Caroline Glick on the similarities of hostilities that Trump and Netanyahu face from their domestic opponents, and how they both benefit by dropping the nonsensical "2-State Solution"

THE TRUMP-NETANYAHU ALLIANCE

BYCAROLINE B. GLICK

Jerusalem Post  FEBRUARY 17, 2017

The two-state model is widely viewed as the formula for Middle East peace. But the fact of the matter is that it makes peace impossible to achieve, by holding normal relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors hostage to grandiose peace deals.


When they met on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin were both walking wounded.

Netanyahu arrived in Washington the center of a criminal investigation the chief characteristic of which is that selected details of the probe are regularly leaked to the media by anonymous sources who cannot be challenged or held to account.

These anonymous sources, from inside the police and state prosecution, use hand-picked reporters who all share a visceral hatred of Netanyahu, to present a version of the probe to the public that besmirches Netanyahu and his family.

The prospect that Netanyahu may face indictment weakens his position in his party. Likud ministers, unsure of the future, but certain that they cannot challenge the credibility of unnamed sources without risking their own reputations and political futures, refuse to stand with Netanyahu and defend him. And so, with each additional anonymously sourced, incriminating story, the prime minister finds his political power diminished.

As for Trump, he met with Netanyahu two days after his loyal national security adviser, Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn, was forced to resign.

Flynn’s resignation was the culmination of a continuous campaign of defamation waged against him that began even before Trump was elected.

Flynn rose to national prominence in 2014 after then-president Barack Obama, who promoted him and appointed him to head the Defense Intelligence Agency, summarily fired him. Obama fired Flynn because the general opposed his nuclear deal with Iran, and opposed his supportive view of the Muslim Brotherhood, among other things. Since he was forced into early retirement, Flynn became an outspoken critic of the politicization of US intelligence agencies under the Obama administration.

The campaign against Flynn was based on highly classified information regarding conversations Flynn held with Russia’s ambassador to the US during the transition process in December. Under US law, intelligence agencies are prohibited from divulging the identity of US citizens whose conversations with foreign intelligence targets are intercepted.

The law is in place for good reason. As Eli Lake wrote in Bloomberg on Tuesday, “Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.”

In the event, an FBI investigation of the conversations after they were leaked concluded that Flynn did nothing illegal in his dealings with the Russian ambassador. But criminalizing Flynn was never the object of the leaks – making him politically toxic was the aim. And it was accomplished on Monday when he resigned.

It appears likely that Trump became convinced that by sacrificing Flynn, he would end the insurrection US intelligence operatives are waging against his presidency. But as The New York Times made clear on Wednesday, the opposite is true.

Following Flynn’s resignation, the same intelligence sources that caused his downfall told sympathetic reporters that they have the top secret transcripts of conversations that other Trump staffers held with Russian regime officials. The fact that the transcripts indicate no wrongdoing on the part of any of Trump’s staffers is neither here nor there. The drumbeat of defamation will continue.

Flynn was the first target. But he will not be the last.

Selective leaks are not the only way that the permanent state intends to hamstring Trump. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence agencies are hiding intelligence from the White House.

On Thursday, without provocation or legal requirement, the FBI released records from a 45-year-old civil rights investigation of the Trump family’s real estate firm.

And of course, the decision by radical courts to block implementation of Trump’s executive order on immigration to the US from seven terrorism-stricken states shows that empowered political foes in the legal establishment intend to prevent him from governing.

To a certain degree, Trump’s first month in office bears a striking similarly to Netanyahu’s first term in office 20 years ago. When Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996, he was an inexperienced politician. Before winning the election, Netanyahu had never held a cabinet level appointment.

Netanyahu, who opposed the phony peace process with the PLO, was viewed as the root of all evil by Israel’s security and legal establishment whose members had adopted the two-state formula as their catechism. After he was elected they joined forces to subvert his authority.

In 1997, the legal fraternity, in alliance with the media, alleged that Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Likud attorney Ronnie Bar-On attorney-general was the product of a criminal deal he cooked up with then-interior minister Arye Deri. In the fullness of time, the allegations were exposed as utterly groundless. But at the time, they sufficed to torpedo Bar- On’s appointment. More important, the fake Bar-On scandal gave the legal fraternity the opportunity to turn the relationship between the attorney-general and the government on its head. Following the affair, the legal fraternity coerced a weakened Netanyahu to transfer the authority to select the attorney-general to the legal fraternity. Moreover, Netanyahu agreed to subordinate the government to the attorney-general’s legal decisions.

Then there was the security establishment. From the beginning the military establishment set out to block efforts by Netanyahu to diminish the centrality of the peace process with the PLO in Israel’s strategic planning. The fact that the security establishment was not faithfully serving Netanyahu and his government was exposed for all to see in September 1996, when the PLO-led Palestinian Authority launched a terrorist campaign against Israel following Netanyahu’s decision to order the opening of a subterranean tunnel spanning the walls of the Temple Mount.

Rather than taking responsibility for failing to either foresee or quell the terrorist offensive, Israel’s security brass blamed Netanyahu for the PLO’s murder spree.

Instead of standing up to the rebellious bureaucracies, Netanyahu caved in. Consequently, he lost his base, and in 1999 he lost his office.

In a way, Netanyahu had no choice. He had no allies with the power to help him. The Clinton administration was implacably opposed to him and worked openly with the Israeli deep state to unseat him. The media hated him even more than they hate him today.

Trump’s decision to allow Flynn to resign was a dangerous sign that he is beginning to follow the same pattern of behavior that led to the failure of Netanyahu’s first term.

But his press conference with Netanyahu on Wednesday signaled that Trump may yet turn things around and gain control over the rebellious bureaucracy by leaning on an ally that wants him to succeed and needs him to succeed in order to survive himself.

From the statements they made at the joint press conference, it is clear that Trump and Netanyahu have decided to build an alliance. Its purpose is twofold. First, by working together, they can defeat the common foes of their countries. And second, the success of their joint efforts will bring about the defeat of their bureaucratic enemies.

The most significant development to come out of the Trump-Netanyahu press conference was their refusal to endorse the two-state policy doctrine. This was a necessary move.

The only way to build a working alliance between the US and Israel – as opposed to the declarative alliance that exists at public ceremonies – is for both leaders to abandon the two-state paradigm for policy- making.

The two-state formula has been the foundation of US Middle East policy for a generation. It has also been the foundation of the tribal identity of the Israeli Left – led by the military and legal fraternities and the media.

The two-state model is widely viewed as the formula for Middle East peace. But the fact of the matter is that it makes peace impossible to achieve, by holding normal relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors hostage to grandiose peace deals.

Even worse, the two-state model is based on an anti-Israel and anti-US assumption that makes it impossible for either to advance their strategic interests vis-à-vis the Islamic world.

The basic idea behind the two-state paradigm is that the establishment of a PLO state is a precondition for winning the war against Islamic terrorism.

So long as Israel refuses to cede sufficient territory to appease the PLO, victory will be impossible, because the absence of a PLO state so angers Muslims that they will continue killing their enemies.

The defeatist notion that “there is no military solution” to terrorism that dominates the American and Israeli strategic discourses is based on the two-state model.

Given that at the heart of the two-state model is the conviction that Israel is to blame for the presence of Islamic terrorism and extremism, and that the only way to proceed is to establish a terrorism- supporting PLO state, it naturally follows that the policy’s adherents in the US cannot see any real purpose for the US alliance with Israel. It is also natural that they fail to see any potential for a regional alliance led by the US and joined by Israel and the Sunni states based on the common goals of defeating Iran and radical Islamic terrorist enclaves.

In other words, the two-state formula dooms its adherents to strategic myopia and defeatism while holding their strategic and national interests hostage to the PLO.

The insanity at the heart of the two-state formula, and the US and Israeli public’s desire to make a clear break with the strategic defeats of the past generation, makes its abandonment a clear choice for both Trump and Netanyahu. Abandoning it wins them support and credibility from their political bases when they need their supporters to rally to their side. And to the extent they are able to implement more constructive policies to defeat the forces of radical Islam, they will weaken the establishments that are working to undermine them.

By leaning on Netanyahu to help him to secure victories against the forces of radical Islam, and so putting paid to the bureaucracy’s most beloved policy paradigm, Trump can both secure his base and weaken his opponents.

So, too, by developing a substantive alliance with the Trump administration and increasing Trump’s chance of political survival and success, Netanyahu gains a formidable partner and makes it more difficult for the legal fraternity and its media flacks to bring about his indictment and fall.

Amazingly then, to a significant degree, the survival of both leaders is tied up with their success in keeping their promises to their voters and defeating their foes – domestic and foreign.

www.CarolineGlick.com

Jonathan Pollard - interview with Caroline Glick

ISRAEL MATZAV: Caroline Glick: Obama is turning the United States into a global laughing stock

Caroline Glick appeared on Washington's WMAL radio on Monday to discuss President Obama's decision to punt the decision to attack Syria to Congress.  This interview is devastating. Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Jack W via Pat Dollard).

The Myth of "Palestinian Rights"

As Israel considers again concessions for "peace," we bring you this frank talk by Jerusalem Post editorCaroline Glick.

Caroline Glick is the senior contributing editor of the Jerusalem Post, director of the Israel Security Project at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a senior adjunct fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs a the Center for Security Policy.

American Thinker wrote about this speech: "Glick's powerful presentation at Intelligence Squared, directly countering the basic premise that Israel is destroying itself through expanding settlements on their own land. Glick also frames her argument to highlight the double-standard of ignoring the civil rights of Jews in the debate."

Caroline Glick Speaks at the 2013 Jerusalem Post Conference

Join us as popular Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick delivers a passionate speech at the 2013 Jerusalem Post Conference. This speech was a precursor to the infamous afternoon panel with Alan Dershowitz, during which Glick vociferously defended the audienceapos;s right to boo former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In this lengthier polemic, Glick enunciates her well-known positions on the ongoing struggle for peace. Whatever your beliefs about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Glickapos;s speech is a must-watch.

Israel, the only country that can stop Iran

Monday's US presidential debate on foreign policy came and went. And we are none the wiser for it.

Not surprisingly, at the height of the campaign season, neither US President Barack Obama nor his Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney was interested in revealing his plans for the next four years.

But from what was said, we can be fairly certain that a second Obama term will involve no departure from his foreign policy in his current term in office.

As far as Iran and its nuclear weapons program is concerned, that policy has involved a combination of occasional tough talk and a relentless attempt to appease the mullahs. While Obama denied The New York Timesreport from last weekend that he has agreed to carry out new bilateral negotiations with Iran after the US presidential elections, his administration has acknowledged that it would be happy to have such talks if they can be arranged.

As for Romney, his statements of support for tougher sanctions, including moving to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the crime of incitement of genocide were certainly welcome.

But they were also rather out of date, given the lateness of the hour.

If there was ever much to recommend it, the "sanction Iran into abandoning its nuclear weapons" policy is no longer a relevant option. The timetables are too short.

On the other hand, Romney's identification of Iran as the gravest national security threat facing the US made clear that he understands the severity of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear weapons program.

And consequently, if Romney defeats Obama on November 6, it is likely that on January 21, 2013, the US will adopt a different policy towards Iran.

The question for Israel now is whether any of this matters. If Romney is elected and adopts a new policy towards Iran, what if any operational significance will this policy shift have for Israel? 

The short answer is very little.

To understand why this is the case we need to consider two issues: The time it would take for a new US policy to be implemented; and the time Iran requires to become a nuclear power.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, jihadist attacks on the US, then-president George W. Bush faced no internal opposition to overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The US military and intelligence arms all supported the operation. Congress supported the operation. The American public supported the operation. The UN supported the mission.

And still, it took the US four weeks to plan and launch Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. That is, under optimal conditions, the US needed nearly a month to respond to the largest foreign attack on the US mainland since the War of 1812.

Then of course there was Operation Iraqi Freedom which officially began on March 20, 2003, with the US-British ground invasion of Iraq from Kuwait.

Bush and his advisers began seriously considering overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime in the spring of 2002. They met with resistance from the US military. They met with a modicum of political opposition in Congress, and more serious opposition in the media. Moreover, they met with harsh opposition from France and Russia and other key players at the UN and in the international community. So, too, they met with harsh opposition from senior UN officials.

It took the administration until November 2002 to get the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 1441 which found Iraq in material breach of the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War. The US and Britain began prepositioning ground forces and war materiel in Kuwait ahead of a ground invasion that month. It took more than four months for the Americans and the British to complete the forward deployment of their forces in Kuwait.

During those long months, other parties, unsympathetic to the US, Britain and their aims had ample opportunity to make their own preparations to deny the US and Britain the ability to win the war quickly and easily and so avoid the insurgency that ensued in the absence of a clear victory. So, too, the four months the US required to ready for war enabled Iran to plan and begin executing its plan to suck the US into a prolonged proxy war with its surrogates from al-Qaida and Hezbollah protégés.

A CLEAR Anglo-American victory would have involved the location, presentation and destruction of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. And this Saddam denied them. By the time US ground forces finally arrived, despite massive telltale signs that such weapons had been in Iraq until very recently, no smoking gun was found.

In the long lead up to the US invasion, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon warned that satellite data indicated that Iraq was transporting its chemical weapons arsenal to Syria. Sharon's warnings fell on deaf ears. So, too, a report by a Syrian journalist that WMD had been transferred to Syria was ignored.

According to a detailed report by Ryan Mauro at PJMedia.com from June 2010, after the fall of Saddam's regime, the Iraq Survey Group, charged with assessing the status of Iraq's WMD arsenal, received numerous credible reports that the chemical weapons had been sent to Syria before the invasion.

The stream of reports about the pre-invasion transfer of Iraq's WMD to Syria have continued to intermittently surface since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war last year.

In short, at a minimum, the time the US required to mount its operation in Iraq enabled Saddam to prepare the conditions to deny America the ability to achieve a clear victory.

THIS BRINGS us to Iran. In the event that Romney is elected to the presidency, upon entering office he would face a military leadership led by Gen. Martin Dempsey that has for four years sought to minimize the danger that Iran's nuclear weapons program poses to the US. Dempsey has personally employed language to indicate that he believes an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear weapons sites would be an illegal act of aggression.

Romney would face intelligence, diplomatic and military establishments that at a minimum have been complicit in massive leaks of Israeli strike options against Iran and that have so far failed to present credible military options for a US strike against Iran's uranium enrichment sites and other nuclear installations.

He would face a hostile media establishment that firmly and enthusiastically supports Obama's policy of relentless appeasement and has sought to discredit as a warmonger and a racist every politician who has tried to make the case that Iran's nuclear weapons program constitutes an unacceptable threat to US national security.

Then, too, Romney would face a wounded Democratic base, controlled by politicians who have refused to cooperate with Republicans since 2004.

And he would face an electorate that has never heard a cogent case for military action against Iran. (Although, with the goodwill with which the American public usually greets its new presidents, this last difficulty would likely be the least of his worries.)

At the UN, Romney would face the same gridlock faced by his two predecessors on Iran. Russia and China would block UN Security Council action against the mullocarcy.

AS FOR the Arab world, whereas when Obama came into office in 2009, the Sunni Arab world was united in its opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, today Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt favors Iran more than it favors the US. Arguably only Saudi Arabia would actively support an assault on Iran's nuclear weapons sites. All the other US allies have either switched sides, or like Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain are too weak to offer any open assistance or political support. For its part, Iraq is already acting as Iran's satrapy, allowing Iran to transfer weapons to Bashar Assad's henchmen through its territory.

All of this means that as was the case in Iraq, it would likely take until at least the summer of 2013, if not the fall, before a Romney administration would be in a position to take any military action against Iran's nuclear installations.

And it isn't only US military campaigns that take a long time to organize. It also takes a long time for US administrations to change arm sales policies.

For instance, if a hypothetical Romney administration wished to supply Israel with certain weapons systems that would make an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations more successful, it could take months for such deals to be concluded, approved by Congress, and then executed.

This then brings us to the question of where will Iran's nuclear weapons program likely stand by next summer?

In his speech before the UN General Assembly last month, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that by next spring or at the latest next summer Iran will have reached the final stage of uranium enrichment and will be able to acquire sufficient quantities of bomb-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon within a few months or even a few weeks.

Netanyahu said that the last opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will be before it reaches the final stage of uranium enrichment - that is, by the spring. At that point, a hypothetical Romney administration will have been in office for mere months. A new national security leadership will just be coming into its own.

It is extremely difficult to imagine that a new US administration would be capable of launching a preemptive attack against Iran's nuclear installations at such an early point in its tenure in office.

Indeed, it is hard to see how such a new administration would be able to offer Israel any material support for an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations by next spring.

So this leaves us with Israel. Over the past several weeks, there has been a spate of reports indicating that Israel's military and intelligence establishments forced Netanyahu to take a step back from rhetorical brinksmanship on Iran. Our commanders are reportedly dead set against attacking Iran without US support and still insist that Israel can and must trust the Americans to take action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

There is great plausibility to these reports for a number of reasons. The intelligence and military brass have for years suffered from psychological dependence of the US and believe that Israel's most important strategic interest is to ensure US support for the country. Then, too, in the event that an Israeli strike takes place against the backdrop of a larger military confrontation with Iran's proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, Israel would likely require rapid resupply of arms to ensure its ability to fend off its enemies.

But when we consider the political realities of the US - in the event that Obama is reelected or in the event that Romney takes the White House - it is clear that Israel will remain the only party with the means - such as they are - and the will to strike Iran's nuclear installations.

Israel is the only country that can prevent this genocidal regime with regional and global ambitions from acquiring the means to carry out its goals.

Civil Trial attorney Baruch C. Cohen meets Jerusalem Post reporter & LATMA creator Caroline Glick

Civil Trial Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., with Caroline Glick

Dr. Murray Waksburg, Civil Trial Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., Caroline Glick & Stanley Treitel

Civil Trial Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., with Eli Pelman

Civil Trial Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., with Sarah Sweck

Civil Trial Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., with Sarita Spivack

Caroline Glick - Israel on the Eve of US Elections

About those Jews... CAROLINE B. GLICK

Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi doesn’t hate Jews. He hates Zionists. Some of his best friends are Jews...

So it works out that Iran’s vice president really hates Jews. In fact, he hates Jews so much that even The New York Times reported it. On Tuesday, the Times published an account of Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi’s speech before a UN forum on fighting drug addiction in Tehran.

Rahimi claimed that Jews control the illegal drug trade. We sell drugs, he said, in order to fulfill what he said is a Talmudic writ to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews.”

He said that our conspiracy is obvious since, he claimed, there are no Jewish drug addicts.

He went so far as to promise to pay anyone who can find a Jewish drug addict.

As he put it, “The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict. They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade.”

Oops, sorry, he doesn’t hate Jews. He hates Zionists.

Some of his best friends are Jews.

At least that is what the Times would have us believe. As reporter Thomas Erdbrink put it, “‘Zionists’ is Iran’s ideological term for Jews who support the state of Israel.”

He also helpfully noted, “More than 25,000 Jews live in Iran, and they are recognized as a religious minority, with a representative in Parliament.”

Aside from that, just so we don’t get the wrong impression about the Iranian government, Erdbrink calmed us down by noting, therapeutically, “Several Iranian ministers gave politically neutral briefings on the impact of the drug trade on the country.”

So aside from the fact that its vice president is a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite, the Iranian regime is perfectly respectable. Nothing to see here folks, move on.

Except, of course, that this is not the case.

Iran’s “Supreme Leader” routinely refers to Israel as a cancer. For instance, in a sermon before thousands of Muslim worshipers in February, Ali Khamenei said, “The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed.”

Then, of course, there’s Rahimi’s direct boss, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can’t ask what the weather is like without calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people.

But then he too usually calls us Jews “Zionists,” (which most of us are), so his calls for the genocide of Jewry is really just a political statement and not proof that what moves him when he wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night is a passionate, obsessive desire to murder an entire people.

Many commentators seized on Erdbrink’s write-up of Rahimi’s diatribe as further proof that the civilized world cannot permit Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. And that is fair enough.

Of course Iran cannot be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. They are religious fanatics who rule under a deranged banner of messianic genocide.

BUT THE real issue here is that these commentators felt it necessary to seize on the Times’ write-up of Rahimi’s speech to make this obvious point. That is, the real issue here isn’t the Iranians. The real issue is the Western media. From the New York Times to the BBC to the European media, Jew-hatred is the most under-reported – and arguably most important story – of our times.

No issue unites the Muslim world more than venomous, murderous hatred of Jews.

No single issue informs their foreign policies more than hatred of Jews. And yet, reporting – even biased, misleadingly understated reporting – of this massive, strategically pivotal phenomenon is almost nonexistent in most major media outlets. As a consequence, it is a major event when the Times finally publishes an anemic report about it. And again, even that report hides the real story.

Erdbrink ended his report by quoting an unnamed European diplomat who was in Rahimi’s audience at the conference. The diplomat told him that on the one hand, “This was definitely one of the worst speeches I have heard in my life. My gut reaction was: Why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?” But, lest we reach any policy conclusions from Rahimi’s bigotry, the diplomat soothed, “If we do not support the United Nations on helping Iran fight drugs, voices like the one of Mr. Rahimi will be the only ones out there.”

What both Erdbrink and his European interlocutor failed to acknowledge is that Rahimi won’t be punished for his views. He was promoted because of his views. Helping Iran fight drugs doesn’t encourage non-genocidal Iranian politicians. It legitimizes the regime that promoted Rahimi and Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and every other powerful politician and military commander because of their hatred of Jews.

The Western media has two basic approaches to their non-reporting of Islamic Jew-hatred and its significance for international security. The first approach is to ignore the issue because it is ideologically inconvenient.

The New York Times, like every other major Western media outlet except The Wall Street Journal, is of the opinion that the Islamic world should be appeased. The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran should be accommodated.

If they gave Islamic Jew-hatred coverage commensurate with its actual significance, they would be undermining their ideological agenda. In light of their ubiquitous and vituperative obsession with Jewish people, it is obvious that it is impossible to appease the Muslim world.

The second approach to contending with Islamic Jew-hatred is to justify it by claiming that Israel has earned all the hate coming its way. It’s “political” they say. The Islamic demonization of Jews is understandable given the Palestinians and all that.

Obviously, both of these approaches to the story of Islamic Jew-hatred are appalling. The former approach involves a breach of the very concept of objective journalism. After all, the purpose of journalism is to report on the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

And the latter approach is no less bigoted than the hatred it serves to whitewash. The European diplomat’s gut reaction to Rahimi’s speech, “Why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?” was entirely rational.

AND IF Rahimi’s hatred had been directed against any other people, race, creed, state or color, no one would support cooperation with “these people.”

No one would support the Palestinian national movement if its inherent, overwhelming hatred was directed, say, against the black state rather than the Jewish state.

Demonizing and delegitimizing Israel is the core goal of the Palestinian national movement.

To this end the Palestinian Authority’s Information Ministry published a style guide to instruct Palestinians what terms they should use to avoid legitimizing Israel.

According to Palestinian Media Watch’s report about the style guide, language must be chosen that will avoid presenting Israel’s existence as “natural.” As the book’s introduction explains, using Israeli terminology “turns the essence of the Zionist endeavor (i.e., Israeli statehood) from a racist, colonialist endeavor into an endeavor of self-definition and independence for the Jewish People.”

Among its other guidelines, the PA’s style guide tells Palestinians to replace the term “Star of David,” with “six-pointed star.” And this makes sense. The term “Star of David” exposes the Jews’ national rights to the Land of Israel. After all, this is the land of the Jewish King David who founded the Jewish capital of Jerusalem three thousand years ago.

But a central goal of Palestinian propaganda, and advanced by all relevant sectors of Palestinian society, is to rewrite history and erase the Jews from the history of the Land of Israel.

And rather than call them on this intellectual crime of literally biblical proportions, the Western media collaborates with them. For instance, on Tuesday, the New York Times published an article about the efforts of the Palestinians from Battir, an Arab village southwest of Jerusalem, to have their ancient terraced irrigation system recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They claim the designation is necessary and urgent because if they don’t get it, Israel may build a portion of the security barrier through the village and harm the irrigation system.

Isabel Kershner, the Times’ reporter, referred to the irrigation system as “a Roman-era irrigation system.”

But as the bloggers Yisrael Medad and Elli Fischer pointed out, it is a Jewish irrigation system from the Second Temple period. And while Battir is a reasonable candidate for World Heritage Site status, it is first and foremost a Jewish heritage site. Battir is the Arab name for the ancient Jewish village Betar, the site of Bar- Kochba’s last stand against the Roman Empire.

It is the last place where Jews were sovereign until the establishment of the State of Israel.

But Kershner didn’t mention any of that.

Doing so would lead to too many inconvenient truths – about the nature of Palestinian nationalism, about UNESCO, about Jewish rights to the land. So the historical significance of Battir was left unreported, and the nature of the irrigation system was reported incorrectly.

On the face of it, it can be argued that the Western media’s willful blindness towards Islamic Jew-hatred and its influence on world affairs are part and parcel of the Western elite’s collective refusal to recognize and contend with the implications of the phenomenon.

But this is too forgiving.

Policy-makers who ignore Islamic Jew-hatred are doing so because they are trying to sell their policies. What’s the New York Times’ excuse? The media are supposed to report facts, not shape perceptions. The facts, not the perceptions are supposed to inform policy.

That is, they are not supposed to collaborate with policy-makers, they are supposed to inform policy-makers and the general public.

And this leads us back to the well-meaning commentators who seized on Erdbrink’s report about how Iran’s vice president believes that Jews – sorry Zionists – are monsters, and used it as proof that Iran cannot be permitted to get the bomb. Yes, of course, they are right that it is worth re-quoting his vile remarks to make the point. But by quoting the Times, they may be scoring a couple of tactical points today, but they are losing a long-term strategic battle. They are giving respectability to a media organ that is consummately unworthy of our respect. They are giving respectability to a news organ with an institutional policy of denying, underreporting, and misleadingly reporting about the most important issue that shapes events in the Middle East today: Islamic hatred of Jews.

Embracing dangerous delusions and not our friends By Caroline B. Glick; A reminder -- and warning -- to those who would rather attack than analyze

Two weeks ago, US Congressman Joe Walsh published an oped in the Washington Times in which he called for the US and Israel to abandon the two-state solution. After running through the record of Palestinian duplicity, failed governance, terrorism and bad faith, he called for Israel to apply its sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. In his words, he said Israel should, "adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region."

The evidence that the two-state paradigm has failed is overwhelming. The Palestinians' decision to reject statehood at Camp David in 2000 and launch a terror war against Israel made clear that they had not abandoned their refusal from 1947 to accept partition of the land of Israel with the Jews.

So too, the Palestinians' election of Hamas in the 2006 elections, and their missile war against Israel from Gaza in the aftermath of Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 all made clear that they are not interested in a Palestinian state. Rather, their chief desire is Israel's annihilation. Consequentially, there is no chance whatsoever that the two state paradigm can work. Indeed, the fact that there is no Palestinian leader willing to recognize Israel's right to exist makes clear that if a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria — in addition to the de facto Palestinian state in Gaza — that state will be in state of war with Israel. All territory under its control will be used to attack the rump Jewish state.

Given the abject failure of the two-state paradigm then, it is abundantly clear that for all the complications that may be associated with the application of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it is a better option for Israel than Israeli surrender of the areas.

Walsh's op-ed is not his first statement of support for Israeli annexation. Last September, he authored Congressional Resolution 394 supporting Israel's right to annex Judea and Samaria in the event that the Palestinians ask the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. 44 other Congressmen co-sponsored the resolution. And this makes sense.

The Palestinians' decision to turn the issue of Palestinian statehood over to the UN constituted a substantive breach of the treaties the PLO signed with Israel in which both sides agreed that their conflict would be solved through negotiations and not through unilateral actions. By ending negotiations with Israel and turning the issue of statehood over to the UN, the Palestinians cancelled their treaties with Israel. Consequently, Israel is no longer bound by those accords and is free to take its own unilateral actions, including applying its laws to Judea and Samaria as it did in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past.

For his unstinting support for Israel, Walsh has been subject to an unbridled assault by leftist American Jews. Ron Kampeas from JTA for instance attacked Walsh accusing him of being no different from Israel's enemies who seek to destroy Israel by ending its ability to define itself as a Jewish state through what they refer to as the "one state solution."

Kampeas blasted Walsh for suggesting that Palestinians unwilling to live under Israeli rule could move to Jordan which, with its 75 percent Palestinian majority is effectively the Palestinian state. Kampeas quoted Robert Wright's excoriation of Walsh in the Atlantic. There Wright wrote, "Offhand, I don't recall a member of Congress in my lifetime saying anything so grotesquely at odds with American ideals about ethnic relations and for that matter basic human rights."

For its part, the Jewish run anti-Israel lobby J Street is mobilizing its supporters to bring about Walsh's defeat in the November elections by soliciting contributions to his Democratic challenger. J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote that "Walsh's prescription amounts to a call for an end to Israel as the democratic home of the Jewish people."

It is hard to know where to begin a discussion of this assault in which Jewish Americans attack one of Israel's strongest supporters simply because he has the temerity to recognize reality and call for the US to support an Israeli victory against our enemies who seek our destruction.

First, it is important to consider the claim that Walsh went against the grain of American ideals by suggesting, "Those Palestinians who wish to may leave their Fatah- and Hamas-created slums and move to the original Palestinian state: Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. That is the only justification for its creation. Even now, 75 percent of its population is of Palestinian descent."

The fact of the matter is that the two-state paradigm rests on the assumption that the Palestinian state will be ethnically cleansed of Jews before it is established. Whereas Walsh somehow stands in opposition to American ideals for suggesting that the Palestinians may voluntarily immigrate to Jordan, Kampeas, Ben-Ami and their cohorts have no problem with the concept of a Jew-free Palestine and the forcible expulsion of up to 675,000 Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem simply because they are Jewish.

Aside from their pernicious hypocrisy and moral blindness, what stands out in their assaults on Walsh is that they cannot tell the difference between Israel's enemies that seek its destruction through the so-called one-state solution, and Israel's friends, who want it to defeat its enemies and live with security and peace. For the likes of Kampeas and Ben-Ami, there is no difference between Walsh and Israel's worst enemies.

Part of this problem is their apparent unquestioning acceptance of the myth of a demographic time bomb. They seem not to have noticed that the Palestinian claim that by 2015 there will be an Arab majority west of the Jordan River is a complete fabrication.

The truth is that if Israel applied its laws to Judea and Samaria tomorrow and all the Palestinians in those areas received Israeli citizenship, Israel would still retain a two thirds Jewish majority. Moreover, all the demographic trends for Israel including increased birthrates and positive immigration rates are positive. And all the demographic trends for the Palestinians including decreasing birthrates and negative immigration rates are negative. According to Israeli demographic researcher Yoram Ettinger, by 2030, Jewish will likely comprise 80 percent of the population of Israel, Judea and Samaria.

So Ben-Ami's argument that Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria means the end of Israeli democracy is simply incorrect.

But aside from their hypocrisy and refusal to accept simple arithmetic realities, what stands out most clearly in their assault on Walsh is how they have become addicted to the fable of the two-state solution. Their addiction to this fable — that argues that after a century of Palestinian devotion to the annihilation of Israel, they are suddenly willing to meet Israel halfway — is what propels them attack anyone who points out reality. It is what drives them to brand as a foe anyone with the temerity to suggest a better way forward.

The beauty of the two-state fable is that it puts the onus to make peace on Israel's shoulders. If it is true that the Palestinians want to make peace, then Israel must make peace. And if all the Palestinians require to make peace is for Israel to quit Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, then that is what Israel must do, together with the 675,000 Jews who live there.

The real tragedy is of course not that the likes of Kampeas and Ben-Ami maintain faith with the fairytale of Palestinian willingness to live at peace with Israel. The real tragedy is that this myth has been the official policy of the Government of Israel for the past 19 years. Since then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin launched the peace process with Yasser Arafat in September 1993, to greater or lesser degrees, every Israeli government has kept faith with the two state solution lie.

It hasn't matter that the Palestinians rejected statehood and peace not once but twice. It hasn't mattered that the Palestinians received Gaza lock, stock and barrel with no strings attached and used the territory to launch an illegal missile war against Israeli civilians. The fact that both Arafat and his supposedly moderate successor Mahmoud Abbas rejected partition and maintained their devotion to Israel's destruction did not stop Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from bowing to US pressure and embracing this fool's game.

People like Kampeas are the first to bemoan Israel's sorry state in the realm of public diplomacy. They decry Israel's hasbara efforts as pathetic and failed. But what they fail to acknowledge is that it is the two-state trap that makes the construction and execution of an effective public diplomacy strategy impossible. To maintain faith with this failed policy, Israel's leaders and representatives are not merely required to ignore the history of the past ninety years of Palestinian rejection and aggression. They are required to ignore current events. They are forced to ignore not just what happened in 1947, but what happened at 7 o'clock in the morning.

And this brings us back to Cong. Walsh. There may be things to criticize about Walsh's policy argument. For instance, he calls for the conferral of "limited voting power" on the Palestinians under Israeli sovereignty. In truth, there is no reason for them to receive anything but full voting rights.

But you have to be blind to reality to view him as anything other than a friend of Israel.

Happily, not everyone in Israel remains paralyzed. Members of Knesset have launched repeated attempts in recent months to debate legislation calling for Israel to apply its sovereignty over all or parts of Judea and Samaria. Next Wednesday, MK Miri Regev is holding a conference to launch a new Knesset caucus calling for the adoption of this policy.

In recent years, poll after poll has shown that the majority of Israelis do not believe that the two state paradigm will bring peace or that if a Palestinian state is formed, it will live at peace with Israel.

And yet, because of the chokehold that Kampeas and Ben-Ami's Israeli counterparts have held over the national discourse, the Israeli people have been given no other option to consider. Rather we have been told over and over again that giving our enemies a veto over our rights, land and security is the only alternative.

Walsh and the 44 Congressmen who co-sponsored his resolution are Israel's friends. And we should take heart in their willingness to buck consensus and support us. 

CAROLINE GLICK: An ally no more

With vote tallies in for Egypt's first round of parliamentary elections in it is abundantly clear that Egypt is on the fast track to becoming a totalitarian Islamic state. The first round of voting took place in Egypt's most liberal, cosmopolitan cities. And still the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists received more than 60 percent of the vote. Run-off elections for 52 seats will by all estimates increase their representation.

And then in the months to come, Egyptian voters in the far more Islamist Nile Delta and Sinai will undoubtedly provide the forces of jihadist Islam with an even greater margin of victory.

Until the US-supported overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt served as the anchor of the US alliance system in the Arab world. The Egyptian military is US-armed, US-trained and US-financed. The Suez Canal is among the most vital waterways in the world for the US Navy and the global economy. Due to Mubarak's commitment to stemming the tide of jihadist forces that threatened his regime, under his rule Egypt served as a major counter-terror hub in the US-led war against international jihad.

GIVEN EGYPT'S singular importance to US strategic interests in the Arab world, the Obama administration's response to the calamitous election results has been shocking. Rather than sound the alarm bells, US President Barack Obama has celebrated the results as a victory for "democracy."

Rather than warn Egypt that it will face severe consequences if it completes its Islamist transformation, the Obama administration has turned its guns on the first country that will pay a price for Egypt's Islamic revolution: Israel.

Speaking at the annual policy conclave in Washington sponsored by the leftist Brookings Institute's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hammered Israel, the only real ally the US has left in the Middle East after Mubarak's fall. Clinton felt it necessary - in the name of democracy - to embrace the positions of Israel's radical Left against the majority of Israelis.

The same Secretary of State that has heralded negotiations with the violent, fanatical misogynists of the Taliban; who has extolled Saudi Arabia where women are given ten lashes for driving, and whose State Department trained female-hating Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the lead-up to the current elections in Egypt accused Israel of repressing women's rights. The only state in the region where women are given full rights and legal protections became the focus of Clinton's righteous feminist wrath.

In the IDF, as in the rest of the country, religious coercion is forbidden. Jewish law prohibits men from listening to women's voices in song. And recently, when a group of religious soldiers were presented with an IDF band that featured female vocalists, keeping faith with their Orthodox observance, they walked out of the auditorium. The vocalists were not barred from singing. They were not mistreated. They were simply not listened to.

And as far as Clinton is concerned, this is proof that women in Israel are under attack. Barred by law from forcing their soldiers to spurn their religious obligations, IDF commanders were guilty of crimes against democracy for allowing the troops to exit the hall.

Clinton didn't end her diatribe with the IDF's supposed war against women. She continued her onslaught by proclaiming that Israel is taking a knife to democracy by permitting its legislators to legislate laws that she doesn't like. The legislative initiatives that provoked the ire of the US Secretary of State are the bills now under discussion which seek to curtail the ability of foreign governments to subvert Israel's elected government by funding non-representative, anti-Israel political NGOs like B'Tselem and Peace Now.

In attacking Israel in the way she did, Clinton showed that she holds Israel to a unique standard of behavior. Whereas fellow Western democracies are within their rights when they undertake initiatives like banning Islamic headdresses from the public square, Israel is a criminal state for affording Jewish soldiers freedom of religion. Whereas the Taliban, who enslave women and girls in the most unspeakable fashion are worthy interlocutors, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which supports universal female genital mutilation is moderate, Israel is an enemy of democracy for seeking to preserve the government's ability to adopt policies that advance the country's interests.

The unique standard to which Clinton holds the Jewish state is the standard of human perfection.

And as far as she is concerned, if Israel is not perfect, then it is unworthy of support. And since Israel, as a nation of mere mortals can never be perfect, it is necessarily always guilty.

CLINTON'S ASSAULT on Israeli democracy and society came a day after Panetta attacked Israel's handling of its strategic challenges. Whereas Clinton attacked Israel's moral fiber, Panetta judged Israel responsible for every negative development in the regional landscape.

Panetta excoriated Israel for not being involved in negotiations with the Palestinians. Israel, he said must make new concessions to the Palestinians in order to convince them of its good faith. If Israel makes such gestures, and the Palestinians and the larger Islamic world spurn them, then Panetta and his friends will side with Israel, he said.

Panetta failed to notice that Israel has already made repeated, unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians and that the Palestinians have pocketed those concessions and refused to negotiate. And he failed to notice that in response to the repeated spurning of its concessions by the Palestinians and the Arab world writ large, rather than stand with Israel, the US and Europe expanded their demands for further Israeli concessions.

Panetta demanded that Israel make renewed gestures as well to appease the Egyptians, Turks and Jordanians. He failed to notice that it was Turkey's Islamist government, not Israel, that took a knife to the Turkish-Israeli strategic alliance.

As for Egypt, rather than recognize the strategic implications for the US and Israel alike of Egypt's transformation into an Islamic state, the US Defense Secretary demanded that Israel ingratiate itself with Egypt's military junta. Thanks in large part to the Obama administration, that junta is now completely beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood.

As for Jordan, again thanks to the US's support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its aligned groups in Libya and Tunisia, the Hashemite regime is seeking to cut a deal with the Jordanian branch of the movement in a bid to save itself from Mubarak's fate. Under these circumstances, there is no gesture that Israel can make to its neighbor to the east that would empower King Abdullah to extol the virtues of peace with the Jewish state.

Then there is Iran, and its nuclear weapons program.

Panetta argued that an Israeli military strike against Iran would lead to regional war. But he failed to mention that a nuclear armed Iran will lead to nuclear proliferation in the Arab world and exponentially increase the prospect of a global nuclear war.

Rather than face the dangers head on, Panetta's message was that the Obama administration would rather accept a nuclear-armed Iran than support an Israeli military strike on Iran to prevent the mullocracy from becoming a nuclear-armed state.

Clinton's and Panetta's virulently anti-Israeli messages resonated in an address about European anti-Semitism given last week by the US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman. Speaking to a Jewish audience, Gutman effectively denied the existence of anti-Semitism in Europe. While attacks against European Jews and Jewish institutions have become a daily occurrence continent-wide, Gutman claimed that non-Muslim anti- Semites are essentially just all-purpose bigots who hate everyone, not just Jews.

As for the Muslims who carry out the vast majority of anti-Jewish attacks in Europe, Gutman claimed they don't have a problem with good Jews like him. They are simply angry because Israel isn't handing over land to the Palestinians quickly enough. If the Jewish state would simply get with Obama's program, according to the US ambassador, Muslim attacks on Jews in Europe would simply disappear.

Gutman of course is not a policymaker. His job is simply to implement Obama's policies and voice the president's beliefs.

But when taken together with Clinton's and Panetta's speeches, Gutman's remarks expose a distressing intellectual and moral trend that clearly dominates the Obama administration's foreign policy discourse. All three speeches share a common rejection of objective reality in favor of a fantasy.

In the administration's fantasy universe, Israel is the only actor on the world stage. Its detractors, whether in the Islamic world or Europe, are mere objects. They are bereft of judgment or responsibility for their actions.

There are two possible explanations for this state of affairs - and they are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that the Obama administration is an ideological echo chamber in which only certain positions are permitted. This prospect is likely given the White House's repeated directives prohibiting government officials from using terms like "jihad," "Islamic terrorism," "Islamist," and "jihadist," to describe jihad, Islamic terrorism, Islamists and jihadists.

Restrained by ideological thought police that outlaw critical thought about the dominant forces in the Islamic world today, US officials have little choice but to place all the blame for everything that goes wrong on the one society they are free to criticize - Israel.

The second possible explanation for the administration's treatment of Israel is that it is permeated by anti-Semitism. The outsized responsibility and culpability placed on Israel by the likes of Obama, Clinton, Panetta and Gutman is certainly of a piece with classical anti-Semitic behavior.

There is little qualitative difference between accusing Israeli society of destroying democracy for seeking to defend itself against foreign political subversion, and accusing Jews of destroying morality for failing to embrace foreign religious faiths.

So too, there is little qualitative difference between blaming Israel for its isolation in the face of the Islamist takeover of the Arab world, and blaming the Jews for the rise of anti-Semites to power in places like Russia, Germany and Norway.

In truth, from Israel's perspective, it really doesn't make a difference whether these statements and the intellectual climate they represent stem from ideological myopia or from hatred of Jews.

The end result is the same in either case: Under President Obama, the US government has become hostile to Israel's national rights and strategic imperatives. Under Obama, the US is no longer Israel's ally.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Caroline Glick: Israel Loses At the United Nations

Many friends of Israel are concluding that President Obama's speech at the United Nations is a monumental victory for the State of Israel. Setting aside that Israel would not be facing a Palestinian State vote if President Obama did not call for the recognition of a Palestinian State last year at the UN, or if he would have backed legislation that would cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if they went through with this stunt, the fact is Obama (at this point) has only delivered words. Even promising and casting a veto on the Security Council is not what Israel needs at this time. As Caroline Glick argues, Israel needs a quick veto but for that to happen the United States must demand a quick vote at the Security Council. At this point it looks like this will be a long drawn out deliberation which will play into the hands of the Palestinians.

Caroline Glick writes:

 

From Israel's perspective, the best possible outcome of the current standoff at the U.N. is for the Palestinians to present their resolution for statehood to the Security Council and for the U.S. to immediately veto it. Such a move would provide closure to this particular round of anti-Israel aggression. But it certainly wouldn't end the danger. The Palestinians can renew their request as often as they please. And given the sympathetic -- indeed enthusiastic -- reception they have received at the U.N., there is little reason to doubt that they will do so.

The worse scenario from Israel's perspective is quickly becoming the more likely one. That scenario is that the Security Council will not bring the Palestinian-statehood resolution to an immediate vote but will instead delay voting on it for an indeterminate period. During that period, the U.S. and the EU will exert massive pressure on Israel to capitulate to whatever Palestinian preconditions for renewing negotiations are on hand.

Israel will face the prospect that if it fails to surrender to all the Palestinian demands, the U.N. will retaliate by passing the Palestinian-statehood resolution. At a minimum, Israel will find itself under a constant barrage of criticism blaming it for the Palestinian decision to abandon the peace process and ask the U.N. to grant them what they refuse to negotiate with Israel.

All of this could have been averted or at least mitigated if the Obama administration had behaved differently. If the White House had announced at an early date that it would automatically veto any resolution calling for Palestinian U.N. membership and would end all U.S. financial and political support for the Palestinian Authority if it went through with its stated aim of applying for U.N. membership as a state, the Palestinians would likely have set aside their plans. But still today President Obama has refused to take any punitive action against the PA and, according to the New York Times, forced Israel to lobby Congress not to cut off foreign aid to the PA.