Lessons of the Syrian Reactor By Bruce Riedel Apr 26 2013 http://nationalinterest.org/article/lessons-the-syrian-reactor-8380?page=show THE OFFICE of the assistant to the president for national-security affairs in the West Wing of the White House is a spacious, well-lit corner room in a building where space is at a premium. It contains not only the national-security adviser’s large desk but also a table for lunch discussions and other small meetings as well as a couch and easy chairs for more relaxed discussions. In April 2007, this commodious setting was the scene of a remarkable meeting. Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser at the time, welcomed Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, who came with a special briefing for his American host. Dagan revealed a secret nuclear reactor in the final stages of construction in the Syrian desert, developed with the help of North Korea. Knowledge of this project constituted a stunning intelligence coup for Israel. Later that year, on September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Syria’s nuclear facility at Al Kibar along the Euphrates River. The mission emerged from more than two decades of comprehensive intelligence collection and analysis by American and Israeli intelligence services targeting Syria’s development of weapons of mass destruction. It was a dramatic demonstration of intelligence success-all the more so given the ongoing civil war that has devastated Syria since 2011. The world does not need to worry about a Syrian nuclear reactor under threat of capture by Islamic radicals. Israel took that concern off the table. But the incident also demonstrated that once a policy-intelligence feedback loop becomes dysfunctional, as happened to the George W. Bush administration after it exaggerated and distorted intelligence estimates to justify the Iraq War, there are serious policy implications. Israel wanted America to take out the reactor, but Bush was constrained by an intelligence community unwilling to cooperate with another major military operation based primarily on intelligence data. THE STORY begins in the early 1980s, when the Syrian government began developing weapons of mass destruction. Despite achieving strategic surprise in the Yom Kippur War and foiling Israel’s ambitions to remake Lebanon into an ally in the 1982 Lebanon war, Damascus recognized that it was no match for Israel in a conventional war. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) marched to the outskirts of Damascus in 1973 and nine years later evicted the Syrians from Beirut and southern Lebanon. Thus, President Hafez al-Assad sought to develop chemical weapons to create a balance of terror between Israel and Syria that would deter Israel from threatening Damascus or trying to oust his regime in any future conflict. Assad turned to Syria’s preeminent scientific-research establishment to begin developing weapons of mass destruction to threaten Israel’s cities. The Centre d’Etude et de Recherche Scientifique (CERS) in Damascus was able to develop a reliable chemical weapon using the nerve agent sarin by the mid-1980s. Sarin, discovered by four German scientists just before World War II and named as an acronym of their last names, is estimated to be more than five hundred times as toxic as cyanide. CERS scientists were able to produce the nerve agent in significant quantities and achieve a high level of purity to make it lethal. The Syrians then mated the chemical weapon with a reliable delivery system-the Soviet-built Scud missile, also a weapon of German design. The Russians essentially copied the German V-2 missile after the Second World War and in the 1970s began exporting the system to their Arab allies. Mating a chemical warhead to a missile is not a simple technical challenge, but the Syrians succeeded in doing so in the mid-1980s and successfully carried out tests with the system. Syria also developed chemical bombs that could be dropped by aircraft. Syria was not alone in developing sarin weapons; Iraq did so as well and actually used them extensively, along with other chemicals, on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war. In January 1988, the Sunday Times of London reported on its front page that Israeli officials had briefed the paper that Syria had successfully developed the chemical warheads for its Scud missiles and that Israel was considering a preemptive attack to destroy the manufacturing plants. Syria denied that it was making chemical weapons. In the end, Israel chose not to initiate a preemptive strike, probably because the Syrians had developed a sufficient number of manufacturing plants, finished warheads and missiles that an attack likely would fail to eliminate the danger and might provoke a Syrian strike on Tel Aviv. Syria continued to refine its chemical weapons during the 1990s even as it pursued peace negotiations with the Israelis. In addition to sarin warheads, it also developed the even more toxic nerve agent VX and expanded the number of its missile delivery systems with assistance from North Korea. The American and Israeli intelligence communities monitored the improvement of the Syrian arsenal. In January 2000, the Syrian-Israeli peace process led to a summit in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, that came tantalizingly close to a peace agreement. But it fell just short of culmination. The draft agreement made no mention of Syria’s WMD. Two months later, a final effort to arrange a peace agreement failed at a summit between Assad and President Bill Clinton in Geneva. In June 2000, Assad died and was succeeded by his son Bashar. Before the elder Assad’s death, he entered into discussions with North Korea on a highly secret program to build a nuclear reactor in western Syria with Pyongyang’s assistance. According to former CIA director Michael Hayden, cooperation between Syria and North Korea on nuclear issues began in the late 1990s, perhaps in 1997. A subsequent review of imagery indicates that construction at Al Kibar began in 2002. According to Hayden, the CIA saw the construction as suspicious but did not recognize it as a nuclear reactor until “a report from a foreign partner initially identified the structure at Al-Kibar as a nuclear reactor similar to one in North Korea.” THE ISRAELIS tentatively identified the reactor for what it was in late 2006. According to Israeli and German press reports, the Mossad obtained access to the laptop computer of a Syrian government official while he was visiting London in 2006. The laptop contained construction plans, letters and hundreds of photographs of the reactor at various stages in its development since 2002. Most importantly, the photographs of the interior of the site demonstrated it was a nuclear reactor. It is unclear if the Israelis had British cooperation in gaining access to the computer. The CIA then employed classic “multidisciplinary, blue-collar analysis,” as Hayden put it, to bring together “virtually every form of intelligence-imagery, signals, human source, you name it... so that they were never completely dependent on any single channel” of source material. He highlighted the “quality of tradecraft, in terms of collection and analysis, and the value of collaboration... with foreign services.” A six-minute CIA video, released after the reactor’s destruction, indicates the agency analysis demonstrated that the Al Kibar facility was a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor intended to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Al Kibar was a North Korean design, similar to that country’s reactor at Yongbyon. Only North Korea had built reactors of this design in the previous thirty-five years. The CIA reached its conclusions by using satellite imagery, ground photographs of the interior of the facility and a computer-produced graphic image of the reactor. It also photographed North Korean personnel in Syria involved in the construction. The CIA video concluded that the construction was complete by April 2007, after which the reactor could have gone operational at any time with sufficient fuel. Hayden noted that the American analysts reviewed potential alternative explanations for the facility, but “the arguments simply didn’t add up.” He stressed that the “foreign partnerships... were critical to the final outcome” of the analysis. They were “akin to working together on a complex equation over a long period. Each tries to solve a variable that in turn helps a partner solve another, and so on until we’ve cracked the case. That’s what good intelligence is all about.” The Israelis supplemented their data with soil and plant samples acquired by an IDF commando mission in August 2007. Elite soldiers from the Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s elite commando unit, were covertly flown in by CH-53 helicopters to the Al Kibar region to acquire the samples. This intelligence collection, and the detection of the Syrian nuclear reactor, represented an unqualified intelligence success. American and Israeli covert operations had successfully tracked Syria’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction over two decades. But the interaction between intelligence and policy was more complicated, especially on the American side. Some press accounts of the reactor episode in Israel and elsewhere emphasize a possible Iranian role in the project. Israeli accounts suggest the Syrian project was funded in part or in full by Tehran, and one says Iran provided $2 billion for the project. But the CIA’s video and Hayden’s public comments don’t mention Iran, and President Bush’s account of his discussions with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes no mention of any Iranian role. Nor did Vice President Dick Cheney’s subsequent accounts suggest involvement by Iran. No Israeli government source has claimed an Iranian role in the Syria project, either, and Israeli government officials normally are not hesitant to discuss Iranian nuclear developments. A senior Israeli intelligence officer directly involved in the operation told me that the evidence does not confirm an Iranian role in or even knowledge of the reactor, although it is always difficult to be definitive about funding sources for secret projects. Israeli accounts also stress the role of General Mohammed Suleiman in the project. Suleiman was in charge of the reactor’s construction and security. An engineering graduate from Damascus University, Suleiman was Assad’s chief adviser on all WMD projects and dealt extensively with the North Koreans and Iranians. Suleiman was assassinated in August 2008 at his seaside home near Tartus, Syria, reportedly by Israeli naval commandos. Importantly, neither American nor Israeli intelligence located a plutonium-reprocessing facility near Al Kibar or anywhere in Syria. While a nuclear reactor potentially represents the first step toward a nuclear-weapons capability, it alone would not be sufficient to build the weapons. The country would also need a reprocessing facility-a more difficult technical challenge to build-in order to convert the plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel into a high enough grade for it to be usable in nuclear weapons. Syria also lacked sufficient fuel to start the reactor on its own; it would need a fuel supply from some outside source. That presumably would have been North Korea. The absence of a reprocessing facility suggests the reactor at Al Kibar may have been for supplying North Korea and its nuclear-weapons program more than it was for a Syrian program, at least until Syria built a reprocessing facility. This intriguing absence would raise questions that would have serious implications for the policy community in the United States. IN MARCH 2007, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert set up a small team of experts to advise him and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on what to do about the Syrian threat. The following month, as previously mentioned, Mossad director Meir Dagan came to Washington to see Stephen Hadley to discuss the situation. Dagan brought photographs from his laptop and imagery taken by Israel’s satellites to share with Hadley, who also previously had his own briefing from the CIA. Cheney also was present for Dagan’s briefing, which he describes as including satellite imagery and photographs of the North Korean team leaders in Syria. Bush described the American decision-making process in his memoir. In spring 2007, shortly after the Dagan visit, he was briefed extensively on the Israeli information. “Our strong suspicion was that we had just caught Syria red-handed trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability with North Korean help,” he wrote. Shortly thereafter, Olmert called Bush with a request that the United States “bomb the compound.” Bush asked for options from his national-security team and an intelligence assessment from Hayden. The military favored an air strike if force was to be used, while the diplomatic option would be to brief allies on the intelligence and collectively go to the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) to demand Syria shut down and dismantle the reactor under IAEA supervision. If Syria refused, then “we would have a clear public rationale for military action.” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both favored the diplomatic option. Cheney supported an American military attack. The intelligence assessment “clarified my decision,” according to Bush. Hayden told the president that intelligence-community analysts “had high confidence that the plant housed a nuclear reactor. But because they could not confirm the location of the facilities necessary to turn the plutonium into a weapon, they had only low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.” In her memoir, Rice credits the intelligence assessment as critical in convincing her that to bomb the reactor in the “face of uncertain intelligence was, to put it mildly, reckless.” Bush informed Olmert that he had decided for the diplomatic option on the basis of the intelligence analysts’ estimate. “I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program,” he told Olmert. A diplomatic approach would fully protect Israel’s “interests and your state,” he argued, telling the prime minister that this approach “makes it more likely we can achieve our interests as well.” Cheney later described the decision-making process as well. He attended the first briefing with Dagan in April 2007. At a national-security principals meeting in the family quarters on the second floor of the White House on June 17, Cheney urged an American military attack on the reactor. He later wrote that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell had “high confidence” it was a reactor, but he makes no mention of the second low-confidence judgment. Cheney also describes a second principals meeting in late June, at which the president asked his top advisers for advice. Only Cheney favored an American military strike, while Rice, Hadley and Gates supported a diplomatic response. “The prime minister was disappointed,” Bush relates. The Israeli leader told the president that a Syrian nuclear-weapons program represented an “existential” issue for Israel. Olmert predicted that diplomacy “would bog down and fail,” and added that the U.S. strategy was “very disturbing to me.” He then ended the conversation. On September 6, 2007, Israel launched a military strike and destroyed the reactor without any effort to alert the IAEA, the United Nations or the international community. Israel’s decision was consistent with its history. In 1981, Israel used force to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor and maintain its own regional nuclear monopoly. It is well-known that Israel has its own nuclear arsenal, although it has never acknowledged as much publicly. Every Israeli prime minister since David Ben-Gurion deliberately has taken an evasive posture on the issue, but Israel never has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ben-Gurion set up the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in 1952, just four years after the country’s independence, and concluded a deal with France a few years later to secretly build the Dimona nuclear reactor. By 1960 the CIA had uncovered the project and was convinced that “plutonium production for weapons is at least one major purpose of this effort.” President John F. Kennedy tried to persuade Israel to forego the bomb without success. By 1974 the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Israel had produced and stockpiled a small number of fission weapons, and press reporting about the Israeli program was commonplace. The Federation of American Scientists’ latest estimate of global nuclear stockpiles pegs the size of Israel’s arsenal today at roughly eighty nuclear weapons, deliverable by aircraft, cruise missiles from Israeli submarines built in Germany or Jericho ballistic missiles. This estimate is consistent with those from other think tanks around the world. Israel has threatened to use its nuclear arsenal at least once. In 1991, on the eve of the Gulf War, then Israeli deputy chief of staff Ehud Barak told King Hussein of Jordan to pass a message to Saddam Hussein and Iraq at a secret meeting in England. “If one single chemical warhead falls on Israel, we’ll hit Iraq with everything we have got.... Look at your watch and forty minutes later an Iraqi city will be reduced to ashes.” It worked. Saddam fired conventionally armed warheads at Tel Aviv, Haifa and Dimona, but no chemicals. Given the power of such a threat, it is understandable why Israel would seek to preserve its monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The decision to attack and destroy Syria’s reactor was fully consistent with that long-standing but unstated Israeli policy. THE AMERICAN decision not to attack was more complex. Bush says he was constrained by the analysts’ assessment that, while Al Kibar was clearly a nuclear reactor, they were “less confident” it was part of a Syrian nuclear-weapons program, given the lack of a reprocessing facility. That decision reflected the state of intelligence-policy interaction in the later stages of the Bush administration. The Iraq War had significantly influenced this interaction. The intelligence community had been heavily criticized in the media and Congress for allegedly allowing the Bush administration to pressure it into exaggerating the Iraqi WMD program to justify the war. Under intense political pressure, Bush created the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, which reported to the president on March 31, 2005. The commission concluded that on the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon production facilities, and had stockpiled and was producing chemical weapons. All of this was based on the assessments of the U.S. Intelligence Community. And not one bit of it could be confirmed when the war was over.... making this one of the most public-and most damaging-intelligence failures in recent American history. It was a devastating conclusion. The commission-composed of experienced public servants who had served in both Republican and Democratic administrations-put the burden of blame for analytic and collection shortcomings on the intelligence community. It specifically did not address, and was not authorized to address, the issue of how the policy community used the intelligence it received in 2003. The commission did examine “the possibility that intelligence analysts were pressured by policymakers to change their judgments” to support policy. It said the intelligence analysts “universally agreed” this was not the case, although it also agreed that “it is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism” about Iraqi possession of WMD. Many in and out of the intelligence community sharply and publicly disagreed with the commission’s decision not to pursue aggressively the question of “politicization” of intelligence. Intelligence officers who retired after the war began were among the most critical of the administration. Tyler Drumheller, a twenty-five-year veteran of the clandestine service who rose to European division chief in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, wrote in 2006 that “never have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since the second President Bush took office.” Drumheller reported that intelligence suggesting there were no Iraqi WMD was overlooked or ignored in the CIA because of political pressure from the White House, especially from Cheney. He asserts that “the books had been cooked, the bets placed.” Former director of central intelligence George Tenet was more restrained in his 2007 memoir. Although he conceded the intelligence community had made serious errors in its Iraq WMD estimates, he was less harsh on the Bush policy team. Six former intelligence officers released a letter to Tenet immediately thereafter in which they accused the former director of being “a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war.... You were well aware that the White House tried to present as fact intelligence you knew was unreliable.” In short, the 2007 environment was toxic with strong accusations from former senior intelligence officers that the Bush team consciously manipulated intelligence to justify policy decisions it had made independent of intelligence estimates. Whatever the merits of the arguments on either side of this controversy, my purpose here is to probe the impact of the issue. By 2007, the controversy had created a reality in which Bush was constrained by his track record in dealing with intelligence assessments. As he puts it in his memoir, he simply had no option to take military action once the intelligence community said it had “low confidence” of a Syrian nuclear-weapons program. The policy-intelligence interface had become a public issue like never before in American history. Cheney agreed. He concluded his account of the decision-making process in the Bush White House in 2007 with the judgment that “although the evidence about the nuclear reactor was solid, the intelligence community’s failure on Iraq was still affecting our decision making.” He added, “That experience made some key policymakers very reluctant to consider robust options for dealing with the Syrian plant.” It can be argued that the outcome was nonetheless positive because Israel, taking the action Bush could or would not take, destroyed the reactor. It seems clear today that ensuring Syria would not possess a nuclear reactor under Assad’s despotism was the right choice, particularly in light of the political and social chaos that subsequently descended upon that country. But for America the story illustrates what happens when the policy-intelligence process breaks down dramatically and publicly. In that circumstance, American policy makers become tightly constrained politically. When policy makers lose the trust of the intelligence community and the public, the consequences are serious. Bruce Riedel is director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution. A career CIA officer, he has advised four presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues on the staff of the National Security Council.

Israel’s Peculiar Position by Eric Hoffer   Los Angeles Times  May 26, 1968 In 1968 the LA times ran this article, written by Eric Hoffer, a former longshoreman and non-Jewish American social philosopher. Born in 1902, Hoffer died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Although written 34 years ago, the following is as timely and applicable today as then. The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations — when they are defeated — survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we did in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway. The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to American and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

Fayad; Hardly a Moderate

David Bedein   Apr 24 2013

April 18, 2013 we distributed an article by Elliott Abrams (a very well-informed foreign policy expert) lauding Palestinian Prime Minister Fayad  which emphasized his importance (In Abram's  eyes)as a reasonable, level headed, expert official in the Palestinian administration. 

 To help balance the picture we are distributing an article by David Bedein  (also a well-regarded Middle East expert) which points out (correctly) that Fayad  both in  actual practice and in his statements could hardly be called a moderate.

Thomas Friedman and Jonathan Tobin  have also  written on this subject today. (Tobin's article link:  http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/04/24/the-misleading-salam-fayyad-blame-game-thomas-friedman/ ).  Tom Friedman's article can be  accessed through the New York Times

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Fayad; Hardly a Moderate

By David Bedein

Wed Apr 24 2013

The recently resigned former Palestinian Prime Minister Salman Fayad is being eulogized as the late great hope of moderation for the Palestinian Authority.

The time has come to question such a characterization of Fayad.

A case in point: In May 2009, our agency facilitated an informal briefing for staffers of the Middle East Subcommittee of the US Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives on the subject of Palestinian Authority and UNRWA education. Journalist and scholar Dr. Arnon Groiss, who regularly translates new PA textbooks used in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA education.

These translations can be easily perused on the net:
http://israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/RightofReturninUNRWASchools.pdf
http://israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/PA-schoolbooks.pdf

Dr. Groiss updated Congress with the content of the new PA texts...

*Deny the historical and religious presence of Jews in Palestine.
*Fail to recognize the State of Israel.
*Demonize Jews and Israel.
*Assign blame for the conflict exclusively on Israel, totally absolving Palestinians.
*Stress the idea of a violent struggle of liberation rather than a peaceful settlement.

In August 2009, a delegation of fifty members from both sides of the aisle of the US House of Representatives met with Salman Fayad, the newly appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.

Several members of Congress raised the issue of the Palestinian Authority schoolbooks with Fayad, who assured the delegation that the school books would be changed for the new school year, just about to begin.

Hearing the report from the congressional delegation, our agency immediately dispatched a reporter to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority Education Minister Lamis Al Alami to ask her about the PA curriculum for the new semester.

We asked her about changes in the curriculum. Al Alami answered that she was under strict orders from Fayad not to change anything in the curriculum

Yet you would not be surprised by Fayad's real educational policy if were to read Fayad's position paper for a future Palestinian state, available on the net at:

http://www.geneva-accord.org/images/Offical%20Paper%20-%20Program
%20of%20the%20Thirteenth%20Government,%20August%202009.pdf

In that position paper. Fayad spelled out his platform, in clear terms and in English.

Every embassy, every consulate, and every news outlet in the Middle East received a copy of Fayad's platform, entitled “Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State: Program of the Thirteenth Government”

In his platform, Fayad asserted that “Jerusalem” will be the Palestinian capital of the Palestinian state - with no mention of “East Jerusalem.”

In case anyone was wondering if Fayad had made a typographical error by not mentioning “east” Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, Fayad repeated - ten times - that he meant Jerusalem - all of Jerusalem.

Fayad left nothing to the imagination, and wrote that the Palestinian state will “Protect Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Palestinian state,” because Fayad asserted that “Jerusalem is our people’s religious, cultural, economic and political center. It is the Flower of Cities and Capital of Capitals. It cannot be anything but the eternal capital of the future Palestinian state. Jerusalem”

Fayad went on to claim that Jerusalem “is under threat” and that “ the occupying authority is implementing a systematic plan to alter the city’s landmarks and its geographical and demographic character in order to forcibly create facts on the ground, ultimately separating it from its Palestinian surroundings and eradicating its Arab Palestinian heritage”.

Fayad further claimed that “Palestinian life in Jerusalem is under daily attack through systematic violations perpetrated by the occupation regime” and that “It is the right and the duty of all Palestinians to protect their land, reject the occupation and defy its measures”, adding that the Palestinian state “bears special responsibility for nurturing our people’s ability to persevere and protect their homeland”.

Fayad added that the Palestinian government will maintain its “unreserved commitment to defending the Arab character and status of Jerusalem.... The Government will continue to do all that is possible to achieve this goal. The Government will work with all organizations to preserve the landmarks of Jerusalem and its Arab Palestinian heritage, develop the city, and secure its contiguity with its Palestinian surroundings”.

Fayad framed Jerusalem as an illegal settlement, postulating that “the occupying authority is pursuing its intensive settlement policy in and around Jerusalem...The occupation regime has shut down our national institutions, neglected the development of Palestinian life, continued to demolish and evacuate Palestinian homes, and restricted access to sacred Christian and Islamic sites”

Fayad went on to present a practical plan to Arabize Jerusalem, by “Maintaining Jerusalem as a top priority on the Government’s agenda and“ highlighting “its predicament in the media”.

Launching programs to promote the steadfastness of Jerusalem, including: Strengthen Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, providing financial support to help them deliver services to citizens”.

Fayad reassured his readers that a future Palestinian state would not be satisfied with Jerusalem, the west bank and Gaza as the national home for Palestinians, and says that the Palestinian government will continue to advocate for “Palestinian refugees in accordance with relevant international resolutions, and UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in particular”, which mandates that Palestinian refugees and their descendents have a right to return to the homes and villages that Palestinians left during the 1948 war and its aftermath.

Fayad reminded Palestinians that “the refugee issue will remain under the jurisdiction of the PLO, through its Department of Refugees’ Affairs...in a manner that does not exempt the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from its responsibilities”

In the view of Fayad, UNRWA will therefore continue to confine Palestinian refugees their descendents to the indignity of refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the “right of return.”

Meanwhile, Fayyad expressed full support for Palestinians who have been convicted of murder and attempted murder, saying that “the state also has an enduring obligation to care and provide for the martyrs, prisoners, orphans and all those harmed in the Palestinian struggle for independence”
.
Fayyad expressed a point of view as to where he could not understand why Palestinians convicted of capital crimes should be jailed.

Fayyad proclaimed that “the continued detention of thousands of Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention camps in violation of international law and basic human rights, is of great concern to all Palestinians” and declares that “Securing the freedom of all these heroic prisoners is an utmost Palestinian priority and it is a fundamental duty all Palestinians feel to honor their great sacrifices and end their suffering” and demands the “freedom of all Palestinian detainees and prisoners and will continue to strive to secure their liberty”.

Fayyad also asserted that the PLO and have signed “all provisions of agreements signed with Israel”, yet forgot to mention that the PLO never ratified the signed agreements with Israel. On October 6, 1993, The now defunct Mapam newspaper Al HaMishmar’s correspondent in Tunis revealed that the late PLO chairman Arafat could not get a quorum for the PLO executive to ratify the Oslo accords that Arafat had signed with Rabin on the White House lawn.

Fayad’s view of justice was clearly presented in his position paper when he stated that “All Palestinians are equal before the law”. Simply put, anyone who is not a Palestinian is therefore not equal.

Fayad also proclaimed that that a future Palestinian State will be an Islamic state and “Promote awareness and understanding of the Islamic religion and culture and disseminate the concept of tolerance in the religion through developing and implementing programs of Shari’a education as derived from the science of the Holy Qur’an and Prophet’s heritage.”

In sum, Fayad concluded with a demand for a Palestinian state in the next two years, along the parameters that he has outlined, with an Palestinian state that will have all of Jerusalem as its capital, in an Islamic Sharia state that will campaign for all convicts to be freed, for all refugees to return to the homes and villages that they left in 1948.

Was Fayad a voice of reform and moderation? Think again.

The “Mysterious Motive” Cover-Up on the Boston Attack Begins

 Barry Rubin, PJ MEDIAKJ 4-22-13

Now that the two (main at least) terrorists from the Boston Marathon attack have been killed or captured we enter a new phase, the phase in which the dominant Politically Correct (but Factually Incorrect) forces try to explain away the attack.

Can this be done? Will they really try? Well, yes. True, as one of my correspondents remarked it is much easier to obfuscate far distant Benghazi than the total shutdown and horror in the middle of a major American city. Yet the spin-masters are already at work.

The first step must be, in part, a stalling technique but it sets the pattern for what is to come. As, in the words of a Reuters story, the “Boston Marathon bombing investigation turns to motive,” the motive must be obfuscated.The Reuters piece is a good start. The article spends seven paragraphs discussing the parents claim that the two brothers were framed. This suggests that the mass media and politicians will not shrink from suggesting—perhaps I should say, gives fair hearing—to bizarre conspiracy theories and doubts.

People shouldn’t believe these completely, is the theme, but you just can’t be too sure that two young Muslims would have any reason to harm Americans.

Indeed, there are now witnesses who heard the two terrorists’ mother claiming that September 11 was a U.S. plot to make people hate Muslims. That’s where playing with that kind of fire leads.

In the article, the word “Islam” is not mentioned, except to say that they once lived in one predominantly Muslim country and another place they lived, Dagestan, is “a southern Russian province that lies at the heart of a violent Islamist insurgency.” Here, we have another technique, minimize Islam as a factor and turn it into background noise.

Obviously, this will not apply completely both because the elephant in the room is too big and there is still some journalistic integrity in places. Both the Washington Post and Mother Jones took a lead in exposing the You-Tube likes of one of the terrorists which showed a propensity for al-Qaida views to say the least.

There are a lot of other quivers, however, in the arsenal of denial.

On “Face the Nation” Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said that he had no idea why the Tsarnaev brothers would target “innocent men, women and children in the way that these two fellows did.” The answer, of course, is that these people were not regarded as innocent at all but as soldiers in the alleged Christian-Jewish war on Islam, precisely the same thinking that has been produced by Islamists for decades. Might September 11, 2001, be a clue here?

Of course, for Patrick to say that at this point in the investigation is understandable on one level, a refusal by a government official to remark on an ongoing investigation and a relief from “the police are stupid” or “Trayvon looks like the son I didn’t have” remarks by someone else. Yet what is this claim is sustained week after week until the heat is off?

NBC News has just reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited an Islamist radical six times in a mosque in Dagestan. The Caucasian/Chechen angle, however, does offer some hope. A lot of media time can be spent talking about that conflict. Of course, if the young men were acting as Chechens they would have attacked a Russian and not an American target. The United States has not, even by the usual stretch of radical Islamist imagination, had anything to do with the conflict in Chechnya.

The more compelling the conflict there is as a source of pain and passion, the less compelling the argument that that was a motive. The Russians have indeed been brutal in suppressing the rebellion, far more than the West or Israel has acted toward anyone. So what cause overrides that one? Yet Chechen grievances will be a good source of obfuscation.

Then there will a frantic search for the “blame ourselves” theme. If the issue wasn’t such a tragic one, this would be humorous. Could America have acted more kindly toward these two brothers? Don’t underestimate how well this theme will play with those citizens who drink other flavors of Kool-Aid.

In this pursuit no idiocy is unthinkable. Canadian Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, who is trying to be an Obama clone, explained:

1. “There is no question that this happened because of someone who feels completely excluded, someone who feels completely at war…with society.”

The solution, then, is not to “marginalize people even further who already feel like they are enemies of society rather than people who have hope for the future.”

In other words, doing anything is more dangerous than doing nothing. To combat radical Islam is to hurt people’s feelings and that will produce more terrorism.

They were allowed in (rather questionably) as permanent residents and suddenly large numbers of relatives were in the United States as well (so much for draconian immigration laws); one of the brothers became a citizen. They went to the best schools. What did they learn there about the greatness of America? Was the seed of rage fertilized by the demonization of American history as evil, greedy, racist, and imperialist? One of them even got a scholarship.It is vital to understand the profound difference between these two and the September 11 hijackers, men who came on a mission of sabotage and murder. They reached the U.S. shore as enemies, reliable agents of revolutionary retribution.

These two young men, however, had a free choice. They had to actively close their minds to everything good they experienced and to adopt an ideology of hate. Only a very powerful force could move them in that direction. We have seen this frequently in the United Kingdom and France.

Guess what? If such comparisons were to be made it would have to be acknowledged that there is a second-generation (though strictly speaking these two were first generation) time bomb implanted. That means one can expect many more attacks like this. But will anyone make that point?

There normality will be used to make them seem…normal, their motive inexplicable. But on the contrary it is their very apparent normality, their seeming assimilation into American life, which makes the situation so scary.

What about their mosque and other contacts in the Muslim community? Why didn’t they get an anti-extremist indoctrination there, an explanation of what Islam really is about? They attended a Muslim Brotherhood sponsored mosque (but that won’t be said) and the Boston Muslim religious leadership is full of extremists (the evidence of which has long been available). The mosque even received a subsidy from Boston even as it hosted anti-American speakers who made the precise arguments used to rationalize terrorism.

We won’t be hearing much about these issues though. Well, except for two aspects: the story is now circulating that one of the brothers was thrown out of his mosque for being too radical. Then, there are all the denunciations of the terror attack by Islamist front groups.

Having followed this issue for many years, I have never heard of a single anti-radicalization program conducted by any mosque or “mainstream” Islamic group. Real moderates are isolated, vilified, denied media attention, and even forced out of local mosques. In a 2011 Pew poll, fully half of American Muslims say their leaders aren’t doing enough to fight extremism. That last point can safely be used as a certified non-“Islamophobic” argument about where much of the problem lies. But it won’t be.

And of course there is the troubled youth angle to be played to the fullest. Yes, the tribulations of young adulthood and adolescence are factors. But only inasmuch as it makes them vulnerable to systematic indoctrination. In other words, their specific psychology and even personal experiences are not the motive any more than the childhood of a professional hit-man for the Mafia is.

Another angle will be the growing story of governmental incompetence in using intelligence to stop terrorists. In part, this is unfair since there have also been many successes. A more important issue is why government officials, politicians, army officers, academics, and journalists fear to point out the truth. Look at the Nidal Hassan/Fort Hood case. Doing so is bad for their careers and reputation, as well as being sometimes counter to their ideology.

Then there is the partisan argument, as made most memorably by a journalist who openly hoped the terrorists would be white right-wingers. There is an unnoticed dimension here. If the attack is seen as a political defeat it cannot be a learning experience. The question isn’t, Does this attack tell us something important about the real world, but: How can we explain it away so we don’t suffer losses in the effort to fundamentally transform America into a just, non-racist society?

And so it can be claimed that, in a sense, white right-wingers, or at least the kind of policies they would endorse, did cause the Boston attack. America was mean to these kids; it is aggressive in other countries, counter-terrorist protection was reduced by budget cuts.

In other words, lying, concealing, and misleading become defined as virtuous. As Trudeau said, talking honestly about revolutionary Islamism would be to inspire more racism and terrorism.

Finally, there is a “full admission” fallback argument on which U.S. foreign policy is based. Sure it was those evil SOBs at al-Qaida. That’s why other Islamists are relatively good. That’s why we have to promote them into power since only they can counter the “bad” Islamists. That’s why Islamist governments in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey are good for you.

Indeed, Secretary of State John Kerry in Turkey compared Americans’ feelings about the Boston attack to Turkish feelings about the killing of jihadis engaged in supporting a terrorist group (Hamas) who attacked Israeli soldiers during the Gaza flotilla incident. This should not be seen merely as a clumsy statement but as dangerous and revealing stupidity.
It is dangerous because it tells Muslims that they are equally the victims of “our” terrorism; and it is revealing because the context shows the equation of all violence, no matter what the cause, that reinforces such thinking. A U.S. attack on terrorists in Yemen, Afghanistan, or elsewhere then becomes anti-Muslim violence that justifies the next terror attack in an American city.

Former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw explained that American drones were killing innocent people and this led to rage against the “presumptuousness of the United States.”
In an honest discussion it must be considered what U.S. policy factors lead to terrorism. But now there is the transfer to America of the old “cycle of violence” argument about the Middle East. Terrorists murder Israeli civilians or fire rockets at Israel; Israel defends itself and the two events are treated as indistinguishable.Defending yourself offends people.

The proper response is to denounce the terrorists, the ideology of terrorism, and the right of focused self-defense, which means doing everything possible to retaliate against those responsible and not citizens of another country chosen at random.

The American secretary of state, a leading Canadian politician, journalists, and others are thus rationalizing in advance more such attacks. They will get their “wish” and then explain away the next event as more proof for their worldview.

Why Europe can't bring peace to the Middle East Elliott Abrams 4-21-13 Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU's top foreign policy official, has received a remarkable letter from the "European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process." This self-selected collectivity might more accurately be called the "Formerly Eminent Persons Group," inasmuch as the first word describing each one of its members is "Former," but I suppose that these Formerly Eminent Persons do indeed also represent the views of Currently Eminent European Persons. The letter is important in one way: It shows that European official and elite thinking continues to blame Israel for everything related to the so-called peace process. To take one example, the letter states that: "We have watched with increasing disappointment over the past five years the failure of the parties to start any kind of productive discussion, and of the international community under American and/or European leadership to promote such discussion. We have also noted with frustration and deep concern the deteriorating standards of humanitarian and human rights care of the population in the Occupied Territories." The failure of the parties? Five years? Five years ago, in the spring of 2008, the parties were negotiating, apparently seriously, as part of what was then called "the Annapolis process." That failed when Mahmoud Abbas refused an extremely generous offer from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Formerly Eminent Persons appear to have forgotten this, or, far more likely, appear to be seeking to avoid that truth. Equally inaccurate is their line about the "failure of the parties," a phrase that refuses to acknowledge that only the Palestinians have refused to negotiate in the last four years, not "the parties." In any event, the Formerly Eminent Persons soon arrive at their key insight, which is "that the Peace Process as conceived in the Oslo Agreements has nothing more to offer." What does this mean, actually? Turns out, rather unsurprisingly, that it means we must all get tougher now with Israel. We must all insist that Israel's borders are the 1967 lines and everything beyond that is illegal and illegitimate. Everything -- including such things as Israel's control of the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, from which Israelis were kept away when Jordan controlled the area. The Formerly Eminent Persons wish above all to erase the letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from President George W. Bush in 2004, where he called the major settlement blocks "new realities on the ground" that all efforts at negotiation had acknowledged Israel would keep. There is more in the letter that is wrong, such as the notion that human rights conditions in the West Bank are deteriorating due to the Israeli occupation. One can make a good argument that they are deteriorating in the Gaza Strip due to Hamas and in the West Bank due to the growing pressure from the Palestinian Authority against journalists. The letter does not appear to consider the possibility that any problem in Palestinian areas might possibly be the fault of Palestinians. The letter's greatest sins are those that are quite familiar in letters from Europe, whether from Formerly Eminent Persons or from Currently Eminent Persons: the sin of blaming everything on Israel and nothing on the Palestinians, demanding nothing of the Palestinians, and treating the Palestinians like objects rather than people. Nowhere does the letter mention the issue of anti-Semitic broadcasting and hate speech in Palestinian official media, nor the matter of the glorification of terrorism and terrorists by the PA, and the impact such conduct has on prospects for peace. The letter takes a shot at U.S. President Barack Obama, saying that all he said and did during his trip to Israel "gave no indication of action to break the deep stagnation." Just talk from the Americans, you see; we are all, including Obama, seen as coddling Israel (and we do not even have Formerly Eminent Persons writing letters). This letter is a useful reminder of European attitudes, at least at the level of the Eminent: Blame Israel, treat the Palestinians as children, wring your hands over the terrible way the Americans conduct diplomacy. The Israelis will treat this letter with the derision it deserves, and the Palestinians will understand that because this kind of thing reduces European influence with Israel, the EU just can't deliver much. Indeed it cannot, and the bias, poor reasoning, and refusal to face facts in this letter all suggest that this won't be changing any time soon. Here is the letter and its list of signatories: THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS Dear High Representative We, the under-signed members of the European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process, are writing to you to express our strong concern about the dying chances of a settlement based on two separate, sovereign and peaceful states of Israel and Palestine. The Eminent Persons Group is composed of a number of former Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers and senior officials of EU Member States who have decided to concert their efforts to encourage a lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. We have watched with increasing disappointment over the past five years the failure of the parties to start any kind of productive discussion, and of the international community under American and/or European leadership to promote such discussion. We have also noted with frustration and deep concern the deteriorating standards of humanitarian and human rights care of the population in the Occupied Territories. The security and long-term stability of Israel, an essential objective in any process, cannot be assured in such conditions, any more than the legitimate rights and interests of the Palestinian people. President Obama made some of these points during his March 2013 visit to the region, particularly in his address to the people of Israel, but he gave no indication of action to break the deep stagnation, nor any sign that he sought something other than the re-start of talks between West Bank and Israeli leaders under the Oslo Process, which lost its momentum long ago. We are therefore appealing to you, and through you to the members of the Council of Ministers, to recognise that the Peace Process as conceived in the Oslo Agreements has nothing more to offer. Yet the present political stalemate, while the situation deteriorates on the ground, is unsustainable, given the disturbed politics of the region and the bitterness generated by the harsh conditions of life under the Occupation. The concern of the European Union at this deterioration, clearly expressed in a series of statements, not least the European Council Conclusions of 14 May 2012, has not been matched by any action likely to improve the situation. The aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis and the interests of the European Union, prominently referred to in those Conclusions and in other relevant EU documents, cannot be met by the current stagnation. It is time to give a stark warning that the Occupation is actually being entrenched by the present Western policy. The Palestinian Authority cannot survive without leaning on Israeli security assistance and Western funding and, since the PA offers little hope of progress towards self-determination for the Palestinian people, it is fast losing respect and support from its domestic constituency. The steady increase in the extent and population of Israeli settlements, including in East Jerusalem, and the entrenchment of Israeli control over the OT in defiance of international law, indicate a permanent trend towards a complete dislocation of Palestinian territorial rights. We have reached the conclusion that there must be a new approach. Letting the situation lie unaddressed is highly dangerous when such an explosive issue sits in such a turbulent environment. A realistic but active policy, set in the context of current regional events, needs to be composed of the following elements: a sharper focus on the essential need for a two-state solution, as the most likely outcome to offer lasting peace and security for the parties and their neighbourhood and the only one recognised by UN resolutions as just and equitable; an explicit recognition that the current status of the Palestinian Territories is one of occupation, with responsibility for their condition falling under international law on the occupying state; an insistence that Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 lines are illegal, must cease being expanded and will not be recognised as one of the starting points in any new negotiations; a stipulation that any representative political organisation with a valid claim to participate in negotiations must renounce the use of violence outside established UN norms; the renewal of efforts to establish a unified Palestinian representation of both the West Bank and Gaza, without which a comprehensive peace cannot be successfully negotiated and the absence of which serves as an excuse for inaction; the encouragement of reform of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, including representation of all the main Palestinian parties committed to non-violence and reflecting the expressed wishes of the resident Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza; a vigorous international drive for the implementation of much improved humanitarian and human rights conditions in both the West Bank and Gaza, monitored by the United Nations, whatever the state of peace negotiations might be at any time; a reconsideration of the funding arrangements for Palestine, in order to avoid the Palestinian Authority's present dependence on sources of funding which serve to freeze rather than promote the peace process; a clear and concerted effort to counter the erasing of the 1967 lines as the basis for a two-state outline. This should include a clear distinction in EU dealings with Israel between what is legitimate – within the 1967 lines – and what violates international law in the Occupied Territories; a clearer willingness within the EU to play a political and not just a funding role and to resume a more strategic dialogue with the Palestinians. For all the good sense of EU statements on this issue over the years, the EU's inactivity in the face of an increasingly dangerous stagnation is both unprincipled and unwise. European leaders cannot wait for ever for action from the United States when the evidence accumulates of American failure to recognise and promote the equal status of Israelis and Palestinians in the search for a settlement, as accepted in United Nations resolutions. Later generations will see it as unforgivable that we Europeans not only allowed the situation to develop to this point of acute tension, but took no action now to remedy the continuing destruction of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination. We regard it as essential for EU interests that the Council of Ministers and you take rapid action to correct this unacceptable state of affairs. We are sending copies of this letter to Members of the Council of Ministers and to the US Secretary of State. Members of the EEPG send you their respectful greetings. Signed Guiliano Amato, Former Prime Minister of Italy Frans Andriessen, Former Vice-President of the European Commission Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Former Vice-Prime Minister of the Netherlands John Bruton, Former Prime Minister of Ireland Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Former European Commissioner and Former Foreign Minister of Austria Teresa Patricio Gouveia, Former Foreign Minister of Portugal Jeremy Greenstock, Former UK Ambassador to the UN and Co-Chair of the EEPG Lena Hjelm-Wallén, Former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden Wolfgang Ischinger, Former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry and Co-Chair of the EEPG Lionel Jospin, Former Prime Minister of France Miguel Moratinos, Former Foreign Minister of Spain Ruprecht Polenz, Former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag Pierre Schori, Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Sweden Javier Solana, Former High Representative and Former NATO Secretary-General Peter Sutherland, Former EU Commissioner and Director General of the WTO Andreas van Agt, Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands Hans van den Broek, Former Netherlands Foreign Minister and Former EU Commissioner for External Relations Hubert Védrine, Former Foreign Minister of France and Co-Chair of the EEPG Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Former President of Latvia

WHY OBAMA'S VISIT TO ISRAEL HAD NO IMPACT ON PUBLIC OPINION OR GOVERNMENT POLICY …

Israel: The happy little country By CAROLINE B. GLICK  4-19-13

Netanyahu thought a moment and said, “I’d like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel’s security.”

As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2’s left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show’s host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office.

Netanyahu thought a moment and said, “I’d like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel’s security.”

On the face of it, Netanyahu’s stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he’ll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state’s history, and all he wants is to preserve our national security? Why is he aiming so low? And yet, the studio audience reacted to Netanyahu’s modest goal with a thunderclap of applause.

After pausing to gather his thoughts, a clearly befuddled Kitzis mumbled something along the lines of, “Well, if you manage to make peace as well, we wouldn’t object.” The audience was silent.

The disparity between the audience’s exultation and Kitzis’s shocked disappointment at Netanyahu’s answer exposed – yet again – the yawning gap between the mainstream Israeli view of the world, and that shared by members of our elite class.

The Israeli public gave our elites the opportunity to try out their peace fantasies in the 1990s. We gave their peace a chance and got repaid with massive terror and international isolation.

We are not interested in repeating the experience.

We will be nice to leftists, if they are polite. We might even watch their shows, if there’s nothing else on or they are mildly entertaining. But we won’t listen to them anymore.

This is why US President Barack Obama’s visit last month had no impact on public opinion or government policy.

Obama came, hugged Netanyahu and showered us with love just like Bill Clinton did back in the roaring ’90s. He praised us to high heaven and told us he has our back. And then he told us we should force our leaders to give Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to our sworn enemies even as they teach their children to aspire to kill our children.

And we smiled and wished him a pleasant flight home.

Obama had no idea what he was getting into when he came here. Like Kitzis and his colleagues on Channel 2, Obama surrounds himself with people who, like him, prefer fantasy to reality. In Obama’s world, Islamic jihad is about the West, not about jihadists. In Obama’s world, the most pressing issue on the international agenda is apartments for Jews in Jerusalem and Efrat. And in Obama’s world, what Israelis need more than anything else is for leftist Europeans to love us.

Talk about retro.

But a lot has changed since the 1990s. Twenty years after Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasser Arafat’s hand on the White House lawn and so officially ushered in Israel’s Age of Terror, most Israelis don’t really care what the Europeans or the Arabs think of us.

The Europeans prattle on about Israeli racism, and threaten to put yellow stars or some other nasty mark on Israeli goods. They ban Israeli books from their libraries in Scotland. They boycott Israeli universities, professors and students in England. In Italy they hold rallies for convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti at their national Senate. And in France they butcher Jewish children.

And then the likes of Catherine Ashton expect us to care what they think about us. Well, we don’t.

For their part, Americans are bemoaning the resignation of the unelected Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and insisting that he was a true partner for Israel, who just couldn’t make a go of it due to forces beyond his control. While most recognize Fayyad’s departure has nothing to do with Israel, some US pontificators have blamed Israel for Fayyad’s failure. Elliott Abrams, for instance, wrote, “Israeli governments also gave him less cooperation than he deserved.” To that we answer, Fayyad was nothing more than a Western delusion, like Arab peace with Israel.

Fayyad didn’t have a chance of leading the Palestinians because he never personally killed a Jew. And the Palestinians only accept murderers as their leaders. But the fact that he never killed a Jew personally didn’t render Fayyad a partner for Israel.

Fayyad dutifully used donor funds to pay the salaries of terrorists in Judea, Samaria and Gaza every month.

He led the Palestinian branch of the boycott, divestment and sanctions war against Israel. He made working for Israelis and buying Israeli goods criminal offenses. Fayyad personally led raids into private homes to inspect people’s refrigerators to see if they had Israeli cottage cheese on their shelves. He organized and attended bonfires where they burned Israeli goods.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is not the sort of behavior you would expect a peace partner to engage in.

The Americans who insist on mourning Fayyad’s departure refuse to accept the obvious fact that Palestinian aspirations for statehood are a cheap, shoddy, for-export-only Arab product. The Palestinians don’t want a state. They want to destroy Israel. Unable to accept this basic fact, the Americans invent lies like Fayyad-as-peace partner and try to shove them down Israel’s throats. Well good riddance, Salam Fayyad.

Obviously Fayyad is not the last word in Western delusion. They will think of a new perfect solution to replace him in short order.

But in their endless search for the next silver bullet, the Europeans and the Americans and their Israeli followers miss the fact that the easiest way to build a secure and peaceful world is not by wooing terrorists. The best way to achieve these goals is by accepting the world as it is. This is what the Israeli people has done. True, we needed to have our fantasies blown away in suicide bombings before we reconciled ourselves to this simple truth. But life has been better, happier and more secure since we did.

The “international community’s” inability to accept that sober-minded contentment is better than pipe dream fantasies has caused leftist writers in Israel, Europe and the US alike to express mystification at a recent survey carried out by the OECD, which ranks Israelis among the happiest people in the world. The ranking made no sense to commentators.

Israelis work harder than other members of the OECD. We complain more than other members of the OECD. We don’t have “peace.” And yet, we are among the happiest people in the OECD.

What gives? For decades before we embarked on the phony peace process, Israel was a model socialist state. We had paralyzing tax rates and failed government industries that crowded private entrepreneurship out of the market. Monopolies ran every sector and provided shoddy goods and horrible services at astronomical prices. The Histadrut labor union owned most of the economy along with the government and in every sector, Histadrut commissars ensured that anyone with an ounce of initiative was subject to unending abuse.

Nirvana.

Just around the time we began extricating ourselves from our socialist straitjacket, we were also recognizing that the peace thing wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. And at that point we began to understand that happiness and success aren’t about what other people give you – money, treaties, a phone line after a five-year wait. Happiness and success are about what you accomplish.

At that point, sometime between 1996 and 2000, Israelis began creating large families and embracing the free market.

Today, with an average of three children per family, Israelis are the fecund outliers of the industrial world. And as David Goldman at PJ Media has demonstrated, there is a direct correlation between children and human happiness. This is why fruitful Israelis have the lowest suicide rate in the industrial world. When you have children, you have a future.

And when you have a future, you work hard to secure it, and have a generally optimistic outlook.

What could be so bad when your kid just lost his first tooth? Israelis are also happy because we see that we can build the future we want for our families and our country even without another glitzy signing ceremony at the White House every six months. Our country is getting stronger and more livable every day. And we know it.

Those on the international stage that share our view that life is about more than pieces of paper signed with Arab anti-Semites recognize what is happening. For them Israel is not “that shi**y little country.” It’s “The Little Engine that Could.”

Take the Chinese. Last July China signed a deal with Israel to build an inland port in Eilat and a 180- km. freight railway to connect Eilat to Israel’s Mediterranean ports in Ashdod and Haifa. The purpose of the project is to build an alternative to the Suez Canal, in Israel. The Chinese look at the region, and they see that Egypt is a failed state that can’t even afford its wheat imports. The future of shipping along the Suez Canal is in doubt with riots in Port Said and Suez occurring on a regular basis.

On the other hand, Israel is a stable, prosperous, successful democracy that keeps moving from strength to strength. When the freight line is completed, as far as the global economy is concerned, Israel will become the most strategically important country in the region.

Then there is our newfound energy wealth. Israel became energy independent on March 30, when the Tamar offshore gas field began pumping natural gas to Israel. In two to three years, when the Leviathan gas field comes online, Israel will become one of the most important producers of natural gas in the world. Moreover, in 2017, Israel will likely begin extracting commercial quantities of oil from its massive oil shale deposits in the Shfela Basin near Beit Shemesh.

Geologists assess that the field alone contains some 250 billion barrels of oil, giving Israel oil parity with Saudi Arabia. Chinese, Russian and Australian firms are lining up to sign contracts with Israeli energy companies. International analysts assess that Israel’s emergence as an energy power will have a stabilizing impact on the global economy and international security. Israel can end Asia’s oil and gas hunger. It can reduce European dependence on Russia. It will remove OPEC’s ability to dictate world oil prices through supply manipulation.

Israel’s discovery of its energy riches couldn’t have come at a more propitious time. Had Israel discovered its oil and gas 65 or even 20 years ago, we wouldn’t have had the economic maturity to manage our resources responsibly. But now, with our free market, our hi-tech sector and our entrepreneurial culture, we can develop and manage our resources wisely and successfully.

At 65, Israel is becoming a mature, responsible, prosperous and powerful player in the international arena. The only thing we need to ensure that we enjoy the fruits of our labors is security. And the one thing we can do to squander it all is place our hopes in “peace.” And so we won’t, ever again.