NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY

THIS MORNING IN THE WEE HOURS, we on the East Coast were greeted by a speech from Cairo which will surely and eerily live in infamy. Perhaps it's time to recall these scorching words about one of the most remarkable stories in the history of mankind. That story is Israel. Dylan doesn't pull punches in this track, and delivers a scathing and sarcastic attack at the politically correct viewpoint, now at its zenith some twenty-five years later, which tends to support the Transjordanian Arabs, now redubbed the Palestinians after a brainstorm by PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1969 hit upon the idea of a "race" without a homeland.

The Middle East war is not now and never was a conflict between Israelis/Jews on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. In fact, the Arab-"Palestinians", while currently the perpetrators of most of the anti-Jewish atrocities, were never a very important part of the conflict. In fact, before about 1970, virtually no one in the world considered the Middle East conflict to be one between Israelis and Palestinians.
The term "Palestinian" itself had referred to Israeli Jews back in the 1940s, and had been slowly deconstructed and redefined to refer to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The Middle East Conflict was always a war by Arabs against Jews, not a conflict between Israelis and "Palestinians." The war was repackaged as a conflict between Jews and Palestinians as a public relations gimmick by the Arab fascist regimes. These regimes had never had any interest in "Palestinians," in creating a "Palestinian" state, or in "Palestinian nationalism" before 1967. That is because Palestinian nationalism did not and DOES NOT exist. The Palestinians were a regional group of Arabs having virtually no cultural nor national distinctive traits separating them from Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians. They are all basically Arabs!.

The bulk of what are called "Palestinian Arabs" are members of families who migrated into the Land of Israel beginning in the late 19th century. Palestinian nationalism is a mislabeling of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism exists, although it is closely bound up with Islamic nationalism and even Islamism. Palestinian nationalism, however, is a phantom. It is nothing more than genocidal hatred of Jews!

The Arab assaults and aggressions against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1968, and 1973 had nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian terror campaign would itself be easy to suppress today and eradicate if the Middle East conflict were really a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel would simply obliterate the terrorists and expel their supporters to Syria and Lebanon. The Middle East war continues because it is really an Arab-Israeli war, not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also in large part a war between barbarism and civilization. In many ways an Islamic religious jihad against the Jews.

From the masterful voice of our conservative, yes, I wrote conservative (read radical centrist), poet and prophet Bob Dylan straight off the prescient 1983 "Infidels" LP:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say. He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully

THE ART OF CRIMINAL COLLUSION

CONFOUNDED BY THE PERSISTENT and pernicious moral relativism of the high strutting Lefties in your midst? Today in Breath of the Beast, Yaacov ben Moishe takes issue with the chortling and hairsplitting of PBS navel gazer—Bill Moyers—in Saint Bill or Accessory to Mass Murder? The Dilemma of the Morally Relativistic Media.

On one hand he considers Israel to be entitled to defend herself (as if she needed his permission) on the other hand, he wants, from the vantage point of his snug PBS studio to be able to pass judgment on what a fitting (proportional?) defense would be.

Proportionality? Israel’s armed forces always has done and continues to do their best at separating Hamas from their human shields and killing only the combatants. But that is not enough for Bill Moyers. He uses two examples, examples which all media professionals by the time he used them knew to be suspect, to imply that the Israelis are no better than those who want only to murder them. He pointedly ignores the obvious difference in the morality of the two sides.

He pretends, as it were, that he has just walked into the room and sees Israel beating up the Palestinians without knowing any of the background. According to him, it is an onslaught and a slaughter and he hurls those epithets at Israel, not the hate-filled murderers who have caused the problem and intentionally placed their own people between them and the tiger they had taunted once too often.

He crowns his assault on morality with the remark that first caught our attention—the one he has already backed away from as “obviously not sufficiently precise”. (Ah, suddenly the man who has traded in words all his professional life has “misspoken?

More likely he spoke too quickly and revealed too much) Not only did he state that it was the bible that “genetically encoded” violence in the Jewish people, even as he goes on to say, “A radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth,” he compounds his betrayal of common sense and moral decency by adding “Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians with checkpoints, concrete walls, routine insults” as if he agrees with the Islamist honor/shame formula that their humiliation must be avenged in blood.

Read it all.

Unravelling and understanding this Israeli-Arab conflict is a rather simple task. Unravelling and understanding the mental gymnastics the Left uses to suggest its own moral superiority is not.

NETANYAHU DEFIANT AGAINST APPEASERS

ISRAEL'S SECURITY CHALLENGES ARE daunting. Hamas remains in power and will try to rearm itself with an even more deadly arsenal. This goes without saying, however much the Arab and Western Left wish to spin "context" contrary to the facts on then ground since day one of Israel's declaration of independence as a modern state on May 14, 1948.

The Israeli papers carried reports on Monday (here, for instance) about an article in the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat claiming Egypt was warning Hamas to strike a deal with Israel before Binyamin Netanyahu forms the next government. Otherwise, the Egyptian officials are supposed to have said, Hamas stands to “lose everything.”

Rumors were flying about a ceasefire of a year to a year and a half in which Israel would open the crossings to Gaza and free 1,000 Hamas prisoners in return for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel’s current leaders Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, and Tzipi Livni are said to be anxious to conclude a deal for Shalit before the February 10 elections.

If so, they’re badly miscalculating. Israelis want Shalit freed and are perturbed that Operation Cast Lead didn’t secure that result. The renewed terror puts the government’s claims about restored Israei deterrence in doubt as well.

Clearly Olmert, Barak, and Livni can’t boast that the war was a resounding success, gravely weakening Hamas, and then agree to abject terms of 1,000 terrorists for one Israeli soldier. Israelis would rejoice to see Shalit back home in any case—then send Livni and Barak (with Olmert finished in any case) deeper into political defeat.

Bibi to world: I don’t believe Operation Cast Lead came anywhere near defeating or neutralizing Hamas. I am realistic about the danger Hamas continues to pose.

“Hizbullah has de facto control over Lebanon and has tripled its lethal capacity.”

Bibi to world: Ditto for the Second Lebanon War. It didn’t achieve much and I am realistic about the danger Hizbullah continues to pose.

“And advancing peace with moderate Palestinians is possible, but must be done in a way that does not sacrifice Israel’s security interests.”

Bibi to Obama administration: Again, I don’t dismiss this idea, but I’m going to be real careful about it and will not be pushed into moves I deem harmful to Israel.

“Above all else, the top priority of the next government of Israel will be to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. Iran is a regime openly pledged to our destruction, and its threats must never be dismissed lightly. Israel must immediately redouble its efforts to work with the United States and other allies to neutralize this threat.”

Bibi to Obama administration and Europeans: If you’re really intending to do something about it, I will work with you against the Iranian threat. If you’re not, take note: Israel will go it alone.

To sum up, Netanyahu’s advent evokes rational fears in those who wish Israel ill and irrational enmity in those purporting to wish it well. Netanyahu, aware of the various perceptions, wants it to be known that he is above all an Israeli nationalist concerned about his country’s survival. After three years and more of weak, obsequious leadership, Israelis—with their mixed feelings about his earlier tenure at the helm—are ready to put him there again.

Read it all.

We, in the United States, who share this resolve to identify and stop the rising global tide of Islamic jihad in all of its infamy can only hope that Bibi Netanyahu rises once again to the top slot in the Israeli government at this most dangerous time in history. His abiding strength and iron resolve to confront those who would "wipe Israel off the map" not with weakness but with clarity of purpose will be the corrective and timely anecdote to the wobbly Obama policies already in motion.

Remember people, our Dear Leader has already—in his first week as top policy maker of the most powerful military force on earth—reached out to the Islamic rabble in a pitiful show of "dhimmitudinal" solidarity, just like he telegraphed in one of those two biographies of his (and William Ayers), in stating that "when the political winds change in an ugly direction I will stand with my Muslim brothers."

As Charles Krauthammer put it, "Every new president flatters himself that he, kinder and gentler, is beginning the world anew. Yet, when Barack Obama in his inaugural address reached out to Muslims with to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect, his formulation was needlessly defensive and apologetic.

Krauthammer is being gentle. The truth is that Obama has more up his sleeve than even this well-respected conservative columnist will admit publically.

Is it "new" to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn't just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years—the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world—America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved—and resulted in—the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

That's right. Stop the misplaced appeasement to these vulgar peoples who are aggressive the world over, thanks to Saudi-financed Wahabbi madrassas now stretching into every corner of the free world. Bottom line, Mr. President. No more dhimmitude. We had enough of that with the last man to sit in the same seat you now occupy. Enough said for this patriot.

SUNSHINE PATRIOTS AMONGST US

Picture this scenario—roving gangs terrorizing the neighborhood; residents and police act to curb violence. Gang members, adept at finding flaws in a system meant to work as a favorable policy, start crying foul that they are being picked on.

Who was "living" in the area of Israel in 1947? Nobody. It was unattended forgotten desert. Bedouins migrated through it, but it was a vast wasteland. Now with the help of pseudo-compassionate people we are supposed to believe that this turf was always inhabited by the so-called Palestinian people. Hey, I know, let's introduce a turf war. Many an Arab country could alleviate the problem by assimilating the Palestinians (pan-Arabs) into their cultures and societies, but no, it is much more convenient for the Muslim world for them to be 'a thorn in Israel's side'.

Others have said it before, but honestly, the more I hear the screams from the Left the more I am persuaded that unbridled liberalism is indeed some sort of mental disorder—to be unable to distinguish between right and wrong, truth and fiction, the real and the unreal is to be delusional.

Too many Americans digest too much of what the MSM reports as news, thinking that US foreign policy is utterly without redeeming features and that things have never been worse in the nation or the world at large.

But just like President Georgie Bush said yesterday—things during President Abe Lincoln's tenure surely weren't the rosiest of times, now were they? A nation crippled and divided where fathers fought sons, brothers fought brothers, and the blood ran red.

It's unfortunate our automobiles today can't run on the vitriolic fuel our political climate seems to produce in quite an abundant supply.

ORDINARY MEN, OR IDIOTS IN PAJAMAS

FOLLOWING ARE SEVERAL EXCERPTS from an interview with an Hamas MP which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on April 23, 2008. If these men weren't running a country, perhaps they would be fabulous comedians, but otherwise, this is simply the work of an idiot in pajamas. If idiot is too harsh a word, bigot will work just as well. And if the word bigot offends thee, let;s just call him an Israeliophobe. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Salem Salamah: "There are companies established by the colonialists and occupiers—large companies with branches all over the world, like Pepsi, Pepsi Cola. This is a well-known company. Pepsi is an acronym. P-E-P-S-I - Pay Every Pence to Save Israel. Pay every pence—pence is one hundredth of a dollar—to save Israel. Pay every pence to save Israel. Shouldn't the Muslims have a fund, a company, or a large project to save the Al-Aqsa Mosque?"

Then there's this to chew on. Boycotts work both ways. If only the US would just say NO to the Saudi oil shieks, we might once again begin to exert some real leverage against these adversaries. History is a description of conflict, no doubt, so read on for some tough but real history thanks to the folks at Snopes...

Claim: Coca-Cola was once considered anti-Semitic for refusing to do business in Israel.

Status: True.

Origins: The last thirty-odd years have seen allegations of anti-Semitism hurled at both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and for both companies the charges stemmed from their one-time reluctance to do business with Israel.

Successfully doing business in the Middle East often depended upon not doing business in Israel. The Arab League was quick to boycott, and multinational concerns were forced to choose between the smaller market of Israel and the much larger market of the combined Arab states. For firms caught in the middle, it was a "no win" situation. Coca-Cola's turn in the harsh spotlight of public opinion came in 1966.

April 1 1966: At a press conference in Tel Aviv, businessman Moshe Bornstein accused Coca-Cola of refusing to do business in Israel out of fear of reprisals and loss of profits in the Arab soft drink market. A week later in New York, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith released a statement backing up the charges, triggering headlines across the U.S.A. Coca-Cola was in hot water, and the American public was demanding answers. It was also rejecting the answers it was getting.

In 1949 Coca-Cola had attempted to open a bottling plant in Israel, but its efforts had been blocked by the Israeli government. As long as no one questioned the company too closely, the failure of this one stab at the Israeli market appeared to provide a satisfactory answer for Coca-Cola's conspicuous absence from the Israeli market. In the meanwhile, Coca-Cola was content to continue quietly serving the much larger Arab market, a market it was likely to lose if it began operating in Israel.

In 1961 an incident in Cairo involving civil servant Mohammad Abu Shadi momentarily shattered the quiet. Shadi had come into possession of a Coca-Cola bottle manufactured in Ethiopia, mistaken the Amharic lettering on its label for Hebrew, and publicly accused Coca-Cola of doing business with Israel.

The manager of Coca-Cola's Egyptian bottling operations wasted no time (and little thought) in assuring the press that Coca-Cola would never allow the Israelis a franchise. With their hands forced by their bottler's impolitic statement, company officials quickly invented the explanation that Israel was too small to support a franchise and gave their reasons for staying away as purely economic, not political. For the time being, this seemed to keep a lid on the brewing storm.

It wasn't until 1966 that people began to wonder openly why it was that nearby Cyprus had no difficulty supporting its Coca-Cola franchise despite their having only one-tenth the population of Israel. The comfortable aura of quiet was shattered by Bornstein's charges and the subsequent uproar they raised in the US.

When these issues came to light in 1966, they proved highly embarrassing to Coca-Cola. The administrators of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan announced they would stop serving Coke, and the owners of Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Emporium on Coney Island followed suit. Faced with the prospect of a Jewish boycott in America, the company attempted to right the tipped canoe by announcing it would open a bottling plant in Tel Aviv. (Such is the price of business: Israel with the fury of America behind it became a much more attractive market than it ever had been all on its own.) The Arab League struck back by placing Coca-Cola on its boycott list. The boycott began in August 1968 and lasted until May 1991 (or until 1979 in Egypt, where they made their own rules).

Pepsi's entry into Israel in 1992 did not go smoothly—the evolution theme of its "Choice of a New Generation" ad campaign (in which man was portrayed as evolving from a monkey into a Pepsi drinker) angered the strictly observant haredi community. Though Pepsi pulled the campaign from Israel, it found itself in more hot water over a 1993 Michael Jackson tour. Jackson's unthinking flashbulb-popping arrival on a Sabbath was viewed by many observant Jews as a desecration. For a time Pepsi lost its kashrut (kosher) certificate because it was deemed to be promoting a culture that would corrupt the nation's youth through rock music concerts and advertisements featuring scantily-clad women.

Prior to 1992, Pepsi had backed the other horse, choosing to service the lucrative Coke-less Arab markets in the boycott days. For its decision to stay out of Israel (and thus itself avoid being placed on the Arab League's blacklist), Pepsi faced continued criticism in the United States. In certain circles it was considered politically incorrect to be seen drinking Pepsi.

The Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith investigated claims that Pepsi was participating in the boycott of Israel. U.S. law prohibited American companies from taking part in this boycott, but the law was vague, and outright violations were hard to pin down. Nothing ever came of the investigations, and Pepsi was never placed on the American government's list of violators.

Pepsi always denied it was the fear of losing their Arab markets that kept them out of Israel. Like Coca-Cola in 1961, Pepsi fell back upon the claim of Israel's being too small to support a franchise. At least this time the excuse was a bit more believable—Coca-Cola's already holding down the lion's share of the Israeli soft drink market gave this claim a bit more plausibility. Even so, Pepsi was doing business in many other small markets and much more often than not competing head-to-head against Coca-Cola. If these conditions were keeping them out of Israel, then why weren't they equally keeping them out of these other markets?

Many people in the United States believed Pepsi was going along with the boycott, whether it was proveable in the eyes of U.S. law or not. Those lucrative Arab markets did not come without a price, and Pepsi paid it in loss of goodwill in the US. A significant number of American cola drinkers grew up suspecting Pepsi of being anti-Israel and refrained from buying their product. By contrast, Coca-Cola appeared heroic.

This appearance failed to take into account Coca-Cola's fast stepping to shake off similar charges in the 1960s. Pepsi's mud-spattered skirts were but Coca-Cola's hand-me-downs—same skirt, just a bit older.

Today you can get either Coke or Pepsi in anywhere in the Middle East, and the days of the boycott have faded into memory. Even so, there are still those who observe the stricture of "Coke is for Jews; Pepsi is for Arabs." Old wounds are not necessarily healed wounds.

RICE CHIDES ARABIC STINGINESS

Regardless of how one feels about this administration's handling of Middle Eastern affairs, or the practicality of a Palestinian state, it's good news and orange juice to go with your breakfast when the oil-crippled United States government actually criticizes the grappling oil-rich Arabs for anything.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday chided Arab countries for not helping the Palestinians financially to establish a viable state, and she accused some states of trying to get away with giving as little aid as possible.

Rice, beginning a trip focused mostly on the Middle East, also said that it is too early to "despair" about missing the Bush administration"s year-end deadline for reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

"States that have resources ought to be looking not for how little they can do, but how much they can do," she said when asked about the limited Arab support for the Palestinians in a briefing to reporters on her way to London.

They "need to put those resources to use now in order to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a [Palestinian] state," the secretary said, although she did not name specific countries to avoid being seen as pointing fingers.

In addition to "budget support" for the Palestinian Authority, help is needed to implement a "broad national plan" drawn up by Prime Minister Salaam Fayad and his Cabinet, which was presented in Paris, she said.

Read it all.

HILLARY'S THE OBLITERATOR IN CHIEF

AS PENNSYLVANIA VOTERS go to the polls in a primary widely regarded as do-or-die for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the New York Democrat apparently is positioning herself to the right of some Republicans, vowing that if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, she would respond in kind against Tehran, with the ability to "totally obliterate them."

Would she, or won't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

Clinton's remarks came during an interview airing tomorrow morning on the ABC News show, Good Morning America. ABC's Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, according to the network. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Aim big, but level a soft kick at the groin, just to get their attention. That's what many of us think about Hillary's commitment to defending Israel and America from this menace called Ahmadinejad's Mahdi. That poor fellow Ahmadinejad has been blustering for so long, his chin is dragging across his soup most of the time these days, but if he were to manage to finally go nuclear, there is little doubt he would immediately seek to create all that chaos that he believes his mysterious Mahdi requires for making that next appearance.

But somehow I believe her affinity for the button more than I believe Mister Obama in his earlier threatening words to Pakistan. Obama will opt for the jizya tactic. More bribery money to the troublemakers. That's his ticket. Bah, humbug. Stop all US payments to these crouching leopards, and while you are at it, why don't you show your toughness by being tough at home, and help police and eradicate the roving thugs already terrorizing our own urban and suburban neighborhoods throughout the nation...

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND THE MEDIA

A CASE COULD BE MADE made that in the age of television, and especially since 1967, there has not been a news event of major transformative effect that has not been presented to the public without serious distortions. Some have been outright lies. The seriousness of the effects of these distortions cannot be understated. Here are a variety of examples as put forth by Yaacov ben Moshe over at his Breath of the Beast blog:

In 1967 the world was given the impression that the great victory in The Six Day War had solved the Middle East problem and secured Israel’s existence. This distorted view has set the stage for the Arabs, who still vastly outnumber the Israelis, are far richer and have an undiminished desire to utterly destroy Israel, to claim the mantel of “underdog” and even “victim” in the eyes of a majority of Europeans and very large numbers of Americans.

The defeat of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968 was presented as proof that further support of freedom in Southeast Asia was futile. This perception turned allied victory into defeat and caused a substantial bloodbath in Viet Nam and contributed heavily to the cataclysm in neighboring Cambodia

In 1987 the video of the Rodney King incident was shown over and over to the public on the evening news without the first segment of it which showed King attacking one of the officers. The public then could not understand the verdict when the jury (who, in court, had seen King’s aggressive attack) acquitted the police officers. The reverberations of the riots, in which 48 people died, that followed are still poisoning the “conversation about race” in the US today.

The systematic demonization of the Serbs in the Balkans and the complete bestowal of “victim-hood” on the Moslems of Kosovo. Led to allied bombing of the Serbs and an overall tilt toward the Moslem side which gave prestige, courage and comfort to many foreign Islamist fighters who were active in the Balkans at the time. Many of those fighters, including Osama bin Laden himself, have gone on to terrorist activities against the west.

The al Durah blood libel poured fuel on the fires of Islamist Jihad and the resulting wave of “retaliatory” violence that reference al Durah included the Ramallah lynchings, the beheading of Daniel Pearl and 9/11. Even more damaging than the directly related violence, though, is that the wide acceptance of this particular fraud as truth has given credence to every other fraud, misrepresentation and slander since that time.

TROUBLE IN ANNAPOLIS

What would you do if your foreign policy agenda had these priorities:
* Get Arab and European support for solving the Iraq crisis.
* Mobilize Arab and European forces against a threat led by Iran and its allies, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
* Get Iran to stop its campaign to get nuclear weapons.
* Reestablish American credibility toward friends and deterrence toward enemies.
* Reduce the level of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

That pretty much describes the U.S. framework for dealing with the Middle East nowadays. The Annapolis conference is not going to contribute to these goals. The most likely outcome is either failure or a non-event portrayed as a victory because it took place at all. No one is going to say: We are so grateful at the United States becoming more active on Arab-Israeli issues that we are going to back its policy on other issues.

On the contrary, the conference is more likely to show the inability of the United States to produce results, thus undermining belief in U.S. leverage in the region in general. It shines the spotlight on the most divisive issue, the great excuse for not doing more to help U.S. efforts, raising its prominence. What most of Washington simply fails to understand is that any real demand for Palestinian or Arab concessions will be fodder for radical groups and frighten Arab regimes, pushing the latter away from support for America rather than toward it. And any Israeli concessions obtained by this process will not satisfy their demands either.

Despite thousands of claims by lots of famous people, national leaders, and respected journals, solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not make radical Islamism or terrorism go away. Would you like to know why? Because even if this issue could be solved—which isn’t about to happen for reasons requiring a different article—to do so would necessitate a compromise including an end to the conflict, acceptance of Israel, and compromises by the Arab side. These steps would inflame the extremists and make any Arab rulers who accepted it vulnerable to being called traitors. It would increase instability in the Arab world, also by removing the conflict as splendid excuse and basis for mobilizing support for the current rulers. Arab politicians understand this reality; most people in the West don’t.

Read it all here in the essay by Barry Rubin at the GLORIA Center.

Rubin's headline for this article is Drilling a Hole in the Lifeboat. But here's my own bit of painful, yet nevertheless, strategic wishful thinking. The operative question is simple. Is the United States still operating with a few aces short of a full deck in dealing with this foul enemy of basic human dignity and its phoney peacemakers, or is this rather the traditional final opportunity for the five families to look each other in the eye and declare themselves according to their own peculiar lights as rational businessmen just prior to the moment when the real turf war begins?

We know what happens next. Vito Corleone is hammered with bullets as the hapless Fredo fumbles about nearby. But this despicable action sparks the required no holds barred heroic response to take down these unlikeable mobsters who wish to spread its immoral oppression, in our case, around the globe. I'd like to think it is this latter scenario we are facing, in anticipation that Bush and company are determined that we must finally move this sixty year old family feud towards the finishing stage, which is a true peace built of strength of character and not some awkward and deceitful strength by religious police we see implemented across the sand belt from Africa to Indonesia.

But I'm not getting my hopes up. Old fashioned nationalism certainly seems to be taking a back seat to this push toward absolute globalism these days.

Breaking news. Same old Saudi smoke and mirrors. Yesterday we read in the Arab News that the House of Saud has released 1500 Al-Qaeda extremists, who were detained on charges of embracing and spreading takfeer (the ideology that brands other Muslims who disagree with them as infidels) after they repented. Today we hear that the Saudi regime has arrested over 200 extremists who have terrorist ties.

One must wonder how many of the 1500 released were rounded up again the next day in order to create a splash at Annapolis. It is the House of Saud, of course, who finances the madrassas and mosques around the globe including over 1500 here in the States. These schools teach the most virilent form of Wahabbism, including one in the Washington, DC area that several US Senators are trying to have shut down. No word on the traction of this shut down, but we shall certainly follow the story here.

THOSE TROUBLED PALESTINIANS

Illegal Jewish settlements on land where before there were none.

The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is infamous for uttering the bold political statement: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people."

The statement has been a source of ridicule and derision by Arab propagandists ever since. They love to talk about Meir's "racism" when skies are blue and not bloody with Arab aggression they can never admit, eager to suggest she was in historical denial. They love to say her statement is patently false—an intentional lie, a strategic deception.

What they don't like to talk about, however, are the very similar statements made by Yasser Arafat and his inner circle of political leadership years after Meir had told the truth—that there is no distinct Palestinian cultural or national identity.

So, despite the fact that the woefully misnamed "politically correct" wisdom has now proclaimed that there is indeed such a thing as the Palestinian people, Ione must consider a few inconvenient quotations made by Arafat and his thugs when their public-relations guard was down.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

This statement requires no Clintonian parsing. It's even more specific than Golda Meir's statement. And it is hardly the only such statement of its kind. Arafat himself made a very definitive and unequivocal statement along these lines as late as 1993. It demonstrates conclusively that the Palestinian nationhood argument is the real strategic deception—one geared to set up the destruction of Israel.

In fact, on the same day Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles, also known as the Oslo Accords, on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, he explained his actions on Jordan TV. Here's what he said: "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."

No matter how many people convince themselves that the aspirations for Palestinian statehood are genuine and the key to peace in the Middle East, they are still deceiving themselves.

Let's be plain. In the history of the world, Palestine has never existed as a nation. The region known as Palestine was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their ancestral homeland. It was never ruled by Arabs as a separate nation.

Why has this issue become such a critical priority to those jostling on the world stage for power in this post 9/11 era? The answer is because of a massive deception campaign and relentless terrorism to push Israel completely out. Golda Meir was right. Her statement is validated by the truth of history and by the candid, but not widely circulated, echoes of Arafat and his lieutenants.

The path is before us. Israel and the West must not surrender to terrorism by granting the killers just what they want—a public relations triumph and a strategic victory. It's not too late to JUST SAY NO to another Arab terror state. It's not too late to tell the truth about Palestine, no matter how the apologists dress up their lies in sweet-sounding good intentions.

Now for another truth. On November 29, 2005, the United Nations in a so-called Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, instead wiped Israel off the map. Read more.

And let us not forget that roughly the same people in the United States who vigorously clamor for a Palestinian state and the relinquishing of the "illegal" territories now held by Jewish settlers, also have no qualms about allowing "illegals" to pour into the US from the south, and elsewhere. Even the class dunce sitting with his nose to a corner can spot the trend here.

SKIPPING A BEAT

"Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville 150 years ago, "than this irritable patriotism of the Americans." It was an era when Americans believed that their country was "God's new Israel," that they were a chosen people.

On July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary to the day of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had died within hours of each other, inspiring a now forgotten but typical orator to find "the finger of Providence" in the coincidence: "It hallows the Declaration of Independence as the Word of God. that promises its principles shall be eternal, and their dissemination universal over the earth."

It was a common boast at the time and for years afterward: the self-invention of a republic would set an example for the corrupt and cynical regimes of the Old World, and any foreigner who suggested otherwise was quickly told that criticisms of the young country must be limited to the quality of its climate and soil. "Even then," Tocqueville noted, "Americans will be found ready to defend both as if they had cooperated in producing them.''

Today it sometimes seems to be Americans themselves who are most embarrassed by the swaggering patriotism that irritated Tocqueville. Having lost its innocence in the first half of the century, the United States has proceeded in the second half to lose much of its self confidence as well. It makes a too-familiar litany: assassinations, race riots, war, Watergate, oil embargoes, inflation all culminating in the humiliation in Teheran and the charred bodies at Desert Storm. As the laidback generation of the 1970s becomes the laid off generation of the '80s, an almost un-American apathy may even arise.

-from a Newsweek article published in 1983

Now here's another charming bit of jolt juice I found on the web today. The two opinions (1) and (2):

(1) It was common know years ago, Americans believed that their country was "God's new Israel," that they were a chosen people. But today that knowledge is hidden, forgotten, hated and denied by the clergy.

(2) Today, anyone can freely say that the Jews are God's Chosen and Palestine is the land of regathered Israel.

But, if you repeat what your great grandfather knew for a fact, (1) then you may be called a neo-Nazi, anti-Semite, hater or bigot. One opinion (2) is politically correct, blessed by the both politician and clergy. The other opinion (1) is now almost a 'thought crime.'

Somehow I think there is a third opinion. We are all God's chosen people. It's just that most people just don't believe it and try to demonize others on abstract grounds that have nothing to do with any of the political, religious, ethnic, economical, or behavioral dichotomies which land each of us in so much dung every time we try to step outside the box of false consciousness.

HARD TALK FROM NEWT GINGRICH

Newt Gingrich of Georgia speaks out against George Bush's "Phoney War" with a resolute directness and strength most welcomed here at the Two-Fisted Quorum. I won't spoil the fun by revealing too much here. Just watch the video.