Weekly Quotes

"We are here to announce that yesterday in Vienna, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years.... The existence of this facility underscores Iran's continuing unwillingness to meet its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions and IAEA requirements.... Iran's decision to build yet another nuclear facility without notifying the IAEA represents a direct challenge to the basic compact at the center of the non-proliferation regime....

"Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear power that meets the energy needs of its people. But the size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program. Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow -- endangering the global non-proliferation regime, denying its own people access to the opportunity they deserve, and threatening the stability and security of the region and the world...." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, alongside British PM Gordon Brown and French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy during the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, indicating that Western leaders are running out of patience with Iran's deceptive and dangerous nuclear-weapons proliferation. (Office of the White House Press Secretary, Sept. 25)

"This is a brutal, cynical, corrupt, anti-Semitic regime that exploits the Palestinian cause and deliberately maintains a hostile posture to the West to justify its grip on power. A regime that relates to its own people with such coercive force is not going to be sweet-talked out of its nuclear program. Negotiating with such a regime without the reality of sanctions and the possibility of force is like playing baseball without a bat." -- New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, arguing that Western powers should take a hard line against Iran's nuclear ambitions, as well as against its current regime. "Obama officials want to be careful not to say that all they care about is a deal that neutralizes Iran's nukes, and, if we get that, we have no problem with those in power in Tehran. That would be a rebuff of Iranian democrats." (New York Times, Sept. 23)

"We are not going to discuss anything related to our nuclear rights, but we can discuss disarmament, we can discuss non-proliferation and other general issues... The new site is part of our rights and there is no need to discuss it." -- Iran nuclear chief, Vice-President Ali Akbar Salehi, reiterating Tuesday that Iran would not discuss its rights to nuclear facilities at the upcoming meeting with the six world powers in Geneva on Thursday. He added that Iran would not abandon its nuclear activities "even for a second." (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 29)

"The Iranians have the intention of having nuclear weapons.... This is part of a pattern of deception and lies on the part of the Iranians from the very beginning with respect to their nuclear program.... If this were a peaceful nuclear program, why didn't they announce this site when they began to construct it? Why didn't they allow IAEA inspectors from the very beginning?" -- US Defence Secretary Robert Gates speaking to ABC News about the revelations of a secret second nuclear plant at Qom at a military base controlled by the Revolutionary Guards. This new plant will hold 3,000 centrifuges that will soon allow it to produce nuclear fuel. Gates said the U.S. was not ruling out a military solution to this development, but still preferred diplomacy and sanctions. "The reality is that there is no military option that does anything more than buy time.... The estimates are three years or so." (ABC News, Sept. 27; Jerusalem Post, Sept. 27)

"Much was made last week of the decision by U. S. President Barack Obama to mark the 70th anniversary of the Red Army's invasion of Poland by announcing that the United States was scrapping the missile defence system it was deploying in Czech and Polish territory...Last April, [Obama] went to Prague to give a grand speech, in which he told the Czechs...'So let me be clear: Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies...The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defence against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven. If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defence construction in Europe will be removed.'" -- National Post columnist Father Raymond J. de Souza, criticizing Obama's retreat from the European missile defense program. This represents a reversal of the promises the U.S. President made in April. "On a highly symbolic issue on a highly symbolic day, [Obama] chose to undermine allies who have fought bravely for freedom in Europe's heart." (National Post, Sept. 25)

"Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.... The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events....

"Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium.... [T]o those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!..." -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking before the UN General Assembly, deploring the body for having compromised its integrity by allowing the forum to be degraded by the Iranian dictator. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sept. 24)

"We have to be careful not to encourage the world to think that Israel was established because of the Holocaust. When Obama said so in Egypt, there was a justified uproar. It is wrong to compare any event in history to the Holocaust, because it minimizes the most horrible historic event that happened to the Jewish people. It also makes Israeli citizens feel less secure. The Jews of Israel in 2009 are not the Jews of Europe in 1939, and I've said this to Netanyahu." -- Leader of Israel's Kadima party, Tzipi Livni, in a televised interview, criticizing PM Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the UN General Assembly for focusing on the Holocaust. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 27)

"This week, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set to address the United Nations General Assembly, on behalf of Canada, I proudly decided that I would stand up and walk out. The reasons behind our decision to boycott may be obvious, but are nonetheless worth repeating. Firstly, Iran has violated the human rights of its own citizens and foreign nationals, including Canadians Maziar Bahari (by unjustifiably detaining him) and Zahra Kazemi (whose death remains unexplained). This recently also has been demonstrated in its violent response against protestors following the fraudulent presidential election. Second, Ahmadinejad continually denies that the Holocaust -- one of the greatest crimes in human history -- ever occurred. Finally, Iran refuses to cease its quest to become a nuclear power, which not only threatens Israel's very existence, but also regional and global stability. As I said in March 2009, a nuclear threat against Israel is a nuclear threat against all of us." -- Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon, in a National Post editorial, explaining exactly why he and the rest of the Canadian delegation to the UN General Assembly walked out when Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the rostrum to deny the Holocaust and spew antisemitism last week. (National Post, Sept. 24)

"Now is the time for action. A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long. The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence. Time and again, experience has taught us that overlooking justice only leads to increased conflict and violence." -- Judge Richard Goldstone, before the Human Rights Council in Geneva, defending his much-criticized UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict report, and calling on the international community to end the violations of international law in Israel and the Palestinian territories. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 29)

"On May 14, 2008, my life was changed forever. I was working in my clinic. Suddenly, the building was hit by a missile, fired from Gaza. I was terribly wounded. Blood was everywhere. My patient was also wounded, and more than one hundred others. Next month will be my eighth operation. Judge Goldstone, I told you all of this, in detail. I testified in good faith. You sent me this letter, saying, 'Your testimony is an essential part of the Mission's fact-finding activities.'

"But now I see your report. I have to tell you: I am shocked. Judge Goldstone, in a five-hundred page report, why did you completely ignore my story? My name appears only in passing, in brackets, in a technical context. I feel humiliated.

"Why are there only two pages about Israeli victims like me, who suffered thousands of rockets over eight years? Why did you choose to focus on the period of my country's response, but not on that of the attacks that caused it? Why did you not tell me that this Council judged Israel guilty in advance, in its meeting of last January? Why did you not tell me that members of your panel signed public letters judging Israel guilty in advance? Judge Goldstone, you, too, signed such a letter, saying you were 'shocked' about Gaza. But where were you when Gaza attacked my medical clinic, in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law? "Where was this Council? Why were you all silent? Thank you, Mr. President." -- Dr. Mirela Siderer, a resident of Sderot, Israel, during a surprise appearance at the UN Human Rights Council, challenging Judge Richard Goldstone and his Fact Finding Mission to Gaza. Siderer's appearance was arranged by the UN Watch NGO. (UN Watch Briefing, Sept. 29, National Post, Sept. 29)

"Fear or the idea of risking my life never influence me that much.... [As a pilot] you could save a life or stop a terrorist, you could feel as if you had done something significant.... [I have gained] a deeper understanding of my father... more and more I want to connect to him.... I am three weeks into the class and I already feel that I am fulfilling a sort of dream that started when I was very young." -- Late Israeli Air Force pilot and son of Israel's first astronaut Ilan Ramon, Assaf Ramon, speaking in a recorded tape that was aired on Channel 2. Assaf Ramon was killed on Sept. 13 at the age of 21 when his F-16 fighter crashed in the West Bank. His father was killed aboard the Columbia space shuttle when it exploded in 2003. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 27)

Short Takes

TEHERAN TEST-FIRES LONG-RANGE MISSILES -- (Teheran) Iran tested its longest-range missiles last week and warned they can reach Israel, parts of Europe and U.S. military bases in the Mideast. "Iranian missiles are able to target any place that threatens Iran," said Abdullah Araqi, a senior Revolutionary Guards official. The tests, conducted Sept. 27 and 28, added urgency to a key meeting planned this week between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. (Globe and Mail, Sept. 29)

JORDAN BANS PLANNED ANTI-ISRAEL DEMO -- (Jerusalem) Jordanian authorities have refused to permit a demonstration which the country's Islamic groups planned for Friday in reaction to the entry into the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by Israeli police earlier this week. Clashes had broken out on Sunday between some 150 Muslim worshippers and police after a group of French Jewish tourists entered the Temple Mount compound accompanied by a police force. The clashes, in which at least 15 Palestinians and 17 Israeli policemen were injured and another 11 arrested, sparked a series of angry reactions in Jordan and elsewhere in Arab and Islamic countries. (Ha'aretz, Sept. 30)

GOV'T MISHANDLED GAZA EVACUEES: REPORT -- (Jerusalem) Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's government failed to resettle the Gaza Strip evacuees and it is now up to PM Benjamin Netanyahu to treat the program as the high priority national mission that it is, the state commission of inquiry into the government's handling of the evacuees declared Tuesday. Meanwhile, the IDF Central Command has established a new rapid-response security team responsible for cracking down on violent right-wing extremists, and preventing violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. Tension has been on the rise in West Bank settlements in recent months since Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced plans to evacuate some 23 illegal outposts throughout the territories. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 24 & 29)

KIEV MAYOR SCRAPS BABI YAR HOTEL PLAN -- (Kiev) Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky reversed a decision by authorities in the Ukranian capital to build a three-star hotel -- called The Babi Yar -- on a killing field used by the Nazis during the Babi Yar massacre. Jewish groups, led by Israeli Pres. Shimon Peres, had condemned the plan on Sept. 27, days before the 68th anniversary of the massacre. The hotel would have been placed on what was believed to be the main killing site. More than 33,700 Jews were shot at Babi Yar over two days beginning Sept. 29, 1941. In the ensuing months, the ravine was filled with an estimated 100,000 bodies. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 27; New York Times, Sept. 29)

NETANYAHU WANTS GOLDSTONE REPORT INQUIRY -- (Jerusalem) Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu plans to present a proposal to his cabinet Oct. 1 to establish an investigative committee to probe the findings of the Goldstone Commission report on the Gaza conflict. Meanwhile, 32 U.S. senators signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding the U.S. block any Goldstone-related punitive measures against Israel at the UN. (Ha'aretz, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 30)

SAUDI ARABIA DENIES OFFERING ISRAELIS FLIGHT PATH TO IRAN -- (Tel Aviv) Saudi Arabia denied Wednesday a report in Britain's Sunday Express that said the Kingdom offered the Israel Air Force flight paths to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The Sunday Express reported this week that the Saudis had agreed to turn a blind eye and not interfere should the U.S. and Israel attack Iranian nuclear facilities via Saudi air space. (Ha'aretz, Sept. 30)

NEW VIDEO OF GILAD SHALIT EXPECTED FRIDAY -- (Jerusalem) Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is alive, according to a newly-recorded videotape that will, supposedly, be provided to Israel by Hamas in return for Israel's release of 20 Palestinian female prisoners. The videotape, already turned over to German mediators, will be given to Israel on Friday, when the prisoners are due to be set free. Shalit, in captivity for more than three years, was abducted at age 19 by Islamic terrorists. (Washington Post, Sept. 30)

"NEVER FORGET" -- (New Orleans) The USS New York, the fifth ship in the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, designed to deliver a fully-equipped battalion of 700 Marines, and forged from over seven tons of steel recovered from Ground Zero, is to be christened on November 7, 2009. The ship is emblazoned with the motto: "Strength forged through sacrifice. Never Forget." Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack that brought down the Twin Towers, NY Governor George Pataki requested his state's victims be honoured with a military vessel to fight the war on terror. (USSNewYork.com, Sept. 30. To see the ship, click on the link.)

THE NOTABLE SHIFT IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
Barry Rubin
Jerusalem Post, September 28, 2009

To say that US President Barack Obama hates, seeks to destroy and/or is pressuring Israel is a staple of the Internet rumor mill. A large portion of the far right would like to believe it. But it isn't true.

Looking beyond the president's tone, miscomprehension of regional realities and all-too-apparent eagerness to please the world, the latest developments have made this so clear that it is time for people to adjust their view. The result is not an ideal relationship but one comparable to that which usually existed under his predecessors. It is a situation not directly dangerous to Israel....

From his political background, Obama learned three negative attitudes toward Israel. If things had gone otherwise, these might have been expressed as major policies during his presidency, the disaster that many foresaw and some still misperceive.

Obama only held the last of these three objectively hostile views after the inauguration, but it was dissipated by the first half-year or so of his experience. The other two were already dropped.

So why did Obama shift his stance? During the campaign he came to learn that Israel's supporters were active, energetic and would fight back even when almost no one else would confront him. In addition, the fact that he could gain Jewish support gave him an added incentive to pull back. Put simply, being anti-Israel was a political liability. Obama knew it and shifted accordingly.

Since the political costs of an anti-Israel stance are continuous, he needed to follow this change after he became president as well. Moreover, he needed Congress, which after a brief period of silence, intimidated by Obama's victory and apparent popularity, has returned to its usual pro-Israel stance.

In addition, though, he began to discover that his views didn't work in the real world. His attempt to pressure Israel failed, thanks to the Israeli government. A key factor here was the tough, superb maneuvering of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ably supported by President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The government could not possibly have handled Obama better....

In addition, as always, intransigence on the Arab and Palestinian side was so extreme that even the Obama administration couldn't ignore it. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was absolutely uncooperative with Obama, throwing away an incredible strategic opportunity. Obama thought Arab states would fall in line behind him -- especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- but they refused to help. It is said that his meeting with the Saudi king, who went into an anti-Israel diatribe, was a particular shock. Syria and Iran also showed they were not so open to friendly engagement.

All these factors have helped force a rethinking process on Obama and his administration.

To this day, the US government under Obama has not taken a single material step against Israel and no such development seems to be on the horizon either. While there are many criticisms that can be made of Obama's Middle East policy, it has swung in a more pro-Israel direction while still maintaining the kind of "evenhanded" balance frequently seen in his predecessors.

The latest examples include:

Sometimes, relatively positive formulations are misinterpreted by some the opposite way. For example, when Obama said at the UN that he considered post-1967 Israeli settlements to be illegal, he was only echoing long-standing US practice. He was also saying that Israel's existence should not be questioned and by not mentioning settlement construction, Obama was actually backtracking on that issue. His statement did not imply that Israel must return to 1967 borders.

Of course, the administration policy does not comprehend things like the impossibility of comprehensive peace due to Palestinian obduracy, the need to bring down the Hamas government in Gaza for progress on peace or stability, and other points required for an effective US policy. But comparing it to positions under the last half-dozen US presidents shows less change than looking at rhetoric alone would seem to indicate.

Can it change again? Definitely, but in which direction? If Obama is determined to push the peace process forward, the Palestinian leadership will teach him what they taught his predecessors: that it is the real roadblock. Arab states will frustrate him because they won't lift a finger to help.

Again, there are many criticisms that can be made of the Obama administration, especially with regards to Iran. On these issues, the administration might not learn its lessons since Obama's clear reluctance to identify and confront the radicals could well push it into a dangerous passivity. That, not appeasement, is the biggest threat.

In the meantime, the Obama administration has shifted on bilateral relations with Israel and on its concept of a peace process from a position of relative hostility to the historic US policy default stance.

O'S WORLDVIEW SEES NO EVIL
Michael Goodwin
New York Post, September 27, 2009

Forget the blather, there were only two important speeches at the United Nations last week. One was a stirring wake-up call about the evil brewing in Iran. Barack Obama gave the other speech. It saw no evil.

It fell to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be the truth-teller. Brandishing Nazi blueprints for Auschwitz and charging the UN with "shame" for giving Iran's madman leader a forum for his hate, Netanyahu said what Obama should have.

Our president whiffed, punted, failed, struck out. His turn at the microphone was important for the worst of reasons: It marked the official coming-out party for a policy of abdicating America's role as protector of the free world.

Obama revealed his self-reverential fixation on "global cooperation," a willowy hope that implicitly gives every crackpot dictator a veto over American assertions of national interest. The terrifying prospect that Obama is prepared to voluntarily forfeit America's preeminence has only suggested itself before, including in Cairo last June, when his flawed moral-equivalence calculations emerged. "No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons," he told his Muslim audience then. Never mind that a year earlier, as a candidate, he had told a Jewish audience he would "do everything in my power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, everything."

It was not until he took the UN stage that Obama's kumbaya dreams were illuminated in their frightening totality. Even Friday, after Iran conceded it has secretly enriched uranium at a second site, Obama could muster no more outrage than a scolding about "international law," as though that means anything to repressive theocracies.

He also used his first speech to the General Assembly to repeat his moral-equivalency nonsense. "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," he said while demanding that Palestinians end their "incitement of Israel." Even if the policy has any merit, it was the wrong place. By rebuking Israel before the General Assembly -- a body that for 16 years, until 1991, formally equated Zionism with racism -- Obama drew applause from an audience that included Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian leader, whose thugs have tortured and killed protesters in his own country, threatens Israel with its plan to get and use nukes. And Iranian weapons have killed hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Obama did not single out Ahmadinejad for the stinging criticism reserved for Israel, saying only Iran and North Korea "threaten to take us down this dangerous slope."...

In his eyes, the US arsenal is apparently no different from those of Russia, China, Pakistan or Iran. No wonder the daffy but dangerous Moammar Khadafy declared he would be "happy and content if Obama can stay forever as president of America." Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez also lavished praise.

Say this for the president: He has made himself popular on the world stage. Unfortunately, his fan club is led by some of the most dangerous people on the planet. If we judge him by this amen corner, Americans have more than mere fear to fear. [His is] a course that is dangerous to our nation's health.

AN ENFEEBLED OBAMA
Caroline Glick
Jerusalem Post, September 24, 2009

If Zbigniew Brzezinski had his way, the US would go to war against Israel to defend Iran's nuclear installations. In an interview with the Daily Beast Web site last weekend, the man who served as former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser said, "They [IAF fighter jets] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not."

Brzezinski has long distinguished himself as one of the most outspoken Israel-haters in polite circles in Washington. Under normal circumstances, his remarks could be laughed off as the ravings of a garden variety anti-Semite. But these are not normal circumstances. Brzezinski served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, and his views are not terribly out of place among Obama's senior advisers in the White House. In an interview in 2002, Samantha Powers, who serves as a senior member of Obama's national security council, effectively called for the US to invade Israel in support of the Palestinians.

The fact of the matter is that Brzezinski's view is in line with the general disposition of Obama's foreign policy. Since entering office, Obama has struck a hard-line position against Israel while adopting a soft, even apologetic line toward Iran and its allies.

For eight months, Obama has sought to force Israel to the wall. He has loudly and repeatedly ordered the Netanyahu government to prevent all private and public construction for Jews in Israel's capital city and its heartland in order to facilitate the eventual mass expulsion of Jews from both areas, which he believes ought to become part of a Jew-free Palestinian state. Until this week, Obama conditioned the resumption of negotiations toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians on such a prohibition of Jewish building and so encouraged Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to further radicalize his positions toward Israel....

Obama made no equivalent demands of the Palestinians. He did not precondition talks on freezing illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem, or on dismantling the Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group, or even simply on setting aside the Palestinian demand that Israel release convicted terrorists from its prisons. To the contrary, he has energetically supported the establishment of a Palestinian unity government between Fatah and Hamas -- which the US State Department has since 1995 designated as a foreign terrorist organization to which US citizens, including the US president, are required by law to give no quarter.

As for Iran, during his meeting with Netanyahu in May, Obama gave the clear impression that the Iranian regime had until September to accept his offer to negotiate the disposition of its nuclear installations.... Instead, Obama announced that he is sending a senior US official to meet with the Iranians on October 1. And with that announcement, any residual doubt that Obama is willing to live in a world in which Iran is armed with nuclear weaponry dissipated completely.

In the meantime, in his address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday and in his remarks at his meeting with Netanyahu and Abbas on Tuesday, Obama made clear that, in the words of former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, he has "put Israel on the chopping block." He referred to Israeli communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines as "illegitimate."

Moreover, Obama explained that Israel can no longer expect US support for its security if it doesn't bow to his demand that it surrender all of the land it has controlled since 1967. Apparently it is immaterial to the US leader that if Israel fulfilled his demand, the Jewish state would render itself defenseless against enemy attack and so embolden its neighbors to invade.... The fact that Obama made these deeply antagonistic statements about Israel at the UN in itself exposes his hostility toward the country. The UN's institutional hostility toward Israel is surpassed only by that of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

So given Obama's positions toward Israel on the one hand and Iran and its allies on the other, it seems clear enough that the logical endpoint of Obama's policies would look something like Brzezinski's recommended course of action. Moreover, Obama's foreign policy as a whole makes it fairly easy to imagine him ordering the US military to open hostilities against a US ally to defend a US adversary -- even as that adversary goes out of its way to humiliate Obama personally and the US in general.

Since Obama took office, he has been abandoning one US ally after another while seeking to curry favor with one US adversary after another.... The horror Obama has instilled in America's friends and the contempt he has evoked from its enemies have not caused him to change course. The fact that his policies throughout the world have already failed to bring a change in the so-called international community's treatment of the US has not led him to reconsider those policies.... But Obama is unmoved by any of this, and as his speech at the UN General Assembly made clear, he is moving full speed ahead in his plans to subordinate US foreign policy to the UN....

Obama's failures in both foreign and domestic policy have weakened him politically. His response to this newfound weakness has been to put himself into the public eye seemingly around the clock. Apparently the thinking behind the move is that while Obama's policies are unpopular, Obama's personal popularity remains high, so if he personalizes his policies, it will become more difficult for his opponents to argue against them.
But alas, this policy too has failed. The more Obama exposes himself, the less he is able to leverage his personal celebrity into political power.

Already this week Israel benefitted from his weakness. It was Obama's weakness that dictated his need to stage a photo-op with Netanyahu and Abbas at the UN. And it was this need -- to be seen as doing something productive -- that outweighed Obama's desire to put the screws on Israel by preconditioning talks with a freeze on Jewish construction. So Obama was forced to relent at least temporarily and Netanyahu won his first round against Obama....

The weaker Obama becomes politically, the more readily Democrats and liberal reporters alike will acknowledge that attacking US allies while scraping and bowing before US foes is a ridiculous strategy for foreign affairs. Certainly no self-proclaimed realist can defend a policy based on denuding the US of its power and forsaking a US-based international system for one dictated by its foes.

It is true that a weakened Obama will seek to win cheap points by putting the squeeze on Israel. But it is also true that the weaker Obama becomes, the less capable he will be of carrying through on his bullying threats against Israel and against fellow democracies around the world.

Please see our Picks of the Week for opinions regarding Obama's policies toward Israel by Efraim Inbar and Benny Avni.

YOM KIPPUR 5770: A MIDRASH
Baruch Cohen

In loving memory of Malca ?"?

Contrary to a popular perception, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on which the Torah bids us to "afflict your souls" (Leviticus 23.32) is not a day of mourning like the other twenty-four hour fast day, Tisha B'av. It is instead a solemn day of repentance, of contemplation, of seeking atonement for one's inadvertent or deliberate wrongdoings; in short, a day of forgiveness.

We may accompany our contemplation and prayers with tears, but not tears of remorse, not tears of mourning. "Weeping on Yom Kippur will avail you nothing if it is a weeping of sadness," said the Hassidic Rabbi Shmuel Shmelke Horowitz of Nickelsburg//Mikulov (see S.Y. Agnon, Yamim Noraym). Rabbi Horowitz was elaborating, in a Yom Kippur sermon, on the Talmudic assertion that the Shechina (the Divine Presence) does not dwell in us when we are sad, but only when we are filled with joy by observing God's precepts (Shabbat 30b, Pessahim 117a).

Rabbi Horowitz added, "And this day is certainly a day of rejoicing-this day on which we have the opportunity, the privilege, of strengthening the crookedness in our hearts and coming close to the King of Kings, the Blessed Holy One, and restoring our soul to its pristine state." The central theme of this approach is brilliantly stated in Psalm 100: "Serve God with joy, and gladness of the heart."

Similarly, in Deuteronomy 28.47, we read: "You did not serve the LORD your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything."

There is, too, a Mishnaic statement that Yom Kippur was one of the happiest days in Israel , when maidens danced in the vineyards! (The Encyclopaedia of the Jewish Religion, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, N.Y., 1966).

(Baruch Cohen is Research Chair of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.)

THE STRENGTH TO FACE EACH OTHER
Natan Sharansky
Jerusalem Post, September 24, 2009

For centuries, Jews have begun the Yom Kippur prayers with a curious declaration. Just before Kol Nidrei, the cantor stops and says something strange. He declares that, by the authority of the Heavenly and the Earthly courts, it is permissible to pray with wrongdoers.

What is the meaning of this? Why say it at the onset of the High Holiday prayers? I must say, for me, this has always been the most emotionally arresting moment of the Days of Awe. Coming from the Soviet Union , representatives of the State would always seek to weed out the undesirables; to arrest ideological unwanteds and do away with them. It strikes me as a point of pride that we don't do that. We proudly declare-on Judgment Day, no less-that we stand hand in hand with wrongdoers. We won't give them up. We won't disavow them. They are part of us, and that's just the way it is.

Think of what we are saying to God when we make this declaration. We are essentially telling Him that this is who we are-take it or leave it. And, I think, we are saying something more. We are saying that our willingness to pray hand in hand with those we consider wrong is not a liability; it is an asset. It is, on some fundamental level, what gives us a right to stand before God as a community. A community is not homogeneous; it consists of many parts, each of which provides something vital to the whole.

The notion that we are enriched by the presence and inclusion of those we might intuitively shun, that our ability to stand before the King comes from our willingness not to disavow those we disagree with or disapprove of, is something I find personally inspiring. I think this is the essence of what we're talking about when we say we are "one people."

Being "one people" makes for a good slogan, but it is up to us to make it more than that. Israel today is caught between Arab terror on the one hand, and the pressure of living as a Jewish state in a "post-identity" world on the other. These are not easy threats to confront-but if we are to face them squarely, we must do it together. That doesn't mean we all have to agree on policy. We can disagree, and we will. But when we do disagree, we can't insinuate that our opponent is "outside the camp" of self-respecting Jews. We need to remember: We are supposed to confront God-and the world-hand in hand with those we think are wrong.

If this is true for individual Jews, it is all the more true for Jewish communities. There are two great Jewish communities on the face of this earth-Israeli Jewry and Diaspora Jewry. A bridge connects us-and however convenient it might seem to occasionally turn our back on this bridge, we must not do so. Each community must engage the other-and understand that our own, continued existence is bound up in the continued ability of the other community to flourish alongside us.

For Jews living in the Diaspora, this means recognizing that San Francisco , San Paulo and San Diego are not self-sufficient Jewish oases; they orbit around a center, and that center is Israel . The more they recognize this, the more they are themselves enriched. It is no accident that, according to a recent study, Birthright participants-youth who've spent ten days in Israel on an intensive trip with peers-are at least as likely to remain Jews as those who've had years and years of Hebrew school education, but no contact with Israel . To encounter our national homeland is to encounter the Jewish People, writ large. The land is a wellspring of Jewish identity; our shared history seeps from its every rock. It is a land that is truly "home" for all of us-not only for those living here, but for those living abroad as well.

For Israeli Jews, the existence of this bridge means living with a kind of humility, with an understanding that we can learn from Diaspora Jews. Israelis, who chatter in Hebrew without even thinking about it and soak up symbols of Jewish culture from sources as ubiquitous as billboards and television advertising, can learn from those who choose to remain Jewish when that is not the default choice, when that choice means swimming against the cultural tide.

For Israelis, living with the bridge also means understanding that, no matter how stupendously aliya might succeed in the future, Jews will inevitably live in the Diaspora. It means realizing that Jews who live abroad are not inherently less committed to Jewish life for doing so, and that the continued vibrancy of Diaspora Jewish life must be a priority for us all, Israeli and "hutznik" alike.

More than anything else, the two communities need to look with pride upon each other. They need to admire each other, even when they disagree; indeed, even when they consider the other to have done wrong. We need to be able to point to our brothers on the other side of the aisle, or on the other side of the ocean, and say: "Whatever their politics, whatever their beliefs, whatever their religiosity-they are a part of me, too, and I would be less without them." When we can say that and really mean it, Israeli and Diaspora Jewry will have achieved something remarkable. For many Yom Kippurs to come, we will be able to stand before God and say, "This is who we are. We are one. We do not shirk from facing each other-and therefore, we have the strength, pride and self assurance to face You as well."

(Natan Sharansky is chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel.)

A GREAT GOOD MAN
Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post, September 25, 2009

After the plain pine box is lowered into the grave, the mourners are asked to come forward-immediate family first-and shovel dirt onto the casket. Only when it is fully covered, only when all that can be seen is dust, is the ceremony complete.

Such is the Jewish way of burial. Its simplicity, austerity and unsentimentality would have appealed to Irving Kristol, who was buried by friends and family Tuesday. Equally fitting for this most unsentimental of men was the spare funeral service that preceded the burial. It consisted of the recitation of two psalms and the prayer for the dead, and two short addresses: an appreciation by the rabbi, followed by a touching, unadorned remembrance by his son, Bill.

The wonder of Irving was that he combined this lack of sentimentality-he delighted in quietly puncturing all emotional affectations and indulgences-with a genuine generosity of spirit. He was a deeply good man who disdained shows of goodness, deflecting expressions of gratitude or admiration with a disarming charm and an irresistible smile. That's because he possessed what might be called a moral humility. For Irving , doing good-witness the posthumous flood of grateful e-mails, letters and other testimonies from often young and uncelebrated beneficiaries of that goodness-was as natural and unremarkable as breathing.

Kristol's biography has been rehearsed in a hundred places. He was one of the great public intellectuals of our time, father of a movement, founder of magazines, nurturer of two generations of thinkers-seeding our intellectual and political life for well over half a century.

Having had the undeserved good fortune of knowing him during his 21-year sojourn in Washington , I can testify to something lesser known: his extraordinary equanimity. His temperament was marked by a total lack of rancor. Angst, bitterness and anguish were alien to him. That, of course, made him unusual among the fraternity of conservatives because we believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. That makes us cranky. But not Irving . Never Irving . He retained steadiness, serenity and grace that expressed themselves in a courtliness couched in a calm quiet humor.

My theory of Irving is that this amazing equanimity was rooted in a profound sense of modesty. First about himself. At 20, he got a job as a machinist's apprentice at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He realized his future did not lie in rivets, he would recount with a smile, when the battleship turret he was working on was found to be pointing in the wrong direction. It could only shoot inward-directly at the ship's own bridge.

He was equally self-deprecating about his experiences as an infantryman in World War II France. "Experiences?" he once said to me. "We were lost all the time.") His gloriously unheroic view of himself extended to the rest of humanity-its politics, its pretensions, its grandiose plans for the renovation of...humanity.

This manifested itself in the work for which he is most celebrated: his penetrating, devastating critique of modern liberalism and of its grand projects for remaking man and society. But his natural skepticism led him often to resist conservative counter-enthusiasms as well. Most recently, the general panic about changing family structures.

Irving had an abiding reverence for tradition and existing norms. But he thought it both futile and anti-human to imagine we could arrest their evolution. He never yelled for history to stop. He acknowledged the necessity of adaptation (most famously, to the New Deal and the welfare state). He was less concerned about the form of emerging family norms, such as France 's non-marriage Civil Solidarity Pact, than whether they could in time perform the essential functions of the traditional family-from the generational transmission of values to the socialization of young males.

That spirit of skepticism and intellectual openness was a marvel. One of Irving 's triumphs was to have infused that spirit into the Public Interest, the most serious and influential social policy journal of our time. Irving co-founded it in 1965, then closed it 40 years later, saying with characteristic equanimity, "No journal is meant to last forever."

A new time, a new journal. On Sept. 8, 2009, the first issue of a new quarterly, National Affairs-- successor to the Public Interest-was published. Irving Kristol died 10 days later, but not before writing a letter to its editor-two generations his junior-offering congratulations and expressing pleasure at its creation. That small tender shoot, yet another legacy of this great good life, was the last Irving lived to see. We shall see many more.

AFTER SURVIVAL, A JOURNEY TO SELF-RECOVERY
Steven Erlanger
New York Times, July 11, 2009

A feral child still lives haunted within him, Samuel Pisar says, and mocks all his fitted suits, lovely furnishings and worldly success. "The little one with the sunken eyes and shaved head helps a lot," he said. "He's very severe with me; he disapproves of so many things; he's a kind of conscience."

Mr. Pisar, now 80, an author, consultant and international lawyer, was 10 when his native Poland was swallowed by Hitler and Stalin. He somehow survived the death camps of Majdanek, Auschwitz and Dachau , emerging at 16, hardened and wild, his Polish family gone to ash.

He spent a year and a half with older survivors as a hooligan and black marketeer in the American occupation zone of Germany, living high for revenge, riding a BMW motorcycle, selling Lucky Strikes and used coffee grounds stolen from the kitchens of the American occupying troops, reroasted and repackaged for the Germans.
He was rescued by a French aunt, and with the help of uncles in Australia he slowly created a life, one with extraordinary accomplishments: becoming an adviser on foreign economic policy to John F. Kennedy, whom he met at Harvard, and a confidant to Presidents François Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France; establishing himself as a lawyer to movie stars and corporate executives; making lots of money and finding happiness in a family that extends between France and the United States; and becoming a citizen of the United States by an act of Congress.

Mr. Pisar, pressed to confront his carefully hidden demons by his second wife, Judith, and his children, wrote a memoir in 1979, "Of Blood and Hope," a moving saga of the nearly unspeakable, of survival and self-recovery. "I couldn't move around any more like a shadow," he said, "with all these taboos."

He describes with relative openness how he was "molded to survive in the death camps, but not the Ivy League." He survived by becoming pitiless and cruel, finding older protectors and ways to seem privileged in a hierarchy of despair, like persuading a prisoner-tailor to refashion a cap so that the stripes on the top perfectly met the stripes on the side. He was condemned to die at least twice, but managed to slip back into the general prison population, once convincing a guard that he was there only to wash the floor.

Mr. Pisar said he learned that "if you followed the law then you were dead." He reacted like an animal, he said. "I had to learn bad habits, to be good at lying and make instant judgments about people, what they were saying, what they really thought, and not just the guards and torturers, but my fellow prisoners, too," he said. "I was a cute kid, and there were a lot of psychotics around." But to rejoin the world, "I had to wipe out the first 17 years of my life," he said. "I muted the past. I didn't want to dabble in it. I turned to the future with a vengeance."

STILL, a taste of bitterness and a sense of distance, even of unworthiness, have persisted through most of his life, Mr. Pisar said in a series of interviews here. Even as he wrote about his liberation from Auschwitz, he noted that there were more people murdered in that one death camp on D-Day than there were Allied troops killed on the Normandy beaches "on this, their longest day."

Years later, having been pressed by Judith's friend Leonard Bernstein, Mr. Pisar, like Job, has taken his arguments to God. Mr. Bernstein, always unhappy with the lyrics of the "Kaddish" Symphony No. 3 he wrote in 1963 and dedicated to the assassinated President Kennedy, asked Mr. Pisar, who had seen hell, to write them instead. Mr. Pisar refused, feeling that his talents were unequal to the music.

But after Mr. Bernstein's death, and prompted by 9/11, Mr. Pisar finally accepted the task, writing a version of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, first performed in 2003. Mr. Pisar calls it "A Dialogue with God." But he keeps refining the text-he is always arguing with himself, said his daughter, Leah Pisar, among his first readers.

With the same "visceral voice I once raised against you as a skeletal kid" at the edge of the gas chamber, he demands of God: "Why do You abandon us? How can You allow such carnage? Do You even care?"

Mr. Pisar describes the Jews heading for the gas "with Your name on their lips," and says it imposes obligations on God, too. "The Auschwitz number engraved on my arm reminds me of it every day," he said. "And today, Father, I remind You!" He said he was no longer furious with God. But pressed, he said: "I'm angry. And he may not even be there. But I love him, too. Because we have loved him for so many thousands of years." Last month, Mr. Pisar performed his Kaddish for the first time in Israel , to a hushed audience at the Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.

THE concert was a memorial to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto, and it was also, to Leah Pisar, a sort of homecoming. "It was so much more resonant there than elsewhere," she said. "Yad Vashem is the place where one feels closest to those who perished. It was as if he was saying Kaddish for all the six million."

He likes to talk of the cunning child inside him. In May, in Bialystok , Poland , where he was born, he said, "I am not sure which of my two voices is more authentic, or more relevant for survival in our crisis-ridden world."
He is not sure, but he suspects. His Kaddish is also an argument with other men about the degradation of the world in the name of big ideas. But it is also a memorial to his lost family, when he recites, "My memory is the only tomb they have."

The family's tradition of public service continues. Leah Pisar worked in the State Department and White House under President Bill Clinton. His stepson, Antony J. Blinken, is national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Pisar also has two daughters from his first marriage.

The German government still pays him, as a survivor, $700 a month, "but I've never been able to invest it in a normal way," he said. For all the money he has made and given away, "that money is still intact."

He wrote that he would use it to create some physical memorial to his parents, "and I will get around to it," he said uncomfortably. "My children say to me, I have to do it," he said, "and one day I will, sooner rather than later." He talks of being open now, but he keeps much hidden. He says he is better with his grandchildren than his children. Even with Leah, he said, "I was willing to tell her a little but not a lot-I fenced with her a little."

Later, he said, "I never spoke about the real horrors-not even with the Germans." Then later: "I remember every detail. But I don't suffer from it." And then he said: "It helped me in life. And tragic as it was, it was a positive experience. I would never have been the way I am." The Kaddish has liberated him, he said; he feels more at ease with the mystery of God. "It's not just that he's waiting for me," Mr. Pisar said. "I'm more at peace. I'm ready."

Please see our Picks of the Week page for David Brooks' eulogy of Irving Kristol.

Shabbat Shalom and Gmar Chatimah Tovah to all our readers.

THE RESTRAINING OF OBAMA
Israel Harel
Ha'aretz, September 24, 2009

The journalists accompanying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States are devastated. It turned out that the U.S. president, and not Israel's prime minister, gave in on the matter of the settlements.
After all, the journalists and their colleagues back home predicted that Barack Obama, as opposed to his predecessors, would put a complete stop to construction in the settlements. How could he make such a grievous mistake and shatter their vision!

And if he cannot overcome Netanyahu, and exchanges "construction in the settlements has got to stop" with anemic "restraint," how can he overcome North Korea or Iran? Is this really the leader of the free world?

Senior members of Obama's administration had prepared a list of tough, but not bizarre, demands from the Likud government. Then came the energetic extreme left activists in Israel and they persuaded them -- the prime minister after all bows to demands -- to bring brutal pressure to bear on Israel. Stopping construction in the settlements, especially in Jerusalem, they said, was the key to getting Netanyahu to give in and jump-start a diplomatic process.

This is not the first time that the "peace camp" has stood helpless before a situation it created itself, following its messianic activism that denies the reality (did someone say Oslo?) it brought upon itself, and upon all of us. If it were not for these activists, happy to continue concocting policy behind the government's back, there would almost certainly be talks today between Israel and the Palestinians.

But they want to prove that it does not matter what the voter chooses or who the elected government is -- hegemony in important areas, first and foremost the peace process, is still in their hands. And of course, their influence on the American administration (although it is immoral, and usually useless, to invite foreign governments to pressure your country) is greater than that of the government.

The demand the Americans presented, to stop construction even in Jerusalem, gave Netanyahu two choices: to give up and bring about a crisis in his cabinet that he would not be likely to overcome, or to stand tall and declare -- enough. He declared it. When it turned out that the sky did not fall, he gave permission (albeit recycled permission) to construct 455 housing units in Judea and Samaria....

So what has changed since the days of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak (when they each served as prime minister and there was no construction freeze)? The American recklessness resulting from the influence of the Israeli left has changed. If Obama demands a total freeze, how can Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas compromise and renew talks for less?

One of the results of this impossible demand is, to the sorrow of those who cooked up the "construction has to stop" formula, the renewal of construction in Judea and Samaria. And no power in the world can now stop the dictates of the natural demands -- as well as ideology -- of life.

Settlement in Judea and Samaria is a solid, permanent and deeply rooted reality. A long and terrible war of terror could not vanquish it, oceans of horrific and cruel propaganda, especially from those within Israeli society who hate it, could not break its spirit. The complete opposite happened. All the more so, external dictates will not rattle its foundations.

Functional arrangements for the future of Judea and Samaria have their place, but the starting point is clear: Settlements will not be uprooted and their size will not be limited. Even the restrained Obama has begun to realize this. So when will the extreme left in Israel also restrain itself and realize it?

THE "HALF-FULL" ASPECTS OF OBAMA'S SPEECH
Herb Keinon
Jerusalem Post, September 24, 2009

To sensitive Israeli ears, the most interesting aspect of US President Barack Obama's references to the Arab-Israel conflict in his UN General Assembly address Wednesday were his comments on Jewish settlements.
A day after he seemed to step back from his call for a total settlement freeze by using the word "restraint" in the context of Israeli settlement activity, he seemed to change direction again, saying, "we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." However, an Israeli diplomat in the US pointed out, this has been Washington's position on settlements for the past 30 years and did not represent any real shift in America's position.

That the settlement line received the loudest applause of the president's speech, along with his comment that "the United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians," should not distract anyone from the interesting nuances that redounded very much in Israel's favor.

For instance, the president did not call -- as some in Israel had worried about -- for two states along the 1967 lines, saying instead that he was calling for "Two states living side by side in peace and security -- a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people." Likewise, the president -- unlike in his Cairo speech -- made no mention of Jerusalem, other than to say it was one of the issues that would be discussed in the permanent-status negotiations.

Another nuance in yesterday's address was his reference to Israel as a Jewish state, something that has been interpreted as shorthand for an appreciation that descendants of Palestinian refugees, in any future agreement, will be allowed to return to a future Palestinian state, and not to Israel.

And, finally, Obama also gave voice to his exasperation with the failure of the Arab world to heed his call and make any gestures toward normalizing ties with Israel, or do anything concrete to move the diplomatic process forward. "But all of us -- not just the Israelis and the Palestinians, but all of us -- must decide whether we are serious about peace, or whether we will only lend it lip service. To break the old patterns, to break the cycle of insecurity and despair, all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private. The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. And -- and nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks against Israel over constructive willingness to recognize Israel's legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security," he said.

The message was clear: it was time for the Arabs to stop saying one thing in private, and another in public, but to act publicly on what they say privately. From the government's point of view, that comment more than compensated for his remark that continued settlement construction was illegitimate.

THE NAIF-IN-CHIEF
Editorial
New York Post, September 24, 2009

Who wrote President Obama's speech for the start of the UN General Assembly yesterday -- Rodney King? You know, the guy whose videotaped run-in with cops sparked the 1992 LA riots, leading King to ask: "Can't we all just get along?"

Today that question is used derisively, to mock naive "solutions" for social ills. But it essentially sums up Obama's 38-minute UN plea, as Washington's former UN envoy John Bolton noted.

Except that Obama is supposed to be the wise leader of the Free World.

What a truly pathetic performance. Not only because of the president's stunning cluelessness about the world's nature. But also because of his repeated insults to America. And his back-stabbing of Washington's top Mideast ally, Israel.

Obama, yet again, focused on the world's "distrust" of this nation, thanks to the "belief . . . that America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interest of others" -- presumably, under George W. Bush's presidency. Not to fear, though; Obama's here: He's closing Gitmo, he said, banning torture, quitting Iraq, scrapping nukes . . .

What about protecting America? Obama believes "deeply," he said, that "the interests of nations and peoples are shared." (Cue the Kumbaya singers.) Indeed, he practically begged world leaders to take their "share of responsibility" in responding to global challenges.

Did no one brief him about who'd be at the event? Like lunatic Libyan murderer-in-chief Moammar Khadafy (who ranted for 95 minutes)? And Holocaust-denying, terror-sponsoring, nuke-building, election-stealing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Obama can't truly believe these guys will do their "share" to make the world safe, however much he pleads.

And what's up with those gratuitous slams at Jerusalem? "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," Obama hissed. He insisted that "Israel respect the legitimate claims . . . of the Palestinians." Memo to POTUS: Israel has always respected legitimate Palestinian claims. Indeed, it is neither Israeli disrespect nor settlements that stand in the way of peace there -- but the Palestinian fantasy (fueled by folks like Ahmadinejad) of wiping the Jewish state off the map.

Obama can wish all he wants for everyone to "just get along." But wishing won't make it happen. He's got some serious learning to do.

SUMMITS OF FOLLY
Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2009

Beggar thy neighbor, bankrupt thy country, appease thy foe. As slogans (or counter-slogans) go, it isn't quite in a class with Amnesty, Acid and Abortion. But it pretty much sums up President Obama's global agenda -- and that's just for the month of September.

In 1943, Walter Lippmann observed that the disarmament movement had been "tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament." That ought to have been the final word on the subject.
So what should Mr. Obama, who this week becomes the first American president to chair a session of the U.N. Security Council, choose to make the centerpiece of the Council's agenda? What else but nonproliferation and disarmament. And lest anyone suspect that this has something to do with North Korea and Iran, U.S.

Ambassador Susan Rice insists otherwise: The meeting, she says, "will focus on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any particular countries."

But the problem with this euphemistic approach to disarmament, as Lippmann noticed, is that it shifts the onus from the countries that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons to those that can. Is Nicolas Sarkozy, with his force de frappe, about to start World War III? Probably not, though he has the means to do so. Should Mr. Obama join hands with Iran and the Arab world in pushing for Israel's nuclear disarmament, on the view that if only the Jewish state would set the right example its enemies would no longer want to wipe it off the map? If that's what the president believes, he should say so publicly, especially since he's offering the same general prescription for America's nuclear deterrent.

Of course what the administration wants is to set the right mood music for its upcoming talks with Iran. Mr. Obama would be better served having a chat with Moammar Gadhafi, who will be seated just a few chairs away at the Security Council: The mood music for his disarmament was set by the 4th Infantry Division when it yanked Saddam Hussein from his spider hole in December 2003. Col. Gadhafi gave up his WMD a week later.

Then again, it's not as if the administration doesn't know how to play hardball when it has a real villain in its sights. Like Chinese tire makers, for instance, who last week were slapped with a 35% tariff because Mr. Obama owed political favors to his friends in Big Labor. Quite something for a president who last year sounded off on the dangers of "trade policy [being] dictated by special interests." In an op-ed in this newspaper, Brookings Institution economist Chad Bown noted that "the count of newly imposed protectionist policies like antidumping duties and other 'safeguard' measures increased by 31% in the first half of 2009 relative to the same period one year ago."

That's a global trend, and the sort of thing a group like the G-20, which meets Thursday and Friday in Pittsburgh, is supposed to set its teeth against. Instead, the agenda will be given over to such brainstorms as capping bankers' bonuses -- "a critical part of our broader reform agenda," according to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Now there's a way to attract the best and the brightest to the world's dullest profession.

The G-20 also has no plans to put the brakes on further infusions of stimulus spending, the removal of which British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says would be an "error of historical proportions." But what's really historical is the explosion in the debt-to-GDP ratios of the G-20 countries, which the IMF predicts will rise to 81.6% next year from 65.9% in 2008. For the U.S. the jump is especially pronounced -- to 97.5% next year from 70.5% last. Only Japan and Italy will be deeper in the red; even Argentina looks good by comparison. This is before the first baby boomer hits retirement age next summer, to say nothing of the liabilities coming from ObamaCare....

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is earning kudos from the Russian government for his decision to pull missile defense from central Europe, even as Poland marked the 70th anniversary of its invasion by the Soviet Union. Moscow is still offering no concessions on sanctioning Iran in the event negotiations fail, but might graciously agree to an arms-control deal that cements its four-to-one advantages in tactical nuclear weapons.

Also on the presidential agenda this week is a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Too bad for all concerned that the two-state solution has been superseded by the three-state fact on the ground.

And all of this in a single month. Just imagine what October will bring.

Please see our Picks of the Week for more opinions of Pres. Obama's recent performance by Daniel Henninger, Michael Freund, and Peggy Noonan.

WEEKLY QUOTES

"We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st.... Or, we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the common interests of human beings, and finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking to the UN General Assembly. Speaking for forty-one minutes, Obama addressed nuclear non-proliferation, Middle East peace, climate change and addressing poverty among developing nations. (The Guardian, September 23)

"It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the Terror Council." -- Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadafi, during a rambling ninety-six minute speech -- his first at the UN in forty years -- denouncing the UN Security Council. Ghadafi's, from the UN rostrum, wondered"why did this Israeli [Jack Ruby] kill the killer of John F. Kennedy?... We have to open the files!" He also called for international investigations into the Afghan war, the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, the Vietnam War, the wars in Iraq, the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the 1982 Lebanon War, Israel's recent Gaza offensive, and the death of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. (National Post, September 23)

"President Ahmadinejad's repeated denial of the Holocaust and his anti-Israel comments run counter to the values of the UN General Assembly, and they're shameful. He uses his public appearances to provoke the international community, and that is why Canada 's seats will be empty." -- Canadian official Catherine Loubier, speaking on behalf of Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon, explaining why Canada planned to walk out of the UN General Assembly when the Iranian president spoke. (National Post, Sep. 23)

"I took note of the fact that the leading democracies that were in this [Richard Goldstone-led] U.N. commission, they opposed this. They were against this mandate, because it looked like a kangaroo court in the first place, where Israel was basically hanged, drawn, and quartered morally and given an unfair trial to boot right at the start of these proceedings. I think this is wrong. But understand this. It's not only we who will be damaged. It's you, too. I mean, American pilots, NATO pilots, let alone Russia and other countries that are fighting terrorists, are going to be put on the dock, too, because it's said that you cannot fight terrorists. It means that all the terrorists have to do is put themselves in a residential quarter, and they receive immunity. And that's not something that any country fighting terrorism can accept. And I don't think you can accept it either." -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, answering Wolf Blitzer on CNN, warning that the "upside-down" conclusion of the recently-released "Goldstone Report" will have troubling consequences not only for Israel , but also for any democracy fighting terrorism. ( Israel MFA, Sep. 22)

"We do believe that if war is waged in Iraq and Afghanistan , it is because of Zionists' provocation. If Sudan is suppressed it is because of Zionists' temptations. Zionists are behind all the conspiracies of the arrogance and colonialism. They do not allow the main factor of excuses for Palestine occupation to be examined and surveyed. The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie -- a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust." -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during Iran 's annual al Quds ( Jerusalem ) Day ceremony, repeating the baseless accusation that all of the problems in the Arab world are due to the existence of the Jewish State of Israel. (MEMRI, Sep. 18)

"We will announce that we are making a major adjustment to our European missile defense system that is designed to protect our forces and our friends in Europe from the growing Iranian short- and medium-term missile threat." -- Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, in a preliminary statement to the press, revealing U.S. Pres. Barack Obama's decision to abandon plans for a long-range missile defence system based in Poland and the Czech Republic . ( Washington Post, Sep. 17)

"Still determined to 'push the reset button with Russia ,' President Obama hit the delete key on our allies in Eastern Europe . Obama's decision to abandon missile defense as we know it, cutting the throats of Poland and the Czech Republic, handed Moscow 's hard-liners their biggest win since the collapse of the Soviet Union . Russian strongman Vladimir Putin insisted all along that we'd never be permitted to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in the former Soviet empire. He was right. And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran 's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia . No restrictions on arms sales to Venezuela . Not even a bearhug." -- Ralph Peters, in his New York Post column, reacting to the U.S. president's decision to abandon his allies in Eastern Europe . In a press release, The Heritage Foundation conservative think-tank added, "Abandoning our best missile defence option in Europe only encourages Iran to speed up their ballistic missile program so that they can get their threat in place before a European missile defence system is available." ( New York Post, National Post, Sep. 18)

"Let us work to achieve lasting peace and security for the state of Israel , so that the Jewish state is fully accepted by its neighbors, and its children can live their dreams free from fear. That is why my Administration is actively pursuing the lasting peace that has eluded Israel and its Arab neighbours for so long. Throughout history, the Jewish people have been, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, 'a light unto the nations.' Through an abiding commitment to faith, family and justice, Jews have overcome extraordinary adversity, holding fast to the hope of a better tomorrow." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, in a video greeting to Jews around the world on Sep. 17, just ahead of Rosh Hashanah. ( Jerusalem Post, Sep. 16)

"It is past time to stop talking about starting negotiations; it is time to move forward. Permanent status negotiations must begin and begin soon. So my message to these two leaders is clear: despite all the obstacles, all the history, all the mistrust, we have to find a way forward." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, standing between Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, insisting, at the meeting he had demanded, that it is "absolutely critical" that their nations resume peace talks. All three leaders are in New York City for the annual opening meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. (New York Times, Sep. 22)

"We are not exactly impotent little babies. [The Israelis] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq . Are we just going to sit there and watch?... If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this, but it could be a Liberty in reverse." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter, and one of President Obama's foreign policy advisors, during an interview for The Daily Beast, suggesting that USAF fighters intercept and shoot down any Israeli fighters crossing Iraq on a mission to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Brzezinski was referring to the 1967 incident when Israel accidentally attacked the USS Liberty, mistaking the U.S. Navy intelligence vessel for an Egyptian warship. (The Daily Beast, Sep. 18)

"But do we really grasp the meaning of these values? Do we truly understand the nature of these virtues, to serve and to sacrifice? Jared Monti knew. The Monti family knows. And they know that the actions we honor today were not a passing moment of courage. They were the culmination of a life of character and commitment." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, in his first presentation of a Congressional Medal of Honor, eulogizing Sgt. First Class Jared Monti, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006 while trying to save a wounded soldier trapped in a Taliban ambush. ( New York Post, Sep. 18)

SHORT TAKES

IAEA: IRAN CAN NOW BUILD NUCLEAR BOMB -- (Jerusalem) Experts at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report. According to a document drafted by senior IAEA officials and leaked by the Associated Press, the Islamic republic has "sufficient information" to build a bomb, and is likely to "overcome problems" on developing a delivery system. The IAEA denied the report, however, saying that it has no "concrete proof" of any Iranian nuclear weapons program. (Jerusalem Post, Sep. 18)

150-NATION MEETING CRITICIZES ISRAEL 'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM -- ( Vienna ) A 150-nation assembly at the September 18 annual International Atomic Energy Agency meeting has formally passed a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years. Iran hailed the vote as a "glorious moment." The result was a setback not only for Israel but also for the U.S. and other backers of the Jewish state, who had lobbied for debate on the issue without a vote. The resolution, which "expresses concerns about the Israeli nuclear capabilities," was sponsored by Arab nations and supported by many developing countries. Of delegations present at the meeting, 49 voted for the resolution, 45 were against and 16 abstained. Israel has never disclosed the nature of its nuclear program. ( Jerusalem Post, Associated Press, Sep. 18)

IRANIANS COMMANDING HEZBOLLAH UNITS -- ( Jerusalem ) In a sign of Iran 's continued efforts to solidify its control over Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic has deployed dozens of military officers in Lebanon to command Hezbollah fighting units. According to senior Israeli defence officials, Iran decided to step up its involvement in the Hezbollah decision-making process following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, and has instituted a number of structural changes to the guerrilla group's hierarchy. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's authority is now "somewhat restricted," according to one defence officer. "Nowadays, most of the control over the group is from Iran ." Iran has reportedly invested billions of dollars into rehabilitating the guerrilla group. (Jerusalem Post, Sep. 18)

THOUSANDS STAGE PROTEST IN IRAN -- ( Beirut ) During the annual Jerusalem Day ceremonies, tens of thousands of green-clad protesters chanted and carried banners through the heart of Tehran and other Iranian cities. Defying tear gas and truncheons, they turned large swaths of a government-organized anti-Israel march into the largest opposition rally in two months. The protests, held in defiance of warnings from the clerical and military elite, served as a public embarrassment to Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who nonetheless delivered a fiery anti-Israel speech in honour of the annual Jerusalem Day ceremonies, calling the Holocaust "a lie" and berating the West for its criticisms of Iran 's disputed June 12 presidential election. (New York Times, National Post, Sep. 19)

PAKISTAN BOMB KILLS DOZENS -- ( Islamabad ) A suicide car-bomb attack in Northwest Pakistan killed at least 29 people, a sign that insurgents bent on destabilizing the nuclear-armed country are still active despite recent setbacks. The attack comes as Pakistani officials prepare to announce charges against seven suspects in last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Pakistan has been under pressure from India to do more to bring to justice those behind the attacks, in which terrorists raided hotels and other targets over three days, killing 163 people. (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Sep. 20)

LIBYANS TRAINING AT BRITISH BOMB SCHOOL -- ( London ) Britain has been secretly training Libyan security officers in the methods used by terrorists to make bombs. At least 20 Libyan police officers have attended explosives training courses at a specialist counterterrorism school in Wiltshire. The training was approved in advance by the British Ministry of Defence and the Home Office. Chris Grayling, a Conservative MP, said the bomb training raised serious questions about the government's motives. "It is time ministers [offered] a full explanation of what our relationship now is with Libya and the ways in which we are cooperating," he said. ( Libya supplied IRA terrorists with weapons and training during their campaign against Northern Ireland and England .) ( New York Post, Sep. 20)

SOUTH KOREA TO BUY ISRAELI RADAR SYSTEM -- ( Jerusalem ) South Korea 's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has decided to buy Israel 's advanced Green Pine Block-B radar system to detect and track North Korean ballistic missiles. Spokesman Kim Young-San said that Israel 's Elta group fared better than France 's Thales in an August performance test, and that "the radars will significantly improve our anti-missile defense capabilities." According to Kim, the system could, if deployed in South Korea by 2012, monitor ballistic missiles in flight at ranges of up to 500 kilometres, covering nearly all North Korea . ( Jerusalem Post, Sep. 17)

"TORONTO 18" GUNRUNNER PLEADS GUILTY -- ( Toronto ) A Toronto man caught smuggling handguns into Canada pleaded guilty to terrorism charges yesterday, making him the latest of the " Toronto 18" group to admit to wrongdoing. Somali-born Ali Mohamed Dirie, 26, was scheduled to appear in court Wednesday for a sentencing hearing after pleading guilty to participating in the activities of a terrorist group. The sentence will be handed down Oct. 2. A resident of suburban Markham , Ontario , Dirie was one of 18 Toronto-area men charged in 2006 with a plot to carry out terrorist attacks in southern Ontario , in protest to Canada 's military presence in Afghanistan . (National Post, Sep. 22)

CIA CHIEFS ASK OBAMA TO ABANDON ABUSE INQUIRY -- ( Washington ) Seven former directors of the CIA strongly urged U.S. Pres. Barack Obama last week to shut down the new Justice Department inquiry into past abuses during interrogations of terrorism suspects. They argue that the inquiry "will seriously damage" the nation's ability to protect itself. In a letter to Obama, the former CIA chiefs said the cases under study had already been examined by career prosecutors who found that no criminal charges were warranted. (New York Times, Sep. 19)

INDONESIA 'S #1 TERRORIST KILLED -- ( Kepuh Sari , Indonesia ) Armed Indonesian police stormed a hideout early Sep. 17 in a raid that killed fugitive terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top and three other terrorists, bringing to end an exhaustive six-year manhunt. Noordin, a 41-year-old Malaysian who was Southeast Asia 's most wanted man, led a radical splinter faction of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network blamed for a string of deadly attacks. The offshoot, labelled Al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago, is suspected of being behind the July 17 suicide attacks on Jakarta 's JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. (National Post, Sep. 18)

GHADAFI SEEKING N.Y.C. LODGING -- ( New York ) Moammar Ghadafi is running out of places to stay during a visit to New York City this week in anticipation of his first speech at the UN. Agents for the Libyan dictator approached a real-estate broker to rent a posh Upper East Side townhouse, only to be told to take a hike back to the desert. Residents of Englewood , NJ , had already rejected his plan to stay at a home the Libyan Mission owns there. And the day after Ghadafi's Sep. 22 arrival, officials in Westchester County forbade him from pitching a Bedouin-style tent on Donald Trump's property in Bedford , because his henchmen didn't have a work permit. ( New York Post, Sep. 20 & 23)

Melanie Phillips
Spectator, September 16, 2009

So now we can see how Richard Goldstone thinks he has preserved his judicial reputation while perpetrating a blood libel against Israel . He has produced a report which, as anticipated, finds that Israel committed all the 'war crimes' during Operation Cast Lead of which his Mission members had decided it was guilty before even starting their deliberations, along with the NGOs whose unremitting hostility and malice towards Israel and history of peddling Palestinian propaganda as fact did not deter the Mission from uncritically accepting their evidence as the truth, thus finding Hamas guilty of no crimes at all-except one. That was, by an amazing coincidence, the one set of crimes it committed which the world was forced to acknowledge actually happened-the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel with the sole intention of killing Israeli civilians. By referring to this en passant, devoting minimal attention to it in the course of his 570-page report the vast majority of which is devoted to allegations against Israel , he engineered the 'even-handed' headline he needed to maintain his credibility: "There is evidence that both Israeli and Palestinian forces committed war crimes in the recent Gaza conflict, the official UN report says."

With this cynical veneer, Goldstone does worse even than establish a moral equivalence between the instigators of genocidal violence and those who were attempting to defend themselves against it. He presents Israel , the victims of such aggression, as war criminals and the Palestinians, the actual instigators of terror, as its victims. This is not moral equivalence but moral inversion.

He acknowledges no such crimes by Hamas within Gaza itself-not least against other Palestinians-such as turning the entire population of Gaza into hostages by siting its rockets and terrorist infrastructure amongst that population and additionally using them as human shields.

(To clarify, this is quite different from the intra-Palestinian violations of human rights he found took place as a result of the violence between Fatah and Hamas.)

Even worse, he presents the Palestinian aggressors as victims of Israel , requiring Israel to make reparation to those from whose houses and streets it was being attacked. No reparations to Israel are required from any Palestinians, even though Goldstone accepts that Hamas committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by firing thousands of missiles at its civilians.

To cover himself completely against the fact that the degraded aim of the mission he headed was to delegitimise Israel , his report claims at the start that his mandate from the President of the UN Council on Human Rights was:

Now this is curious, since UN Resolution S-9/1 which established the mandate for the Goldstone commission said the Human Rights Council:

So the UNHRC mandate explicitly limited Goldstone to investigating solely Israel, which it deemed guilty of human rights violations during Cast Lead-a mandate whose terms as set out in the UNHRC resolution cannot be changed; while Goldstone's report cites a mandate which is quite different from that resolution, which is ascribed not to the Council but to the President, and which encompasses all such violations during Cast Lead. Goldstone himself said he had changed the terms of the mandate in 'informal discussions'. It looks therefore as if he and the UNHRC President unilaterally tore up both the Council's mandate and UN regulations to provide Goldstone with the fig-leaf to disguise the moral bankruptcy of the entire process.

Of the countless distortions, errors and absurdities in this travesty of a report, the following jumped out at me from an initial reading.

1) The first error is in the title itself: HUMAN RIGHTS IN PALESTINE AND OTHER OCCUPIED ARAB TERRITORIES: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. But Gaza is not occupied by Israel , as is quite clear from even a cursory look at the Hague Convention which lays down the criteria for occupation. For Goldstone to say that Gaza is still occupied demonstrates either an ignorance of international law quite remarkable for a professor of international law, or that he is signed up to the ideology which deliberately uses such mis-statements to delegitimise Israel.

2) Par 27: Goldstone describes Gaza as blockaded by Israel . He makes no mention of Gaza 's border with Egypt which Egypt keeps closed. Is Goldstone as ignorant of topography as he appears to be of international law? Unlikely, since he also states (par 8) that "the Mission sought and obtained the assistance of the Government of Egypt to enable it to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing."

3) Par 30: "The data provided by non-governmental sources with regard to the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent and raise very serious concerns with regard to the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza ." But Goldstone does not mention that Israel provided a detailed breakdown of the Palestinians killed in Gaza and stated that the vast majority of these were Hamas or other terror operatives. Even the UN eventually acknowledged that some 75 per cent of the dead in Gaza were Hamas terrorists.

4) Pars 33-34: Goldstone says he does not accept that the Gaza police targeted by Israeli military strikes were "part of the terrorist infrastructure"; and that therefore the attacks on police buildings "constituted deliberate attacks on civilian objects in violation of the rule of customary international humanitarian law whereby attacks must be strictly limited to military objectives." But as Jonathan Halevi has reported for the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs:

Indeed, Goldstone himself goes on to say he accepts that "there may be individual members of the Gaza police that were at the same time members of Palestinian armed groups and thus combatants", yet he nevertheless still finds that these were somehow "civilian objects"!

5) In attempting to discover whether Palestinian civilians were adequately protected by Hamas, Goldstone says delicately (par 35) that the mission "was faced with a certain reluctance by the persons it interviewed in Gaza to discuss the activities of the armed groups."

A "certain reluctance," eh? Like a "certain reluctance" to be thrown off the top of a tall building? Maybe the utter dislocation of this report from reality is also due to the fact that "as part of Israel 's refusal to cooperate, it banned the panel members from entering the country. The panel made two visits to Gaza , entering from Egypt , but conducted the bulk of their research from Geneva ." Mmnn, yes, Geneva, home to the UNHRC, is as everyone knows where every conscientious and objective researcher goes to find those authoritative first-hand accounts of what actually went on in Gaza.

6) Then there is Goldstone's treatment of the mortar shelling of al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to an UNRWA school. This was the site of the infamous accusation by the UN that Israel had shelled the school itself, killing more than 40 civilians sheltering there. The UN eventually admitted that this was entirely false and the school had not been shelled at all. Israel had instead returned mortar fire at the street next to the school from where firing was still continuing, killing a small number of Hamas terrorists and an even smaller number of civilians who were standing near to the Hamas mortar position.

But Goldstone concludes:

So the fact that Israel was the victim of an incendiary libel by the UN, which said falsely that its school had been hit and inflated the number of casualties-a lie that went round the world inciting hysteria and violence against Israel and Jews-is totally ignored; instead Israel is pilloried for its (undoubtedly) chaotic response as it gradually pieced together what had actually happened.

7) Goldstone says: "Par 209. Since 1967, about 750,000 Palestinians have been detained at some point by the Government of Israel, according to Palestinian human rights organizations." This claim was taken straight from Sahar Francis, director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. As Elder of Ziyon [a blogger-ed.] observes, however, the figure is ludicrous:

And yet, like the rest of the claims made by these NGOs, Goldstone just shoved it straight into his report....

In short, Goldstone adduces no evidence of Israeli war crimes at all. He merely recycles the claims made by hostile NGOs peddling unverifiable Palestinian propaganda as fact-including more than 30 references to Human Rights Watch, the anti-Israel organisation of which Goldstone himself was until recently a member of the board.

As such, the Palestinians who used other Palestinians as hostages, booby-trapped their civilian areas and used women and children as human shields are given a virtually free pass by Goldstone. Israel , which conducted an operation that was targeted with astonishing precision against terrorists operating inside civilian areas, taking every possible precaution to safeguard civilian life by repeatedly dropping leaflets and making cell-phone calls beforehand to warn residents to evacuate, is accused by Goldstone of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Through such moral inversion and the reproduction of distortions, lies, smears, errors and omissions Goldstone has thus anathematised a country's defence against terrorism and genocidal aggression. But then, he doesn't accept that in Cast Lead Israel was defending itself. Astoundingly, he characterises the aim of Cast Lead thus:

The implication is that Cast Lead had a "political objective" of subduing Gaza . But it was provoked solely by the 6000-rocket attack from Gaza . It was not "political". It was undertaken to defend the lives of its citizens. Having stated that the impact of Cast Lead "cannot be understood and assessed in isolation from developments prior and subsequent to it", Goldstone proceeds to omit the key "development" that explained Israel's military action-the rocket bombardment from Gaza of its citizens. He thus presents Israel as the aggressor and Hamas as the victims. What malice.

This disreputable piece of work will in turn embolden and empower Hamas and Palestinian terrorism, provide the jihadis of the UN and their accomplices with the means further to persecute Israel and endorse its genocidal attackers, and incite the Arab and Muslim world still further to aggression and to war.
With this report, Goldstone demonstrably forfeits his claim to legal, moral or intellectual credibility. He should be disowned by the legal profession.

Please see our Picks of the Week for Caroline Glick on "Our Irredeemable International System" and Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi's complete analysis of "How the Goldstone Commission Understated the Hamas Threat to Palestinian Civilians".

GOLDSTONE'S SINS OF OMISSION
Dan Kosky
The Guardian, September 16, 2009

Richard Goldstone's long-awaited report has confirmed suspicions that his investigation is guided by an agenda to isolate Israel . The farcical investigative process has produced a report which vilifies Israel but helps little in better understanding the Gaza conflict.

Much was rightly made of the investigation's one-sided mandate, which erased Hamas's culpability. Panel member Christine Chinkin, branded Israel 's Gaza operation a "war crime" before the inquiry had even begun. As a result, the Israeli government rightly recognised the warning signs and stayed away from the Goldstone process.

Equally worrying for the sceptics was the lack of transparency throughout the inquiry. Hand-picked "witnesses" were invited without explanation to testify before the mission. A hearing in Geneva , billed ostensibly as an opportunity to hear Israeli voices, became a cover for representatives of radical NGOs to spout propaganda with little direct significance to the conflict in Gaza .

Most notable was the appearance via video of Shawan Jabarin, director general of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based NGO which spearheads lawsuits against Israeli officials in courts across the world. Jabarin's contribution over events in Gaza is overshadowed by evidence that he is "among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organisation". Al-Haq's allegations are cited at least 30 times in the report, but the critical context of his background is hidden.

Grave doubts over the investigative process have been realised by the mission's conclusions. These strengthen the game plan designed to condemn Israel . The report is replete with dubious statistics and sources. Casualty figures are quoted from the Gaza based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a politically motivated organisation, which consistently refers to terrorism as "resistance". PCHR's faulty statistics include senior Hamas military figures such as Nizar Rayan and Said Siam, as civilians.

Yet it is perhaps what is missing which is most telling. Reading the report, one would be unaware of Hamas's human-shield strategy, a significant contributory factor to the civilian deaths in Gaza . Goldstone prefers to ignore the obvious. Although he states: "Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas", he avoids the logical conclusion of the massive use of human shields. Of course, admitting that Hamas endangered Gazan citizens would provide an alternative to Israeli guilt. Yet, rather than state the inconvenient truth, the report reinforces preconceived Israeli culpability.

Goldstone is similarly evasive over the unreliability of key "eyewitnesses". Like the flood of NGO publications in the immediate aftermath of the conflict (particularly those by Human Rights Watch, of which Goldstone was a board member) Goldstone's so-called investigation is largely reliant upon "eyewitness" Gaza testimony. The report applies entirely illogical reasoning, failing to elaborate on "a certain reluctance by the persons ...

nterviewed in Gaza to discuss the activities of armed groups". This observation provides a glimpse of the dangers faced by those speaking out against the regime in Gaza , yet Goldstone omits to mention how Hamas intimidation undermines witnesses and with it the very foundation for his conclusions.

On the basis of such flimsy testimony, Goldstone's recommendations are particularly sinister. Although "the findings do not ... pretend to reach the standard of proof applicable in criminal trials", they will undoubtedly fuel a judicial campaign against Israel . Both Israel and the euphemistic " Gaza authorities" have been given six months to prove their mettle in investigating potential war crimes or face the prospect of becoming international pariahs at the international criminal court (ICC).

Realistically, no one can expect to hold to account a non-state actor such as Hamas, supported by Iran . Fewer still can imagine that any Israeli investigation will be judged by the UN framework as satisfactory. The Israeli authorities have already investigated more than 100 allegations of wrongdoing, with 23 cases still pending. These efforts were deemed insufficient before they began and one wonders how many convictions would have to be secured in Israeli courts to ward off the wrath of Goldstone.

Once again it is his sins of omission which truly undermine Goldstone's recommendations. Having condemned Israel 's military campaign, Goldstone does little to provide solutions. He pays lip service to the complexities of asymmetric warfare, preferring the easy route of criticism. Rather than advise how to better stop groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad who deliberately target civilians, Goldstone opts for straightforward denunciation of Israel .

Of course, these are the same battle dilemmas facing UK and US armies in foreign fields. Until the issues are seriously addressed or, alternatively, forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are subjected to similar scrutiny, Goldstone and the NGOs and UN frameworks which threw their weight behind his mission will justifiably be viewed with suspicion.

THE GOLDSTONE REPORT
Max Boot
Contentions, September 16, 2009

After reading the Goldstone Report on human-rights abuses committed during the Gaza War (December 27, 2008-January 19, 2009), all I can say is, it's a good thing that the United Nations wasn't around during World War II. I can just imagine its producing a supposedly evenhanded report that condemned the Nazis for "grave" abuses such as incinerating Jews, while also condemning the Allies for their equally "grave" abuses such as fire-bombing German and Japanese cities. The recommendation, no doubt, would have been that both sides be tried for war crimes, with Adolf Hitler in the dock alongside Franklin Roosevelt. Actually, that may be giving the UN more credit than it deserves. To judge by the evidence before us, the likelihood is that the UN in those days would have devoted far more space to Allied "abuses" than to those of the Axis and would have recommended that FDR stand alone before the world court.

The nods toward Palestinian culpability in the report issued by the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which was headed by the former South African judge Richard Goldstone, are pretty perfunctory. Yes, the report notes that "the rockets and, to a lesser extent, mortars, fired by the Palestinian armed groups...constitute indiscriminate attacks upon the civilian population of southern Israel " and amount to "war crimes" and possibly "crimes against humanity." But far more space in this 575-page document is devoted to Israel 's sins, real or imagined-even if their relationship to the conflict in question is tangential at best.

Readers of the report may be surprised to learn, for example, that "individuals and groups, viewed as sources of criticism of Israel 's military operations were subjected to repression or attempted repression by the Government of Israel." Repression? What repression? I thought Israel was one of the freest countries in the world and by far the freest in the region. But the UN, in its wisdom, finds:

So reported difficulties in obtaining protest permits and the arrests of unruly demonstrators (which must remain unverified, since the UN bureaucrats were denied permission to visit Israel and the West Bank ) constitute crimes under international law? Pretty rich coming from a UN Human Rights Commission whose members include states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia , where protesters face consequences somewhat more severe than delays in being granted a permit.

The report also goes out of its way to attack Israel for its detention policies:

This makes it sound as if Israel imprisons people for voicing dissenting viewpoints. But Israel isn't Egypt or Saudi Arabia . All its prisoners are behind bars because they are suspected of involvement in terrorism. In fact, left-wing Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs are free to subject their government to nonstop vituperation-and many take ample advantage of the opportunity.

The report also takes a swipe at Israeli restrictions on movement in the West Bank without any acknowledgment that this is done solely to prevent terrorism in Israel or any suggestion that this is related to the Gaza War. Israel is even castigated for "policies on the right to enter from abroad and the right of return for refugees," meaning that the UN (or at least its Human Rights Commission) has endorsed the Palestinian bargaining position of the supposed "right to return," which really amounts to the destruction of Israel by demographic means. But such pervasive anti-Israeli bias should not be surprising coming from a fact-finding mission that misses the elementary fact that the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip ended in 2005; the report still refers to Gaza as "Israeli occupied territory."

The report's findings on the actual Gaza conflict are no more convincing. It amounts to one-sided, after-the-fact second-guessing of difficult targeting decisions made in the heat of battle by Israeli soldiers. Goldstone & Co. are exercised about, inter alia,

the Israeli strikes against the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Gaza main prison. Both buildings were destroyed to an extent that puts them out of use. Statements by Israeli Government and armed forces representatives justified the attacks arguing that political and administrative institutions in Gaza are part of the "Hamas terrorist infrastructure." The Mission rejects this position. It finds that there is no evidence that the Legislative Council building and the Gaza main prison made an effective contribution to military action. On the information available to it, the Mission finds that the attacks on these buildings constituted deliberate attacks on civilian objects in violation of the rule of customary international humanitarian law whereby attacks must be strictly limited to military objectives.

Presumably during World War II, Goldstone would have found that Allied attacks on the Reichstag were also in violation of "humanitarian law" because that building also was primarily civilian in orientation.

The UN goes so far as to excoriate Israeli attacks on Gaza police who are Hamas enforcers:

There is no indication of how Israeli military commanders were to strike the balance demanded by the UN: to defend southern Israel from Palestinian rocket attacks while at the same time not inflicting any damage on any Palestinian person or building that was designated as "civilian." That task is hard enough to accomplish in a war against a conventional combatant whose forces operate openly in uniforms; it is impossible to achieve against a terrorist group whose members deliberately do not wear uniforms (in violation of the laws of war!) in order to blend in with the civilian population.

There is no reason to be surprised that the United Nations-long infamous for its now revoked "Zionism as racism" resolution-should be behind such a risible series of findings. But that makes it no less objectionable or worrisome insofar as Goldstone has suggested that he will push for International Criminal Court action in this matter. Israel 's President Shimon Peres-no hawk-has it right when he says that the Goldstone Report "makes a mockery of history" and "does not distinguish between the aggressor and the defender."

THERE IS NO NEED FOR A BIG FUSS
Alan Baker
Jerusalem Post, September 20, 2009

Given the blatantly one-sided and slanted political mandate of the United Nations fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, and being aware of the accusation against Israel of war crimes published by at least one of the members of the mission even before it began, one is tempted to wonder why on earth the leadership of Israel and the public is so surprised and shocked by this UN report.

While the lip-service reference in the report to the need to release Gilad Schalit, and the lukewarm criticism of Hamas rocket fire against Israel's civilian centers might be seen as a poor attempt at balancing against the bulk of the severe anti-Israel criticism, the report is nothing more, or less, than a typical UN report, written according to UN rules, with UN terminology ("occupied Palestinian territories"), run-of-the-mill UN criticism of Israel and based on a UN Human Rights Council mandate that determined in advance that Israel had committed war crimes.
Even the report's recommendations seek to put Israel through the gamut of UN bodies for punishment: the Human Rights Council-a body predominantly composed such nondemocratic and oppressive paragons of international virtue as Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Egypt, Nicaragua, Russia, South Africa, Libya and others; the Security Council and the UN-inspired International Criminal Court, the statute of which was drafted to include provisions deliberately slanted against Israel and which, by its own rules, could never elect an Israeli judge.

One might indeed be tempted to dismiss this report and repeat David Ben-Gurion's age-old and classic dictum "um shmum!" However, that being said, and despite this being another UN anti-Israel document, there are some implications likely to arise out of this report that we cannot and should not ignore.

First, the heavily biased conclusions against Israel , a democratic country acting in self-defense, and the inexcusably lenient treatment of blatant Hamas terror will doubtless be interpreted by Hamas and its colleagues throughout the area as justification for their tactics of shielding themselves behind civilians, operating in the midst of densely populated civilian areas and deliberately targeting Israeli civilians. It is highly likely that the report will serve as a green light for further developing such tactics, knowing that the organized international community has, through the Goldstone report, given its sanction.

Second, the report will likely give substantive and misguidedly moral impetus to those bodies and individuals functioning in the Western democratic countries, and working to manipulate the liberal legal systems practicing universal jurisdiction to delegitimize Israel and its leaders, through initiating war-crimes prosecutions. This could pose problems for Israeli leaders and senior officers travelling abroad...

The specter of Israeli leaders and military officers in the dock of the International Criminal Court at The Hague , while dramatic, is nevertheless highly unlikely due to the lack of jurisdiction of that court vis-a-vis Israel , partly due to the fact that Israel (as well as the US , China , India , Russia and others) is not party to its statute....
Perhaps the most important implication emanating from the Goldstone report is international law's lack of response on how to deal with international terror....This body of law has not really been updated since the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, and does not provide serious and practical norms and guidelines as to how to deal with terrorists that hide behind civilians and that bomb other civilians. Nor does it know what to do about suicide bombers and the like.

Once the dust settles on this report, and we all calm down from the indignation and insult wrought by "another UN document," we must rationally size up the practical and legal implications and determine how to deal with them. In the meantime, there is no doubt that the UN will continue to be the UN. Without Israel to bash, how would it maintain itself? Um shmum indeed!

(Alan Baker is an acknowledged international lawyer, and served as the legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry and as ambassador to Canada .)

Please see The UN Has Outdone Itself This Time by Michael Freund and A Drive to Create Israeli War Crimes by Jay Sekulow and Brett Joshpe on our Picks of the Week page .

CHESHBON HANEFESH 5770: AN ACCOUNTING
Baruch Cohen

In honour of Prof. Frederick Krantz
In loving memory of Malca

A version of this piece was published in the Canadian Jewish News on September 17, 2009.

Our world is in deep crisis. The anti-Israel attitudes now increasingly rampant, call upon us, the Jewish People, to forge a strong, united front. The world media are disseminating outrageous lies, and we must be vigilant and fight back constantly.

We Jews are called "racists", and our beloved democratic State of Israel is, outrageously, accused of being an apartheid state. Zionism, once again, is racism. Accusing Israel and, by implication, the Jews, of crimes, of being fascists, intolerant, and brutal, and stigmatizing Israel by associating it with abhorrent acts, is on the world's agenda. Western Europe, the Arab-Islamic totalitarian states, Left-liberals and "intellectuals" in the United States and Europe perpetuate vile slogans: "Zionism is racism", "Israel = Nazis", "Israel is an apartheid state", and so on.

Our world is in deep crisis; the times, we lament, are out of joint. How, then, are we Jews facing this horror? What is the remedy for this alarming situation? Are we going to let our children, grand-children, and future generations be intimidated into accepting this horrendous situation, this ugly climate, which reminds us all of the 1920s, the fear and anguish of the 1930s and 1940s?

Israel's enemies have learned how to manipulate facts and distort reality, using "Western" terminology to intimidate our naïve and uninformed children. The antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-democratic forces use to their advantage the freedom they enjoy in Western democratic countries.

Fortunately, here in Montreal, we are blessed with the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR). Under the superb academic leadership of Professor Frederick Krantz, CIJR is an independent academic pro-Israel and pro-Judaism think-tank whose sole aim is to teach our students and the public at large, Jewish and non-Jewish, how to defend against increasingly ferocious racist, and antisemitic attacks. Our Student Israel-Advocacy Program is designed to educate Jewish and non-Jewish students to enable them to counter the increasing on-campus delegitimization of Israel. The program does this by engaging students in studying and discussing Zionism, and the history of Israel and of the Arab conflict with the Jewish state.

On this Rosh Hashanah eve of the New Year 5770, we are facing a storm of lies and accusations of slander against the Jewish People and the State of Israel. We must create a strong, united community standing shoulder-to-shoulder, supporting and encouraging our children to learn the truth and -- strongly, courageously, and competently -- to defend and counter the infamous, malicious attacks against us and our beloved State of Israel. They, and we, must rise to the defence of Jewish Israel, the only island of democracy in a Middle Eastern sea of oligarchic, totalitarian, and antisemitic regimes.

Never was this call so urgent as it is today, as Israel and, indeed, humanity at large, stands at the very edge of a dangerous precipice, the murderous abyss represented by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's soon-to-be nuclear-armed, anti-Semitic and dictatorial Iranian regime.

This is my call at the threshold of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur 5770: that all the forces of unity and decency dedicate themselves now to creating an impenetrable front against the evil forces of hate, racism and anti-Semitism. An indestructible unity of the forces of justice and humanity is required. For Rosh Hashanah 5770, let us pray that not only Israel, but the entire world may obtain redemption and brotherhood.

The Torah wisely recognises the need to combat and, if necessary, destroy those who spread hate and aggression, and CIJR's recent, successful International Conference, "Israel on Campus: Defending Our Universities", has proven once again the raison d'être of the superb work of itsacademics on behalf of Israel and the community.

The challenge we see today is for Jews to act like Jews, and to demonstrate concretely once again what the history of our people, of Jewish greatness and unity teaches. This is Cheshbon Hanefesh 5770! Shanah Tovah to the entire House of Israel.

(Baruch Cohen, a Romanian survivor of the Holocaust, is CIJR's Research Chairman.)

THE SHOFAR OF RABBI YITZHAK FINKLER OF PIOTRKOV
Emil Fakenheim

Excerpt from The Jewish Return Into History: Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem,New York, Schocken Books, 1978 (pp. 188-193)

The Termini of Jewish History

We all recall the great, terrifying biblical tale of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. In Jewish tradition that tale assumes world historical significance, and is referred to as the "binding" of Isaac, to indicate that there was a reprieve, that in this particular case the shedding of Jewish blood was averted, and a ram sacrificed in Isaac's stead.

Not surprisingly, the ancient rabbis think highly of that ram. Concerning one of them, Rabbi Hanina Ben Dosa, there is a current scholarly controversy as to whether or not he lived to see that great shedding of Jewish blood -- the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 C.E. Rabbi Hanina told a story, a Midrash, about that ram. It was so holy that no part of it went unused. Its ashes subsequently became part of the inner altar of the Temple. Its sinews were made into strings of David's harp; its skin, into the girdle of Elijah's loins. Finally there were the horns. What about those ram's horns? One of them -- so Rabbi Hanina Ben Dosa concluded his Midrash -- was used at Mount Sinai. And the other, somewhat larger, will be blown in the End of Days, so as to fulfill the saying of the Prophet Isaiah, "And it shall come to pass in that day that a great horn will be blown." (Isa. 27: 13).

In Jewish historical tradition and religious imagination the ram's horn, or shofar, has many uses. Its best known and most regular use, during the Rosh Hashanah festival and at the end of Yom Kippur, is to arouse the worshipers to repentance. But it is also used to warn of danger and to arouse to battle, just as it is an expression of grateful relief when the danger has passed. Sometimes it is used to arouse men; at other times, to arouse God. Only one thing is always the same: the shofar always arouses, or as Maimonides in a rare flight into poetry put it, it is meant to awaken the sleepers from their sleep.

What then of those two horns of the ram that was sacrificed in Isaac's stead? The left, blown at Sinai, ushered in Jewish history, whereas the right -- somewhat larger -- will mark its eschatological end. The Jewish people exist between these two termini and are defined by them, and in 1921 the greatest theological work within the Judaism of this century, Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, was still able to assert that nothing decisive has happened or can happen between these two poles.

Rosenzweig died in 1929. Less than four years after, events began to take their course which, though most people today pretend that they are over and done with, continue to have world-historical effects. As for the Jewish people, to attempt to forget would be to attempt the impossible. And so distant has Rosenzweig's vision become from us that is impossible for the Jew of today to hear authentically either the shofar of Sinai or the shofar of the End of Days without also hearing yet a third shofar -- the shofar of Rabbi Yitzhak Finkler of Piotrkov. Whatever the political contingencies of history between Sinai and the End, there exists now a new moral necessity, for the Jewish people and indeed for the world.

Piotrkov

Let me tell you about the city of Piotrkov. I look at the map, and find that it is located some hundred miles to the south of Warsaw. I look next at the recently published Jewish encyclopedia, for I want to know about the Jewish population, and I find some very precise statistics. In 1917 the Jewish population of Piotrkov was 14,890. Four years later it had dropped, for reasons one may guess, to 11,630. And then a sentence leaps at you from the pages -- on October 28, 1939, the first Nazi-established ghetto was set up in Piotrkov. Thereafter the Jewish population began to rise, for reasons which are only too obvious. By April 1942, it had risen to 16,469: the statistics are still quite precise. In October of the same year it had risen dramatically: it had leaped to 25,000. The figure is no longer precise. There was no longer time to worry about statistics, and a few hundred Jewish lives more or less no longer mattered so much. And then a second sentence leaps at you -- in a single week in October 1942, 22,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka, to be murdered.

I look at my atlas to find out about Piotrkov today. It tells me that its population is roughly 58,000. There is no mention of Jews in Piotrkov....

Rabbi Yitzhak Finkler

Let me tell you about Rabbi Finkler. I find out about him in a memorial book. After the great catastrophe, reverent survivors all over the world composed a large number of memorial books to commemorate the saintly victims who otherwise would be as though they had never been. The memorial book about Piotrkov tells me that Rabbi Finkler was a man of conscience. When the Nazis came and said to the Jewish community council, "Register young Jews for work, it will be good for them -- they will get more food," Rabbi Finkler said, "No, you do not have the right to make such decisions for someone else!" Then the Nazis asked for volunteers and said to Jews, "You, you, and you -- report for work, it will be good for you!" And Rabbi Finkler said, "Let no one go voluntarily! Do anything, everything. Disappear, hide, lie down, anything -- but don't volunteer!" Thus Rabbi Finkler is credited by his chronicler not only with great moral integrity but with a political shrewdness and uncanny foresight that are almost superhuman....

Throughout the ordeal he studied and prayed, a source of comfort and strength to all. More seriously, he obeyed the commandments. This is more serious, at a time of such hunger, observing the dietary laws. So we find it quite plausible and indeed inevitable that during the one-and-a-half years which he spent in a forced labor camp before Treblinka, he suffered more than others, not only spiritually but physically, because of the unaccustomed labor -- and above all, the hunger.

The Third Shofar

Then came Rosh Hashanah, and Rabbi Finkler and his followers were deeply worried because they did not have a shofar. A shofar which to blow, so as to let it arouse them to penitence for their sins. So they sold their bread for money, gave the money to a Polish Gentile who had access to the labor camp, and asked him to buy a shofar outside. The Pole made a mistake and came back with a calfs horn, the only kind of horn not permitted, reminiscent as it is of the golden calf and the time of Israel's great sin. By then Rabbi Finkler and his pious ones were full of anxiety, for Rosh Hashanah was already near, but they sent out the good-natured Pole again and he finally came, just in time, with a genuine ram's horn. And, thus, the chronicler finishes: "They blew the ram's horn on Rosh Hashanah and a prayer rose heavenwards, together with the sound of the Shofar. It threw itself before the throne of Divinity saying 'tear up the evil decree.'" But alas, the evil decree was not torm up -- and this is why the shofar of Rabbi Yitzhak Finkler still resounds on earth and in heaven, and will never be silenced until the End of Days....

Try to picture Rabbi Yitzhak Finkler in his last days, his last hours, in the last minute of horrified recognition which surpassed all possible foresight. There can be no question as to how he behaved. Most assuredly he said to himself and to his pious ones: If the evil decree was not tom up in our case, although it surpasses all evil decrees ever, it is because we did not repent enough, because we did not pray enough, because we did not do enough good works.

That is what he said. But it cannot possibly be what we can say. We must cry out to God and men: if not for him and his like, then for whom? If not for these righteous ones and these saintly ones -- then when will the evil decree ever be tom up? And this is why for all those who come after and hear that shofar -- be they Jews, be they Gentiles, be they Diaspora Jews or Israeli Jews -- there is now a new moral necessity amidst all the contingencies of human existence, that the course of history, or in any case the course of Jewish history, must be so altered that such as Rabbi Yitzhak Finkler will never again be the helpless victims of the great hatred.

Emil Ludwig Fackenheim, one of the most profound Jewish thinkers of our time, was born in Halle, Germany in 1916. He studied with Leo Baeck, was interned by the Nazis in Sachsenhausen (November, 1938) and escaped to Britain and Canada, where he took a doctorate in philosophy from, and taught at, the University of Toronto.
Among his many key works are The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought (1967), God's Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (1970), The Human Condition After Auschwitz: A Jewish Testimony a Generation After (1971), Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought (1973), The Jewish Return into History: Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem (1978), To Mend the World: Foundations of a Future Jewish Thought (1982), What Is Judaism? An Interpretation for the Present Age (1988), and his autobiography, An Epitaph for German Judaism: From Halle to Jerusalem. (A selection of his writings is available in Michael L. Morgan, ed., The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A Reader, (1987).

Emil Fackenheim made aliyah to Israel, where he taught at the Hebrew University's Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and died in Jerusalem in 2003. He is remembered for his suggested "614th Commandment" -- "Thou shalt not hand Hitler posthumous victories".

PARSHAT ROSH HASHANA: SILENCE RESOUNDS
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2009

This year, when the shofar will be sounded only on the second day of Rosh Hashana, a mystical silence prevails in the synagogue on the first day, Shabbat. Indeed, the total absence of the expected blasts seems difficult to understand. Despite the fact that the Bible describes Rosh Hashana as "a day of t'rua (broken, staccato shofar sounds) shall it be for you" (Numbers 29) -- in fact, the only biblically ordained positive commandment of the New Year festival is the sounding of the shofar -- when Rosh Hashana falls out on Shabbat, the shofar falls silent. In the words of the Mishna: "When the festival of Rosh Hashana falls out on Shabbat, the shofar is to be blown in the Holy Temple, but not anywhere else in the country." (Mishna, Rosh Hashana 4,1).

How are we understand such a strange mandate of not blowing the shofar, although there is one talmudic opinion on this silence stemming from the verse "A Sabbath of remembering the t'rua sound" (Leviticus 23) -- when Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbat, you only remember what the shofar blasts sounded like (B.T. Rosh Hashana 29b). After all, the other verses in the Bible specifically define Rosh Hashana as the day of the shofar blast.

Perhaps if we delve more deeply into the significance of the shofar sounds this idea of the "silent shofar" will be easier to understand.

There are two different blasts blown on the ram's horn: the firm, exultant and exalting t'kia sound (taka means straight); and the staccato, searing, sighing, sobbing t'rua sound (ra'ua means broken).

The sages of the Talmud even debate as to whether the t'rua is three sharp sighing sounds (which we know as shvarim) or nine gasping, sobbing sounds (which we know as t'rua). Our conclusion is to sound all the possible permutations, with the broken sound of despair always preceded and succeeded by a straight sound (t'kiya) of faith and hope (B.T. Rosh Hashana 33b).

What do these blasts have to do with the fundamental significance of Rosh Hashana? Rosh Hashana is the anniversary of the creation of the world -- and our declaration of faith that the Almighty guarantees an eventual world of perfection and peace. This is clearly expressed in the Additional Prayer (Musaf Amida) liturgy of malchiyot -- "We have faith in You that we shall soon see the glory of Your power... when all the wicked will be turned to You and the world will be perfected in the Kingship of God." And the exalted t'kiya sound expresses this optimistic faith.

But Rosh Hashana is biblically referred to as Yom T'rua, the day of the staccato, sighing-sobbing sound! I believe that the reason is tragically clear: the world in which we live is far from perfect. Hence we cry out to God in pain on Rosh Hashana, entreating our Father-in-Heaven to take note of our suffering and redeem us. This is the t'rua, the sigh-sob cry of God's suffering servants in a world of untimely death and innocent victims.
When Rosh Hashana comes on Shabbat, another motif enters the equation. Shabbat is a foretaste of the world-to-come, a day of peace which allows us a glimpse of what will occur in the days of Redemption.

Rosh Hashana is redemption promised -- whereas Shabbat is redemption realized.

But redemption is not being realized at all; our history is blood-soaked and tear-stained. Thus the confluence of Perfection Promised and Perfection Realized which takes place when Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbat can seem like a mockery.

When the disparity is too great, when the ideal and the actual are so far apart, the only way to maintain the relationship as well as the faith is to remain silent. In the Ela Ezkera martyrology which we recite on Yom Kippur, the elegist pictures Moses watching the great Rabbi Akiva being tortured to death by his Roman captors, and crying out to God: "This is Torah, and such is its reward?" The Almighty responds: "Be silent -- or I'll turn the world back into the primordial water." When the disparity between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be become too great, the only possible response -- if you want to keep the faith -- is silence!

And so, on Rosh Hashana which falls on Shabbat, the shofar is silent; the people of Israel swallow their cries of dismay in order to keep on believing in the perfection of the world in the Kingship of God.

(The writer is the founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs,
and chief rabbi of Efrat)

Shanah Tovah to all our readers.

U.N. SMEARS ISRAELI SELF-DEFENSE AS "WAR CRIMES"
Gerald M. Steinberg
Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2009

Judge Richard Goldstone and the three other members of the U.N.-authorized "fact finding mission" on Gaza spent five months collecting testimony, interviewing witnesses and writing a 575-page report, with 1,223 references. But they ended up where they and the U.N. Human Rights Council began an assumption of Israeli war crimes "proved" by a collection of NGO claims and Palestinian "testimony," both of which lack credibility.

The report ostensibly presents the results of an intensive investigation into the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas from June 2008 to the end of July 2009. Yet on every significant issue, Judge Goldstone's group simply repeated what it chose to hear from carefully selected witnesses. (When Israeli victims of Hamas rocket attacks were given a few hours to tell their tales of horror, photos show Mr. Goldstone taking a nap.) The result vindicated the Israel government's view that the books were cooked from the beginning, including the one-sided terms of reference and the selection of Mr. Goldstone and of Prof. Christine Chinkin, whose anti-Israel prejudices were clear. There is no evidence to indicate that a fair hearing was possible, or that Israeli government cooperation would have made any difference.

Unusually, the tendentious and extremely biased report succeeded in angering Israelis from across the political spectrum. President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres, who does not see eye-to-eye with Prime Minister Netanyahu on many issues, said the report made a mockery of history and gave legitimacy to terror. The committee condemned every Israeli response to the 8,000 rockets fired by Hamas, but its recommendations did not include any steps to end this aggression. And while Israel is accused of committing acts of terror, the report never acknowledges that Hamas committed acts of terror, even though it is legally banned as a terrorist organization by the U.S and the European Union, among others. This distortion undermined the facade of even-handedness, as if balance between a terrorist group and aggressor, and a democracy meeting the obligation to defend its citizens, had any moral foundation....

Iran, which is the main patron of Hamas and its primary source of funding, political support, training and weapons, is only mentioned once, obliquely, in the report, in connection with "the 220 mm Fadjr-3 rocket ... thought to be smuggled into Gaza." The committee, like the NGOs on which it relied, did not bother to investigate this central issue, since it would not have contributed to the indictment of Israel.

Mr. Goldstone's professional qualifications are anchored in international law, but if anything, this report highlights the absurdity of a vocabulary and framework that are anachronistic. Applying classical concepts and terms to terror and asymmetric urban warfare, in which the entire population is a massive human shield and hospitals are used as command headquarters, as in the case of Gaza, is ridiculous. The report fails to deal with the difficulty of defining a civilian in this context, and following the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the report classifies the members of the Hamas "police" as civilians, erasing their membership in Hamas' armed forces and their participation in the rocket barrages targeting Israeli civilians.

On most issues, Mr. Goldstone followed the lead and biases of NGO "superpowers" particularly Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch's publications on Gaza have been discredited following the exposure of the obsession with Nazi memorabilia and false claims of its "senior military expert," Marc Garlasco. But his allegations are adopted in this report, again without any independent investigation and despite the testimony of military experts who exposed Mr. Garlasco's fictions. Indeed, Mr. Goldstone's long relationship with Human Rights Watch, including his membership on its board, added to the credibility problems of this inquiry.

Similarly, the attempt to shove the role of Iran under the carpet follows the lead of these NGOs, as does the decision to ignore video evidence showing the use of civilians as cover for Hamas fighters attacking Israel (human shields), including the launch of rockets from schools. Instead, copying the unreliable NGO claims almost word for word, the issue is dismissed on the grounds that the committee "received no reports of such incidents from other sources." No independent research was conducted....

One of Israel's primary and most important objectives in the war was to search for clues to the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit, a soldier kidnapped from Israel and taken to Gaza in a 2006 cross-border raid. Mr. Goldstone does not consider this to be related to military necessity, and even labels the interrogation of Palestinians on this issue as criminal. And in rejecting Israeli statements regarding the storage of weapons in a mosque (ignoring video evidence), the report admits: "the Mission cannot exclude that this might have occurred in other cases." In other words, they did not have a clue.

As is often the case, the implications of this report, including the threats of a Security Council monitoring mechanism and possible action by the International Criminal Court, go far beyond Israel. If Israel is condemned for attacking "civilians" like Nizar Rayan, the head of Hamas' military wing, American officials could find themselves in the dock for the raid in Somalia that killed al Qaeda leader Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan....

Instead of promoting legal accountability and reconciliation, Mr. Goldstone's report will increase Israeli cynicism regarding the viability of international institutions and guarantees of Israeli security and fair treatment. The damage wreaked by Mr. Goldstone's offensive will not help the efforts of President Obama's peace envoy, George Mitchell, in efforts to gain Israeli flexibility and willingness to take risks. Hopes for peace, already very tenuous, may be another casualty of the Goldstone report.

(Gerald Steinberg , president of NGO Monitor, is professor of political science at Bar Ilan University)

RIGHT OF REPLY: FALSE ACCUSATIONS IN THE MIRROR
Irwin Cotler
Jerusalem Post, September 15, 2009

This piece was submitted before the Goldstone Report was released on September 15, 2009.

Ken Roth's article "Don't smear the messenger" (August 26) -- responding to my critique of the Goldstone mission under the authority of the UN Human Rights Council -- reminds me of what is termed the "false accusation in the mirror," where you accuse the "other" of what you yourself are doing. On the eve of the Goldstone report's release, Roth's false misrepresentations and ad hominem diatribes warrant a response.
Simply put, Roth falsely accuses me of "smearing Goldstone," though in my article I expressly stated that "if one wanted to have a distinguished person to head up an inquiry into the events of the Gaza war, Richard Goldstone would be a natural candidate... he brings to the table a special expertise and experience on matters at the intersection of international human rights law and international humanitarian law."

My critique was of the tainted [this is an understatement] authority of the UN Human Rights Council under which the mission was established; the flawed, one-sided mandate -- also an understatement; the prejudicial presence of one of the members of the commission, who had already pronounced herself on the merits of the issue thereby giving rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias in the work of the commission; and the damage done to the integrity of the UN and the authority of international law, the whole of which underpins the Goldstone mission.

Roth seeks to justify his defense of Goldstone -- who deserves a better defense than this -- by yet another false accusation, namely that I am "part of an intense campaign by the Israeli government and some of its uncritical supporters to smear the messenger and change the subject." Never mind that I have appeared in Israeli courts and made representations to the Israeli government on subjects ranging from the protection of Palestinian refugees to the status of Ethiopian Jews; never mind that I served as international legal counsel to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group -- until I became minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada -- on issues regarding human rights violations in the occupied territories and in Israel; or that I have visited Israel and Gaza more than Ken Roth has, including meeting with Palestinian government leaders and leaders of Palestinian civil society in Ramallah this past August. These are simply "inconvenient truths" that might undermine Roth's false ad hominem diatribe, which permeates his piece.

But even if his smear were true -- that I am an uncritical supporter of Israel -- it is beside the point. My critique of the Goldstone mission was based on the fact that it was established under the enabling authority of the UN Human Rights Council, which has systematically singled-out one member state in the international community (call it X, since for Roth accusations of war crimes against Israel seem to be a right of passage necessary to engage in international human rights discourse) while the major human rights violators have enjoyed exculpatory immunity. And it was advanced as a critique of the denial of international due process to a member state, and as an expression of concern with the work of the UN Human Rights Council and the integrity of UN missions under its authority....

Simply put, this flawed mission is not only established under the authority of the obsessively discriminatory UN Human Rights Council, it is irredeemably tainted by the prejudicial resolution establishing the mission itself. Roth should read -- or reread -- the resolution; it is a star-chamber indictment. It is precisely Goldstone's participation and distinction that is used to sanitize the resolution, which Goldstone acknowledged was one-sided, though he believed he had a more even-handed mandate given to him by the president of the UN Human Rights Council....

Roth's article makes no mention of the fact that the appointment of Prof. Christine Chinkin has already compromised the commission. Indeed, since I wrote my piece, 19 British lawyers and academics have penned an open letter calling upon Chinkin to disqualify herself as her expression "on the merits of the issue... prior to seeing any of the evidence... give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias..."; and saying that her continued participation necessarily compromises the independence of the inquiry and its report....
In a word, Roth writes not like a lawyer -- let alone a human rights lawyer -- but as a propagandist. There is an old adage that if you are weak on the facts, argue the law; if you are weak on the law, argue the facts; if you are weak on both, smear. At the end of the day it is what Roth's article was all about.

(Irwin Cotler , the former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada,
is a Member of Parliament, and a law professor (on leave) at McGill University.)

UN MUST HOLD OBAMA TO SAME STANDARD AS ISRAEL
Ari Shavit
Ha'aretz, September 16, 2009

Some two weeks ago American airplanes fired on two oil tankers in northern Afghanistan. It was a German officer who'd asked the U.S. air force to attack the tankers in the middle of the night, in a populated area. The attack was successful -- the two tankers were hit, went up in flames and were destroyed. But the overwhelming American-German air attack killed some 70 people. Some of those brought to hospitals were severely injured -- with mutilated faces, burned hands and charred bodies.

It is not clear to this day if most of those who burned to death were Taliban warriors, as NATO first claimed, or innocent civilians who wanted to bring home a bit of oil. One way or another, it's clear that the United States and Germany are responsible for an extremely brutal attack....

If the international community is committed to international law and universal ethics -- which do not discriminate between one sort of killing and another -- then it should investigate this villainous assault. If the United States, Germany and NATO refuse to cooperate with investigators, the UN should consider transferring the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It is possible that at the end of the process it would be necessary to put U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway on trial for their role in committing a severe war crime that did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Obama would probably be the principal defendant in this case. He was the one who believed in the war in Afghanistan and intensified it. As U.S. commander-in-chief, he bears direct responsibility not only for the deaths of those who were burned with the tankers, but the death of many hundreds of innocent Afghan civilians. If there are is such a thing as an international community, international law and universal ethics, they must seriously consider putting Obama on trial for his responsibility for severe war crimes.

Absurd? Yes, it's absurd. No sane person in the world believes that the United States, Russia or China could be subjected to purist international law. The United States has killed thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the last few months encouraged Pakistan to make an extremely brutal military move in its Swat Valley. The United States was not required to account for it because everyone understands that this is the price of the terrible War on Terror. Russia committed blood-curdling war crimes in Chechnya, while China deprives its citizens of basic rights and is conducting a wicked occupation in Tibet. They are not asked to pay for this because everyone understands that you don't mess with superpowers....

But not only superpowers are immune. Saudi Arabia practices an open, declared policy of discrimination against women and the international community does not see. Sri Lanka is crushing the Tamil national movement, causing a ghastly humanitarian disaster, and the international community does not hear. Turkey is brutally oppressing the Kurdish minority, and the international community does not speak.

Only in matters involving Israel, do international law and justice suddenly discover that they have teeth. Only when Israel is involved is the judgment administered out of context. Only Israel is required to uphold a moral standard no superpower or Middle Eastern state is required to uphold.

Over the course of the military offensive in Gaza, Israel used excessive firepower and this must not recur. Severe incidents took place during the operation which must be investigated. But the inquiry must be carried out by us, and among ourselves. As long as Judge Richard Goldstone doesn't probe the United States, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka or Turkey, just as he probed Israel, he is not a moral figure. A law is a law only when it applies to everyone and does not discriminate, as Goldstone did.

Please see our Picks of the Week for Israel Harel's response to the Goldstone Commission.

WEEKLY QUOTES

"The Goldstone Commission report is a mockery of history. It fails to distinguish between the aggressor and a state exercising its right for self defense." -- Israeli President Shimon Peres in a Sept. 16 statement excoriating the United Nations report on the IDF's 2008-2009 military operation in Gaza . "For years, Hamas carried out attacks against the children of Israel , sending suicide bombers into city centers, injuring and killing civilians. They fired over 12,000 rockets and mortar shells at towns and villages with one clear aim - to kill innocent civilians...While Hamas continued firing, Israel employed, time and time again, the diplomatic channels, including many appeals to the UN - in an attempt to bring about a cessation of rocket fire...Instead of building Gaza and caring for the welfare of its citizens, Hamas built tunnels to attack Israel, cruelly using children and innocent Palestinians to hide terrorists and ammunition." The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, meanwhile, said it was "appalled and disappointed" at the report and that "Israel did not feel able to cooperate with the Fact Finding Mission because its mandate was clearly one-sided and ignored the thousands of Hamas missile attacks on civilians in southern Israel that made the Gaza Operation necessary. Both the mandate of the Mission and the resolution establishing it prejudged the outcome of any investigation, gave legitimacy to the Hamas terrorist organization and disregarded the deliberate Hamas strategy of using Palestinian civilians as cover for launching terrorist attacks." (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sept. 15; Globe and Mail, Office of the President of Israel , Sept. 16)

"Gilad is not a prisoner, he is being held as a captive or hostage and must be immediately released, not only for humanitarian reasons but also because holding a hostage is a serious war crime according to Clause 8 of the Treaty of Rome." -- Noam Shalit, father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, asserting that his son is a hostage and not a prisoner of war as argued in the Goldstone Commission. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 16)

"Your brothers in Palestine , despite the blockade and the closing of border passages...despite the fleets from east and west, despite all of this, we buy arms, we manage to produce arms and we smuggle arms." -- Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, declaring during a visit to Sudan Wednesday that his organization produces and smuggles weapons despite the Israel-imposed blockade on the Gaza Strip. (Jerusalem Post, Sept.9)

"Americans are not really willing to provide us with such weapons. They will tell you these weapons will be used against Israelis. Okay, but my enemy is Israel ." -- Lebanese Druse leader Walid Jumblatt telling an Iranian news source that Lebanon should be supplied with weapons from Iran and Russia in order to counter an Israeli attack. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 13)

"Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, the custodian of its two holy mosques, the world's energy superpower and the de facto leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds -- that is why our recognition is greatly prized by Israel. However, for all these same reasons, the kingdom holds itself to higher standards of justice and law. It must therefore refuse to engage Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights as well as Shabaa Farms in Lebanon . For Saudis to take steps toward diplomatic normalization before this land is returned to its rightful owners would undermine international law and turn a blind eye to immorality." -- Prince Turki al-Faisal, chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and former ambassador to the United States , in an editorial dashing Obama Administration hopes for Saudi forthcomingness, outlining the Saudi position on diplomatic relations with Israel. (New York Times, Sept. 13)

"The war on terror is in Afghanistan ... The fact that we weakened our commitment to Afghanistan in order to concentrate in Iraq has taken a toll." -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a 2007 speech emphasizing the importance of the American-led mission in Afghanistan . Her, and her Democratic Party's position has since evolved, and President Barack Obama may well refuse Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal's probable request to increase further the number of American troops in Afghanistan . Meanwhile, an audiotape of what is purported to be Osama Bin Laden's voice was released on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. "The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israel lobby," Bin Laden is quoted as saying in a message addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama, where he warns that the West's war against the Taliban in Afghanistan is doomed to failure. (WSJ, Globe and Mail, Sept. 12; Globe and Mail, Sept. 15)

"I think there were other activities that gave us concern... IAEA inspectors actually asked to go to a number of other sites, and the Syrians wouldn't let them go there; they claimed they were military sites. They claimed the uranium particles that the inspectors found at the destroyed reactor came from Israeli bombs." -- Gregory Schulte, former US envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a Sept. 10 interview where he said that Syria may be operating more nuclear sites even after their Deir Azour reactor was bombed by Israel on September 6, 2007. Israel has never formally admitted to bombing Deir Azour. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 10)

"We have made clear to the Iranians that any talks we participate in must address the nuclear issue head on. It cannot be ignored....We are on the one hand working to see whether anything positive can come from this meeting on Oct. 1. But we are also working with the international community on consequences that would flow if Iran fails to fulfill their international obligations on their nuclear program." -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, outlining the purpose of an upcoming meeting between Iran and the U.S. , Russia , China , Britain , France and Germany . Russian President Vladimir Putin also cautioned Iran to be careful with their nuclear program, saying that "We have told Iran that it has the right to a civilian nuclear program but it should understand what region of the world it is in....This is a dangerous region and Iran should show responsibility, especially by taking into account Israel's concerns, all the more so after the absolutely unacceptable statements about the destruction of the state of Israel." Meanwhile, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini warned local opposition leaders against dissenting against the government, and insisted that Iran was not gong to compromise over its nuclear program. "We must stand firm for our rights... If we give up our rights, whether nuclear or other rights, this will lead to decline." (National Post, New York Times, Sept. 12; National Post, Sept. 16)

SHORT TAKES

FACT-FINDING MISSION FINDS THE FACTS IT WANTS -- (New York City) The much-anticipated Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (better known as the "Goldstone Report") was released today using the language of human rights and international law developed in the "Durban Strategy" at the 2001 NGO Forum as political weapons in a campaign to delegitimize Israel and restrict legitimate responses to terror. The report is primarily based on statements, publications, and submissions from NGOs, uncritically repeating flawed methodology and false claims -- e.g., the classification of Gaza police as "civilian" and including the legal claim invented by the PLO Negotiation Affairs Department that Gaza remains "occupied" after the 2005 disengagement -- rendering the report invalid. One paragraph even blatantly ignores evidence that contradicts the predetermined conclusion that there was no "use of mosques for military purposes or to shield military activities." (Arutz Sheva, NGO Monitor, Sep. 16)

B'TSELEM REPORT DISTORTS FACTS -- (Jerusalem) Following a document released by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem which shows a significant discrepancy in the number of Gazan fatalities reported by the IDF after Operation Cast Lead, the Center for Injury Prevention and Genocide Prevention Program at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine issued its own analysis. The report charged that the B'Tselem report "is flawed by major errors of commission and omission and possibly major misclassification biases." According to B'Tselem, 1,387 Palestinians were killed in Cast Lead. Of those killed, 773 were non-combatants. The IDF claims that of 1,166 total fatalities, 709 were combatants and 162 Palestinian males aged 16-50 were unclassifiable. (Jerusalem Post, Sep. 16)

LEBANESE PM-DESIGNATE RESIGNS; ROCKETS HIT ISRAEL -- (Jerusalem) Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Sa'ad Hariri said Sept. 10 he is abandoning efforts to form a new government after the Hezbollah-led parliament minority rejected his list for a national unity Cabinet. Hariri's move, coming two days after his proposed 30-member cabinet list was turned down, highlights the continuing deadlock between Lebanon's U.S.-backed camp headed by Hariri and the pro-Syrian bloc led by Hezbollah. Meanwhile, at least two rockets fired from southern Lebanon hit open areas in northern Israel on Sept. 11, and Israel returned fire. No injuries were reported. The Katushya rockets were the first in over six months to be fired at Israel from Lebanon . (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 10; New York Times, Sept. 12)

RARE TV SATIRE MOCKS PALESTINIAN POLITICIANS -- (Jerusalem) Palestine TV, a state-run station, has launched an irreverent comedy show that mocks and often bites the hand that feeds it: the Palestinian Authority. "Homeland on a Thread" satirizes inept Palestinian politicians, police bullies and Muslim extremists. The popular 30-minute program is Palestine TV's first-ever attempt at political satire, an art form that remains rare in an Arab world where authoritarian regimes abound. (Jerusalem Post, Sept, 10)

GROWING TIES BETWEEN ISRAELI, PA POLICE -- (Jerusalem) Israeli and Palestinian Authority police forces and the IDF's civil administration are increasing their cooperation and have implemented a series of confidence-building measures over the past two years. One example is the payment of an estimated 4 million shekels in traffic fines paid to Judea and Samaria Police by PA residents. The police transfer the money to the civil administration, which in turn invests the money in Palestinian infrastructure in the West Bank . "The cooperation between us certainly helps to build a positive atmosphere," said Chief Superintendant Daniel Israel, who heads the Israel Police's Coordination Unit with the Palestinian Civil Police. "It most helps in building deterrence, so that both Israeli [Arab] and Palestinian lawbreakers don't feel they can seek shelter in West Bank cities." (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 10)

U.S. COMMANDOS KILL AL-QAEDA KINGPIN -- (Nairobi) U.S. commandos killed one of the most wanted Islamic terrorists in Africa in a daylight raid in southern Somalia Sept. 14, according to U.S. and Somali officials, in a move designed to counter al-Qaeda's growing influence in the region. Western intelligence agents have described the terrorist, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, as the ringleader of an al-Qaeda cell in Kenya responsible for the bombing of an Israeli hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002. (Globe and Mail, Sept. 15)

PAKISTAN NABS TALIBAN SPOKESMAN IN SWAT VALLEY -- (Islamabad) The Pakistani army has captured Muslim Khan, a top Taliban commander who once worked in Boston as a housepainter. It is the first capture of a senior Taliban figure to be announced officially by the Pakistani authorities since the beginning of the Pakistani Army offensive in the Swat Valley this May. Khan had helped spearhead the Taliban's two-year uprising in the region, and also served as the Taliban's chief spokesman for local and foreign journalists. He was arrested earlier this week with four other commanders in the suburbs of Mingora, the Swat Valley's main city. (Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, New York Times, Sept. 12)

IRAN WILL TALK NUKES BUT NOT ENRICHMENT -- (Teheran) Iran announced that its nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili will discuss Iran's nuclear program with world powers, including EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana as well as representatives of the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany. The meeting set for October 1 is meant to prepare for more substantive negotiations on Iran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment and heed other UN Security Council demands. Although Iran still formally refuses to discuss enrichment, the U.S. believes talks may eventually expand to encompass enrichment and related topics. In related news, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il ordered a third nuclear test to force the U.S. into another round of negotiations, this one using an enriched uranium-fuelled bomb. (Jerusalem Post, Sep. 13-14)

EXPLOSIONS IN IRAQ TARGET SHIITES -- (Baghdad) Two bombs exploded near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Saturday, while another was found hidden inside a Koran at one of the city's holiest Shiite shrines and was subsequently defused. At least three people were killed in the explosions and more than a dozen others were wounded at another holy Shiite site in the city. The latest violence added to a particularly bloody month that included two large suicide bombings that badly damaged the Iraqi Finance and Foreign Affairs ministries and killed 132. (New York Times, Sep. 16)

LIFE TERMS FOR "SODA-BOTTLE" TERRORISTS -- (London) A High Court judge on Monday imposed minimum prison terms of 32 to 40 years on three British Muslims convicted last week of plotting to smuggle liquid explosives onto at least seven trans-Atlantic airliners heading to the United States and Canada from London, with the aim of blowing the aircraft apart in midair. The judge, Sir Richard Henriques, called the plot "the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction" and added that if police and security forces had not intervened, the attack would have certainly succeeded. "The intention was to perpetrate a terrorist outrage that would stand alongside the events of Sept. 11, 2001," said the judge. (New York Post, Sept. 15)

9/11 MUSEUM TO ADDRESS ROLE OF HIJACKERS -- (New York) The museum being built at Ground Zero will display photos of the 19 men who hijacked the four airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The exhibit may also include printed quotations from so-called martyr videos filmed by the terrorists before the attacks. "Let's show the world the 19 individuals who boarded planes and murdered so many. To not do that would be a major disservice to the public," said Joseph C. Daniels, president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center . (New York Times, Sept. 12)

RUSSIA ARMS VENEZUELA -- (Moscow) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Russia has offered him a $2.2 billion line of credit for Venezuela to purchase weapons, insisting that the U.S. intends to invade and commandeer his country's oil fields from its military bases in Colombia . He said the deal would include 92 Russian-made T-72 tanks and anti-aircraft missile launching systems. Chavez also suggested that the deal included the purchase of surface-to-surface missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers. (Jerusalem Post, Sep. 14)

ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS SPAN THE GLOBE -- (Buenos Aires & Khabarovsk) Four skinheads were arrested in Khabarovsk , Russia on Sunday suspected of having attacked a synagogue with firebombs. Meanwhile, vandals destroyed nearly 60 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Buenos Aires , Argentina . The cemetery includes the graves of some of the victims of the 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish community centre. The incident took place during Shabbat, and was not discovered until Sunday. (Jerusalem Post, Sep. 14)

THE TALIBAN: A BRIEF HISTORY
Cliford D. May
National Post, July 17, 2009

"Afghanistan is the most foreign country in the world," William Wood told me last fall as he was concluding his term as America's ambassador in Kabul . He added: "It's a ferociously foreign country." Mountainous, landlocked and remote, populated by legendary warriors -- Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek -- Afghanistan is rich in history but poor in just about everything else. For 30 years -- since the Soviet invasion of 1979 -- it has been in continual turmoil. It is a country used to violence. It also is a country traumatized by violence.

In 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in defeat and disgrace. This was a great and consequential victory for Afghan fighters, achieved with assistance from the United States .... Once the Russians were gone, however, Americans and Europeans lost interest in what became, again, an isolated corner of the world. Afghan warlords fought among themselves for land, power and poppies (from which heroin is made). Chaos and corruption ensued and life only grew harder for many Afghans.

In 1994, a group of provincial vigilantes led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the administrator of a religious school, rose up against these forces. He and his followers called themselves "the students" -- the taliban in the Pashto language. The Taliban imposed a strict version of Islamic law and order. At first, many Afghans welcomed that. The Taliban also had the support of Islamists entrenched in Pakistan 's intelligence service. The Saudis approved as well.

Before long, the Taliban's extremist agenda became manifest. Girls were no longer permitted to attend school. Women could not leave their homes unless covered from head to toe in a burka and accompanied by a male. Singing, dancing, playing music, watching television, sports, even flying kites...were prohibited. Prayer five times a day became compulsory.

Those who transgressed were sentenced to beatings, amputations, executions -- by the thousands, often in public. Traditional tribal leaders were murdered and replaced by fire-breathing mullahs who broke with Afghan tradition by melding religious and political power. In March 2001, the Taliban dynamited the Buddhas of Bamiyan--giant statues, great works of religion and art, built in the sixth century. Why? Because they were "idols" and deserved destruction -- like all things not Islamic....

At this same time, of course, the Taliban also were providing refuge to an Islamist Saudi exile by the name of Osama bin Laden. He was plotting his own assault against the despised infidels and their symbols. The Taliban remained loyal to bin Laden and al-Qaeda after the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. The result was an American-led invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban regime. Both bin Laden and Mullah Omar escaped across the border to the wild reaches of northwestern Pakistan....

Like other militant Islamist groups -- Hamas and Hezbollah, for example-- the Taliban act locally but think globally. "We want to eradicate Britain and America," Ay'atulah Mahsoud, the emir of the Pakistani Taliban, has said, "and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York and London."...

The available evidence suggests most Afghans would not welcome the Taliban's return to power. And despite what has been described as a Taliban "resurgence," the group has not managed to regain control of a single city. In recent days, a new American "surge" has begun to clear the Taliban from its rural strongholds. Meanwhile, the Pakistani military has taken the fight to Taliban forces on its side of the border.

Military commanders and analysts say beating the Taliban on the battlefield is not the hard part. What is? Holding those battlefields afterward.... For this reason, General Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan , has reportedly concluded that more American troops will be needed, both to fight and to train Afghan security forces. It is not clear whether President Barack Obama and Congress will provide those resources.
An American general in Kandahar made the argument for more resources succinctly. "Do it right," he told me, "and we won't have to come back here years from now."

(Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a terrorism policy institute.)

A MILITARY SOLUTION
Amir Taheri
New York Post, August 27, 2009

In Kabul these days, those wishing to sound knowledgeable fire one phrase at visiting reporters: "This has no military solution!" One hears it from President Hamid Karzai, UN "experts" and diplomats. Yet they appear stuck when asked: What precisely is the "this" that has no military solution? If pressed, they offer various answers: Afghanistan 's poverty, gender inequality, corruption, the drug trade, ethnic rivalries and intrigues by rival powers such as Pakistan and Iran .

Obviously, none of those problems has a military solution. But the main problem Afghanistan faces today is the threat posed to the security of its citizens and infrastructure by insurgents using terror tactics such as roadside bombings and suicide attacks. And that problem does have a military solution -- indeed, the only solution is military. The insurgents must be defeated on the battlefield.

The fact is that, although President Obama has spoken of a "war of necessity," there is little actual fighting in Afghanistan . The majority of US and other NATO nations' casualties are caused by improvised explosive devices planted on the roads.... A few other US/NATO casualties are the results of ambushes organized by insurgents.

The Afghan experience could be divided into three phases. In the first phase, the US , backed by the Afghan Northern Alliance , managed to flush the Taliban out of Kabul , gain control of the country and establish a new regime. The second phase, between 2004 and 2008, saw America and NATO focusing on such nonmilitary issues as creating a new administrative machine, raising a new Afghan army and police and inventing a new judiciary.... US forces did some fighting in the southeastern provinces (often by firing missiles from drones into Pakistan ). British, Canadian and French units also did some fighting in the provinces entrusted to them -- but seldom took the initiative by actually going after the insurgents....

The third phase started in 2008, when President George W. Bush decided to send more troops, a move endorsed by his successor. Washington had realized that there was a military problem, and that it needed a military solution. In a new strategy developed by Gen. David Petraeus, US forces (with those NATO allies who are prepared to fight) have redefined the mission as one of enforcing peace. The "live and let live" policy, under which insurgents are allowed safe havens, will end....

NATO has some 90,000 troops in Afghanistan , a country the size of California . Of these, at least a third won't fight because of caveats imposed by their governments. Gen. Stan McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, might find it hard to go after the insurgents in a big way with just 60,000 or so troops. If Obama intends to win his "war of necessity," he'd have to increase the number of US troops for a fight that might take two or three more years. Even then, McChrystal would need to find allies inside Afghanistan, just as Petraeus did in Iraq....

We also have the 180,000 or so members of the new Afghan army and police. Often, these men draw their salaries but spend their time doing the crosswords or at best directing the traffic in Kabul . But experts suggest a third of the army is reliable and competent.... On the other side? The drug-smuggling rings have 15,000 armed men, often cooperating with the Taliban, whose own strength may be 20,000.

Smaller insurgent groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) may command a further 5,000 armed men. Yet Hekmatyar worked for the CIA for years, and recently made it clear that he is open to offers. In a hierarchy of operations, the Taliban is the top target. This could mean making tactical alliances even with some unsavory armed groups, and buying others.

Afghanistan has a military problem that needs a military solution. US strategists are starting to realize that. This war could and must be won. There is no need to panic and cry for an "exit strategy" even before there has been any real fighting.

WAR -- WHAT WAR?
Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, August 27, 2009

The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed this week to Martha's Vineyard , where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC's Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford , Tex. Now he says, with a sigh, of her recent anti-Obama efforts, "Enough already."...

Former anti-war candidate Barack Obama is now also President and Commander-in-Chief Obama -- with Democratic majorities in the Congress. Public opinion and media attention about Iraq were always based largely on two factors that transcended whether Americans felt the removal of Saddam Hussein was wise and necessary -- or misguided and wrong.

First was the perception of costs to benefits. In May 2003, after a quick, successful American invasion, a Gallup poll revealed that 79 percent of the public supported the war -- despite our not finding weapons of mass destruction. But by December 2008 -- more than 4,000 American fatalities later and at the end of the Bush presidency -- only 34 percent, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, still felt the war had been worth the effort.

Second was how the changing public mood affected politics. In October 2002, the Republican-controlled House and Senate, with plenty of Democratic support, voted overwhelmingly to authorize the Iraq War. Congress cited 23 reasons why we should remove Saddam. The majority of these authorizations had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Yet as the subsequent occupation became messy and costly, prior Democratic support evaporated....

From all that, we can draw more conclusions about the present media silence and absence of public protests over the Iraq War. As long as Barack Obama is commander-in-chief, and as long as casualties in Iraq are down, there will be no large public protests nor much news about our sizable Iraq presence. The cost and the attendant politics -- not why we went there -- always determined how the Iraq War was covered....

[S]o far there have been none of the public protests that we used to see in connection with Iraq . Why? Over the last few years, we have become used to the idea that Afghanistan was "quiet." Indeed fewer were killed there in most years than in some of the bloodiest single months in Iraq . Democrats also ran on the notion of Afghanistan as the "good war." It was the direct payback for the Taliban's involvement with Osama bin Laden. It garnered United Nations support. And it had been neglected by Iraq-obsessed, neocon George Bush. Many anti-war candidates also thought the "good" Afghan war was largely over, while the "bad" Iraq one was hopeless -- already "lost" -- in the words of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D., Nev.)....

So now we have public confusion about both wars. George Bush's "wrong" war is largely won and Iraq 's democracy fairly stable. But [now] the good war in Afghanistan is becoming Barack Obama's and heating up -- more American troops, more American casualties, and little political stability.

If the past is any guide to media and public reaction, some predictions seem warranted. Obama will enjoy far more patience, since the anti-war Left and a liberal media will go easier on a kindred president. Yet if casualties peak, the American people will sour on Afghanistan as they did on Iraq. Then even Obama, I think unfairly, will be blamed in the media.... And even reluctant Charlie Gibson might have to return to covering Cindy Sheehan's latest pursuit of a beleaguered American president.

(Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution senior fellow, received the 2007 National Humanities Medal.)

VIETNAM-ISTAN
Ralph Peters
New York Post, August 3, 2009

Our troops in Afghanistan are performing heroically, doing everything we ask of them. But we shouldn't ask them to die without a purpose. We're floundering in Afghanistan -- confusing techniques with strategy. Not one senior official, political or military, has explained convincingly why we're still there....

Afghans see their government as an enemy -- a cabal of thieves grabbing all they can. We're fighting for an Afghan government that won't fight for itself or sacrifice to help its own people. Our own officers don't trust the Kabul government. Why should Afghans believe us when we promote it? They know what they'll face -- from both sides -- when we leave....

[O]ur commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stan McChrystal (a terrific soldier tasked with the impossible), may request additional American troops above the 21,000 already in the pipeline. Their mission would be to buy time to build Afghanistan 's security forces. Yet, after almost eight years of US efforts, the illiterate Afghans who Kabul press-ganged into uniform still perform abysmally (a few elite units notwithstanding). They don't believe in their government, either.

So our troops shoulder deadly burdens for a corrupt government that sides with the Taliban in the media to win votes from a hostile population. How, exactly, is this supposed to come out? The echoes of Vietnam keep getting louder. Our well-intentioned aid only corrupts. We never pause to try to think like Afghans. And we comfort ourselves with platitudes, then lie about our prospects.... We're fighting the wrong enemy, in the wrong place, in the wrong way. And sending more troops won't fix it.... Is an endless stalemate in a wasteland worth it?

We shouldn't evacuate Afghanistan entirely. It remains an excellent mother ship for a smaller, hyper-lethal US force that would continue to hunt and kill al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in the back-country that straddles the border with Pakistan. But the idea of building a modern Afghan state with a respected rule-of-law government is an impossible dream -- and not worth the life of a single soldier, Marine or Navy corpsman. Afghanistan isn't the heartland of terror. It's just the heart of darkness....

During his election campaign, President Obama promised us that he knew how to fix Afghanistan . His macho rhetoric made it his war. But I'm willing to let him off the hook on that one -- if we just stop pouring lives and money down a bottomless rat-hole.... In the words Gen. David Petraeus applied to Iraq , "Tell me how this ends?"...

TIME TO GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN
George F. Will
Washington Post, September 1, 2009

"Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning." "I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"

Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America 's involvement in Afghanistan , where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible....

Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia.... Three-quarters of Afghanistan 's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?...

Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean. Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but the Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."...

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory...indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck 's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop....

Please see our Picks of the Week for Hugh Segal's analysis of Canada's role in Afghanistan

WEEKLY QUOTES

"The destruction of the Jewish people was planned in detail in this place...As the prime minister of Israel, I have three words to say here, and I have written them down in the guest book: 'Am Yisrael chai' [The people Israel live]." -- PM Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking passionately and emphatically, during his visit to a house on Berlin's Wannsee Lake that was the site of the notorious Jan. 20, 1942, Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders drew up final plans for the Holocaust. ( New York Post, Aug 28)

"The whole delay in the peace process is a self-inflicted wound on the Obama administration. Let's remember that for over a year, the previous prime minister of Israel , Ehud Olmert, had been negotiating with the head of the Palestinians and made an astonishingly generous offer in December of '08, which the Palestinians refused, as they always refuse.

So Obama comes in and instead of picking up and trying to get the Palestinians to moderate, what does he do? He attacks Netanyahu. He tries to make an issue of settlements, which had been in consensus. The U.S. and Israelis had agreed: No new settlements, no new expansion of territory in settlements and dismantling of existing settlements.

And the Palestinians had accepted that, had never refused negotiations for anything else. But then Obama adds a condition of no thickening of settlement, i.e., you don't construct a kindergarten if children are born, which the Israelis have rejected. And all of a sudden the Palestinians and Arabs have said no negotiations until Israel jumps through this higher hoop. So the Arabs and Palestinians have said we are not going to move. We're going to let Obama extract unilateral concessions out of the Israelis, and that is why the process has stopped." -- Syndicated Columnist Charles Krauthammer, speaking on a Fox News "Special Report Panel" about the Obama Administration's renewed push for Middle East peace. (FoxNews.com, Sept. 1)

"Developing a strong relationship with Libya and helping it to reintegrate into the international community, is good for the UK ... I do not believe that it is necessary, or sensible, to risk damaging our wide ranging and beneficial relationship with Libya by inserting a specific exclusion [of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi] into the [prisoner transfer agreement]." -- British Justice Minister Jack Straw said in a letter to Scotland 's First Minister Alex Salmond, dated February 11, 2008. Documents released by the Scottish government showed Libyan officials had warned London that the death of Megrahi in a Scottish prison would have "catastrophic effects for the relationship between Libya and Britain ." Earlier news reports alleged that a major British-Libya oil deal is in the works and may have influenced the Brown Administration's decision to release the terrorist. Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds two weeks ago. A storm of protest, including widespread condemnation in America , greeted the release. (Reuters, Sept. 2; Time, Sept. 1)

"There must be a serious confrontation with the leaders and key elements who organized and provoked (the riots) and carried out the enemy's plan. They have to be dealt with seriously." -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, bitterly calling for the prosecution of Iran 's top opposition leaders. (Globe and Mail, Aug. 29)
"There are those who deny that the Holocaust happened... Instead of saying, 'Let them come to Berlin ,' we can now say, 'Let them come to Jerusalem and look at these plans, these plans for the factory of death.' " -- Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, after being presented with 29 detailed blueprints -- including the original floor plans for the Auschwitz death camp and drawings outlining a gas chamber -- that were discovered in a Berlin apartment and are now headed for Israel 's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. Germany 's federal archive confirmed that the documents -- which date as far back as 1941 and are initialed by the head of the Nazi SS, Heinrich Himmler, and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hess -- are authentic. "Armed barbarism knows no limits. It has to be unarmed, disarmed in time," Netanyahu added in a veiled reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has vowed to wipe Israel off the map. ( New York Post, Aug. 28)

"Netanyahu's claims are baseless and untrue... Jerusalem is an Arab and Islamic city and it always has been so." -- Palestinian Authority's chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, insisting that Jews had never lived in Jerusalem and that the Temple never existed. Tamimi's announcement came in response to statements made earlier this week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that Jerusalem "is not a settlement," and that "the Jews built it 3,000 years ago." Tamimi claimed that all excavation work conducted by Israel after 1967 has "failed to prove that Jews had a history or presence in Jerusalem or that their ostensible temple had ever existed." ( Jerusalem Post, Aug. 27)

"I fully realize that my decision to commence this preliminary review will be controversial. In this case, given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take." -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a statement to the media, defending his decision to appoint a special prosecutor to probe CIA employees' and contractors' for harsh interrogation methods in Iraq and Afghanistan . (National Post, August 25)

"It is clear that Eastern Europe is out of the epicenter of this American administration. The missile defense system is now under review. The chances that it will be in Poland are 50-50." -- Piotr Paszkowski, spokesperson for Poland 's foreign minister, expressing Poland 's disappointment at the prospect of being abandoned by the Obama Administration's revision of its predecessor's missile defence shield over Eastern Europe . (New York Times, August 29)

"Suddenly, people are saying that Communist crimes are equal to Nazi crimes. They are saying that victims of Communism and Nazism are one and the same, and should be remembered together, and this is a dangerous idea.&qu