actions taken by Israel and the actions of Hamas are not equal and the same. Hamas is a terrorist operation fighting a terrorist campaign. Hamas leaders might be politicians, but they are first and foremost terrorist guerillas. Israel is a democracy, a country that wages war in order to provide a safe home for Israeli citizens. The Israeli army conducts wartime campaigns in a manner that is consistent with accepted military doctrine, it is an army that values the lives of soldiers and citizens alike - including the lives of civilians living among the enemy.

There are always mistakes made during wars. There are always situations that could have been handled better, or differently. There are always people who violate moral precepts. It happens in every war. But in the Israeli military they are isolated incidents and isolated individuals. The Goldstone Report portrays the opposite.

For better and for worse, Israel has always been held to a higher standard than her neighbors and the region and even to other democratic nations. Israel holds herself to a high and strict moral standard with a code of engagement that is written down and taught. That standard has evolved as times have changed and is evolving now, accommodating for new tools of war and changing methods of war. It is precisely because the Goldstone Report also holds Israel to that higher standard.

Mistakes that happened during the course of Operation Cast Lead must be acknowledged and corrected. The people responsible for those mistakes must be held accountable and responsibility should flow along the chain of command. Punishments should be meted out where required and restitution provided where appropriate.

That is not where the Goldstone erred.

The Goldstone Report erred because, if accepted as the Golden Standard for the Proper Practice of Warfare, it will become nearly impossible for the democratic world to fight the world of terror. And terror is the new face of war. Terror tactics have been insinuated into the tactics of conventional warfare and terror has its own set of laws and by laws, rules and permissible acts. And that is why the Goldstone Report will not win the vote of the Security Council, why China and Russia will vote against the Goldstone Report and why, by default, the Goldstone Report will not become a tool to indict Israel for war crimes in The Hague.

Russia and China understand how wars are now being fought. So does Israel. Goldstone does not.

And the Goldstone Report erred because the document does not differentiate between a defensive military operation and an offensive military action. It glosses over this vital distinction in a few paragraphs and focuses on only one element of the internationally accepted norms of warfare. It focuses on the military imperative to prevent civilian populations from becoming victims. And then it chastises Israel repeatedly for not doing enough to prevent injuries and deaths in the civilian Palestinian population. But it does not place adequate responsibility with Hamas for using human shields in order to better fight Israel. It does not chastise Hamas for hiding among civilian populations and for not wearing uniforms. Instead, it blames Israeli troops for using human shields.

In this war, in this defensive war, Israel's obligations shifted. Israel's objective was to eliminate the threat to Israeli citizens. During Operation Cast Lead that meant finding Hamas fighters and caches of Hamas' weapons and neutralizing them - and they were found among civilian populations, Palestinian populations.

The problems of fighting in the densely populated urban environment in which Hamas was hiding, commanding and fighting from behind civilians, was not dealt with in the Goldstone Report. That a moral obligation shifts in a defensive war when one party is hiding unidentified and uniformed behind innocent civilians was not dealt with in the Goldstone Report. That the moral obligation falls on the fighters who are hiding, in this case Hamas, was not dealt with in the Goldstone Report. But it is in international law. According to international law Hamas - not Israel - is morally and legally responsible for the deaths of civilians as Israel went in pursuit of Hamas fighters.

International law and morality warrant that an army does its most to prevent injury to civilians. And international law and morality recognize that Israel met those obligations by sending text messages in Arabic to the cell phones of the Palestinians in the areas being targeted and dropping leaflets written in Arabic in those areas.

War is different today than it was in the 1864 when Henri Dumont initiated the Geneva Conventions. Hamas and other terrorist organizations are responsible for many of those differences.

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Thursday October 15, 2000

Column:

Western democracies were pleased.

Mainstream Muslim Arab countries, countries described as non anti-Western, were coalescing and creating a free flowing block against the extremists in their midst. The movement was gathering momentum and would have inevitably pushed to destroy the more radical groups and states in the region. Even Iran would have been pressured into toning down the Shiite radical views that define Iranian culture and impact upon weaker countries in the Arab world.

The result would be a defacto easing of tensions in the region, the long sought after recognition of Israel and a gracious acceptance of United States involvement in Arab and Muslim affairs in the region

It was happening, it was happening - and then it stopped. And Middle East analysts and Israeli security experts have no idea why.

In an unexpected turn of events, the less extreme states of the Middle East are creating obstacles that serve to further distance them - rather than bring them closer - from the West and from Israel. The newly created alliances between the states is taking once moderate Muslim Arab countries and bringing them in line with radical and extremist points of view.

External manifestations of this shift are obvious and alarming. Turkey, a long standing pro-Western country, has befriended Syria, a breeding ground for extremism and terror. Saudi Arabia, a significant voice in the moderate, pro-West camp has made diplomatic forays into Syria. And Egypt, the big brother of the Middle East has brokered an agreement to unite warring Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas.

Internally, the shift has far reaching ramifications. Efforts are being made to alienate anyone who may have been open to friendly relations with Israel. A respected Egyptian magazine editor, an academic and ground breaking thinker named Hala Mustafa, is being kicked out of the national journalist association of Egypt because she met with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt. Ironically, the ambassador's name is Silvan Shalom - a name easily understood by the Arab world, a name that the Arab world would spell sallam.

Diplomats in the United States sense that the tide is turning away from them. George Mitchell, President Obama's Special Envoy to the Middle East, made his dissatisfaction with the current tone in the Middle East known to his Egyptian counterparts. He told them in no uncertain terms that the United States never envisioned nor intended for there to be reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Hamas was to be brought under control and minimized - not embraced and incorporated into the Palestinian government.

And nuanced thinkers in Israel are uncertain as to the reasons for this shift. Some will blame the Goldstone Report for condemning Israeli actions and for tarnishing Israel's military and humanitarian image. Others will lay blame with Operation Cast Lead. But even those excuses are not enough to warrant a shift of this nature.

The reason behind this massive shift away from the West - and embracing radical extremism is as far away as is possible, is the disappointment and frustration and resentment that the Muslim world feels towards the new American president. The Muslim world feels jilted by Obama. When Barack Hussein Obama took office the Muslim world had high hopes and immediate expectations. Those hopes and expectations remain unfulfilled.

The fact that the president of the United States has not put Israel in its place and has provided only lip service in support of the Palestinian cause has led many in the Arab world who had once been eager to adopt Western ways to instead swallow the Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah mantra that the new president is the same as the old president, he just has a different name.

The mainstream Muslim Arab world was hoping for something new and better. The hope they had felt has turned to betrayal. The Western world had better prepare for turbulent times.

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Friday October 9, 2009

Column:

Iran, under the leadership of The Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has successfully managed to outwit, outsmart and outmaneuver the Western world in both the diplomatic and military arenas.

Western democracies have obsessed over Iran's embracing of nuclear technology and race towards nuclear capability. And yet, Iran has managed to progress towards their nuclear goal unencumbered by international dictates and convention. Iran has built nuclear facilities, purchased nuclear materials and fooled nuclear inspectors and will soon be capable of making a nuclear bomb.

Iran has done it all by flying under international radar.

But Iran is not only flying under the radar, Iran is also, and very successfully, flying above the radar.

Iran is doing much more than breaking into the nuclear club. This week Iran announced that they will launch another missile, a different type of missile - a missile designed for space. Iran is engaged in a race that is bigger and more significant than the nuclear race. Iran has been racing towards "the final frontier" and all the while, the Western world has remained ignorant of their very calculated moves and the long term implications.

If successful, Iran will be able to use their missiles launched in space, aka satellites, for military intelligence. They will be able to control their weapons systems from miles up above the earth. If successful, the Iranians will be major players in space and they will be totally unhindered in their quest for international control.

Iran is making plans to launch this missile and then another missile into space within the next six months. According to Mohammed Ibrahimi, the head of Iran's Department of Space Exploration, "The Kavoshgar-3 missile will be launched into space by the end of the Persian year (which ends on March 20th) for the purpose of research." The Kavoshgar-3 is the new version of the Kavoshgar-2, the space rocket that Iran launched in December of 2008 during their last effort to enter space.

It is neither coincidental nor serendipitous that Iran is racing towards supremacy in both the nuclear and space arenas at the same time. The overlap between the space and nuclear programs is fundamental.

There is one stumbling block that has encumbered Iran's nuclear program. Even more difficult than enriching uranium is the ability to successfully deliver nuclear warheads - and that is exactly where the space program and the nuclear program overlap. A successful space program will facilitate a successful delivery system.

The same long range missile technology that will send a rocket into space will be the technology that Iran uses to deliver a nuclear warhead to Israel or to any other Western target around the world.

The race began in 1998 when Iran began research into the Shabbab-4. Ostensibly, the rocket was to be used to attack Israel but over the past eleven years Shabbab-4 plans were scrapped and all energies were focused on the Shabbab-3, a better, faster, longer missile with much better controls. The Kavoshgar is an outgrowth of that program.

The Iranian race towards supremacy in space is as big a story as is their race towards nuclear capability - and just as scary and as foreboding. But no red flags have been waving, no statements of condemnation have been issued and no investigations have been conducted.

The Western world has fallen asleep, The Grand Ayatollah and the Iranian president are wide awake and racing ahead.

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Thursday October 1, 2009

Column:

Do you know what a quagmire is?

A quagmire is the Middle East right now, a quagmire is the situation the Israeli and Palestinians are stuck in right now. A quagmire is the situation that the Obama White House, however unwittingly and unintentionally, created in the name of peace.

President Barack Obama and his band of advisors embraced the Israeli/Palestinian peace process with gusto and zest, but with very little understanding of the players, the playing ground and the process. The White House does not yet comprehend the value of language and symbols as they apply to the Middle East. And that is a problem. And now Israelis and Palestinians are even further behind in the process of making peace than they were before the last US election. The White House doesn't even realize the mess they have caused.

It all began with lofty goals and good intentions.

The White House wanted to invigorate the peace process. Since the inauguration in January, the new administration repeated - and repeated and repeated, the need to freeze all construction in Israeli settlements. It was their mantra. The Arab world responded with a great hadad!, which means hurray! in Arabic. Finally, they thought, the United States gets it.

In fact, the United States did not get it at all. The United States President did not understand that he was repeating the Palestinian mantra. He did not understand that freezing all settlements is the Palestinian mantra. He did not understand that for the Palestinians settlements are not buildings and roads, schools and post offices, for the Arab world settlements are a symbol.

President Obama did not understand that, for years, settlement construction has been used as the most licentious and destructive obstacle to an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Instead, the new administration embraced a vibrant chant and called for a settlement freeze, insisting that even one new nail would be a violation of the concept of settlement freeze.

The administration would soon discover that things in the Middle are seldom one dimensional. The US made it clear that past promises, even promises in writing to Israel regarding settlements, would not be honored - and they thought they were nearing a real breakthrough. But the reality was that now the sides were not talking to each other. President Obama had created a sin qua non for the start of dialogue. The attempt to pressure Israel to come to the table was failing.

In the period before the US election, when Ehud Olmert was prime minister of Israel, the parties were speaking and there were no preconditions. Now, The President of the United States said no to construction in the settlements, the Israeli said to no that decree and the Palestinians were saying that they had the blessings of the United States not to come to the peace table because the Israelis were not in compliance.

What was President Obama to do? He back peddled. He sent George Mitchell, his special envoy, to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in London. Netanyahu explained that he could get his government to agree to a settlement freeze, but. The but was - Jerusalem is not a settlement. The but was that there were 2,500 apartments in Jerusalem that were already under construction.

Mitchell called Washington and it was agreed that a good compromise had been reached, not construction, except in Jerusalem. After all, an effective compromise is one in which both sides give a little, both sides feel that they have been gypped a little and both sides shake hands.

The Arab world was offended. Jerusalem is not only a settlement, it is a symbol. And there is no compromising on a symbol. Palestinians were up in arms, the Arab world felt betrayed.

And Obama back peddled some more. During the United Nations General Assembly in New York the US president scaled back his language. He did not insist on a total settlement freeze. Arabic papers saw it as a major retreat - and that retreat caused the Palestinians to increase their absoluteness and their insistence that no settlement means no settlement.

And that is where the situation remains today. Settlements might or might not be frozen, but the peace process certainly is. Now there must be a calming down period which must, by definition, delay any reconciliation. Not exactly what President Obama had in mind.

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Thursday September 17, 2009

Column:

Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident, former minister within several governments of Israel, present head of the Jewish Agency and acknowledged chess pro, once said to me, when referring to the conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors "they are playing with us chess and we are playing with them checkers."

The long time politician, the man who once beat the famous Kasparov, was not paying Israel a compliment.

I was reminded of Sharansky's succinct summary of inept and ineffective foreign affairs and diplomatic maneuverings as I assessed the reaction of the United States of America to the proposal put forth by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

At best, it's a joke.
In the end, the joke will be on us.

There is no logic in the decision by the United States to accept the proposal put forth by Iran as a foundation upon which to begin negotiations. No logic and no mental contortions will convince me that this is a sound, thought through decision by the greatest power in the Western world.

When the Iranians declared that they were preparing a proposal, I knew it would fall short of any serious dialogue on the issues. Unfortunately, I was not disappointed. I read all five pages, well, almost five pages. The document not only falls short in content and depth, it even falls short in length.

The Iranian proposal is well scripted, diplomatic spin.
Iran does not admit that there is a problem. Not once does Iran speak about itself or its nuclear technology. Instead, it spews forth on issues of justice and freedom. It condemns the empires that promote a double standard in the world. The Iranians even, unabashedly, go so far as to volunteer to be part of a dialogue to rectify these injustices.

Iran titled the document "Cooperation for Peace, Justice and Progress." It begins with the words "In the Name of the Almighty." By the second paragraph Iran comes straight to the point. It reads: "Resolution of these problems and creating a world filled with spirituality, friendship ... prosperity, wellness and security requires reorganization and creating an opportunity for broad and collective participation in the management of the world." From there the document cum proposal goes on and on about reorganizing the world - in other words, about ousting the United States and removing all traces of Western orientation.

There is not one word about Iranian nukes. There is not one word about the issue at hand. This proposal should have been publicly dismissed as a non-starter. It was not. On the contrary, it was embraced by the Obama Administration. The Iranians knew what was expected of them, made their own calculation and chose to solve the problem by saying that the problem is not with them but with United States domination of the world.

That the United States accepted this high falutin' gobbly gook at face value and will now use it as a foundation for serious dialogue to help bring the world back from the brink of a nuclear Iran - is simply ludicrous. Iran wants to focus on the sins of America. Iran wants to focus on the problems inflicted on the world because of America. Iran does not want to talk about what Iranian President Ahmadinejad calls Iran's "inalienable rights," Iran's inalienable rights to develop nuclear technology. Yes, the Iranian president had the gall to borrow a phrase from United States President Thomas Jefferson and turn it on the United States.

The situation goes from ludicrous to surreal.
In a recent Friday sermon the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei said that Iran would love to talk to the United States and other Western countries about issues related to nuclear development in the world. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the Ayatollah will ever allow any discussion about Iran's nuclear development. He will not.

Add to that the diplomatic coup pulled off by Iran at the 53rd annual meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. The function of the IAEA is to be the nuclear watch dog of the United Nations. Iran proposed and successfully passed a resolution that makes it illegal to attack a nuclear site. The resolution was so resoundingly approved that it received the equivalent of the IAEA stamp of official approval.

Secretary of State Clinton pointed out that during the October 1st meeting between Iranian and US officials the discussion will cover nuclear issues. Clinton said she expects serious responses to the tough questions that will be raised. Don't expect too much. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, media adviser for Ahmadinejad, said that Iran will not tolerate threats. He said that accepting Iran as a nuclear power was the "first step" toward normalizing relations with the US and with the West.

How quintessentially Iran.
How distressingly American.

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Wednesday September 9, 2009

Column:

One wears tailored suits, the other wears leisure suits. One wears silk ties, the other sports open colors. Despite their apparent differences, they are cut of the same cloth.

Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad despise everything Western. Most of their venom is aimed at anything emanating from the United States. Destroying the West and especially the United States is their individual and united goal. If these leaders of Venezuela and Iran cannot bring down the United States militarily, they will do everything in their collective power to do it diplomatically. It is the glue that holds this unlikely pair together. It is the reason that Chavez has just completed his eighth visit to Iran.

The war against terror is not over, it has taken another, expanded, form. Eight years after 9/11 the West still has enemies. The United States is still being plotted against. Our enemies are not sleeping, neither should we.

Hugo Chavez, the despotic leader of Venezuela, has just concluded a four day trip to Iran. Chavez and the tyrannical Ahmadinejad smiled and shook hands for the camera. And they initiated a new set of deals that will not only propel their relationship forward but that will also, and perhaps more importantly for them, fortify a new bulwark against the United States and the West.

As part of his eleven day trip abroad Chavez also visited Libya, Syria and several European nations including Spain, Russia and Belarus. But Iran was the most important stop of all, because it was in Iran that an outright plan to topple the West was meticulously planned and proudly, publicly, proclaimed.

It goes without saying that Venezuela is wholeheartedly in favor or a nuclear Iran and will do everything to support it and make it happen. Chavez publicly praised Iran for standing up the United States and not giving in to US "blackmail." That alone would be unsettling, not threatening. The plan, in their own translated words, has Chavez and Ahmadinejad creating a "multi polar world" to confront US influence. As Chavez so succinctly put it, we are "facing the same enemy, which is the U.S. empire and its lackeys. And we will defeat the empire and its lackeys."

Those are fighting words. This is not wishful thinking or even grandstanding. Chavez and Ahmadinejad have a plan and they are about to implement that plan. Three agreements, building blocks for the plan, emerged from this trip.

The first is the creation of a mutual Iranian-Venezuelan bank in Caracas with an already pledged $200 million dedicated to mutual investment.

The second is a promise by Chavez to export 20,000 barrels of refined oil to Iran every day. That agreement sidesteps the pressure that the United States was planning to bring upon all potential local oil suppliers to Iran.

The third is the decision to mutually dedicate $750 million towards sharing energy technology.

Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are serious. The objective is to unseat the United States as the most significant diplomatic and economic power in the world. During a press conference broadcast on Iranian TV Chavez, standing alongside Ahmadinejad, proclaimed that our "important mission is to help the oppressed and revolutionary nations and to expand the anti-imperialist front in the world." The oppressed and revolutionary nations are other, smaller nations united in their distrust of the United States, aka the imperialist front.

They will use existing organizations like the United Nations and the Nonaligned Pact, a group of 118 nations who are, by their very definition, at odds with the United States, to achieve their ends. The vast majority of UN members are against the US policy. During the upcoming General Assembly we will see will see Venezuela and Iran coddle up to those nations and convince them to support their plan.

No, the war on terror has not ended. It has just taken a deeply disturbing turn. Sticks and stones won't break the United States or the West, but these words are sending a loud and clear message.

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Wednesday September 2, 2009

Column:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is telling us that the United States has not yet heard back from Iran regarding the mid-September deadline to negotiate.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, was quoted on Tuesday on Iran's Arabic TV network al Alam, saying that Iran now has a counter proposal and is ready to negotiate with the West.

I expect that an Iranian response will be forthcoming. I do not expect it to be a very mature or well delineated response.

The clock is ticking.

The Iranians are game players and they derive great pleasure from beating the West at its own games. There is a long history of gaming between the United States and Iran and just because Barack Obama is new to the game, the Iranians are not about to cut him any slack.

Iran plays to win. As the deadline crept closer and Western threats of more significant sanctions against Iran became more realistic, Iran opened its doors to the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency). Feigning nuclear transparency, Iran allowed international nuclear inspectors from the United Nations to inspect their nuclear facilities. To the uninitiated game player, it appeared as if Iran was complying with international demands.

The report composed by the IAEA indicated that Iran was indeed becoming more transparent, more willing to divulge their nuclear plans and capabilities. According to the report Iran has slowed its uranium enrichment program, but that observation raises several red flags because there is also credible information indicating that Iran has investigated the technology necessary to produce nuclear weapons.

The end result is that, by allowing inspectors to enter Iran when the timing was right for Iran and not a minute before, Iran may successfully sway the majority of Western nations into believing that they are, indeed, playing by the rules of the nuclear game. And in the statement that Iran released in response to the IAEA report Iran maintains that now there is proof positive that Iranian intentions are peaceful - just as they have been claiming all along,

There are still two options open to Western nations, two means by which the West can force Iran to not only abandon the pretense of conformity but, and more importantly, to abandon the race to develop nuclear weapons. The first option involves the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. They are the only countries in a position to convincingly threaten Iran, the only countries with the muscle and the backing to carry through on their threats of sanctions. The problem with this otherwise august group is that they are united in indecision.

The unofficial spokesperson for those Security Council member countries most skeptical of US/Western policy regarding Iran is Russia. Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, made it very clear that the way to handle the Iranian nuclear issue is not through military strikes but through diplomatic means.

The problem with this option is that it plays right into Iran's hands. The Iranians have proven themselves extremely adroit at out-maneuvering the United States and the West in diplomatic games.

The best example of this is the way in which Iran has co-opted the IAEA by proposing that the next IAEA meeting they initiate legislation that would condemn any military strike against any nuclear facility in the world. The move is a perfect block against Israel and the United States. It is no secret that Israel feels most threatened by Iran's nuclear potential and has a defensive, pre-emptive strike plan in the works.
Legislation of this kind within the UN's atomic energy body will certainly pass.

In the end, Israel will be condemned for conducting a defensive raid and Iran will waltz away unscathed, uncensored and un-sanctioned for aggressively producing the nuclear material in the first place. And when it happens, the majority of UN member nations will side with Iran against Israel - especially because regardless of the veracity of their findings, Iran has opened its doors to nuclear inspection. Iran needs international support in order to stand up against the United States and in putting forth this legislation Iran has found the way to force the US to back down.

The second option involves taking advantage of one of Iran's few vulnerable points. Iran may be the fifth largest exporter of crude oil in the world, but yet, about half of Iran's gasoline must be imported.

Iran is heavily dependent on refined oil. They import from all over, but most of all, they import locally from Arab countries. And these Arab countries, like the West, view a nuclear Iran as a significant threat. Actually, almost every Arab country in the Middle East considers Iran to be the most significant internal and external threat that they regularly confront.

The Arab countries of the Middle East, Iran's neighbors, must be convinced to shut down the refined oil spigot and to turn off the energy switch. Then, and only then, will the West have any real leverage and any chance at influencing Iran and having the Iranians adjust their nuclear policy to one that the world can live with.

The game is not over and time is running out.

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August 26, 2009

Column:

Being nice is not always the best policy.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill was the driving force behind the decision to free Abdel Baset al Megrahi, the Lockerbie terrorist. The Libyans lobbied the Scotts long, hard and well. They charmed the Scotts and made them great promises. Libya said many things in order to secure the release of Megrahi. And then they played the trump card. Megrahi was old, he was sick, he was dying.

And once the mass murderer from Libya was free, Libya laughed in the face of the world. All bets were off. All promises were null and void. They had their man and that was all that ever mattered.

Right now the justice minister from Scotland is blistering. He feels, correctly enough, used by the Libyans. The Libyans did not live up to their bargain. But why would anyone ever expect them to? History and experience have proven over and over that Muammar Ghadaffi is not to be trusted. It was, after all, the Libyan government's intelligence branch that planned and executed the Lockerbie terror attack - Megrahi was merely the figurehead of the deadly operation.

On December 21, a Wednesday in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 took off from Heathrow Airport in London bound for the US. The jet liner blown up just after it reached about 31,000 feet. All two hundred and seventy people aboard the plane were murdered, blown up by a bomb that had been planted on the Pan Am plane. What remained scattered over an, until then little known, city called Lockerbie, Scotland.

Many of the victims, one hundred and seventy of them, were Americans. Most of those were students from Syracuse University returning home after completing a semester abroad learning about different cultures and traditions, learning about people who are different from Americans. The bomb was brought onto the plane by Megrahi's girlfriend. She, too, was a passenger on the plane -carrying a parting gift given her by Megrahi, a tape recorder with a bomb planted inside. Abdel Baset al Megrahi thought nothing of using his girl friend as his mule, as a tool with which he could transport his murderous weapon. And he thought nothing of sending her to her death.

Libya just recently took responsibility for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and has made restitution to the families of the victims, the exact settlement sums are still undisclosed. Libya owned up to the terrorist attack because now the Libyans have decided to embark on another mission. Libya has tried and tried successfully to get out of the international doghouse in which they have been placed. Accepting responsibility for the event over Lockerbie went a long way towards proving their new intentions, especially in the view of the United States State Department.

On January 31, 2001 Megrahi was convicted in a Scottish court and sentenced to life in a Scottish prison. Nowadays, Scotland is trying to become independent of the United Kingdom. The Scots want to assert themselves and show that they will not genuflect to either 10 Downing Street or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And so, when Libya approached the government of Scotland about freeing Megrahi it sounded like the perfect opportunity. It would be even better if Scotland secured trade deals with Libya along with the release, that would be sure proof that the Scots can be independent and effectually, stand on their own as a country.

Scotland agreed to release Megrahi on humanitarian grounds because he was dying of terminal prostate cancer. Libya promised to keep Megrahi's release quiet and not to turn the terrorist's return home into a media spectacle.

Libya lied. Megrahi came home to a hero's welcome. Parades, cheering crowds and the son of Muammar Ghadaffi were all there to greet the returning murderer. Libya reneged on the promise and Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill was shocked.

Perhaps the justice minister should have consulted with the health minister. Just because someone has a terminal illness and is "supposed" to die does not mean that that person is on a deathbed and dying. Sheik Ahmed Yassin comes immediately to mind.

Sheik Yassin was known as the blind Sheik. Confined to a wheelchair and imprisoned in Israel, he was the spiritual leader of Hamas. Yassin was released from prison, traded back to the Palestinians and returned to Gaza. Why? Because everyone was convinced that the blind Sheik was on his deathbed, they believed that he had only a few days left to live. Five years and many terrorist attacks later Israel targeted Yassin in a helicopter gunship raid that brought down the Sheik and the entire building he was in.

People who murder hundreds of other people should not get humanitarian reprieves. Terrorist are not entitled a break. Terrorist are not like other criminals.

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Wednesday August 19, 2009

Column:

All of us, regardless of our profession, have an obligation first and foremost to tell the truth. Journalists, columnists, professional observers and commentators bear that responsibility a bit more heavily than do people in other professions. As do politicians.

I am fond of saying that I am an equal opportunity critic. We all have a point of view and that point of view colors our approach to almost every issue we discuss and every action we take. One of the ways I carry out my obligation to tell the truth is by monitoring the actions and words, the deeds and decrees, of world leaders and when I find fault with them, I point that out to the public.

It seems appropriate now, as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and President Barack Obama sit in Washington, DC rehashing the problems of the Middle East to take a long, hard look at why the constant pursuit of a resolution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict flounders in a sea of perpetual failure.

There are many truths in the Middle East and each one is born out of bias - cultural bias, historical bias and religious bias. For almost everyone in the Middle East and involved with the Middle East that bias is more than a predilection for or against, it is a bias that colors their entire approach to events and distorts their ability to critically analyze those events. When it comes to the peace process especially, the distortion can be seen in the Arab and Muslim worlds, in the Israeli and Jewish worlds, and in the Western world.

Journalism, by its very nature, lends information and shapes opinions. A propagandist cannot be objective, a propagandist is blinded by bias. Most journalists in the Arab world, more than in Israel and more than in the West, are propagandists.

In the Arab world there is no real journalism because there cannot be real journalists. They may carry the title "journalist" but in order to survive, they must act like propagandists. In the Arab and Moslem worlds there are nearly no democracies and there is almost no such thing as a free press. It is dangerous to write about or report on certain events on Monday which could get you arrested on Tuesday for writing. In these dictatorships the press, which is government controlled and sponsored, is in many ways a vehicle to control the masses. There are very few exceptions.

The Arab and Moslem worlds feed on conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel. About how Jews murder and steal, about how they destroy and gobble up Arab land. The Jewish and Israeli worlds feed off of paranoia and conspiracy theories too, but to a lesser extent.

Israelis and Jews tend to find anti-Semites lurking about and poking their heads everywhere. Looking at the world through the perspective of anti-Semitism is not only disturbing, it drastically narrows your perspective and limits any real learning. As a result, Israelis become incapable of seeing that sometimes they are the unrealistic party in terms of demands and expectations. Thinking that every stand is a Masada, that every stand is the last stand, and that every decision is one of survival can significantly bring creative problem solving to a halt.

History and culture are hard to unlearn. They bear a large part of the responsibility for the conspiracy addicted Middle East and for the conspiracy lore that has invaded the thinking of Western democracies involved with the Middle East. It will take formal re-education programs to change the foundations upon which these biases are grounded, and that process takes time.

For the here and now, there is a way. To forge a resolution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict it is only necessary to deal with a small handful of issues. Neither side must love the other - that will never happen. Both sides must agree only to abide by the other, to agree not to kill each other and to stop those others who want to kill them. It will not solve all the problems of the Middle East, but it will bring about peaceful coexistence.

The West has its own bias about the Middle East. Western leaders and by extension Western journalists believe that the panacea for the entire Middle East is the resolution of the conflict between the Israeli and the Palestinians. That is simply delusional. It is an erroneous conclusion based on exclusively Western thought, perception and deep misunderstanding. The problem is much larger than Israelis and Palestinians. The problems between Shiites and Sunnis will remain whether or not the Palestinians live in peace with Israel, but the West has yet to reflect on that truth. And yes, the US presidential election was also impacted by bias and conspiracy theory. The United States is not totally immune.

Without a thoughtful critical press, without insightful view without a truthful approach there can never really be progress. Like everyone else, I too have a bias, but I can say in all honesty that I try to see the varied truths and untruths of all sides.

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Wednesday August 12, 2009

Column:

The 6th Fatah Conference that took place in Bethlehem has come to its conclusion. Phew. There were fireworks, but thankfully, they were only metaphorical.

The Conference was fraught with back stabbing and internal bickering. The single most important objective for most participants was to create blocks of voters insuring that their chosen candidates would sit in one of the one hundred and twenty coveted seats on the Revolutionary Council or one of the twenty allotted seats on the Executive Council. It was all politics, back room deals and disappointments.

The last Fatah Conference was held twenty years ago. In principle, this Conference was all about new ideas, new steps to be taken to forward the Palestinian cause and new leadership. In reality, much of the Conference was a rehash of the old days and a throwback to the reign of Arafat.

Two major votes were taken in Bethlehem and they both went off smoothly and predictably. In a vote taken shortly after the proceeding began the entire plenary unanimously voted that Israel was responsible for the murder of Yasser Arafat.
After that there was a vote by acclamation to renew the positions held by Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority and as leader of the Fatah movement. The vote was only in the affirmative and it was conducted by a show of hands. The intention was to make it impossible to gauge how many people neglected to raise their hands and who they are. The result is that Conference publicists are proudly claiming that Abbas has unanimous and undisputed support for his next term.

Elections for the twenty seat Executive Council were almost as unsurprising as the earlier votes. Before the Conference began, analysts predicted that if the old guard were to be replaced with a new guard, the 6th Fatah Conference would be a success. At its conclusion it became evident that the new guard is not that new and that its members, while not octogenarians like Abbas, are growing old.

Ten members of the old guard ran for positions on the Executive Council, five of them won. One big loser came as a surprise, he is Ahmed Qurei the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat also known as Abu Ala. Queria's loss was an undoubted blow to the old guard. But many of the new people elected were recycled, ex-Arafat players and advisers.

Jibril Rajoub is fifty six years old and under Arafat he served as head of security for the PA. Rajoub was both feared and revered. Mohammed Dahlan is a tall, dashing, well dressed and impeccably groomed fifty four years old. He was the head of security in Gaza and is thought of as the arch enemy of Hamas and the symbol of Fatah in Gaza. He is also the person that many West Bankers blame for Fatah's sound defeat at the hands of Hamas in Gaza. The Gaza coup took place while Dahlan was out of Gaza on vacation and no security infrastructure was in place to stem the bloodshed and prevent the takeover.

Marwan Barghouti was elected to the Executive Council, but as of now, he is unable to serve. Barghouti, an "anti-intellectual intellectual" who often sported leather bomber jackets and work boots is a prisoner in Israel. Barghouti, former head of the Tanzim, the Fatah military wing in the West Bank, was tried and convicted for orchestrating five terrorist attacks. Even though he has been out of the political fray for several years, Barghouti is by far the most popular political personality in the West Bank.

Neither Jibril nor Dahlan nor Barghouti are to be considered politically liberal. They were the "iron fist" that enabled Arafat's rule. As leaders they believe in pursuing peace but not in achieving compromise. And yet, Israel is being asked to release Barghouti as a gesture of good faith that will also shore up the more liberal aspects of the Palestinian society.

Barghouti is in favor of living side by side with Israel but only within the '67 borders - without a single exception. Dahlan has said that he does not recognize Israel. Rajoub is the most practical of anyone in the new old guard. He wants a Palestinian state but is schooled enough to understand that he cannot force it.

Optimists were hoping that new blood would re-invigorate the Fatah organization making it more of a political organization and less of a military organization. That did not happen. Realists hope that Fatah does not implode and is strong enough to fend off internal threats from Hamas.

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Wednesday August 5, 2009

Column:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was officially appointed to his second term as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran in a nationally televised ceremony that came complete with pomp and circumstance. The Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, presided over the ceremony. After being graced by The Supreme Leader, the new second term president kissed the Ayatollah's robe and then kissed his shoulder.

This gesture by the president to The Supreme Leader displayed a very formal, very reserved, sense of respect.

Flashback four years.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was officially appointed as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran in a nationally televised ceremony that came complete with pomp and circumstance. The Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, presided over the ceremony. After being graced by The Supreme Leader the new president kissed the Ayatollah's hand and cheek.

In the Middle East, much more so than in the Western world, gestures make a difference. In the Middle East, gestures tell a story.

More than time separates these two ceremonial events. Four years ago Ahmadinejad was able to show respect to The Supreme Leader coupled with warmth and closeness. Four years later, he showed respect. The warmth is gone, the closeness is no longer there.

A kiss on the hand and a kiss on the cheek demonstrate closeness and warmth. A kiss to the shoulder and to the robes demonstrates distance. It shows fear. It shows hierarchy and deference.

During the first ceremony the president was saying through gesture and gesture alone that together we - The Supreme Leader and I - will rule. Days ago, as he was inaugurated for his second term, the president showed acceptance of the true reality of his position. The true ruler of Iran is the Ayatollah and the Ayatollah truly rules alone. He, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retains his position purely through the graces of The Supreme Leader and for no other reason.

Communicating through gesture is not unique to the Middle East. The difference is that in the Middle East body language does not need interpretation, it is intentional and specific. Leaning forward during a conversation is as significant as leaning back - and it is intentional. Crossing one's legs and showing the sole of one's shoe during conversation is a sure and deliberate sign of disrespect - and when done it is done with intent and with malice. Crossing one's legs with the toe pointed down, however, is a relaxed expression that says lets continue talking, it is especially cordial if accompanied with the gesture of leaning forward and placing one's hands on knees.

Kissing on one cheek or on two cheeks or two kisses on the right hand is a shorthand form of conversation in the Middle East. They are ways in which Middle East Arabs and Persians convey both a sense of affection and an appreciation of status and stature.

A kiss on the cheek means that you are close to that person in soul, in blood and in stature. You kiss the hand of someone who is your superior and you kiss the cloak of someone who is your superior. The cloak is significant in the Middle East because it symbolizes the dust, sand and dirt that would be picked up on the hem of the desert ruler's robes. The hands of the leader are clean and should not be tarnished by a commoners' kiss.

Hand shaking is not a part of Middle East culture, it is a tradition that became incorporated into Western tradition because of Roman tradition. The Romans were all right handed and held their daggers in the left waist of their togas. Their right hand was their dagger hand and so extending it to shake meant that it was a greeting, it meant that the right hand was unarmed and there was no intention to do harm.

In the case of The Supreme Leader and Ahmadinejad we are seeing a president who is clearly contrite. Ahmadinejad was, through gesture and gesture alone, asking forgiveness. The Supreme Leader was creating significant distance. He was letting the entire population of Iran know that he was unhappy with Ahmadinejad's behavior. It was clear to all of Iran that Ahmadinnejad had disregarded a direct order from The Supreme Leader in regard to his vice president. And despite his support of Ahmadinejad in the elections, challenging The Supreme Leader at any time is unacceptable.

Their relationship will mend. Over the past four years Ahmadinejad has on several occasions attempted to wrestled decision making and other powers from The Supreme Leader. At times he succeeded, other times he failed, but in the end it was always success because he Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah, permitted his president to succeed.

The Ayatollah is in charge and Ahmadinejad knows it. We should know it, too.

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Wednesday July 29, 2009

Column:

The young people of Gaza are no different than young people anywhere. They just live under a different set of rules.

Gaza has been under Hamas rule ever since June 2007, when Fatah, the Palestinian ruling party, was booted out in a brutal coup. In several subsequent massacres, Hamas has continued killing off Fatah members living in Gaza.

Summertime in Gaza presents it own unique form of torture. On a normal day the temperatures reach 105 - 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The only reprieve from the sweltering heat in dusty, over crowded Gaza is the beach and the water spouts. Everyone, religious Muslims and secular Muslims, flock to the Gaza beaches in the early evening searching for cool Mediterranean breezes and wet, refreshing waves.

That behavior is about to change. Hamas has begun a religious coercion ritual and initiated a "campaign of virtue." Hamas wants the people of Gaza to live Muslim style lives. One of the most obvious ways of judging that lifestyle is through outward dress and appearance and one of the most obvious places to determine whether or not that behavior is religiously observed is on the beach.

I travel often. I speak at colleges and universities around the country. I lecture to varied communities throughout North America. Periodically, self-described Hamas supporters attend my campus lectures.

The first time this happened I was thrown off balance - but just for a quick second. Then it became clear to me, it made sense. It was not that these students were actively pro-Hamas, they were vehemently anti-Israel.

Most of my potential hecklers have no idea what Hamas really stands for, no knowledge of Hamas' principles or ideology. All they know is that Hamas preaches the ruination and total destruction of Israel, and for them, that is enough. Once I figured it out, it became easy for me to talk to these students and to address them directly. I know what Hamas stands for. And I know that Hamas is very oppressive towards other Palestinians.

I also know that Hamas is first and foremost an extremist religious movement. Only after that is Hamas a terrorist movement. Internal Palestinian politics trump external issues every time. And this is the prefect case scenario.

Hamas wants people to dress modestly and will without hesitation arrest those who violate the law. Hamas' understanding of their position of political authority is directly linked to Iran. In this case, the fact that Iran's religious authority is Shiite and Hamas' religious authority is Sunni makes no difference. Hamas wants to exert that same power and control over their people as Iranian religious leadership exerts over theirs.

Iran has a set of modesty laws that also kick into high gear in the summer, the time when people shed their clothing and with them their political and religious inhibitions. In Iran people are arrested for violating the code and their families are hauled off to jail. In Gaza the virtue police have limited their actions to intimidation, public beatings and humiliations.

Hamas has already demanded that female lawyers wear scarves in court. They have demanded that female mannequins be totally covered. Now they demand that all women be covered up on the beach. Single men and women are forbidden to cohort on the beach.

For good measure Hamas is also demanding that on the beach, men wear shirts. A lifeguard was told by plainclothes security to dress more Islamic and instructed to wear a shirt and have knee length pants. A young man on the beach was emphatically told to remove his rings and his bracelet because they were Western and under Hamas, all Western styles and influences are shunned.

Gaza is gearing up for a culture clash. These are issues that arise annually, but much more so this year as Hamas police patrol the beaches and enforce the new, stricter rules. As the heat builds and the beach becomes more of a magnet, tensions and tempers overheat. Anyone who knows young people knows that today's youth march to a very different cadence than do adults and that rules are meant to be broken.

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Wednesday July 22, 2009

Column:

Americans tend to think of terror as a snake. Slithering, scaly, poisonous, deadly. The analogy works, but only if you think of terror not as a dangerous python or a venomous cobra, it works if you think of terror as the hydra - the many headed serpent from Greek mythology. The monster that was slain by the Greek god Hercules, the monster that grew back two heads each time one was chopped off.

When two luxurious hotels in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, were devastated by a suicide bombing, the CIA was caught off guard. The double bombing of the Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels that killed nine people and wounded over sixty was a clear attack on Western targets. The organizers were clearly members of Jama Islamiya, a splinter organization off al Qaeda. Even before JI publicly claimed responsibility for the attack it was easy to determine that they were the perpetrators, all the indications were there - and not just because this same Marriot hotel was hit in 2003 by this same group, killing twelve people.

Jama Islamiya functions as an off shoot of al Qaeda. Jama Islamiya operatives are trained by al Qaeda. Jama Islamiya members and supporters pledge allegiance to al Qaeda. And the CIA had assumed that JI was defunct.

The CIA assumed that this al Qaeda terrorist arm was no longer in operation. One CIA source even said that Jama Islamiya came out of the grave to hit these two hotels. In a classic mistake of Western allegiance, because the group had been silent, because the proverbial head of the snake had once been removed, the CIA thought the group to be dead. They thought cobra, they should always be thinking hydra.

Cutting off the head - in this case either arresting or killing many JI leaders, undoubtedly did slow down the organization, but it did not kill it. It allowed Jama Islamiya to morph and to grow and to evolve all while under the radar of Western intelligence. Western intelligence, in an act of benign neglect brought on by ignorance and self aggrandizement in essence helped Jama Islamiya carry out this devastating act of terror.

As vivid and romantic and compelling as visions of modern day security operative Sir Galahads killing the snake may be, only Hercules can slay the hydra. Killing and arresting terrorist leaders is the easy part, ridding Indonesia of terror is the difficult part, eradicating terror is a constant battle.

What is also so fascinating about the recent attack is that a significant dimension of the story and the motivation of the terrorists was not played out in American media.

Luxury hotels are obvious targets, Western travelers enjoy luxury hotels around the world. Indonesia is the most populated Muslim country in the world. Indonesia is therefore the perfect place for extremists to ply their trade. But we in the United States live in a bubble and see the world only through our own eyes.

This attack was intended to cause a bigger bang for the terrorist world than it actually did cause. What was missing from media coverage of the bombing was the information that the famed Manchester United team was scheduled to be staying at the Ritz Hotel, there to play against the national team of Indonesia. Manchester United is one of the greatest teams in the soccer world and soccer greatly eclipses all other team sports everywhere in the world outside the United States.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world follow soccer, hundreds of millions. There's more. Manchester United is owned by an American Jew, a businessman named Malcolm Glazer.

Terrorists attack symbols. These terrorists aimed at but missed out on striking two very recognizable symbols - Jewish business and beloved world sports. For the terrorists and terrorist supporters, it was dumb luck that they missed these targets. The rest of the world is grateful.

The world is becoming inured to acts of terror and that is very dangerous. First word of this attack came as reports on twitter. One tweet actually described how, after the attack, people continued to meet and eat in cafes near the site and that scares me.

This attack in Jakarta, perpetrated by Jama Islamiya is an important lesson in the study of terrorist activities. If the security apparatus pays attention it will learn a lot about the bio-rhythm of al Qaeda and al Qaeda splinter groups. The hydra rests, the hydra does not sleep.

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Wednesday July 15, 2009

Column:

The world has become so focused on Iran that we have neglected to pay attention to what is happening in Iraq. That was a mistake. Without our taking any notice, a religious expulsion has been taking place in Iraq. The Christians of Iraq are being murdered, displaced and disgraced.

Twelve years ago, under the reign of Saddam Hussein, about 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq. Six years later, in 2003, the year the United States entered Iraq, that number dropped to 800,000. Today, another six years later, the German Catholic Relief Organization Kirche puts the number of Christians living in Iraq at 400,000 - 500,000.

Where have the Christians of Iraq gone? They have been decimated, fallen victim to a campaign that systematically intimidates, persecutes and even executes Christians. The plan, instituted by Islamic extremists, forces Iraq's Christian population out of certain neighborhoods, towns, cities and ultimately, out of Iraq.

In attacks against these non-Muslim residents of Iraq the Armenian Church was leveled and the home of the Chaldean Archbishop was bombed. After attacks on Christian-owned businesses the business owners were brutally killed and offered as examples to what can and will happen to other Christian practitioners.

This past week, several Christian churches came under attack. In one incident, a church in Baghdad was bombed moments after completing a religious rite. Several worshippers were killed as they were leaving Sunday Mass. On April 14th, in the town of Mosul, an ancient place once heavily populated by Christians and now almost completely vacated, a Christian father and his family were executed by Muslim extremists. Vehicles have been banned near all churches in the nearby towns of Tilkaif and Hamdaniyah in an attempt to prevent car bombings. These acts of intimidation are having the desired effect.

Christians in Iraq are fearful of retaliation and rightfully so -local Iraqi police are believed to be complicit in these acts. To be fair, the police have taken some actions and even issued precautions during large marches and Muslim memorials in order to protect the Christian minority, but, like in Tilkaif and Hamdaniyah, those moves are more cosmetic than convincing.

Iraq must learn to self-govern and we in the West have taken upon ourselves the responsibility of teaching Iraqis to govern. One lesson we have forgotten, however, is to teach Iraqis that the principle of protecting minority rights is not merely a lofty ideal, it is an obligation, it is one of the building blocks of a society.

The Christian community in Iraq has a long and wondrous history dating back centuries. So did the Jewish community. Once upon a time centuries ago Iraq had a culture that understood minorities and allowed them to flourish. Today, there are no Jews left in Iraq. We cannot let the Christians of Iraq suffer that same fate.

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Tuesday July 7, 2009

Column:

In 1979 a revolution took place in Iran. Thirty years later, in 2009, although many people expected and even hoped for a revolution, the movement never took off.

Let me explain why. The revolution that took place in Iran in 1979, the revolution that overthrew and ousted the Shah from power and placed the Ayatollah Khomeini in power, was religiously based. In 1979 a theocratic state was instituted in Iran and that state is called, to this day, the Islamic Republic.

Without the backing of the clergy, a revolution has no chance of even happening, let alone being successful, in Iran. And in the post-election frenzy that possessed Iran the clergy was conspicuously absent. The mosques were silent, religious leadership was mum.

Iran's clergy had no respect for the Shah of Iran. He disgusted them, he repulsed them. The Shah of Iran was the symbolic representation of everything that was wrong with Iran from the point of view of the religious leadership. Religious loyalty was with an Ayatollah, a dynamic personality and persuasive speaker who was living in Paris - the Ayatollah Khomeini. This Ayatollah was a religious leader who spoke directly to the masses and as a person, he was held in the highest regard by every single Shiite Muslim cleric.

The clergy in Iran today is pleased with their position and with their influence. Over time the Ayatollah Khomeini was replaced by the Ayatollah Khamenei. While the change may be significant for many segments of the population in Iran and worldwide this change is insignificant for Iran's clergy.

The mosques and the Imams were not fomenting a post-election revolt. Very few clergy took a stand in favor of revolt and those who did were seen as political figures rather than religious leaders. Even those clergy who opposed a revolt were seen as political but viewed kindly and as part of the establishment which carries very different currency in Iran.

No one in the religious sphere wanted to oust the religious leadership. No one set their cross hairs on the Grand Ayatollah.

Although he was a protege of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Mir Hussein Mousavi was not worthy of the fight. He may have charisma, but Mousavi does not have the following. He does not have the religious credentials, Mousavi is a former politician, he is a poet and an architect. The clergy of Iran are not about to jeopardize their future for the man who would replace not the Ayatollah, but merely Ahmadinejad, the president.

One of the truly greatest insights and quotes of the Shah of Iran, made famous by Salman Rushdie, was: My biggest mistake was that I stopped paying the clergy. When I paid them they did what I asked. As soon as I stopped they ran to the opposition.

Religion and business run hand in hand in Iran. Without one, the other's power is diminished. And just as Iran's religious leadership was prominently absent from the 2009 revolution that wasn't, so too were Iran's merchants absent. Pivotal to the success of the 1979 Khomeini revolt was the backing of the merchant class.

Iran is a merchant-run society and the merchant class is far more significant and carries much more clout than do students or doctors or lawyers. Professionals and intellectuals have their place in Iran, but the movers and shakers are the merchants.

By definition Iranian merchants tend to be conservative. They have strong values and are motivated by business and family. Although the reformers advocated for a leadership that was more economically responsible it was a message that did not resonate with the merchant class.

The merchants were not convinced. And without merchants you have a movement with no financial backing.

No religious backing, no support from the merchant class and a move to overthrow not the religious leader but merely his mouthpiece, the president. That is not a recipe for success. And the Ayatollah understood it from the outset.

That understanding underscores why The Supreme Leader deliberately ordered the police to be very precise and to exercise restraint. Had too much blood been spilled the ire of the masses, the concern of the clergy and the pockets of the merchants might have tipped the balance and turned passionate demonstrating into true revolution. The Ayatollah would have none of that.

And that explains why the Iranian revolution of 1979 did not repeat itself in 2009.

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Wednesday July 1, 2009

Column:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not make empty threats.

Last week the president of Iran threatened the president of Azerbaijan. Using his foreign minister as a mouthpiece, Ahmadinejad threatened to severely punish Azerbaijan if the official visit of Israeli President Shimon Peres was not cancelled.

The official visit went on as planned. And this week the Iranian ambassador to Azerbaijan was called home.

Shimon Peres, undaunted by the diplomatic curve he had been thrown Azerbaijan, continued on to the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is a burgeoning country. It has a blossoming economy and its influence in the Muslim world is substantial and growing more substantial. Kazakhstan is a country in the right place, with the right natural resources, at the right time in history.

Kazakhstan is the 2nd largest producer of uranium in the world and has, by far, the largest uranium reserves in Eurasia. The only country that has more uranium than Kazakhstan is Australia, but Australia can never wield the influence over the Muslim world that Kazakhstan can wield. Nuclear energy speaks volumes in today's world.

Shimon Peres had multiple agendas in going to Kazakhstan. One of those reasons was expanding relations between Israel and a significant Muslim country. Another reason had to do with nuclear energy. Peres wanted assurances that Kazakhstan would not be supplying nuclear fuel to Iran. The promises were received, but promises from Kazakhstan are not completely reliable.

Last year I wrote about a train that departed from Kyrgyzstan, crossed into Kazakhstan and then crossed the border into Uzbekistan where it was intercepted and stopped. The train was making its way to Iran. The train was filled with uranium. It had already traveled through and crossed over the entire Kazakh before it was stopped on the Uzebeki side of the border.

The Uzebeki border guards were shocked to find the uranium. They sent it back and alerted the Kazakh government. In retrospect, that was probably not the wisest move. According to most people in the know, including International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammed el Baradei, Kazakhstan is one of the most nuclear-trafficked states in the world.

Uranium is for Kazakhstan what oil is for Saudi Arabia. Every country will want it, many countries will need it and Kazakhstan will be one of the only countries that has it. Estimates for the revenue Kazakhstan will reap exporting their natural resource are coming in high, as high as $15 - $20 billion a year for this sleepy little Asian Muslim country.

Central Asia is the future battlefield for the conflict between East and West. It is where Islam retains a strong moderate tradition, it is also where the Fundamentalist population is growing. Kazakhstan realizes that it is coming of age and that it will very soon be in control of the world's supply of nuclear fuel much the same way OPEC is in control of the world's oil production and supply.

We must keep a very close eye on Kazakhstan. We must nurture the Kazakhs and help them grow responsibly. We must cultivate a deep and trusting relationship with Kazakhstan. We must make every effort to lure Kazakhstan away from Iranian influences. If Kazakhstan falls under the influence of Iran the results will be cataclysmal for the Western world.

That is why Iran's president saw fit to make threats. It is why Israel's president thought it wise to pay a visit.

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Wednesday June 24, 2009

Column:

Think of a word that expresses the ideal for which the Western world strives.
That word would be "democracy."

Think of a concept that epitomizes a dream for all Westerners.
That concept would be "freedom."

Think of a game that emblemizes the way Westerners chase after that ideal and live out that dream.
That game is "follow the leader."

As independent as we think we are, we in the West look to leaders to rally us forward and define our purpose. For Westerners, especially in the United States, every movement needs a face.

Good movements or bad movements, ideological movements or religious movements, self help movements or mass demonstration movements - every movement needs a leader, every movement needs a face.

Americans join the army because Uncle Sam asks us to. Americans slim down because Tommy Lasorda, Valerie Bertinelli or Oprah ask us to. Our leaders shape our world by shaping our ideas.

We cannot understand Islamic terror, so we focus on Osama bin Laden. We cannot understand the complex tribal balance between Arab groups, so we focus on Saddam Hussein. We cannot understand Hezbollah, so we focus on Nasrallah. We cannot understand the thirst for freedom, so we focus on twenty-six year old Neda Agha-Soltan lying dead in the street. We cannot understand a government so willing to strip away the freedoms of its citizens, so we focus on Mir Hussein Mousavi.

We cannot understand, even our supreme leader, our president, does not completely understand, but we should try.

The power of the events now unfolding in Iran has revealed the true Iran. The curtain has been lifted and we must allow the reality of life and governance and religious control in Iran to take hold in our minds and in the minds of our leaders, our decision makers, the faces we look up to and follow.

The execution of Neda, shot through the heart by Iranian secret security sniper fire has outraged the world. Neda's death is proof positive that the leadership of Iran is not about to either reform or to liberalize. And as that reality sinks in we must also realize that no matter who the elected face of government in Iran belongs to, nothing will change.

Mir Hussein Mousavi's greatest contribution to the movement that we think he leads is that he is not Mohammad Ahmadinejad. The biggest difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad is that Mousavi wears nicely cut pinstripe suits and Ahmadinejad wears polyester leisure suits.

The people of Iran had their cause, they had their movement. They were not looking for a leader - they were looking to express themselves in a peaceful manner. They went out to vote, not riot. And then they went out to peacefully demonstrate, not violently revolt.

But the West could not understand what was happening. So the Western media chose a face for the people of Iran, and that faced belonged to Mousavi. The media chose Mousavi not for Iranians - they knew all along that all the candidates were one and the same, they chose him so that the West would have a face and therefore be able to understand the movement taking place in Iran.

Iranians are upset not because Ahmadinejad was declared winner in this election and Mousavi was not, they are upset because Ahmadinejad was proclaimed to have won a landslide victory. And that means that their votes were not even counted. Ahmadinejad might have honestly won the election, but not by that large a margin.

The Supreme Leader miscalculated, and he knows it. And that is why Iran has exhibited so much patience in dealing with this internal crisis. That is why so few protesters have died so far. Hundreds of graves, rectangles dug into the earth, have been prepared for the violence. The family of one victim was told that they
could not receive their loved one's body for burial unless they paid for the cost of the bullets used to kill him. The sum they were given was equivalent to $3000. Thankfully, most other graves remain open and unused.

Other countries in the region would not have behaved with such restraint. Egypt and Jordan, friends of the West, would never have permitted these protests to continue. By now, Syria would have massacred thousands of protesters making it clear from the outset that protests are not permitted.

And if Mousavi were in office, he would do the same. As prime minister of Iran Mousavi was responsible for 7,000 deaths by execution of Iranians who challenged the authority. Under Mousavi the fatwah, the religious edict calling for the death of Salman Rushdie was issued. Mousavi, the face the West has chosen to represent freedom from Iranian persecution, called upon all Iranians to kill the author on sight.

In the West we need leaders to propel our movements. In non-Western countries leaders inhibit movement.

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Wednesday June 17, 2009

Column:

The light has finally gone on in American foreign policy vis a vis Iran. The token has finally fallen into place. The president is finally speaking about Iran in terms that prove that he, Barack Obama, really, finally, understands Iran.

In remarks that were on target and accurate, soundbites that reflect good advice and sound judgment about the crisis in Iran. President Obama said: "It's important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, in terms of their actual policies, may not be as great as has been advertised..."

He said: "Either way we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons."

And in discussing the real differences between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hussein Mousavi he said that those differences: "[M]ay not be as great as has been advertised." That is an understatement of the highest order, but at least the truth has finally been spoken by the American president.

Obama is acknowledging, explaining to the people of the United States of America, that when it comes to the big issues, to the issues that mist directly affect the United States - to nuclear development and to religion, that there is little to no difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Both candidates are insiders. Both candidates were vetted by the religious council of Iran and chosen as four out of four hundred other wannabe candidates to be the mouthpiece of the real leader of Iran, The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. And why? Because both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi represent the mullahs of Iran and both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad respect the religious establishment that is Iran.

So, one might rightfully ask, if Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are so similar, why is there such a public row in the street of Teheran? If they are both the same, what difference does it make who wears the mantle?

The answer is actually very simple. The one great difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is that Mousavi is not Ahmadinejad. Iranians are tired of Ahamdinejad. The sheer fact that Mousavi is not Ahmadinejad was enough to motivate Iranians to vote for the one and against the other. Anyone would have beat out Ahmadinejad if this were a real election. But a real election it was not.

The vote against Ahmadinejad was a rejection of the religious leadership of Iran. That holds true despite the fact the Mousavi represents the same religious leadership. The vote against Ahmadinejad was a rejection of the role played by the political leadership within Iran. That holds true despite the fact that Mousavi has also held political office, serving as prime minister under the founder of the Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

As they were casting their votes every Iranian knew that the only vote that would count would be the one cast by The Supreme Leader. They knew it as well as Mousavi knew it.
They knew that the only way Mousavi would win the election would be if The Supreme Leader was convinced that Mousavi would be an even more willing and convincing messenger than Ahmadinejad had been.

The people tried to convince The Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader was not swayed. Their message was not convincing enough. The people tried hard and they have not given up trying. They are paying with their freedom and with their lives.

Here again, finally, President Obama is showing knowledge heretofore unseen. "I do believe that something has happened in Iran," he said. "There is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy."

And Obama is beginning to understand The Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei and the real monopoly he holds over the lives of the Iranian people. He hinted that the Ayatollah might actually have insight and influence when he said that the Supreme Leader "indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

There are a few things I will never understand. Why the president chose a midday show on CNBC as the platform from which to broadcast the most important and profound statements he has made about Iran since the days leading up to and following the election, is beyond me. CNBC is watched, depending on the day of the week and the time of day, by between 20,000 and 300,000 people. More people watch the local evening news in Akron, Ohio than watch daytime CNBC.

And why it took until Tuesday, five days after the Iranian election, for the president to show us that he has finally been briefed by someone who really knows what is happening is another unsolvable.

As they say, better later than never.

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Wednesday June 10, 2009

Column:

Strategy. Tactics. Move and countermove. Sometimes it's called chess, sometimes it's called diplomacy.

Foreign policy and international relations aside, United States President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu are now engaged in a game of chess. And no, the pawns in this game are not the Palestinian people or Palestinian nationhood. The pawn in this game is a relationship forged long ago between two countries with many significant shared values and principles.

Obama and Netanyahu each have their own philosophy of fair play. Right now, they are trying to psyche each other out. And as in any game of chess, sacrifices will be made. In this game, sacrifices are being made in order to gain better position and advantage and at times, even to give an impression of changing style and attitude and strategy.

The game is being played over the idea of a Two State Solution, an idea that Obama is pushing hard and Netanyahu cannot accept.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly rejected the term Two State Solution while the American president speaks of it as a sine qua non. So where do they go from here?

The president made an important speech on June 4th in Cairo. The prime minister will be making his own important speech, a counter speech,on Sunday at Bar Ilan University. In his speech, Netanyahu will speak about Palestinian self rule. He will stress the importance of Palestinian self rule. He will speak of the necessity of building an infrastructure for a state. He will say that it is a time to build, not to destroy. He will be playing tactical semantics.

For Netanyahu, Palestinian self rule is synonymous with Two State Solution. Palestinian self rule is a term he can live with, Two State solution is a term he cannot bring home to his ruling coalition.

Netanyahu has a difficult needle to thread. The Israeli leader knows how important the issue of Palestinian nationhood is for the United States and for the president of the United States. He also knows that he is the prime minister of a parliamentary government which is very different from the republic of the United States. And he knows full well that his coalition is in place in large part because he chose to include two parties who will not - under any circumstances, support a Two State Solution. These two parties represent only a sliver of Israeli society, but a very vocal and now important of Israeli society. The overwhelming majority of Israel, 78% of Israel, supports the Two State Solution.

But even that 78% has a caveat. Their support is conditional upon their own security and survival.

So Netanyahu will finesse the term. If he pushes his coalition too hard, he will fall and no longer be prime minister. If he does not pursue the matter he will fall from the good graces of the United States and jeopardize US support for Israel, especially US military support. The Obama Two State Solution plan has already been proposed and drafts have been given to Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians. The Egyptians have invited all Arab foreign ministers to a meeting on June 17th to discuss the plan and to make certain that they are all on board.

Here we have it. Netanyahu will be able to finesse his way through the Two State Solution and the Arab world will back the Two State Solution and the United States will be thrilled with the Two State Solution - so wherein lies the problem?

The biggest problem is that there is no real infrastructure within the Palestinian Authority and without infrastructure there is no way to create a state. The Palestinians do not have their bureaucracies in place not for justice, or police, or education, health or self governance. The Palestinians have not yet erected the building blocks of a state.

The next biggest problem is Hamas. If a Palestinian state were to be declared in the West Bank tomorrow or in two months or two years from tomorrow, there is little doubt that as Gaza went, so will the West Bank go. Within six months Hamas will take over, ousting Fatah in a coup and asserting their role as Muslim extremists and establishing a terror state.

The same 78 % of Israel that supports the idea of a Two State Solution knows full well that until the Palestinian Authority can control Hamas it will be impossible to avoid the Hamas state. And that they reject - and so to does the rest of the Arab world. Neither Arab leaders nor the Arab street want Hamas to take control. The only player unconcerned by the lack of Palestinian infrastructure and the rise of Hamas is the United States. It is a part of the greater game plan that the United States considers to be neither likely nor serious.

Netanyahu will do what it takes to protect his people and pacify his friends. But he will not allow his country to be checkmated.

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Wednesday June 3, 2009

Column:

Let it be known that, first and foremost, the Obama Doctrine for the Middle East is a doctrine for and about the United States. It is the personal wish list of this president of the United States.

President Barack Obama and his team of advisors, envoys and mediators are acting in the best interest of the United States and of the United States only. The people who conceived of and the people implementing the Obama Doctrine do not have a mutual interest - or even a partial interest - in what benefits Israel.

True, they would be saddened should something catastrophic happen to Israel but the ultimate security of Israel is not primary in their minds. Israel's safety and Israel's security is purely in the hands of Israel. Right now, the United States will not move a dingy, a toy soldier, or a paper airplane to assist an Israel in crisis.

The intent of this new doctrine is to resurrect the status of the United States, to reshape the power base of the United States and to reposition the influence of the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The Obama Doctrine for the Middle East is a classic replay of geo-politics.

Barack Obama wants to even out the playing field. And in making things even the special relationship between Israel and the United States is automatically diminished. Significantly diminished. And the Obama Doctrine is already in play.

The historic foray into the Middle East embarked upon by the Obama entourage visits four Middle East countries - and Israel is not one of them. The trip to Israel would have been an easy sashay over the Egyptian border, the most significant stop on the trip. Instead, Israel is being snubbed, ignored, diplomatically reprimanded.

The rationale is that a broader US coalition in the Middle East will make for a safer Israel and that a safer region is a safer Israel. The logic is that if, in the long run, Israel will be safer, who can argue with the means through which this happens. Stating his thesis even more pointedly, Obama asserts that only good friends can be so brutally honest with one another. His objective is to apply pressure on the Israeli populace to force their prime minister to buckle under US pressure and to accommodate this new doctrine. Obama is dangling the special Israel/US relationship in the faces of Israelis assuming that they will care so passionately about the relationship that it will override the traditional skepticism that has been so ingrained in the Israeli psyche and that has kept their nation alive until now.

The fact is that there are more Muslims and more Arabs than there are Israelis and Jews in this world. In the end, the Obama camp will cast aside shared values, issues of mutual benefit and past special relationships for the sake of the massive numbers represented by the Muslim and Arab states. It is a quotient somewhat familiar to those students of history and diplomacy who watched the United States cast off a relationship with Hong Kong in favor of a new relationship with Mainland China.

When the inevitable danger befalls Israel in the near term, Israel will be prepared. But Israeli military superiority cannot last long because the qualitative edge that Israel holds is often due to the weapons received from the United States. Will it happen before or after the fall of the Obama Doctrine, I cannot say.

But the Obama Doctrine for the Middle East will, inevitable, fail.

It will fail because Hamas will overpower Fatah and take charge of both the West Bank and Gaza.

It will fail because Israelis will not support Obama over Bibi if only because of the Holocaust mentality and Masada complex which is part and parcel of the Israeli nation.

It will fail because, despite Obama, the Arab world will not trust the United States.

It will fail because Arab leaders cannot believe the naivete of Barack Obama regarding Iran and they cannot believe that the president of the United States will move ahead and try to befriend Iran over the Arabs.

No matter how charming and how powerful his speeches are, no matter how powerful or poetic his rhetoric, the Obama Doctrine in the Middle East will fail. I just hope it doesn't take too many casualties along the way.

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Tuesday May 26, 2009

Column:

President Barack Obama's desire for change is admirable, but it is also dangerous. It is especially dangerous when he reaches out and embraces other nations and cultures. Especially, in the Middle East.

The buzz has begun on the Obama Middle East doctrine. The speech is still in the formation stages, but it has already had a huge impact on events in the region.

The chosen date is June 4th. The chosen venue is Cairo. It began during the presidential campaign and has been repeated over the last 100+ days. Obama advisers have promised a broad, far reaching presentation aimed at putting into perspective the desires, intentions and ambitions of the United States for the Middle East. In short, this address will speak of the changes that President Barack Obama hopes to wrest from the Israel, the Palestinians, Iran and the nations, cultures and religions of the Middle East region.

The concept of such a speech is as grand as it is tactically well intentioned. Barack Hussein Obama has chosen an Arab center of power from which to reach out to the Muslim world and explain where the United States stands on important issues. In his own way, Obama is restoring to Egypt the grandeur of days long gone, re-asserting the power and presence of Egypt in today's historic and diplomatic context.

Obama will not lay out details of an Israeli/Palestinian peace, the White House made that clear last week. He will mention it and he will emphasize the US conception of a Two State Solution and he will stress the need for Palestinians to have their own, independent state, one that lies next door to Israel and lives there is peace.

He will talk about terror and about freedom and about Iran and about Iran’s race to acquire nuclear technology. He will speak of advancement and of culture, of sharing and learning and understanding. The speech will be very polished and very well delivered - that is the Obama way. And the president of the United States will probably include phrases in Arabic and perhaps even begin his address with an Arabic verse from the Koran. He will not speak in Pharsi, the language of Iran. And much of what he says will fall on deaf ears.

As smart a tactical move as making this speech is, as good as it will look and sound from the point of view of the United States and the West, the impact of this grand maneuvering, of this speech, will be, at best, negligible in the Muslim world. At worst, it will be dangerous.

The Muslim world is divided into three parts. Part one is looking for a ray of light, of hope, of change, from the United States. Part two can never see or hear or experience anything positive from the United States. Part three, the majority of the Muslim world, requires much more than a well spoken, well intentioned, grandstanding speech from the president of the United States of America to impact the way they view US/Muslim interaction.

Despite the good intentions and the positive aspects of the speech, it will bring about no serious change in US/Muslim interaction. By definition, it cannot.

Arab and Muslim cultures are deeply informed by myths and historical narratives. Those narratives take a long time to develop and to seep into the culture. They may be and often are based on half truths and incorrect, revisionist, history but they are a part of the collective memory of the region and of the entire culture.

And part of the currently held myth is that the United States and Israel are inextricably bound together. The myth propagates the idea that the US protects Israel and oppresses the Arab and the Muslim. Part of the myth is that Israel is grabbing Arab land and that Israel is intent on the destruction of the Arab people and Muslim/Arab culture.

Iran has already rejected everything Obama is about to propose, even before the words have been said. Iran has no desire to reach out and grab the Obama gesture. Rather, Iranians exploit Obama's gesture and use it as cover for their own duplicitous end in acquiring nuclear capabilities. Iran understands Obama, realizes how weighty his words will be to part of the Muslim world and knows that they can be the counter weight to this message.

As he ascends the literal platform to deliver his address in the heart of the Arab world, Obama is handing over a figurative platform to enemies of the West. And that is dangerous and damaging.

For Iran, the Obama message is a message of assimilation and a Western cultural attack against Islam. For Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah it is emboldening. The warming period that Obama has extended to these rogues has given them the opportunity, means and motives to act more boldly and become more powerful.

I admire Obama's desire for change, but the Arab world is not the United States.

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Wednesday May 20, 2009

Column:

It happened because it had to happen, because history dictated that it happen.

Barack Obama, the newly elected President of the United States of America and Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu, the newly resurrected Prime Minister of Israel, were fated to meet. The meeting had historical precedence. The meeting had diplomatic overtones. And like historical precedence and like diplomatic two steps, the meeting yielded nothing except for another page written into history and another diplomatic gesture politely completed.

Think tactics, not strategy. The changes in the administrations brought about under the leadership of both Obama and Netanyahu will be tactical changes, not strategic changes. To think otherwise is to be naïve and overly optimistic.

The changes we will see will be in the attainment of short term goals, not long term objectives. Both men acted maturely and stately. The tensions that were expected were present, but only minimally. They heard each other out. They shared and they discussed for one hundred and five minutes. And they both leaned a little.

They learned about each other and about each other's agenda. And because they were engaged in discussion and dialogue, not in debate, they actually heard what the other had to say. In the end, Netanyahu confirmed what he knew about Obama the man and came away reassured about Obama the leader vis a vis his take on Iran. Netanyahu came away so reassured on that one important issue that he was quoted as saying that "the US and Israel see eye to eye on Iran" and since the meeting, Obama has repeated more than once, that Iran must not be allowed to acquire military nuclear power.

The Palestinians are another matter. As part of their give and take, their point and counterpoint discussion, Obama made his case for a Palestinian state to be created now. And Netanyahu, the consummate orator, treated Obama to a brief course on Israel’s reservations about creating a Palestinian state at this juncture. There was nothing new in the material that either the American president or the Israeli prime minister delivered over, but the time, the place and mutual respect between these two Western leaders required that it be said and said in its entirety.

They spoke, they listened, they changed nothing. Not at the White House, that is. On Capitol Hill Netanyahu who had been courting the Hill was greeted with great fanfare - and with frankness. Much as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had done, John Kerry, Chairman of the Senatorial Committee on Foreign Relations made it very clear that the United States is in favor of creating a Palestinian state and that the United States wants Israel to cease settlement building.

America wants a two state solution and so do the vast majority, over seventy percent, of Israelis. That comes as no surprise, but it does come with a bit of a problem. The problem for Israeli leadership, aka Bibi Netanyahu, is that in order for Israel to sign off on a Palestinian state there must be real safeguards, not theoretical safeguards, within the Palestinian government. And right now, there are no safeguards of any kind.

Looking out on the Palestinian horizon there is no leader who can control the Palestinian factions. Looking past the horizon the only figure to emerge would be Marwan Barghouti, but he is serving a term in an Israeli prison for his role in terror attacks against Israelis. In the absence of a real leader it will be almost impossible to reign in the various Palestinian factions in. Without a real Palestinian leader it will be impossible to strike a blow against Hamas and return Hamas to its proper place in the Palestinian hierarchy. And without a real leader the Palestinians will never be able to invest in building the institutions that will help pull them out of the muck and mire and into the modern technological world.

Despite their desire for a Palestinian state to be established, US senators realize the dilemma of the situation. And that is why, in a letter addressed to the president they wrote that they hoped he would "promote far greater involvement and participation by the Arab states both in moving toward normal ties with Israel and in encouraging moderate Palestinian elements."

Creating a Palestinian state takes vision, not history. The meeting between Obama and Netanyahu was historic. The meeting between Obama and Netanyahu was not visionary.

The relationship between Israel and the US remains very strong.

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Wednesday May 13, 2009

Column:

The pressure is on for a Two State Solution. Almost everyone, from east to west, is hounding Israel's new prime minister, pushing and pushing hard.

The UN Security Council issued a statement advancing the idea.

Egypt clearly and directly stated their point of view in a face to face meeting with Netanyahu in Sharm el Sheik.

Jordan's King Abdullah is calling for it. The European Union. Spain. The Czech Republic. President of the United States Barack Obama and General James Jones, his National Security Adviser, are endorsing it.

The only voices not heard advocating for a Two State Solution are the voice of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the voice of Hamas.

The question we need to ask is "why?" Why are so many countries and so many world leaders so very interested in a Two State Solution. There are as many answers as there are countries. Each country has its own agenda, its own special interests, its own selfish reasons for wanting the Israelis and Palestinians to live side-by-side, state-along-state, sharing and in harmony.

King Abdullah of Jordan has a one word reason for pushing towards a Two State Solution. War. For the past year the Jordanian monarch has been repeating the same refrain: it is essential that there be a resolution, a peaceful resolution, a Two State Resolution because the alternative is war. He has said that if there is no resolution within a year, the Palestinians and Israelis will be at war.

So far, the King's prediction has not panned out. In fact, as far as war goes, the Palestinians are closer to a civil war than an Israeli/Palestinian war. And as far as an Israeli/Palestinian war goes, there is less likelihood of that happening now than there was a year ago. In fact, the head of Israel's Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin, just testified before his Knesset committee saying "the likelihood of war with the Palestinians within the next year is low."

The US National Security Adviser explained the American point of view while interviewed on a recent Sunday morning talk show. Jones explained that the United States supports the idea of two states and then took it a giant step forward. He said that solving the problem of Palestinian/Israeli tensions would help reduce the problem of Iranian nuclear tension. It's an interesting theory, but the NSA chief is way off the mark. His first error is in his analysis, his second error is in turning his analysis into political posturing. It's embarrassing.

There is absolutely no connection between Iran and the Palestinians and certainly, there is no connection at all with Iran's nuclear program. Iran pays tribute to the Palestinian issue but does nothing to advance the Palestinian cause. Iran offers words and words only to the Palestinians and when it comes to the Palestinians the word of the Iranian government is nothing more than hot air. And the Palestinians are happy that way.

Mainstream Palestinians reject Iran and reject Ahmadinejad. Only Hamas supports Iran. Mainstream Palestinians reject Iran's message and Iran's culture. The Palestinians view the Iranians as heretics. The Palestinians are not alone in their opinion of Iran.

The entire Arab world views Iranian support for the Palestinian cause as a façade. They view it as a tool used by Iran to advance its own objectives and primary among Iran's objectives is to be positioned as the leader of the Muslim world.

Sadly, President Obama's most important and influential adviser, James Jones, buys into Iran's rhetoric. And if Jones cannot realize that simple truth about Iran it calls into question some of the most critical decisions taken and to be taken by the United States regarding the Middle East region. The Saudis are livid. The Egyptians are fuming. The United States has shown itself to be ignorant of the machinations that run the Middle East.

The 50 state large United States has no idea of what a Two State Solution means.

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Tuesday May 5, 2009

Column:

The equation is simple: pirates capture, companies pay.

Millions and millions of dollars have been paid out as ransom to pirates who capture vessels on the high sea. The story has repeated itslef many times over the past few months. The glaring turth is that the modern world is extremely under-prepared to battle piracy.

The world has changed, but piracy hasn't.

Centuries ago civilized nations were held hostage by pirates, much as we are today. Centuries ago civilized nations were virtually powerless to act against piracy, much as we are today. Centuries ago it was fear that gripped the civilized world, today, that fear is mixed with law.

Historically piracy was never considered political. It was never seen as a form of terror. It was seen through the prism of thievery. Pirates were self motivated. They wanted money. They still want money. But in today's world, if pirates are helping a government and that government, in turn, helps them continue to kidnap ships the law says that the pirates are outside the boundary of the the international law of the high seas and of UNCLOS.

The UN Convention on the Law Of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines piracy as
"any illegal acts of violence or detention, committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship"
"on the high seas"
"outside the jurisdiction of any state"
This is the definition of piracy as laid down in international law. It is Article 101 a,b,c. It is simple, direct and woefully incomplete.

Imagine this situation: a NATO ship captures an entire pirate crew, captures them red handed, with their weapons, with the goods and even saves the day by freeing the hostages and returning the captured vessel to the crew. After a spectacular rescue the NATO team has the pirates and the pirate vessel. The crack NATO team confiscates the weapons, searches for more weapons, finds and takes those, too and then - then the NATO team releases the pirates. Why? Because according to the law NATO does not have jurisdiction. NATO cannot arrest pirates, NATO cannot bring pirates to trial and NATO cannot punish pirates.

The reality is that legally, not only NATO has no jurisdiction. Almost no country will arrest pirates, that is the unwritten rule of the sea and it is a rule that pirates know well. The exception to that rule is in those rare cases in which the rescue team is from the same country as the captured crew. In other words, the only way that pirates will be arrested is if, by chance, the host nation is around and sails to the rescue. Why? Because that way there is no jurisdictional challenge. And that almost never happens.

According to this inadequate definition of piracy, the Somalian pirates plying their trade within the territorial waters of Somalia, are not practising piracy. And according to this definition, pirates who pay tribute to local governments and leadership are not practising piracy either. The act of paying tribute transforms the illegal action from an international act to a local act. Jurisdiction is then covered locally because the pirates have linked themselves to a particular cause and political leader. In the eyes of the law they have been transformed from money and booty seekers to political or governmental activists.

These laws must be changed.

These antiquated perceptions of piracy help the pirate, defend the pirate and lend no incentive to stop the pirate.

When looking at the situation around Somalia it becomes clear that the Somalian government is powerless. The government of Somalia is too weak to stop the piracy and the government of Somalia does not want to stop the piracy because the government gains from the piracy. Rather than stop the pirates, local governments offer the pirates protection, safe haven and refuge.

During the 19th century Barbary Pirates ruled the seas. Civilized countries paid regular ransoms to insure that either their ships were protected in advance or that the vessels would return safely after being boarded and abducted. It was Teddy Roosevelt who said enough, and charged the United States Marine Corps with the responsibility of crushing piracy. Rooselvelt asserted that neither the free world nor the world economy should be brought to its knees by a handful of sea pirates.

The Marine Corps is still capable of handling the job. They just need international law behind them. The time has come to update the law and put down the piracy.

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Tuesday April 28, 2009

Column:

Change, the central theme of the Obama campaign, is now insinuating itself into Middle East policy.

The LA Times recently reported that the Obama administration has asked Capitol Hill to change the law on Hamas. If the president was asking for only slight alterations, even a few cosmetic modifications to the way the United States handles Hamas, Congress might let it slide. But no, this is true change, big change.

As it now stands, it is against the law in the United States to send money that in any way will benefit Hamas either directly or even indirectly. US funds may not support the terrorist organization Hamas or the terrorists of Hamas. Congress has been very clear on this matter. So clear on this matter that Congress came to their decision without the prodding of the "Israel Lobby" or any other "pro" Israel group.

The change President Barack Obama is requesting would alter bedrock assumptions about Hamas and terror. It would permit Hamas' people to be part of a Palestinian unity government if the individuals themselves were not terrorists, just leaders of a terrorist organization.

For the United States Congress, this distinction will not be about political expedience. It will not be about prevailing winds. For Congress it is not a test of friendship between the United States and Israel. Should the Obama change be implemented that friendship will change quickly and completely, perhaps irrevocably.

The men and women on The Hill view dealings with Hamas, the avowed and acknowledged terrorist organization, as an issue of right and wrong. Israel is right and Hamas is wrong. Congress was not planning on altering its stance vis a vis Hamas until Hamas altered its stances on what Congress considers four essential givens. Hamas must recognize Israel's right to exist, must renounce terror, must actively try to prevent terror, must agree to abide by and honor previous agreements. If change of any sort was expected, it was expected to come from Hamas, not from the United States.

Congress is not alone. These four stipulations were laid down by the Quartet the last time an opportunity arose for Hams to join a Palestinian Unity government. The Quartet, a group composed of Russia, the European Union, the United States and the United Nations, is not what anyone could call an overly demanding group when it comes to making demands on Hamas. But even then Hamas was unwilling to meet the demands.

So why does this administration want to bring about this change? The Obama administration likes to look at things, even tried and true, iron clad, basic rules of diplomacy, differently. The Obama administration wants to challenge "what has always been done" and transform it into "what we are now doing."

In some ways challenging basic issues and ideas is refreshing. But it can also be dangerous. And the people who will be paying the price for this particular change in policy towards Hamas don't live in Washington D.C. they live in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Sderot. It is Israelis who will be paying the price for Barack Obamas' creative zeal. The new kids on Pennsylvania Avenue will be sitting back, watching their experiment play out from a safe and comfortable distance.

The White House's argument is that they are doing this out of their love and commitment for Israel. They will say that this is not an anti Israel stance, that it is an incentive package for Hamas.

Hamas will not change because Hamas does not want to change. Hamas will neither stop terror nor renounce terror. Hamas may pretend to be a political organization, but terror is their trade. Hamas will not accept Israel. That is clear. And now, in the midst of this era of new ideas, it is becoming clearer and clearer that neither will the present day ruling faction within the Palestinian Authority.

Just a few weeks ago Mohamed Dahlan, probably the second most publicly recognized person in Fatah and second only to Mahmoud Abbas, clearly stated that just because the government had to accept Israel, it does not automatically follow that Fatah, the ruling party in the PA, must accept Israel. The government needs to recognize Israel because of world politics, but that fact does not reflect a change in the policy of Fatah.

And now Abbas is even challenging the principle of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state as a sine qua non for movement in the peace process. Abbas came out and said "no" it is not. He said "they can call themselves what they want but I do not have to accept it. I do not accept it and I say it publicly."

The White House, the Palestinian Authority and Israel are about to go head to head to head. It will all come to a head in May when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu makes his first visit to Washington. The real battle will be waged on Capitol Hill. If the White House successfully convinces the Hill to adopt this new approach towards Hamas it will lead to a revolutionary period in United States diplomacy and the attitude of the United States toward Israel.

If Congress does not stand strong, Israel will truly be all alone. All those ideas of peace and two states will be gone, off the table until some day in the distant future. If Congress does not stand strong hope of containing Hamas inspired terror will be gone. Hamas will emerge stronger and empowered. But true to its mandate, the Obama administration will have brought about change.

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Tuesday April 21, 2009

Column:

On Sunday April 19th, on the day that was Adolf Hitler's birthday, Hans Rudolf-Merz, the president of Switzerland, met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran.

On Monday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an avowed Holocaust denier, addressed the forum at the UN sponsored Durban II conference held in Geneva.

On Monday members of Western delegations, in attendance at the conference, walked out of the hall as an unfazed, unflustered, uncaring Ahmadinejad spouted his rhetoric, lambasting Israel and the United States of America.

On Monday night, Jews world over began marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

What were they thinking? What were the planners of the conference and what were the handlers of the Swiss president thinking?

The Iranian leader was invited to give the keynote address at the conference and took every advantage of the opportunity to spew terrible hatred and bald faced lies - his mainstay rhetoric and public pronouncements. Representatives from 24 Western nations walked out on Ahmadinejad.

The European Union, in attendance only as observers, walked out.

Jordan, repulsed by what was being said, walked out.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, host of the event, stayed seated but released a statement. The secretary general condemned the Iranian leader's speech and pointed out that, in advance of the address, he had spoken to Ahmadinejad and made it clear that the United Nations has officially repealed the Zionism is racism pronouncement and has affirmed the historical reality of the Holocaust.

In the end, the keynote speaker was the only head of state remaining in the room. And you want to know what Ahmadinejad was thinking? He was pleased. He had made his point. And Ahmadinejad continued on, regurgitating the same hate filled lies.

The Western world and even some members of the Arab world, made a point of walking out on Ahmadinejad and the president of Switzerland made a point of welcoming him into his country.

Hans Rudolf-Merz justified his meeting with the Holocaust denier and rabid anti-Semite Ahmadinejad by repeating the by now overused and incorrect cliche that Switzerland is a neutral country, that as a neutral country Switzerland embraces the idea of maintaining open channels and talking to everyone in order to properly facilitate negotiations between battling parties.

It is the same empty cliche that the Swiss used during World War II to avoid saving Jews, the cliche they used to cover up collaboration with the Nazis.

Neutrality does not mean spineless. Neutrality does not mean an incapacity to differentiate between right and wrong. Neutrality does not mean the inability to condemn evil and wrongdoing.

Neutrality means taking no sides, but it also means adopting a set of values that embraces moral and ethical principles.

Switzerland should have joined countries of conscience and condemned Ahmadinejad, condemned the words he used and the ideas he espoused. Instead, by paying him a courtesy call, the Swiss leader showed that he is not at all repulsed by the ideas Ahmadinejad holds dear. The Swiss president followed the lead of his predecessors and remained silent in the face of evil.

Excuses aside, Switzerland did not host the event. Durban II was hosted by the United Nations and held on United Nations territory. Switzerland was as much the host of Ahmadinejad at Durban II as the United States was when he came to New York to address the UN General Assembly in September.

There was no diplomatic need, no protocol for the head of Switzerland to go out his way and have a special dinner with the head of Iran. And because of that meeting Israel has called its ambassador to Switzerland back to Jerusalem for consultation and has called the Swiss ambassador to Israel in for a serious tongue lashing and is demanding an explanation.

Israel is making symbolic gestures, the president of Switzerland was not acting symbolically. Israel was pointing out that Switzerland has not learned their lessons. Nothing has changed in Switzerland. The Swiss witnessed Jews being murdered and did worse than nothing, they sent them back to Germany.

And today, a man preaches the murder of Jews and the Swiss plead neutrality and dine with the preacher.

Shame on Switzerland. Shame on the United Nations. Shame, shame.

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Monday April 13, 2009

Column:

Israel and the United States are on a collision course.

The issue they are colliding over is world terror.

When it comes to terror, either you are against it, or you are a terrorist. The disagreement between Jerusalem and Washington is not over the definition of terror, it is over the parameters of terrorism.

Barack Obama and Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu, both newly elected, are out to strut their stuff - in front of their respective countrymen and in front of the world. This collision course is premeditated, it is about perspective. Given the personalities and public flair of these two men, the clash between their administrations was predictable.

Obama and Netanyahu need to collide in order to clearly define the red lines of each of their new administrations. The purpose of this deliberate sparring match is for each leader to discover how far the other will go in order to pursue his country's new Middle East policy.

Fear not, this collision will not shake the foundation of the strong, vibrant and important relationship between the two countries. That relationship is built on a mutuality of interests and in the end the friends will, as the children's song goes, shake hands and make amends. But it will be heated and it will impact on the relationship not of the countries, but personally, on the relationship of the two men.

The new Obama-led administration wants to insist on enforcing the principles laid down in Annapolis almost two years ago during the previous administration. The United States wants to make certain that the Palestinians uphold the stipulations of the Road Map developed by the Bush Administration.

That plan includes a two state solution.

The even newer Netanyahu-led administration refuses to embrace Annapolis. Israel has asked for new ideas to solve the current logger jam. Israel has carefully and delicately done a diplomatic tiptoe around the famed two state solution.

The collision is being played out in the press and on the Hill.

Obama's team has already begun to brief Congress about their new plan and the need to hold Israel to the Road Map. The Obama team is promising continued support for Israel and is emphasizing the need to continue to defend Israel. But they also want the Palestinian track to be put on high speed.

Netanyahu's team knows how to use Congress, as well. Their plan will be to set up numerous face-to-face meetings with Congressional leaders with the intention of sabotaging Obama's objectives.

Obama has tried to outsmart Netanyahu by being the first to approach Congress. Netanyahu will be making his first trip to Washington as new Israeli prime minister next month. Bibi will be forced to play catch up, but Bibi is no newcomer at this game. Unlike Obama, Netanyahu is on his second go round in office.

The Israelis will come calling on Capitol Hill with three cards in their pocket, three critical cards that will be difficult for the Obama people to refute.

Card #1 - The Palestinians have never been able to deliver on any significant agreement that included reigning in terror and confronting Hamas.

Card #2 - The plan that the Obama administration is presenting is a replica of the Bush plan with only a few minor revisions. It is a plan that has failed and will fail again.

Card #3 - Iran is spinning out of control. The Obama plan lacks real substance and is Pollyanna-ish at best and extremely dangerous at worse when it comes to Iran. It is one thing to play roulette with Israel's security vis a vis Iran, but the new president is also playing with the security of the United States.

Israel's messages will resonate loud and clear with the leaders on the Hill. Obama's bonafides are in serious question and Bibi Netanyahu can be very convincing and very compelling when he speaks about threats to Israel's very existence,

Even, especially, as the United States is stretching out both arms to Iran, Iran has become more and more involved in political acts that are destabilizing Arab world friends of the United States.

Egypt recently arrested almost one hundred terrorists connected to Hezbollah who, most importantly, are connected through Iran. The Egyptians have blamed Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah for the new terror infrastructure that they have uncovered.

A Kuwaiti newspaper called al Jarida recently wrote that the Egyptians have arrested Sami Shahib an Egyptian trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. From Iran he was sent to Egypt to organize a Shiite underground terrorist organization which would destabilize Egypt.

An Egyptian newspaper called al Ghoumhouria wrote the following about Nasrallah in an editorial: "We do not allow you, monkey sheikh, to mock our judiciary, for you are a bandit and veteran criminal who killed your countrymen, but we will not allow you to threaten the security and safety of Egypt ... and if you threaten its sovereignty, you will burn!"

Egypt is taking this very seriously.

Netanyahu will make certain that Congressional leaders on Capitol Hill take it seriously as well. He will let it be known full well that by supporting President Obama's new policy they are, albeit inadvertently but certainly definitely, destabilizing both United States interests and United States control in the world.

There will be a collision. Don't expect a big bang, but be ready for some fireworks.

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Thursday April 2, 2009

Column:

In the year 1532, when Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince he could never have dreamed that his ideas would ring true even until today. He could never have dreamed that arch enemies, The United States and Iran, would bond over a relatively insignificant country called Afghanistan.

The United States is at diplomatic war with Afghanistan. Iran is at diplomatic war with Afghanistan. The United States and Iran are united in their different wars with Afghanistan. Confused? That's foreign policy for you.

A cardinal rule in foreign policy is that there are no best friends. There are best interests. And foreign affairs work best when there are mutual best interests between countries.

So, yes, diplomatically speaking, the enemy of my enemy is my friend - but my best interests come first. And that explains how the unlikeliest of buddies, the United States and Iran, sat down together to discuss the problem called Afghanistan.

The United States experiences no greater global tension than in its dealing with and about Iran. And yet, in a desire to control the threats emanating from a third country these two countries, diametrically opposed on every other issue, sat down together at a United Nations sponsored summit held this week in The Hague dedicated to discussing, dissecting and neutralizing Afghanistan.

The idea belonged to United State Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Iran jumped on board immediately. Iran had two reasons for agreeing to the secretary of state's suggestion. Firstly, Afghanistan is a true problem for the international community and Iran recognizes how important it is to solve the problem and solve it effectively. Secondly, Iran wants to show the Arab world that it can work side-by-side with the United States to solve some issues.

Don't get too carried away, now. The Summit pitted the United States and Iran against Afghanistan but that is where the mutuality ended. The summit also pitted the United States and Afghanistan against one another in terms of each country's style of operation, specific complaints and endgame solutions.

Iran wants no outside forces in Afghanistan. By outside forces Iran means no non-Muslim forces in Afghanistan. Right now, the United States is not only a force in Afghanistan, it is a significant force in Afghanistan and getting ready to increase their presence there. Looking at the situation from Iran's point of view, Iran borders Afghanistan and having US soldiers in Afghanistan makes it all the easier for those soldiers to saunter on over and enter Iran. Iran also borders Iraq. That puts Iran in the middle of two countries playing host, invited or uninvited it makes no difference, to US forces. In other words, Iran is surrounded on the north by way of Afghanistan and in the south by way of Iraq.

Despite Iran's desire to rid the region of the United States the deputy Foreign minister of Iran, Mehdi Akhundzadeh, agreed to an understated albeit significant meeting with Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's personal troubleshooter for Afghanistan. The meeting was brief. The outcome was a decision to keep in touch. This kind of discussion, on this diplomatic level, is less important for what happened at the moment than for what might happen in the future. A door has been opened and when and if the need arises, and we know it will, these two men can walk through that door again.

The honest truth is that there has been no serious change in United States policy toward Iran. In diplomacy you need backdoors in order to deal with substantive issues on the ground. And there has been no serious change in Iranian policy toward the United States. The final outcome aside, Iran had its own objective in agreeing to this meeting.

Iran was poking fun at the United States in front of other Muslim countries and the almost one hundred countries in attendance at the summit. Iran was using this opportunity to show the rest of the Muslim world how they can and will boldly make their Muslim agendas known to the United States. Iran was standing up for Muslim hegemony. Iran was saying that the major obstacle to real solutions in the region is the aggressive meddling of the United States and Iran was saying it to their face. Iran is making a regional play, hoping that resentment toward US interventionism will sway countries back in their direction.

Iran and the United States have had a modicum of success in the past when they joined forces in collaboration in the war against drugs. And at this summit the United States and Iran again agreed to start working together to curb the drug trade that empowers many of the Afghani warlords.

Two steps backward, one step forward. At least there’s a step in the right direction.

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Tuesday March 24, 2009

Column:

Makara. It means deceit. It is part of an ancient Arabic custom, still practiced today.

Kyhr. It means subterfuge. In Arabic the word kyhr shares a root with the word makara. Makara and Kyhr its root are mentioned 43 times in the Koran.

Certain concepts, inconceivable to the Western mind, are commonplace and easily comprehendible to the Arabic mind. In order to understand the Arabic mind, in order to anticipate the decision making process that goes on in the Arab world, the West must suspend its own system of beliefs and open its collective mind to allow for contradictions in words and actions.

Mohammed Dahlan is one of the most significant leaders the Palestinian people have who is neither in hiding nor imprisoned in Israel. Tall, broad shouldered, well dressed and smooth talking, Dahlan is known as the strong arm man of Fatah. It was Dahlan who was responsible for security in Gaza and the West Bank. It was Dahlan who was at the helm when Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza, essentially ousting him as security chief. Mohammed Dahlan has a vendetta to settle with Hamas. Not only was he publicly embarrassed, but the armed forces under his control were horribly treated and brutally killed.

And still, Dalhlan, the face of Fatah, and Hamas are joined at the hip when it comes to Israel.

In a recent interview on PA TV (Palestinian Television) Mohammed Dahlan said, simply and matter-of-factly, that the Palestinian Authority recognizes Israel, but that Fatah does not. A shocking contradiction? Yes, if you are a Westerner. Not at all if you are a Palestinian.

Dahlan said that Fatah was not asking Hamas to recognize Israel. He explained that the only reason the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel was to get the money that the Western world was doling out to the Palestinians because they had made that concession and publicly claimed to accept Israel. He said the PA would never get the money if they did not recognize Israel. But that was the PA, not Fatah. A distinction with a difference.

In the minds of most Westerners, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are one and the same, it is Hamas that is on the outside. In the mind of Mohammed Dahlan and his compatriots, things look different. Dahlan is adept at double speak, and double speak has a long history in the Arab world.

Double speak is one of the many facets of makara and in the Arab world, makara has both positive and negative attributes.

In the Koran, in both Sura 3:54 and in Sura 30:8 Allah is referred to as Makara. It therefore stands to reason that if Allah is deceitful, and deceit can be good. If Allah can practice kyhr, subterfuge, which has a similar word in Farsi (Persian, the language of Iran), practicing subterfuge can be good.

The Koran tells a glorious story which teaches that Allah will plot against those people who plot against him and Allah will win out in the end. Dahlan has a modern day take on the story.

Quoting from his interview with Palestinian TV, Dahlan said: "I want to say for the thousandth time, in my own name and in the name of all of my fellow members of the Fatah movement: We do not demand that the Hamas movement recognize Israel. On the contrary, we demand of the Hamas movement not to recognize Israel, because the Fatah movement does not recognize Israel even today."

And he is not alone. Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah chair and the president of the Palestinian Authority gave voice to almost the exact same sentiment in 2006 when he said: "Hamas is not required to recognize Israel ... It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front [to liberate Palestine] to recognize Israel."

And he gave voice to it on PA TV when he said: "The PLO, in 1993, recognized Israel. As Israel recognized the PLO. Every person has the right to say "I do not recognize," okay? It's your right. It is the right of every organization. But the government which will be formed, and which will function opposite the Israelis on a daily basis ... every hour and perhaps every second, there will be contact between Palestinian ministers and Israeli ministers. And I ask - how can this government, or these ministers, not recognize their counterparts, and then solve people's problems?"

It's a good question. The simple answer is, they can't. Israel and the West must try not to let deceit and subterfuge and double speak get in the way.

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Monday March 9, 2009

Column:

Lieutenant General Omar al Bashir is a ruthless thug.

The despotic president of Sudan has spurned the world's condemnations of the mass murders perpetrated under his rule and following his direction in Darfur. The delusional al Bashir has gone so far as to, on the one hand, say that the mass murders never happened and on the other hand, to claim that he is doing everything in his power to prevent further killings.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has just drawn up papers ordering the arrest and prosecution of Omar al Bashir. The court is charging him with direct and indirect responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur. Modest estimates put the death toll at 300,000 and the number of people forced from their homes at 2.7 million.

The ICC is the court of justice. The Hague is charged by the United Nations with the task of defending the oppressed and with prosecuting tyrants who persecute, terrorize and murder masses of people. Practically, the Court is problematic and it has a very uneven track record. But the principle under which it was created - that the free world should have access to an international court of justice that takes on issues of human rights, is an important one.

In the case of the people of Darfur the process has been extended, but finally, justice will be served. In corridors of power throughout the world the decision to act against al Bashir was met with great enthusiasm and expelled sighs of it's about time. In two corridors, however, news of the decision has been met with anger laced with fear.

Neither the leadership of Iran nor the leadership of Hamas is pleased to know that the leader of Sudan is to be prosecuted by The Hague.

Rather than acknowledging that justice is to be served, the Iranians publicly condemned the world court calling the action a corruption of justice and wondered how it was possible for the world court to act against Sudanese President al Bashir before it had acted against the Zionists. Similarly, Hamas announced that it was acting in solidarity with the Sudanese leader and issued a call for other true Arabs to do the same.

To prove their points, on Friday Hamas and Iranian delegations flew to Khartoum, Sudan to show their support for al Bashir.

Upon touching down at the Khartoum airport Ali Larjani, speaker of the Iranian parliament, made a strident and aggressive announcement. He termed the decision of the international court to prosecute al Bashir "an insult." In the eyes of Larijani and all of Iranian leadership, the act truly is an insult not just to al Bashir, but to all Muslims. The Hamas spokesman, Tahir Nunu, called the indictment a political ploy.

In choosing to prosecute Omar al Bashir the International Criminal Court in The Hague has violated a fundamental principle in the Muslim world. According to that principle non Muslim-authority and non-Muslim forces may not impose their standards and their values on Muslims, especially in Muslim controlled lands.

Iran and Hamas are not just being good friends and good Muslims. Iran and Hamas have their own axe to grind. Certainly, both constituencies long to see Israel in the docket, but right now, that is not their biggest worry. They fear that they will be next in line for prosecution by The Hague.

For Iran and for Hamas, this is personal. If the Sudanese leader can be arrested and brought to The Hague for trial so can they. And that is not a precedent they want to see set.

Iran is responsible for numerous terror attacks around the world. Iran sponsors terror organizations including Hezbollah and including Hamas. Hamas, obviously, is a terror organization that has perpetrated hundreds of terror attacks. They are speaking out and politicking in support of al Bashir out of pure, selfish, self interest.

What neither Iranian nor Hamas leadership realizes is how ridiculous their actions. What neither Iranian nor Hamas leadership realizes is how slowly the wheels of justice at The Hague turn. Look at the enormity of the crime perpetrated by the tyrant Omar al Bashir and then look at how long it took to draw up a warrant against him for that crime. The likelihood that they will be the next targets of ICC justice is truly, quite small.

But let that be the little secret of the freedom loving world. Let Iran and Hamas sweat a little or even a lot. It's OK, let them sweat.

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Tuesday March 3, 2009

Column:

The official announcement was made on Monday, at the Donors' Conference held in Egypt, but the story was not news to any of the participants.

The news was leaked days before the event took place. The story splashed across newspapers throughout the country and in many parts of the Western world. The United States of America was pledging $900 million to the Palestinians.

Wow! That was the response of most of the people when they learned of the pledge. Didn't matter what side of the aisle they sat on, Republican of Democrat, pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, Muslim, Christian or Jew. $900 million is a lot of money.

The idea of the Donors' Conference, according to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose idea it was, was to create a forum through which money would be raised to rebuild Gaza. As a result of Israel's twenty-two day operation against Hamas in Gaza, which was a response to the terror strikes and constant barrage of rockets fired into Israel by Hamas, Gaza, which was never a luxurious spot under the care of the Palestinians, is pretty much a wreck.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, raised an ambitious nearly $5 billion at the Conference.

Pledges came in. The United States put Fayyad at nearly one-third on the way towards his goal. Israel has already given $100 million, a modest but still significant donation. The Quartet and other European countries came out saying that they were willing to give, as well.

Now comes the first AHA moment.

Salam Fayyad is the PA prime minister of the West Bank, not of Gaza. He, along with Abbas and the rest of the PA were kicked out of Gaza, ousted in a coup, by Hamas, a year ago last summer. They may care about the plight of the Palestinians of Gaza but they have no purview over Gaza. Now, Fayyad has a wonderful personal record. It was he who revolutionized the Palestinian Authority coffers. It was he who convinced Yasser Arafat to direct deposit government salaries thereby removing the temptation from Arafat to dip his fingers into everyone else's tills as he stuffed their envelopes with cash which was his favorite way of doing business.

Fayyad cares about the people of Gaza, but he has no way of controlling, overseeing or even monitoring the flow of money. That responsibility belongs fully and solely to Hamas because Hamas is the only address in Gaza.

Here's the second AHHAA moment.

It is against United States law to give money to Hamas. It is against United States law to transfer money to support terror. The US State Department considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

Congress, the governing body that set up these laws, will not be happy if money finds its way into the hands of terrorists. But how can it not? Nothing comes into or goes out of Gaza without some of it accidentally falling off a truck and going directly into the hands of Hamas. Nothing. Hamas totally controls Gaza. The Palestinian Authority has no police, no soldiers, no authority and no clout in Gaza. Unless Congress finds a way around Hamas, that $900 million will be going to Hamas. By dividing the allocation and announcing that they are giving $300 million to humanitarian relief in Gaza and the other $600 million to the PA for reconstruction Congress thinks they have found the way.

And now, the third AHHHAAA moment.

The Arab League, which also pledged money to Gaza at the Donors' Conference, has not yet fulfilled an earlier pledge to help out the people of Gaza. In January the Arab League obligated itself to a donation of $1 billion. That pledge, that obligation, has not yet been met.

As recently as last week, the Arab League explained that they could not deliver on the money while stability and unity between the Palestinians was unclear. In other words, the Arab League is uncertain. The Arab League is afraid that their money will fall into the wrong hands. And who understands the dynamics of Hamas leadership if not the Arab League?

Here comes the fourth AHHHHAAAA moment.

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Column:

Thursday February 26, 2009

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth his silver lining on the night?

Those words were written in 1634 by John Milton. While very few of us can quote the poem verbatim, almost all of us have expressed the sentiment inherent in these words and said: every cloud has a silver lining.

The economic downturn we are now experiencing has rippled throughout the world. The news is not good and yet, every cloud, even this cloud, does have a silver lining. And while they are few in number, there are a few positive changes that have occurred specifically because of this colossal calamity. The number one change is worth discussing.

The most important change to have been brought about by the economic condition is the drop in oil prices.

Oil prices are down from the record high summer price of nearly $150 a barrel. The prices will remain down, hovering in the $30-$40 range, and may even drop a little lower before they go up again. Funny, isn't it, how what was such an all consuming worry and topic of conversation has been pushed to the sidelines and almost ignored. Sad, that very few of us have been able to enjoy the upside of the oil conundrum because of the downturn in the economy.

OPEC wants to drop production in order to increase prices. But to their chagrin, the general demand for oil has dropped. So even if OPEC drops the price their short term benefit will be minimal. In an ideal world, OPEC would have the price of oil even out at between $75-$85 per barrel.

And who is the most hurt by these low prices? Iran. Iran is hurting bad.

In truth, it's not just Iran. Venezuela and Russia are also suffering seriously because of the great drop in oil prices. But it is Iran that is most affected and interesting to us.

Iran is the third largest producer of oil in the world and yet, Iran must resort to importing its own gasoline. Iran has antiquated refineries and has not built any new refineries since they threw BP out a half a century ago. There's more. Iran not only imports gasoline, the Iranians have no real natural gas and must import that also.

It gets worse for Iran. Add to that an inflation rate that the present regime admits to be at 26% and the country is ripe for an economic implosion. Others, including Khatami who will be opposing Ahmadinejad in Iran's upcoming election on June 12th, put the inflation rate as high up as 65%.

The Iranians need the price of oil to be close to $80 a barrel so that they can break even. They are inefficient. They need subsidies. They need to import. They have almost no cash reverse from their product and they are hemorrhaging money. Iran also made the mistake of dropping the dollar as the official currency exchange link and adopting the Euro, a move that has not proved beneficial.

The picture for Iran is very bleak indeed. No amount of nuclear energy will be able to pull Iran out of this very deep hole.

During the "seven good years of plenty" Iran should have been investing, saving and improving their systems. That, they did not do. That's what Qatar did. Qatar improved its oil infrastructure and is reaping the profits of their investment. The break even point to produce a barrel of oil for Qatar is about $10, substantially lower than what Iran needs. Iran was expecting to earn well over $100 billion in oil revenues this year. With the slashed prices, that number will probably be way down at $20 billion.

So what does this mean? While it is tempting, there is no great pleasure to be had in wallowing in the misfortune of Iran. But what we can do is point a finger, and that finger is pointed at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man responsible for the dramatic economic failure of Iran. Ahmadinejad ran for office on a platform that promised to improve and resuscitate Iran's ailing oil industry. And oil is the only real industry Iran has to export.

If the Supreme Leader, The Ayatollah Khamenei, would lift his head from the clouds and see Iran the way it really is right now, he would oust Ahmadinejad as President of Iran. The people might vote, but it is The Supreme Leader who determines the winner.

If Khatami, the former president and present political rival, wins the election that would be good for Iran. Khatami is less abusive. He is less of a bulldog when dealing with the West. He is more pragmatic and less prone to rhetoric. He understands the need to deal with oil. He understands the need to deal with economics.

OK, so maybe the cloud's lining isn't really silver. But neither is it completely black.

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Tuesday February 17, 2009

Column:

Tennis is a sport, it is not a political movement. Tennis tournaments are supported by sponsors and should not sponsor terror, terrorists or terrorist activities. Playing tennis is about competition, not boycotts.

The Dubai Tennis Championships ranks among the most prestigious tournaments in the world of professional tennis. Coverage of the Dubai receives international attention. This year, the coverage began even before the first match was played. The United Arab Emirates has denied an entrance visa to the person ranked 48th in the world in women's tennis.

Who has the distinction of being denied entry into the UAE? Her name is Shahar Peer. Why has Shahar Peer been singled out? Because Shahar Peer is an Israeli.

The decision sent shock waves throughout the international tennis community. Peer herself received word while participating in a match in Thailand. The shock was dramatic. The response of tennis players has been a unified clamor of dismay.

The players have all sided with Peer. Their support is as admirable as it is ineffective.

International sports at the level of the Dubai Tennis Championships should stand above politics. The reason the Olympics was re-established was specifically to highlight the credo that great sports and great athletics transcend the boundaries of politics and even of war.

The Women's Tennis Association should have cancelled the tournament. The WTA knew that there was a possibility that one of their players would be denied entry into the host country. They warned the hosts not to be discriminatory, not to deny a participant the chance to compete because she came from a country not on their politically approved list.

Larry Scott, director of the Women's Tennis Association, explained the situation by saying the WTA "knew it was an issue, but w