Gaza War Week 3 continued -- closer to the endgame?

Don't forget to check www.jpost.com for the latest.


FRIDAY - Fatah and Abbas to the rescue?

In the rosiest of rosy scenarios, one purportedly championed by Egypt though not necessarily by Israel, Operation Cast Lead ends with Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority restored to power in Gaza. A multi-billion-dollar internationally-financed reconstruction effort gets under way, administered to great acclaim by Fatah. At the Rafah crossing, meanwhile, the 2005 agreement that put Abbas's Force 17 in charge of security would be resurrected, returning international monitors and Israeli cameras to scrutinize comings and goings.

A battered Hamas would, the optimists have it, accept the prolongation of Abbas's presidency (his term expired last week) and a junior role in a Fatah-led government of national reconciliation. This turnabout would reverse Hamas's June 2007 coup in Gaza and undo the diplomatic damage to Palestinian aspirations for international legitimacy caused by the Islamists' January 2006 electoral victory. Fatah would gain a new lease on life.

It would solve so many problems for Israelis, moderate Arabs and the West, if Fatah were truly capable of rebuilding Gaza, conscientiously governing its denizens and policing its borders.

But those who place their hopes in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority are, regrettably,in for a let-down.

Why? Because 100 years of Palestinian Arab history shows that Palestinians reward extremism and punish moderation; because Fatah remains crooked; and because, as its own activists acknowledge, they are simply not up to the task of governing Gaza.

Writing in The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Rashid Khalidi bemoans the fact that though Fatah was formed in the 1950s, the PLO in the 1960s, and the PA in the 1990s; though its leadership was already running a mammoth bureaucracy by the 1970s and a quasi-state in Lebanon until 1982, "the PLO had done precious little to prepare for independent statehood."

Khalidi, predictably, claims it was mostly Israel's fault. "Nevertheless," he writes, "there was much that [the PLO] could have done in spite of these crippling disabilities that they did not do. Notably, when they established the PA they failed to create a solid framework for the rule of law, a constitutional system, a balance of powers, and many of the other building blocks of a modern state to organize the governance of the 3.6 million Palestinians whose welfare they were now responsible for."

SOME Westerners delude themselves into believing they know why support for Hamas appears to have grown despite the fact that since it kidnapped Gilad Schalit in June 2006, the Islamists' self-destructive behavior has paid dividends mostly in Palestinian blood, suffering and mayhem. They attribute Hamas's ascendancy and Fatah's decline to the current fighting, or to settlements, or to the "occupation" pushing ordinary Palestinians ever deeper into Hamas's embrace.

It is more accurate, however, to sadly acknowledge that Hamas's worldview better reflects the extremism, rejectionism and self-destructive tendencies that embody the ethos of the Palestinian polity. Fatah's perceived drift toward moderation, combined with its corruption, have made it increasingly irrelevant to many Palestinians.

Since the start of the Zionist enterprise, Arab fanatics have been at war not only with our national liberation movement, but, simultaneously, with any internal voice advocating Arab-Jewish coexistence. Those who acquiesce in any semblance of Jewish rights are habitually labeled "collaborators."

Though Fatah denounces Israel's battle with Hamas in the most venomous terms, the West Bank masses are said to be fuming that Fatah won't let them confront Israel directly. "This will irreparably damage its standing in the eyes of Palestinians…" an Arab expert told The Christian Science Monitor.

In other words, many ordinary Palestinians want Fatah to again lead them into another violent uprising - despite the devastation a third intifada would bring down on them. Never mind that the standard of living in the West Bank is better than it has been in years.

So the problem is not just a PA demonstrably incapable of reforming itself, or a politically toxic Hamas; it is, more fundamentally, much of the Palestinian political culture.

Those who want to create a Palestinian state living peaceably with Israel could, then, reasonably conclude that what Palestinians need foremost is some kind of trusteeship to help them create a civil society, accountable institutions, transparent government... and the tools necessary for political socialization toward tolerance.

Until that happens, talk about creating a Palestinian state is...just talk.






THURSDAY - Remember the mission

Somewhere in a cave along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a gaunt man who hasn't seen much sun for seven long years has been watching Al-Jazeera's coverage of Operation Cast Lead. Perhaps he's telling himself that the 20 days Hamas commanders have been hunkered down in the sub-basement of Gaza's Shifa hospital is nothing compared to the ordeal he's been through.

Still, Osama bin Laden wants to do the "Islamist thing." So he's called - again - for a holy war against the Jews. Such a Sunni jihad offers the added delight of irking the detested Shi'ite "heretics" in Iran. Didn't Ayatollah Ali Khamenei invite young Persian men to volunteer for suicide missions in Gaza - only to snatch back the offer after 70,000 actually signed up?

Time may be running out for a holy war to save Hamas. Its leaders from both Damascus and Gaza - who cross overland at Rafah - have been dialoguing with each other, and with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Cairo, on a cease-fire. Hamas "inside" is said to be pushing hard to bring the fighting to an end; Hamas "outside" appears, belatedly, to be coming around.

The toing and froing is not limited to Hamas's functionaries. Our own Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau, travels to Cairo today. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spent Wednesday there and is heading to Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton began her Senate confirmation hearings by declaring that she will make the Arab-Israel conflict a priority. On Sunday, the Arab League is scheduled to meet in Kuwait to discuss the Gaza crisis. And the UN General Assembly wants to hold a session to condemn Israel - something it hasn't done in two months.

Here in Israel, Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni have resumed their sniping. Supposedly, Barak has recommended a one-week humanitarian cease-fire; Olmert wants to push on; and Livni wants to act unilaterally once the IDF has done its (undefined) work.

All this plays out as the world waits for Barack Obama to assume the US presidency on Tuesday.

WITH ALL this going on, it is essential that Israel not lose sight of the minimum it should be getting before Operation Cast Lead ends.

• The smuggling must stop. Hamas's access to armaments must be choked off. Any deal between Israel and Egypt on the tunnels beneath the Philadelphi Corridor must not encumber the IDF's freedom to operate when necessary. Once Egypt fulfills its commitments, IDF activity can be wound down.

• There must be an end to shooting at Israel, and to infiltration attempts. The cease-fire must have no time-limit. And it must be honored not just by Hamas's Izzadin Kassam, but also by Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, the PFLP, the DFLP and Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigades. All violations will meet with immediate and "disproportionate" retaliation.

• Hamas must become more reasonable on the Gilad Schalit issue; until it does, Hamas "military" figures will enjoy no repose.

• Regardless of who runs Gaza, Egypt must keep tight control of its side of the Rafah border. When it comes to entry and egress, the buck stops with Cairo.

• There can be absolutely no Turkish or other foreign troops on the Palestinian side of the border. Such a presence would hamper any necessary IDF activity. The foreigners can operate on the Egyptian side, if Cairo desires.

If Israel's fundamental needs are met, how the Palestinians choose to govern themselves in Gaza is their own affair.

Israel, for its part, will open crossing points to everything excepting materiel that can be used for military purposes. The embargo, for all intents and purposes, would be over.

ON DAY 1 of this war, Ehud Barak declared that its mission was to put an end to Hamas aggression. Nothing short of achieving this goal should bring Israel's efforts to a permanent halt.

No deal is better than a bad deal. If Hamas insists on fighting on, Israeli decision-makers will need to weigh when and how to mobilize our society for the prolonged, all-out assault needed to uproot the Islamist menace.

The war - week 3

Dear all,

Thank you for your notes of support. I am sorry that I can't reply to everyone individually.

For the latest news about what is really taking place -- please go to the Jerusalem Post homepage: www.jpost.com

Shalom,
elliot




Wed: What a democracy owes itself

There is something unpalatable about banning political parties. During the coldest days of the Cold War, American voters were never deprived of the chance to vote for Gus Hall and his Soviet-funded Communist Party USA. In Germany, voters can today opt for the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. The British National Party, whose mission is to secure a future for "indigenous" white people, is there for UK voters.

In contrast, authoritarian countries show little compunction about banning. Saudi Arabia bars the Green Party; Sudan and Cuba outlaw all parties. And Syria allows opposition parties that accept the "vanguard role" of the ruling Ba'ath Party.

On Monday, the Knesset Central Elections Committee, comprising 25 politicians and one jurist, disqualified Balad and the United Arab List from running in the February 10 elections. The consensus was that both support terrorism, incitement and reject Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Arab critics retorted that the decision proved Israel is "racist" and "fascist."

The High Court of Justice, which overruled an effort to disqualify Balad prior to the 2006 elections, will make the final call. The attorney-general's office is on record as determining that there is not enough evidence to disqualify either party.

But overturning the ban this time may be harder. The Knesset recently passed a new law based on clause 7A of the Basic Law: The Knesset, which outlaws candidates who deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state; engage in incitement, or support violence against Israel by an enemy state or terror organization. The amended legislation adds that anyone who illegally visited an enemy state in the past seven years can be banned.

The Supreme Court has yet to rule on challenges to the amended law.

DEMOCRACIES are not obligated to commit suicide. Spain, for instance, bans the political party affiliated with the terror group ETA. Similarly, US law makes it illegal for an organization that abets the use of violence against the government to seek office.

The case for banning Balad seems fairly plain. While it's off-putting to hear MK Jamal Zahalka say, "We are not Zionists and we will never be," the reason for keeping his party out of the Knesset is that it refuses to dissociate from its former leader Azmi Bishara - with whom Zahalka proudly consults - who fled to Syria after the Second Lebanon War, fearing arrest as a Hizbullah agent.

The case against Tibi's UAL party is not clear-cut. He is perhaps the most intellectually formidable of the Arab anti-Zionists, has a disarming personality, and calibrates his actions to stay just within the law. He won't declare unequivocally that he opposes terrorism, merely "militarization of the intifada."

At a 2007 Fatah rally in Ramallah, Tibi urged continued struggle against Israel "until all of the Palestinian land is freed." Yasser Arafat's former consigliere tells Palestinians that Israel wants to "eliminate" them "en route to the elimination of the ideas of Palestinian freedom and liberty."

Tibi says he does not oppose the state - just its policies. And he too declares that Arab citizens "will never accept Zionism..." He will not, he says, stop visiting enemy states.

Paradoxically, the disappearance of Balad and UAL from the Knesset might allow the emergence of Arab parties that actually cared about building the kinds of parliamentary alliances that can get things done for the Arab sector.

Israel's proportional representation system allowed the UAL and Balad to gain six seats in the current Knesset. The tragic dynamic is that the more radical the party, the more support it garners from the Arab public. It doesn't help matters that the major parties give Arab voters little incentive to shun the extremists.

In a world where 21 states define themselves as "Arab," and 56 proudly identify as Islamic, we do have a problem with Knesset members who begrudge Jewish self-determination within the rubric of a democratic Israel that respects minority rights.

The Likud's Bennie Begin cautions that Israeli society must be "very, very, careful" about outlawing factions or disenfranchising constituencies in wartime. To that we would add: But neither should our polity shy away from making tough decisions to protect the system from those who would destabilize it.






Tuesday: Egypt at the crossroads
(With Sarah Honig)

For a myriad reasons it suits those who mold international public opinion to minimize the intrinsic importance of Egypt's contiguity to the Gaza Strip. Not only does Egypt border Gaza, it even ruled it for most of the time between 1948 and 1967. This geographic reality could well become the source of Gaza's salvation just as, in recent years, it became the source of its misfortune. Egypt's role is pivotal.

Hamas propagandists like to portray Gaza as "one big prison" totally blockaded by Israel. Yet, as any map shows, Gaza isn't fully encircled by Israel. Its southern end, the Philadelphi Corridor, borders Egyptian Sinai.

This outlet could, assuming prudence and good will, become Gaza's lifeline. Or it could continue to serve as a gateway for the importation of death - which is what it became during years of assiduous weapons smuggling by Hamas.

There can be no lasting stability between Israel and Gaza unless the Philadelphi Corridor is plugged up to prevent gun-running and transformed, instead, into a conduit for improving Gazans' living standards. This necessitates a vigilant presence.

The buildup of Gaza's rocket arsenal since 2005 illustrates what happens when so vital a passage is abandoned to the supervision of a disinclined Cairo and international observers with no clout. It is this state of affairs that allowed Hamas commanders to travel freely in and out of Gaza for training in Iran.

While IDF deployment along the Corridor offers the best way to stop Hamas smuggling in weapons, terrorists and illicit cash, it is not our first preference. Such a deployment would be diplomatically and militarily problematic. The international community does not want to see Israel carve out a buffer zone there, and holding that thin sliver of territory would leave our soldiers highly vulnerable.

The best way - militarily, diplomatically and politically - to secure this crucial bit of real estate is from the Egyptian, not the Gazan side.

WERE Egyptian goodwill unadulterated and its commitment to getting the job done unstinting, sealing Philadelphi would still be a tall order.

Alas, Egypt has not over-extended itself. Its failure to keep Gaza from becoming a combustible repository of Hamas weaponry isn't merely the result, as Cairo claims, of not having enough personnel on the border because the Israel-Egypt peace treaty caps their allowable number.

In reality, Hamas's ability to connect Gaza and Sinai via hundreds of tunnels has better explanations: the failure to check rampant lawlessness among Sinai Beduin tribes; sclerotic Egyptian decision-making, which deprives officials on the spot of authority; and the failure to adequately recompense those charged with securing the border, leaving them susceptible to bakshish.

But the best explanation is that Hosni Mubarak's regime failed to make the cessation of smuggling its own priority. While on the one hand, it didn't want Hamas to grow ever stronger, it didn't, on the other hand, want to be seen as collaborating with Jerusalem against Hamas. Trying to have it both ways has now come back to bite the regime. It inadvertently helped create the explosive situation that forced Israel into Operation Cast Lead.

Egypt is in a bind. Its own national interest isn't far from Israel's, yet it dare not inflame its domestic Islamist opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is closely tied to Hamas. It is understandably loath to allow a free flow of Gazans - who might have Brotherhood or Iranian ties and stir up more unrest inside Egypt.

Keeping the current situation on a low flame may strike Egypt as the least distasteful of a poor menu of choices. Yet it is a recipe for further bloodshed. If the Philadelphi Corridor isn't permanently secured, another - worse - round of warfare is inevitable. It would leave Hamas approaching Hizbullah in strength and posing an even greater risk of destabilization within Egypt.

Egypt stands at a fateful crossroads. It must, finally, overcome its inhibitions vis-a-vis its own Islamists and take real action to stop arms trafficking. Alternatively, it must allow an empowered multi-national military presence on its soil to do the job.

Either way, Egypt ought to desire the most effective supervisory mechanism, one it can oversee and coordinate, thereby cementing its status as regional leader.



Monday:Israel goes it alone

The world must be wondering, 17 days into Operation Cast Lead, why it is taking so long for Jerusalem to cave into pressure for a cease-fire in Gaza. From the UN Security Council, that renowned bastion of international probity, and the constellation of Muslim, Arab and non-aligned states to our unwavering European allies, the international community - and much of the media - wants Israel to stop fighting.

We Israelis can hear these erstwhile friends in Europe and the media saying: "Everybody is wrong, and you alone are right?"

They continue: "Yes, Israel has a right to self-defense - but must your IDF kill innocent civilians and destroy buildings in the process? Can't your tanks avoid harming them? Your failure to fight a war that is televised live, 24/7, without spilling blood has enraged the Arab street. We don't want this fury turned against our interests in the Middle East."

That's why London's Telegraph could withdraw its "support."

"There comes a point beyond which an operation of this sort becomes… morally unjustifiable," it said. "The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is so severe that a cease-fire is essential, irrespective of whether Israel feels it has achieved its military objectives."

By this logic, Britain should have thrown in the towel in its war against Germany by September 18, 1939 - 17 days into WWII. Instead, Winston Churchill fought on for five long years at an awful - but morally justifiable - cost in Allied and enemy civilian lives.

The New York Times, likewise, sympathizes with Israel's predicament but worries that trying to wrest Gaza from Hamas's grip will complicate the efforts of the incoming Obama administration to broker peace.

Yet the reality is precisely the opposite: Unless Hamas is defanged, the prospect that relative moderates among the Palestinians, led by Mahmoud Abbas, will be emboldened to strike a deal with Israel is - nil.

The reaction of Israel's European allies in particular has been instructive. Having abandoned Israel as it defends itself against a transparently fanatical Hamas - and after Israel unilaterally uprooted its settlements and pulled its soldiers out of Gaza in 2005 - Israel will be mindful of how much their support is worth when the time comes to "take risks for peace" in the West Bank.

SPEAKING AT the Sunday cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made Israelis feel proud when he summed up the justice of the struggle and denounced the world's callous reaction: "For three weeks now… Israel has been making an impressive military effort in the Gaza Strip in order to change the security situation in the south of the country. For many years we've shown restraint. We reined in our reactions. We gritted our teeth and absorbed barrage after barrage.

"No country in the world - not even those who preach morality at us - would have shown similar patience and self-control. At the end of the day, the... obligation to defend our citizens - after we issued many warnings - led us to the unavoidable decision [that we had] to defend our [people], whose lives had become intolerable.

"We knew in advance that this struggle would be neither easy nor simple. We did not delude ourselves that what seemed natural, clear and self-evident for any other country would be similarly accepted when the State of Israel is involved. But this did not, and does not hinder our determination to defend our citizens.

"We have never agreed that anyone should decide in our place if we are allowed to strike at those who bomb our kindergartens and schools; nor will ever agree to it...

"Israel is nearing its goal [of changing] the security situation in the south so that our citizens can experience security and stability in the long term. We must not, at the last minute, squander what has been achieved in this unprecedented national effort that has restored a spirit of unity to our nation.

"The Israeli public, especially the residents of the south, have the patience and willingness needed. So does the Israeli government."

Amen to that.

Israel would have preferred to act with the support of those who claim to back our right to self-defense. In a cynical world, Israel must press ahead without it.



The above editorial generated the following NYT piece

Israelis United on War as Censure Rises Abroad

BYLINE: ETHAN BRONNER
Published: Tuesday, January 13, 2009



JERUSALEM — To Israel’s critics abroad, the picture could not be clearer: Israel’s war in Gaza is a wildly disproportionate response to the rockets of Hamas, causing untold human suffering and bombing an already isolated and impoverished population into the Stone Age, and it must be stopped.


Yet here in Israel very few, at least among the Jewish population, see it that way.

Since Israeli warplanes opened the assault on Gaza 17 days ago, about 900 Palestinians have been reported killed, many of them civilians. Red Cross workers were denied access to scores of dead and wounded Gazans, and a civilian crowd near a United Nations school was hit, with at least 40 people killed.

But voices of dissent in this country have been rare. And while tens of thousands have poured into the streets of world capitals demonstrating against the Israeli military operation, antiwar rallies here have struggled to draw 1,000 participants. The Peace Now organization has received many messages from supporters telling it to stay out of the streets on this one.

As the editorial page of The Jerusalem Post put it on Monday, the world must be wondering, do Israelis really believe that everybody is wrong and they alone are right?

The answer is yes.

“It is very frustrating for us not to be understood,” remarked Yoel Esteron, editor of a daily business newspaper called Calcalist. “Almost 100 percent of Israelis feel that the world is hypocritical. Where was the world when our cities were rocketed for eight years and our soldier was kidnapped? Why should we care about the world’s view now?”

Israel, which is sometimes a fractured, bickering society, has turned in the past couple of weeks into a paradigm of unity and mutual support. Flags are flying high. Celebrities are visiting schoolchildren in at-risk areas, soldiers are praising the equipment and camaraderie of their army units, and neighbors are worried about families whose fathers are on reserve duty. Ask people anywhere how they feel about the army’s barring journalists from entering Gaza and the response is: let the army do its job.

Israelis deeply believe, rightly or wrongly, that their military works harder than most to spare civilians, holding their fire in many more cases than using it.

Because Hamas booby-traps schools, apartment buildings and the zoo, and its fighters hide among civilians, it is Hamas that is viewed here as responsible for the civilian toll. Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction and gets help and inspiration from Iran, so that what looks to the world like a disproportionate war of choice is seen by many here as an obligatory war for existence.

“This is a just war and we don’t feel guilty when civilians we don’t intend to hurt get hurt, because we feel Hamas uses these civilians as human shields,” said Elliot Jager, editorial page editor of The Jerusalem Post, who happened to answer his phone for an interview while in Ashkelon, an Israeli city about 10 miles from Gaza, standing in front of a house that had been hit two hours earlier by a Hamas rocket.

“We do feel bad about it, but we don’t feel guilty,” Mr. Jager added. “The most ethical moral imperative is for Israel to prevail in this conflict over an immoral Islamist philosophy. It is a zero sum conflict. That is what is not understood outside this country.”

It is true that there are voices of concern here that the war may be outliving its value. Worries over the risk to Israeli troops and over even steeper civilian casualties as the ground war escalates have produced calls to declare victory and pull out.

For many of the 1.4 million Israelis who are Arabs, the war has produced a very different feeling, a mix of anger and despair. The largest demonstration against the war so far, with some 6,000 participants, was organized by an Arab political party. But that is still distinctly a minority view. Polls have shown nearly 90 percent support for the war thus far, and street interviews confirm that Israelis not only favor it but do so quite strongly. The country’s leaders, while seeking an arrangement to stop Hamas’s ability to rearm, do not want a face-saving agreement. They want one that works, or else they want to continue the war until Hamas has lost either its rockets or its will to fire them.

Boaz Gaon, a playwright and peace activist, said he found it deeply depressing how the Israeli public had embraced the military’s arguments in explaining the deaths of civilians. But he was livid at Hamas, both for what it had done to its own people and civilians in the south, and for its impact on the Israeli left.

“Hamas has pushed Israeli thinking back 30 years,” he said. “It has killed the peace camp.”

Moshe Halbertal, a left-leaning professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University, helped write the army’s ethics code. He said he knew from personal experience how much laborious discussion went into deciding when it was acceptable to shoot at a legitimate target if civilians were nearby, adding that there had been several events in this war in which he suspected that the wrong decision had been made.

For example, Israel killed a top Hamas ideologue, Nizar Rayyan, during the first week of the war and at the same time killed his four wives and at least nine of his children. Looking back at it, Mr. Halbertal disapproves, assuming that the decision was made consciously, even if Mr. Rayyan purposely hid among his family to protect himself, as it appears he did. Yet almost no one here publicly questioned the decision to drop a bomb on his house and kill civilians; all the sentiment in Israel was how satisfying and just it was to kill a man whose ideology and activity had been so virulent and destructive.

But Mr. Halbertal takes quite seriously the threat that Hamas poses to Israel’s existence, and that issue affects him in his judgments of the war.

“Rockets from Hamas could eventually reach all of Israel,” he said. “This is not a fantasy. It is a real problem. So there is a gap between actual images on the screen and the geopolitical situation.

“You have Al Jazeera standing at Shifa Hospital and the wounded are coming in,” he continued, referring to an Arab news outlet. “So you have this great Goliath crushing these poor people, and they are perceived as victims. But from the Israeli perspective, Hamas and Hezbollah are really the spearhead of a whole larger threat that is invisible. Israelis feel like the tiny David faced with an immense Muslim Goliath. The question is: who is the David here?”

The war, of course, is portrayed differently here and abroad. What Israelis see on the front pages of their newspapers and on their evening broadcasts is not what the rest of the world is reading and seeing. Israeli news focuses on Israeli suffering — the continuing rocket attacks on Israel, the wounded Israeli soldiers with pictures from Gaza coming later. On a day last week when the foreign news media focused on Red Cross allegations of possible war crimes, Israeli news outlets played down the story.

But the Israeli news media are not so much determining the national agenda as reflecting it. Even the left and what was long called the peace camp consider this conflict almost entirely the responsibility of Hamas, and thus a moral and just struggle.

“By this stage in the first and second Lebanon wars, there were much larger street demonstrations, vigils and op-ed pieces,” said Janet Aviad, a former sociologist and peace activist. “But in this case, the entire Israeli public is angry at the immoral behavior of Hamas.”

The writer A.B. Yehoshua, who opposes Israel’s occupation and promotes a Palestinian state, has been trying to explain the war to foreigners.

“ ‘Imagine,’ I tell a French reporter, ‘that every two days a missile falls in the Champs-Élysées and only the glass windows of the shops break and five people suffer from shock,’ ” Mr. Yehoshua told a reporter from Yediot Aharonot, a Tel Aviv newspaper. “ ‘What would you say? Wouldn’t you be angry? Wouldn’t you send missiles at Belgium if it were responsible for missiles on your grand boulevard?’ ”

G A Z A W A R week 2

FRIDAY: The Diaspora rallies

The boys wear yarmulkes, the girls hijabs. Chaperoned by their Muslim teacher, they hold signs with the word for "peace" in Hebrew, English and Farsi.

They are Jewish schoolchildren in Teheran - at an anti-Israel demonstration.

In times like these, our thoughts go to the predicament of Iran's 25,000 Jews.

Just 52 years after Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State, transforming the Jews' age-old longing for Zion into modern political Zionism, the State of Israel was born.

But our visionary founder got two things wrong: He assumed that with the creation of a Jewish homeland, the Diaspora would disappear, and so would the anti-Semitism endemic to it.

Surprisingly, the non-disappearance of the galut has turned out - from a Zionist perspective - to be a blessing of sorts.

Israel and the Diaspora sustain each other religiously, culturally and politically. For affiliated Jews, some level of attachment to Israel has become the sine qua non of an authentic Jewish life. Jewish civilization continues to thrive outside Israel, though demographic and other challenges are seldom far from the surface.

This synergy, however, is not without its downside. As the IDF fights on the Gaza battlefield and campaigners wage an uphill battle to make Israel's case in the media, we Israelis are mindful that events here are having a deleterious security impact on the Diaspora.

We worry, for instance, about the 15,000 Jews of Venezuela, being browbeaten by Hugo Chavez.

But life is uncomfortable not just for Jews in hostile countries: Jews have also been targeted in the UK, Belgium, France and Sweden. Anti-Jewish louts marched brazenly through London's Golders Green. A synagogue in Brussels was hit by fire-bombers. A Jewish girl was beaten in Paris. A Helsingborg shul was nearly set ablaze.

A VOCAL minority of Jews has joined the anti-Zionist chorus. Our tradition teaches that such defectors have been part of the scene ever since the Israelites came out of Egypt.

For some, tragically, this is their only Jewish connection. To paraphrase the late US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart in a famous 1964 pornography case: "Self-hatred is hard to define, but we know it when we see it."

Besides the self-haters, there is another small yet well-connected grouping of British and American Jews that identifies itself as friendly to Israel, but whose endeavors undermine Israel's security. These people make a fetish out of breaking with the community's consensus.

Now they're urging the British and US governments to pressure Israel into accepting an unsatisfactory Gaza cease-fire which would leave the Islamists emboldened.

Most Israelis look past them and draw comfort from the solidarity of the vast majority of affiliated Jews.

We know the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations stands solidly with Israel. Expressions of support come from its constituents - the Union of Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. We acknowledge with appreciation the support of the Board of Deputies of British Jewry, and of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations. The Australian community, too, is with us.

Pro-Israel demonstrations were held this past week at the gates of our embassy in Washington. A standing-room-only midday crowd packed the Sixth & I synagogue in the US capital. So many people came to a pro-Israel rally outside Israel's UN Consulate in Manhattan that police had to turn some away.

The United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Federations of North America have been steadfast. The Jews of Boston are rallying; the Los Angeles community has established an emergency fund for victims of Hamas terror; San Francisco's community has been praying for the peace of Israel.

Up and down America - from Providence to Tucson to Memphis; from Kansas City to Dallas to Chicago - this has been a week of solidarity with Israel.

In Europe, pro-Israel rallies have been held - or are scheduled - in every major city. On Sunday morning, London's Jews will gather in Trafalgar Square on behalf of Israel.

We Israelis don't tell our Diaspora brethren often enough how grateful we are for their support, or how cognizant we are that what we do to defend ourselves sometimes complicates their lives.

So we're telling them now: Toda raba!





Thursday: Israel's terms

Notwithstanding the cabinet's authorization for the IDF to fight on, Israel's decision to unilaterally halt offensive military operations in Gaza for three hours daily so residents can obtain supplies is just one of several indications that our decision makers are seeking an endgame to Operation Cast Lead.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak reportedly intimated that he opposes expanding the land war against Hamas, while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has expressed appreciation to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy for their efforts to advance a cease-fire. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad told CNN that the Hamas leaders he hosts in Damascus were in fact "ready [to make a deal]. They were ready, they are ready."

Like it or not, the spotlight is now shifting to the diplomatic arena at a moment when - while Hamas has been dealt a series of punishing blows - the bulk of its guerrilla army and military hardware remain unscathed.

We have consistently argued that Israel cannot tolerate the existence of a hostile regime between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. Hamas stands as the antithesis of the two-state solution - the quintessential enemy of reconciliation. The prospects of cutting a deal with relative Palestinian moderates like Mahmoud Abbas are improbable so long as Hamas remains in power.

EGYPT IS spearheading the cease-fire efforts in coordination with the US, France and Britain, and in consultation with Israel and Hamas. Assuming Cairo comes up with an agreement, the UN Security Council can be expected to provide its imprimatur.

The Egyptian plan, presented when Mubarak met French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sharm e-Sheikh, reportedly calls for a temporary cease-fire as well as opening the crossing points into Gaza from Egypt and Israel for humanitarian relief. The Bush administration is pressing to include a reference to halting rocket attacks from Gaza and an end to smuggling into the Strip through tunnels from Sinai.

Egyptian media say any cease-fire would then be followed by further talks on long-term arrangements.

Publicly, Hamas leaders in Damascus and in Gaza are talking tough. After meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the Syrian-based Mohamed Nasr said, "Our position is clear: End the aggression, withdraw from Gaza; open the crossing points, especially Rafah; [and] a total lifting of the blockade." And when last heard from, Mahmoud Zahar, in Gaza, declared that his men would confront and defeat the IDF.

Zahar's bluster apart, the assumption among Israeli analysts is that Hamas is eager for a time-out.

So if a cease-fire is in the offing, Israel needs to be very clear about what it expects from such a temporary cessation of hostilities. It must also adhere to the larger strategy of asphyxiating Hamas in the fullness of time.

For now, Israel must insist that:

• the smuggling of weapons, munitions, terrorists and contraband via tunnels below the Philadelphi Corridor not be allowed to resume. If it does, all our efforts in the current fighting will have been in vain.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland has recommended widening the corridor on both sides of the border and declaring it a closed military zone. This would require Egypt to be fully on board, and financial backing from the international community to relocate those displaced by the need to create a cordon sanitaire.

Meanwhile, Israel must reserve the right to continue military operations against the tunnels.

• the security reality be changed. The purpose of the IDF operation was to deter Hamas from attacking. If the Palestinians violate the cease-fire by firing, tunneling, smuggling or manufacturing weapons, Israel must enjoy the freedom to retaliate, and in a timely fashion.

• prior to implementing any cease-fire, Gilad Schalit be freed in exchange for Hamas gunmen taken in the current operation; plus, perhaps, others captured subsequent to his kidnapping. Israel will never have more leverage to free him than it has now.

• the mandate for any international forces that would police the crossing points explicitly give them the kind of enforcement authority that earlier EU "monitors" lacked. If not, their presence would be meaningless and Israel should oppose permanent opening of the crossings.

The cabinet must not lose sight of the fact that the goal of this operation was not a cease-fire, but to stop Hamas terror.





Wednesday: Death of innocents


How do Israelis feel when our artillery strikes a UN-run school building, killing dozens of people? The answer is: deeply shaken, profoundly distressed, sorrowful at the catastrophic loss of life.

But we do not feel guilt. We are angry at Hamas for forcing this war on us; for habitually using Gaza's civilians as human shields; and - in this latest outrage - for transforming a center where people had sought refuge into a shooting gallery and weapons depot.

To paraphrase Golda Meir, there may come a time when we will forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, "but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."

Images of carnage take on a momentum of their own, and it requires a certain amount of savvy to realize that, sometimes, a picture is not worth 1,000 words. Images that jumble people's thinking and distort reality are less than worthless - they're propagandistic.

News consumers rely on journalists to keep them from being duped. But what if the media becomes part of the problem?

Take, for instance, a report by Gaza-based BBC producer Rushdi Abu Alouf from Shifa Hospital. The segment opened as frenzied crowds crying Allahu akbar encircled ambulances bringing war-wounded to Shifa's emergency room. The camera took us inside. This "you-are-there" treatment, patented by Al Jazeera, provides a voyeuristic, nearly pornographic, view from inside emergency rooms, operating theaters and morgues.

The BBC producer interviewed a Norwegian physician, Mads Gilbert, presumably to get the view of an impartial foreigner, a Good Samaritan who had arrived in Gaza days earlier to volunteer his medical skills. Gilbert, clad in green scrubs, stethoscope slung around his neck, expressed outrage that international aid agencies were absent from the hospital. He called what is now happening in Gaza the worst man-made medical disaster he'd ever seen.

The Israelis, prompted the producer, were claiming that most of the killed were gunmen - Gilbert's cue to assert that of the hundreds of patients flooding Shifa, maybe two were "militants." He elucidated: 2,450 had been injured, 45 percent of them women and children - and that didn't even include innocent men. Twenty-five percent of the dead were innocents; 801 children were "killed or injured."

Faced with heartrending images of blood-drenched hospital floors, and funeral processions bearing white-shrouded toddlers, who could be bothered to recall that Gaza's Palestinians empowered Hamas knowing full well that its raison d'etre is relentless struggle against the existence of a Jewish state? Or that some of Hamas's leadership is operating out of that very Shifa hospital? Or that Hamas hijacks international medical aid intended for the Gazan masses, diverting it to special locations where its gunmen are being treated?

When readers of Britain's Guardian are confronted by a front-page photo of a father collapsed in front of his three dead children, they can be forgiven for losing sight of the bigger picture: that between 2001-2008, over 8,000 flying bombs were launched at Israel, traumatizing an entire generation of Israeli children; and that unless the IDF manages to stop Hamas, the months ahead could see life in metropolitan Tel Aviv become as perilous as it is in Sderot.

And when readers of London's Times see the headline: "We're wading in death, blood and amputees. Pass it on - shout it out" they, too, may be forgiven for overlooking the fact that Hamas purposely situates its launchers in densely populated areas.

When the Arizona Republic reports: "Israel ignores calls for peace," a photo isn't even necessary.

A WORD about Dr. Mads Gilbert: It turns out he's no neutral medical man, but active in "solidarity work with Palestinians" for 30 years. Responding to 9/11, Gilbert didn't rush to New York's Bellevue Hospital to offer his services. Instead, he defended the moral right of the "oppressed" to have launched that attack.

Too many news outlets have allowed their coverage of Gaza to be agenda-driven, to willfully disregard the duty of presenting news and images in context.

Cynically thrusting pictures of dead toddlers at readers and viewers obfuscates truth, bedevils news consumers, and robotically demonizes those "who could do such a thing."

What a devious way of giving succor to the uncompromising fanatics who are really to blame for the horror of it all.




Tuesday: Turkey chooses sides

Israel's founders had high hopes that the Jewish state, isolated in a sea of Arab hostility, could align itself informally with Iran and Turkey - Muslim countries which had their own differences with the Arabs.

Sure enough, for years Israel obtained much of its oil from the shah, and our unofficial embassy in Teheran was second in personnel only to our Washington representation. Turkey, in 1949, became the first Muslim state to recognize Israel. David Ben-Gurion made a secret trip there in 1958, but it was not until 1999 that an Israeli premier, Ehud Barak, visited openly. Defying the Arab League, Turkey signed a military cooperation pact with Israel in 1996.

In 2002, Turkey's Islamically-inclined Justice and Development Party (AKP), under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, won a landslide victory. Keen to pursue EU membership (Turkey is a candidate member), Erdogan said his party would maintain Ankara's ties with Israel.

It has; but the approach, under the AKP, has turned decidedly tepid. During the 2000-2005 Palestinian uprising, for instance, Erdogan nixed a proposed water deal and temporarily recalled his ambassador to Israel.

After Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections, Turkey broke with Western policy and received Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. Having mended its relations with Damascus, Turkey protested the 2007 IAF raid on the Syrian nuclear facility and Israel's alleged overflight of Turkish territory. And last year, Turkey hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Istanbul. Ankara and Teheran now have close political and economic ties. Despite Turkey's evident drift away from the Western camp, the Olmert government nevertheless accepted Ankara's offer to serve as a go-between in peace talks with Damascus.

SINCE THE IDF began hitting back at Hamas in Operation Cast Lead, both the government and people of Turkey have lined up behind the Islamists. Thousands rallied outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Saturday; 200,000 demonstrated in a main Istanbul square on Sunday. There were also big "Down with Israel" rallies in Ankara, Diyarbakir province, Trabzon, Adana, Bursa and Sirnak.

Erdogan has been trying to halt the IDF's operation to deter Hamas violence virtually since the mission began 11 days ago. He ostentatiously avoided Israel in a just-concluded fact-finding mission that took him to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Now he has "found" that Israel is conducting "inhuman acts" in Gaza, which, he says, will cause Israel to destroy itself. He believes that, in time, Allah will punish those who violate the rights of the "innocent."

The human tragedy in Gaza, it transpires, is entirely Israel's fault: "Hamas abided by the truce. But Israel failed to lift embargoes. In Gaza, people seem to live in an open prison. In fact, all Palestine looks like an open prison…"

Turkish President Abdullah Gul adds: "What Israel has done is nothing but atrocity."

Erdogan can find absolutely nothing wrong with anything Hamas has done since it grabbed power in Gaza.

Turkey has just taken its seat as a non-permanent member of the Security Council and Ankara pledges to be Hamas's conduit to the United Nations. It has offered to deliver Hamas's conditions for a cease-fire to the council. Erdogan is also pushing to bring Fatah and Hamas together, though such reconciliation is unlikely to produce a less intransigent Palestinian polity, or one committed to coexistence with Israel.

On balance, we're not convinced that Turkey has earned the right to lecture Israelis about human rights. While world attention focuses on Gaza, Turkish jets have bombed Kurdish positions in northern Iraq. Over the years, tens of thousands of people have been killed as the radical PKK pursues its campaign for autonomy from Turkey. Kurdish civilians in Iraq complain regularly that Ankara's air force has struck civilian areas where there is no PKK activity.

THE NEXT Israeli government should weigh whether Israel can accept as a mediator a country that speaks, albeit elliptically, of our destruction. Meanwhile, if Turkey persists in its one-sided, anti-Israel rhetoric, the Foreign Ministry might consider recalling our ambassador in Ankara for consultations.

Turkey needs to choose between bridging the gap between East and West and flacking for the kind of dead-end Islamist policies championed by Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas - policies that threaten to destabilize the entire region.




Monday: A moral war

For pacifists who believe that all wars are immoral, Israel's self-defense operation against Hamas in Gaza is necessarily wrong. To such people we invoke the 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Confronted by a movement that amalgamates fascism with religious extremism and a genocidal platform, our moral imperative demands Jewish self-defense.

Few of the voices slamming Israel for conducting an "immoral" war in Gaza are those of pacifists.

Take Riyad Mansour, Mahmoud Abbas's man at the UN. He claimed on CNN that "3,000 Palestinians had been killed or injured" in Gaza, then denounced Israel's "targeting 1.5 million Palestinians" as "immoral" and a "crime against humanity."

Even as Mansour was pontificating, Hamas gunmen in Gaza were shooting Fatah activists in the knees as a preventive security measure lest they take advantage of the unstable situation.

In the West Bank, meanwhile, Mansour's Fatah has been ruthlessly hunting down Hamas members to keep the Islamists from seizing power there when Abbas's presidential term expires next week.

Far from there being "3,000 killed and wounded," more like 500 have been killed - 400 of them Hamas "militants," according to Palestinian Arab and UN sources inside Gaza cited by the Associated Press. Israeli sources put the Palestinian civilian death toll at some 50.

Pointing this out does not diminish the dreadful loss of dozens of innocent Palestinian lives in a week's worth of fighting. It does show, however, that the IDF continues to do everything possible to avoid "collateral damage." But its prime mandate is to protect the lives of Israeli civilians and minimize risks to our citizen-soldiers.

Over the weekend, glitterati including Annie Lennox and Bianca Jagger joined tens of thousands of mostly Muslim protesters in rallies held worldwide against the Israeli "genocide."

In fact, we'd be surprised if any other army currently on the battlefield is more conscientious about avoiding civilian casualties. Before it attacks and whenever possible, the IDF leaflets, telephones or sends text messages to residents of buildings used to launch rockets at our territory, warning them of the impending air-strike.

Conversely, what sort of "resistance" movement deliberately uses mosques, schools and homes as weapons depots and rocket launching pads? Answer: one that also uses its children and women as human shields.

AMONG those troubled by Israel's actions are Jews whose connections to things Jewish are limited to the occasional bagel or lox sandwich. They too march to make clear they're nothing like those pitiless Israelis. "As a Jew, it is very moving to see so many people… outraged at Israel's actions," said comedian Alexei Sayle, who was raised in a strictly orthodox Communist Liverpool household.

Not all uncomfortable Jews are cut off from the community. Take Isaac Luria - not the ancient kabbalist, but the young Internet director of J Street, which is devoted to redefining what it means to be pro-Israel. Luria thinks that the IDF is "pushing the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict further down a path of never-ending violence." He's strictly against "raining rockets on Israeli families" (this is bad, he knows, because he spent a year in Israel), but "there is nothing 'right' in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them."

Wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to admit that Palestinian suffering is mostly self-inflicted? And that Hamas's anti-Israel agenda is wildly popular among Gaza's masses? And doesn't Luria owe it to himself to look a little closer at the nature of the Israeli military response.

The folks at J Street believe "there is no military solution to what is fundamentally a political conflict...." Hamas would beg to differ. Indeed, Hamas has been trying to prove the contrary, forcing Israel's hand.

What Israel's critics need to understand is that there can be no political solution while we are under Palestinian bombardment. Those who are sincere about fostering coexistence should stop bashing the IDF and start telling the Palestinians: Stop the violence.

T H E F I R S T W E E K O F T H E W A R

FRIDAY: Thank you President George W. Bush

Six days into Israel's confrontation with Hamas, just one world leader has steadfastly shown genuine understanding of our dilemma - George W. Bush.

The initial reaction of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for instance, was commonsensical: "I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population." That sympathy, though not dissipated, was soon watered down as the Foreign Office brought London's policy into harmony with the European Union by calling for an immediate cease-fire.

In contrast, from Texas, where the president has been marking the holidays, his spokesman Gordon Johndroe placed the onus for the hostilities where it belongs: "Hamas's continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop," he said. The administration was satisfied, Johndroe added, that the IDF was doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. Moreover, he said, the best way to ensure that violence didn't flare up again was for Hamas to stop smuggling weapons into Gaza.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also blamed Hamas: "We strongly condemn the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and hold Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence there."

As the week progressed, however, a certain slippage in Rice's rhetoric was discernible. "The cease-fire must be restored immediately and fully respected," she said.

But absent a fundamental deterioration in Hamas's military capabilities, a premature cessation of IDF operations would simply set the stage for more violence later.

In all fairness, Rice has been grappling with the wording of a binding UN Security Council draft resolution trying to mediate between the Israel, EU, Arab and other positions.

The Arab League version "strongly condemns all military attacks and the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by Israel…" It makes no mention of Hamas's aggression.

At some point, Rice will meld her own proposals with those of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who ostentatiously boycotted Israel on his fact-finding tour of the region), and the proposals of a bitterly divided Arab world, along with Israel's thoughts, to produce a workable cease-fire proposal.

As this scenario plays out, we hope Hamas's military capacity will, meanwhile, become considerably eroded.

With sirens wailing and the population of Israel's South absorbing blow after blow from Hamas gunners, with everyday-life from Beersheba to Ashdod torn asunder, and with our citizen-army poised at the gates of Hamastan, this newspaper expresses its appreciation to President Bush for his goodwill, and for the diplomatic backing of his administration. We do not take this support for granted.

IN JUST 18 days, Barack Obama will be sworn in as America's president. We are reasonably confident that the incoming administration will cut Hamas no more slack than the outgoing one.

As Obama said in July on a visit to Sderot: "When bombs are raining down on your citizens, there is an urge to respond and act and try and put an end to that."

Sure, there will be those, like former State Department official Aaron David Miller, who argue that by fighting Hamas, Israel is making "a difficult situation even tougher" and reducing the prospects for a durable Palestinian-Israel agreement.

In fact, the opposite is the case. A negotiated settlement requires Arabs and Israelis to want to live in peace. Hamas, meanwhile, is uncompromisingly dedicated, in creed and in deed, to pursuing a zero-sum struggle against Israel. No amount of territorial concessions, no matter how far-reaching, will make a Jewish state palatable to the Hamas fanatics.

Thus any policy predicated on bolstering the relative moderates in the Palestinian polity - Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad, for example - must, logically, seek to chip away at those who denigrate them as Zionist collaborators.

For 100 years, Palestinian politics has seen rejectionists assassinate those who voice any willingness to accommodate Jewish national aspirations. Put differently: If Hamas thrives, peace dies.

Miller isn't entirely wrong about the "Arab street" being resentful of Washington's commitment to Israel's survival. The smart response, however, is not to force Israel into making suicidal territorial concessions - which would only promote endless upheaval - but to help broker the kind of peace that both Israel and the Palestinians will see as just and lasting.





THURSDAY: Europe has a plan


Toward the end of 2005, after Israel unilaterally pulled its citizens and soldiers out of Gaza, Jerusalem consented to the presence of European Union "monitors" at the Rafah Crossing connecting the Strip to Egyptian Sinai. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised the arrangement as giving "the Palestinian people the freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives."

Rafah was opened on November 26, 2005 in a ceremony attended by Mahmoud Abbas. Just two months later, Palestinians voting in the West Bank and Gaza gave Hamas a majority in the Palestinian parliament. But because Hamas was an international outlaw, forces loyal to Abbas continued to oversee Rafah's terminal, providing security for some 70 EU monitors. They had the authority to "reexamine" and "reassess" anyone or anything which struck them as suspicious.

Little, however, struck the monitors as suspicious. When Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar's brother strolled past them on his way into Gaza, the Europeans answered Israeli complaints by arguing that Jerusalem never gave the monitors a list naming those it wanted barred.

When Zahar himself and another Hamas official crossed over with some dozen suitcases containing $20 million, EU monitors did not look the other way. They protested to Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which promised to investigate.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told this newspaper in October 2006 that Israelis were over-obsessing about security at Rafah. He didn't think Hamas wanted to destroy Israel; it simply wanted to liberate Palestinians.

After Gilad Schalit was captured by Hamas in a June 2006 cross-border raid, the EU monitors complained that Israel was keeping the Rafah crossing closed more days than it was open, and threatened to walk off the job. The threat became moot in June 2007: Hamas expelled Fatah, and the monitors fled.

THIS slice of history is pertinent in the wake of an offer by EU foreign ministers, meeting Tuesday night in Paris, to send monitors to Rafah and other crossings to ensure their smooth operation. The proposal came in the context of the EU's demand for an "unconditional halt to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and an end to Israeli military action." The ministers concluded with what is, for them, a truism: "There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Gaza or elsewhere."

Hamas, for its part, appears somewhat less certain about this point. Its founding charter asserts: "Israel... will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it."

Tuesday a Hamas spokesman said on television: "The children of Gaza will be collecting the body parts of [Israeli] soldiers and the ruins of tanks" if IDF ground forces moved in to halt Hamas rocket launchings.

As a Grad slammed into a Beersheba kindergarten, empty at the time, European and US press reports lamented that hopes for an early end to the fighting had "faded" - as if they had existed in the first place - because "Israel rejected international calls for a 48-hour cease-fire to allow the supply of humanitarian aid." Never mind that 179 shipments of international supplies including food and medicines, donations from various governments, blood and 10 ambulances were being conveyed to Gaza.

Other media carried the boilerplate: "Hamas says it will keep up its attacks if Israel does not stop its assault" - which begs the question of why Hamas had been attacking us before the IDF went into action Saturday.

Europe's press is wont to dub the Kassams "rudimentary" because these explosive- and shrapnel-filled rockets lack any guidance system. Hamas-developed Kassams were first launched against Gaza's Jewish settlements in October 2001. By March 5, 2002 they had been sufficiently perfected to hit Sderot. Further refined over the years, more than 10,000 Kassams have smashed into Israeli targets, killing scores, wounding hundreds and terrorizing tens of thousands. After Israel's disengagement from Gaza, Hamas smuggled in tons of advanced weaponry, including the Grad. It too is "primitive" - early versions were fielded by the Soviets in 1963. The model now being fired at Beersheba, 40 km. from Gaza, is Chinese-made.

HAMAS was established in 1987 because the local Muslim Brotherhood doubted the PLO's continued commitment to the destruction of Israel.

Brussels may have the luxury of deluding itself about Hamas's intentions and capabilities. Jerusalem does not.




WEDNESDAY: Cease terror, not cease-fire

On day four of Operation Cast Lead, international demands notwithstanding, it is way too premature for Jerusalem to be entertaining thoughts of a cease-fire. It is Hamas that needs an exit strategy to extricate it from a devastating situation of its own making.

Hamas leaders ordered the cross-border attack against Israel in June 2006 in which two IDF soldiers were killed and Gilad Schalit was taken hostage. They grabbed power away from Fatah the following year, transforming Gaza into a spoiling-for-a-fight Islamist stronghold. Hundreds of Palestinians have lost their lives as a result of Hamas's warmongering.

They locked themselves into the old Arab mantra of "no recognition, no negotiation and no peace." They refused to honor agreements the PLO signed with Israel. They oppose the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. And they've kept Gaza an impoverished basket-case.

Despite their vitriol and bravado, since Israeli military operations began Saturday, the Hamas government has buckled: 400 targets have been struck; most of the regime's symbols have either been pulverized or are tottering. Hamas officials have gone into hiding, providing no succor to the masses, whose distress is directly attributable to Hamas's bellicose policies.

LET US keep our eyes on the prize. The government has belatedly but rightly declared the imperative to change the security environment in the south and stop Hamas from attacking our population. No country - not Germany, Britain, France, or Russia; not Turkey, Greece, Korea or the United States - would tolerate missile attacks on its homeland. Neither can Israel.

The effort to bring long-term peace to southern Israel is in its early stages. Military analysts estimate that half of Hamas's arsenal remains intact. Most of its armed forces are safely hunkered down. Put another way, Hamas is saving itself as it leaves the people of Gaza exposed and leaderless. The longer Israel can keep Hamas from exercising authority, the more the Islamists' legitimacy is weakened.

That being the case, Hamas is keen to change the equation, to goad Israel into launching a predictable land campaign. It wants Israeli tanks mired in the mud of Gaza. Its continued launching of missiles, rockets and mortars at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot and the Negev is Hamas's way of taunting Israel into playing its game, by its rules. Hamas knows that there are certain targets, for instance - munitions storage facilities situated in the heart of residential areas - that have been off-limits to Israel's air force. It also knows that airpower alone can't stop the rocket-launching crews.

Hamas must not get what it most wants. Hamas wants Israel's home front to be demoralized, to feel under siege. It wants to stampede our government into sending ground forces into Gaza's camps and alleyways, to ensnare our fighters in ambushes it has spent long months setting.

IF HAMAS can't hoodwink Israelis into self-defeating policies, it is counting on pressure from within Israel or without to produce at least a temporary halt to the operation, during which it could regroup, or better yet a cease-fire. It needs this to claim a "moral victory" over the IDF; to demonstrate that the West has no response but appeasement to violent Muslim extremism. Finally, Hamas needs a cease-fire on its terms, or it will lose face vis-a-vis Mahmoud Abbas.

Some of what Hamas wants, it is getting. It wants AP and Reuters to continue to disseminate casualty figures which obscure the fact that most of the killed and wounded are gunmen. It wants the wire services to distribute photos and TV footage depicting mostly Palestinian, not Israeli trauma.

The air force will soon have done all it can at the present time - yet, frustratingly, Hamas will still retain its capability to lash out. That's when Israel's historic capacity for military innovation - for utilizing unexpected strategies against its enemies, rather than following a battle-plan for which the enemy has prepared - should be utilized.

Sooner or later, furthermore, Hamas's political and military echelon will emerge from hiding, and the air force will have more work to do. Meanwhile, the homefront's mettle will truly be tested; we will need to demonstrate our patience and resilience.

There should be no talk of a cease-fire until the declared goal of achieving long-term normality in the South has been attained.





Tuesday: Arab elites vs Hamas

Predictably, it's started. Europe's pro-Palestinian lobby, instinctive anti-war campaigners, Muslim extremists and the so-called Arab street have all been demonstrating against Israel's military operations in Gaza.

In London, Muslim and leftist protesters rallied raucously outside the Israeli embassy. Marchers protesting the Palestinian "holocaust" were held in Copenhagen, Paris and Madrid. A protest by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party in the northern city of Mosul ended abruptly when a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up, killing one and wounding 16. Some might wonder why al-Qaida would attack other Sunni anti-Zionists. Plainly, the extremists' lust for chaos and bloodshed trumps all.

Pro-Hamas rallies were organized from Teheran to Beirut, and from Baghdad to Cairo. Arab citizens of Israel observed a general strike, accompanied by sporadic rock-throwing and tire-burning. An Arab minister in the Israeli government protested by refusing to attend a cabinet meeting; Palestinian youths in east Jerusalem rioted as their elders honored the strike.

We find it curious that the weekend deaths of 13 schoolchildren in Afghanistan at the hands of an Islamist bomber; the Taliban suicide attack in Pakistan, which claimed 30 Muslim lives, and the unremitting internecine slaughter in Iraq (9,000 dead in 2008 alone) fail to incense the Arab street half as much as the Jews exercising their right to self-defense.

THAT SAID, it is instructive to look beyond the mobs with their incendiary placards, shrill chants and de-rigueur burning of Israeli flags and take note of a remarkable rupture in the Arab and Muslim world.

The Arab elites, comprising statesmen, academics, journalists and businesspeople, may preface their criticism with references to Israel's "crimes," but a significant facet of this class - it would be simplistic to label them "moderates" - appreciates that Hamas is to blame for what is taking place in the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, their hearts may tell them to bankroll Hamas, but their brains tell them that the fanaticism, political intolerance and social backwardness championed by the Islamists pose a profound threat to the Arab future.

These predominantly Sunni elites - whether they sit in Cairo, Riyadh or Amman, in the Maghreb, the Gulf or in the West - don't want their societies to ape the Taliban or the ayatollahs.

HIZBULLAH leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, still in hiding two years after supposedly defeating Israel in the Second Lebanon War, has been denouncing this attitude as he seeks to salvage Hamas's fortunes - in which he and his Iranian patrons are heavily invested - by mobilizing the Arab street.

He has practically called for a revolution in Egypt. As Al Jazeera reported: "Nasrallah urged Egyptians... to force their government to open the country's border with Gaza. 'If the Egyptian people took to the streets by the millions, could the police kill millions of Egyptians? People of Egypt, you must open this border by the force of your chests.'"

What Hizbullah's demagogue in-chief pointedly neglected to tell the throngs watching him on a giant TV screen as he spoke from his bunker, was that Hizbullah and Iran were egging Hamas on to pick a fight with Israel while Egypt (and Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas) were working overtime to convince Hamas to honor the cease-fire.

Nasrallah is half-right. Arab elites suffer from a sort of split personality disorder. Even as they are trying to pull Hamas's chestnuts out of the fire by pressing Washington to lean on Israel to back off, they know that Hamas (like Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood) threatens not just their own regimes, but political development in the Arab world. If only the Jordanian and Saudi monarchs, Gulf emirs and the Egyptian president would stand up to the Islamists.

How? They should be incrementally fostering transparent government and the rule of law, and socializing their masses to the idea of tolerance and majority rule while respecting the minority. That would promote political institution-building and social stability.

The Arab elites need to offer their people an alternative to Islamist extremism. They could begin by redefining what it means to be pro-Palestinian and dissociating the Palestinian cause from anti-Israel rejectionism.

In this context, if Israel can deflate Hamas, it will be advancing an Arab interest as much as its own citizens' security.




MONDAY: Gaza portrayed

With the exception of the White House - which reacted to Israel's Gaza operation by labeling Hamas leaders "nothing but thugs" and blaming the "terrorists" for igniting the violence - international political and media reaction has, by and large, fallen into two broad categories: low-key evenhandedness and knee-jerk condemnation.

The evenhanded school appreciates that no country can permit, indefinitely, its citizens to be bombarded by an enemy committed to its annihilation. Still, they oppose "disproportionate" Israeli measures - basically those that might actually compel Hamas to end its campaign of terror.

Among these evenhanded are Quartet envoy Tony Blair, French President Nicholas Sarkozy (who also holds the EU presidency), British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The quintessentially evenhanded Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy czar, holds any non-combatant deaths on the Palestinian side "unacceptable." His advice? Hamas should stop attacking Israel, and Israel should stop retaliating.

But it is the Vatican's reaction that captures the very essence of evenhandedness: "Hamas is a prisoner to a logic of hate; Israel to a logic of faith in force as the best response to hate." What to do? "One must continue to search for a different way out, even if that may seem impossible."

THERE are those who make no pretense at being evenhanded. For them, Hamas has been exercising its inalienable right to resist "the occupation" by violently opposing the existence of the Jewish state. For them, practically out of the blue, the Zionists went berserk, massacring women, children, and the occasional Hamas "martyr."

Desmond Tutu weighed in by calling Israel's use of its air force to stop Hamas "a war crime." Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of Britain's Guardian, said that Israel's actions ranked with what he termed the massacres of Deir Yassin and Sabra and Shatilla.

Tim Butcher of London's Telegraph aimed to provide context. As time goes on, he explained, Israel lowers the threshold for who it considers a legitimate target. In 2004, "an elderly man in his wheelchair, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was killed by an Israeli missile as he was pushed out of a mosque after weekly prayers." Butcher went on to note that Yassin "was the Hamas leader responsible for ordering suicide bombings." Still, his point was that, nowadays, "any Hamas traffic cop on a street corner" has become fair game.

ISRAEL embarked on this operation to compel Hamas to stop terrorizing our population in the South. It did so reluctantly, and only after Hamas rejected multiple appeals from Mahmoud Abbas and the Egyptian government to maintain the "cease-fire."

Despite the difficulties inherent in presenting Israel's position to a not always sympathetic media, the Prime Minister's Office, Foreign Ministry and IDF recognize that public diplomacy is an integral element in getting Hamas to stop its attacks. To that end, the articulate former UN representative Dan Gillerman has been appointed to coordinate the Foreign Ministry's response to the crisis. On the whole, Israeli spokespeople have rarely been more proactive or competent.

Israel has had no military or civilian presence in Gaza since 2005. Quiet would prevail across the Israel-Gaza border, and the Palestinians could build a model state, if their Hamas leadership were not insistently bent on attacking Israel. Hamas acknowledges as much. Even as its spokesman Taher al-Nunu was telling al-Jazeera and other channels of the current "ferocious Zionist massacre," he was also emphasizing that Hamas will never abandon its determination to destroy Israel.

The declared Israeli aim in the military operation - putting an end to a neighboring terror-state's ability to threaten our populace - is precisely the goal that any other nation would set itself if attacked as Israel has been.

All of this should be obvious to fair-minded observers everywhere. But when dramatic pictures from Gaza threaten to overwhelm clear thinking, Israeli leaders have in the past two days often formulated effective reminders. "Military actions are not easy to support," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni noted in one interview on Monday, for instance. "But this is the only way we can change realities on the ground... This is our responsibility as a government to our citizens."

Carefully chosen words set against dramatic images? It's an uneven media battlefield. But at least, this time, Israel is fighting.




SUNDAY: A time to fight

On Friday, a Hamas spokesman made Israel the following proposal: You keep the stream of humanitarian aid and supplies flowing into Gaza and we will keep launching rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians.

It was an offer Israel had little choice but to refuse.

For weeks Israel has been imploring Hamas to stop shooting across the border, to stop tunneling in preparation for the next round of violence, and to allow our farmers to tend their fields. The Islamists responded that they were not afraid of the IDF and that they reserved the right to resist "the occupation" - meaning the existence of a Jewish state. They brazenly told Israel to get used to the idea that no amount of humanitarian gestures would stem their behavior.

At 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Israel finally told Hamas that it would not be bled, slowly, to death. Thanks to excellent intelligence and superb training, a haughty enemy was caught off-guard. Targets up and down the Strip were hit and large numbers of Hamas personnel including senior military figures were killed. Key facilities were turned into rubble; well-camouflaged equipment was destroyed.

In launching "Operation Cast Lead," Defense Minister Ehud Barak, declared, "There is a time for calm and there is a time for fighting, and now is the time for fighting." And Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, flanked by Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said that Israel had done everything possible to avoid this escalation, but that its entreaties for quiet had been met with disdain.

The IDF's mission is not to bring down the Hamas regime, but to bring quiet to the South. In a sense we are asking Hamas to stop being Hamas. The Islamists need to decide whether they want to go down in flames or are prepared to take on the responsibilities that come with control over the Strip. They may give Israel no choice but to topple their administration.

To their credit, Israeli decision makers are avoiding the kind of bombastic rhetoric all of us came to regret in the course of the Second Lebanon War and its aftermath. Now, what ordinary Israelis demand is that their government deliver, as promised, quiet to the South. We do not expect this operation to be fast or easy. We do expect it to succeed.

Israelis must unite and be vigilant. Regrettably, we've already seen rioting among some east Jerusalem Palestinians. The possibility of disturbances among our Arab citizens cannot be discounted. Hamas rockets may reach targets heretofore thought to be beyond enemy range; their threats to launch suicide attacks must be taken with utmost seriousness. And Diaspora Jews also need be on alert.

ON A quiet post-Christmas weekend, the events in Gaza have captured world attention. From an unsympathetic foreign media, we are already hearing complaints that Israel's retaliation is "disproportionate" and a form of "collective punishment." That over 200 Palestinians have been killed compared to only one Israeli leads some journalists to conclude that Israel is inherently in the wrong. One British news anchor wondered why her government had not already demanded that Israel halt its operation. There was a grudging understanding that Hamas uses Palestinian non-combatants as human shields, along with an unreasonable demand that Israel magically find a way not to harm any of them.

The formula for purchasing the affection of those who suffer from moral relativism is sickeningly clear: if one Jew is killed, we get very little piety. If, heaven forbid, an Israeli kindergarten was to take a direct hit - Israel might, temporarily, gain the sympathy of news anchors from Paris to London to Madrid.

At that price we would rather forgo their sympathy.

Nevertheless, we expect our diplomats to work 24/7 to make Israel's case to the international community. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has begun that process. In an English-language address she said, "Enough is enough" - Israel would not continue to absorb rockets, mortars and bullets without retaliating.

At this newspaper, we wonder how an international community that can't bring itself to explicitly support Israel's operation against the most intransigent of Muslim fanatics expects to play a positive role in facilitating peace in this region.

Hamas must be stopped. And the civilized world must help stop it.

What to do about Gaza, Christmas, Talks with Syria, Epic Scandal

Dear Readers,

Thanks for checking back. Here are my postings for December 22- Dec. 26

Stay warm.
ej

Stop Hamas. Free Gilad Schalit

If the intimations of senior government officials are to be believed, the IDF is poised to embark on an assault against Hamas the like of which has not been seen since the Muslim extremists captured Gaza from Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah in June 2007.

This week saw a relentless barrage of rockets and mortars slamming into homes and fields in southern Israel. More and more Israeli cities are now in range of enemy gunners. Even backbiting Israeli politicians who would rather concentrate on the February 10 Knesset elections find themselves obliged to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to the citizenry. The security cabinet appears to have determined - belatedly - that Israel can no longer tolerate the continued attacks.

We ask: What took so long?

HAMAS is the lord of Gaza and widely popular to boot. Fully expecting to supplant Abbas's PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," it wishes to be treated accordingly.

So what if it has rejected out of hand the international community's demand that the Palestinian leadership be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations including the road map? The Islamists expect that their violent behavior - and exploitation of Palestinian "suffering" - will in due course compel the Quartet to modify its shaky principles.

Hamas is even ready to throw Egyptian mediators a bone: It will agree to another temporary cease-fire with the hated Zionists in return for an uninterrupted flow of goods and supplies through Israeli and Egyptian crossing points. Of course, its industrial-scale smuggling of weapons via tunnels beneath the Philadelphi Corridor must proceed unmolested. Access to the sea must also be assured.

Most crucially, Hamas reserves the unfettered right to use every centimeter of its territory - especially areas adjacent to Israel's border - to lay the groundwork for the next phase of its unyielding confrontation with "the Zionist enemy."

Hamas is galled when the IDF interdicts tunnels being dug for future operations against Israel, or when our air force kills gunmen just as they are planting improvised explosive devices along the border fence. Over the horizon, Hamas looks to the day when it can compel Israel to allow it to operate with impunity against Fatah in the West Bank.

IN THE face of this Palestinian obduracy and the likelihood it will be met by international appeasement, Jerusalem must decide on a single, unwavering public diplomacy message. In the face of outlandish demands to "lift the siege" and "end collective punishment," Israel's mantra needs to be: "Hamas must be stopped. Gilad Schalit must be freed."

As a matter of grand strategy, Israel must not tolerate a hostile entity anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Hamas cannot be allowed to metastasize into a second Hizbullah.

Israel's immediate objective must be to make it impossible for Hamas to govern in Gaza. Yet the choice is not between a massive land invasion and paralysis. The proper method of fighting Hamas is a methodical elimination of its political and military command and control. Concurrently, IDF artillery need to shoot back at the sources of enemy fire.

Gaza has a border with Egypt and Cairo has lately invited those who want to send supplies to Gaza to use its Rafah crossing. But the crossing points from Israel into Gaza must be kept closed for the duration of the battle.

Though the political campaign here is in full swing, we expect worthy politicians to put country first. Absent a strong home front, Ehud Olmert's lame-duck government and fragmented coalition will be unable to withstand the predictable international pressure to halt operations prematurely.

Once begun, Israel's battle against Hamas must be terminated only when the Islamists lose their governing capacity. This may set the stage for Western-trained Fatah forces to reenter the Strip.

Any resort to force by the IDF raises the possibility of unintended consequences. Israel's home front could be hit hard. Hizbullah could launch diversionary attacks. The Arab street in non-belligerent countries could roil. If enemy non-combatants are killed, nasty media coverage is certain.

We may express regret; but we must not apologize. Whatever happens, we must be resolute: Hamas must be stopped.



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Christmas 2008


Today is Christmas throughout most of the Christian world. For the faithful, the holiday marks the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago. Christian tradition teaches that Jesus was divine as well as the messiah, and sent to fulfill biblical prophesies. He was, of course, a Jew - and the Jews' rejection of him, and of the Trinity, led to centuries of anti-Semitic persecution and contempt for Judaism.

Mercifully, there have been tremendous ecumenical advances in relations between Christians and Jews, especially since the Holocaust. Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit Israel next year. Pope John Paul II came in 2000. The Holy See and the Jewish state established relations in 1994. And some of Israel's greatest benefactors are affiliated with vibrant evangelical churches. In October, 35,000 Protestant pilgrims participated in the annual Feast of Tabernacles parade in Jerusalem.

Still, some mainline US and UK churches have redefined their Christian faith, making political activism their raison d'être and, foremost, championing the Palestinian Arab cause at the expense of the Zionist enterprise. Some have even joined British campaigners who are exploiting Christmas themes as propaganda tools against Israel.

Sovereign in their own land, some Jews have, disappointingly, not always shown tolerance toward their Christian brethren. The most disgraceful recent presumed manifestation of such bigotry is the still unsolved April bombing at the home of a Christian pastor in Ariel that left his 16-year-old son seriously wounded. In June, Orthodox fanatics in Or Yehuda burned copies of the New Testament; in a number of towns extremists regularly harass tiny congregations of Jewish converts to Christianity who call themselves Messianic Jews.

LAST NIGHT, Israel Television (along with radio's Arabic service) broadcast the Roman Catholic Mass live from the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. By tradition, this is where the Virgin Mary received the news from the angel Gabriel that she would give birth to Jesus.

Meanwhile in Bethlehem, which is under the jurisdiction of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority on the other side of Israel's life-saving security barrier, thousands attended Christmas Mass at the Catholic Church of Saint Catherine, which adjoins the mostly Orthodox Church of the Nativity, the traditional place of Jesus' birth.

Christian Arab citizens of Israel have been permitted to cross into Bethlehem for the holiday, and the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria has granted permission to 15,000 Palestinian Christians to visit their families inside the Green Line. Several hundred Christians from Gaza have also received permission to enter Bethlehem.

Hotels there are full. Christians in the West Bank, like other Palestinian Arabs there, are enjoying a mild economic boon following the ruinous second intifada, which tapered off around 2005. With Yasser Arafat now gone and the PA in the hands of relative moderates, Israel has been able to facilitate an improvement in the quality of life for West Bankers. Over 100 security checkpoints have been lifted, making it easier for locals to traverse the territory. Unemployment is down, though still too high; the local economy has grown by 4-5 percent. An unusually good olive harvest has boosted spirits; wages are up, and trade has risen by 35%.

None of this is to suggest that things are as they could be. Until the fragmented Palestinian leadership is both willing and able to conclude a peace deal with Israel, and pending an improvement in the worldwide recession, further development will likely be sluggish.

CHRISTIANITY REMAINS the world's biggest religion, with about 2.1 billion followers. Paradoxically, in the Holy Land, their numbers are meager. There are only about 160,000 Christians in Israel - about 2.1 percent of the population, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Approximately 80 percent are Arabs; most of the rest emigrated here from the former Soviet Union.

There are in addition some 35,000 Christians in the West Bank and 3,000 beleaguered believers under Hamas rule in Gaza, where a number of Christian institutions, among them the YMCA, have been bombed by Islamist fundamentalists. Christian Arabs, about 1.3 percent of the Palestinian population, nevertheless tend to identify culturally with the Palestinian cause.

THE CHRISTIAN world shares many values and concerns with the Jewish people. As we wish Christians everywhere Merry Christmas, we hope for ever stronger ties and increased mutual respect.

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The Assad-Olmert 'dialogue'

What to make of this week's exchange of platitudes between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar Assad? Olmert was on his way to Ankara to promote peace with Syria just as Assad was holding a news conference with Croatian president President Stipe Mesic in Damascus.

By prior arrangement - in coordination with Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Assad allowed that it would be "natural" for Syria and Israel to talk directly at some stage. "I compared the peace process to my friend the president of Croatia to the construction of a building - we first build the solid foundations and then we build the building, not vice versa," said Assad.

This was Olmert's cue: "What you don't do today in the Middle East, it's not certain you will be able to do tomorrow."

IT IS hard to credit either Olmert or Assad with pure intentions. Olmert is a lame-duck premier hounded from office by corruption charges, with little credibility and even less political capital to expend. Assad is a second-generation tyrant whose flawless, British-accented English belies his tight alliance with Iran and its proxy, Hizbullah.

We are not suggesting that Olmert should have stayed at home, or that Israeli diplomacy be put on hold until a new government is formed in 2009. Indeed, the Turks may have been trying to be helpful on another front: quietening the border between a bellicose, Hamas-controlled Gaza and Israel.

When it comes to bilateral relations between Israel and Syria, however, it is hard to lend credence to Olmert's efforts, especially with Israel in the midst of an election campaign.

WE WOULD have thought better of Olmert had he used his Ankara visit to tell the world what Jerusalem expects in any exchange of land for peace with Syria. Yes, a treaty is in Jerusalem's long-term interest, but not at any price. Olmert might have tactfully reminded his Turkish hosts that Syria lost the Golan Heights when, unprovoked, it attacked Israel in 1967.

He should have stressed that irrevocable strategic concessions by Israel on the Golan could only be justified - for the overwhelming majority of Israelis - in return for a true opening of genuine peaceful relations. Last April, though, Assad said that he would not "impose" normalization with Israel on the Syrian people. If Assad hasn't changed his mind about this, why isn't Olmert taking him to task?

Israelis have more questions about Syrian intentions than answers. For example: When will Assad respond to demands by the International Atomic Energy Agency to come clean about his nuclear weapons program? And when will Syria turn away from Iran and toward the West as part of a peace with Israel?

Why are cultural ties between Syria and Iran now closer than ever? The two states are even collaborating on a propaganda film about the Second Lebanon War.

More worryingly, Syria has reportedly been helping Iran evade international sanctions by allowing its territory to be used for trans-shipping missile components from Venezuela. Damascus has also funneled Iranian weapons to Hizbullah and anti-American fighters into neighboring Iraq. Moreover, a good deal of the cash that keeps Hamas afloat in Gaza - undermining Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas - is channeled via Hamas's Damascus headquarters.

No wonder Syria has been on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism for three decades.

Earlier this week, the editor of the London-based Asharq al-Awsat spelled out the obvious: If Syria really wanted to reorient its foreign policy toward the West, it would have to radically alter its relationship with Teheran, Hizbullah and Hamas.

Even Arab observers are interpreting Assad's chatter about direct talks with Israel as intended to mislead President-elect Barak Obama into believing Damascus genuinely seeks peace. If so, Assad is following a well-thumbed Syrian script - feigning moderation while stoking violence, unwilling to pay the price of peace yet anxious not to be ostracized for his intransigence.

Assad's approach is already paying off with some EU countries. Our question is: Why should Ehud Olmert be smoothing his path?



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Epic scandal

Not many people have heard of the Yeshaya Horowitz Foundation, which disbursed about $140 million over the past 15 years in Israel. Started by an anonymous donor, it funded basic medical research - advancing theoretical knowledge in science and medicine with no immediate commercial value. Such work, however, often sets the stage for private industry to take over. Horowitz money paid for doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships, and was just now covering the completion of a lab to be jointly operated by Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University.

Several weeks ago, when monies supposed to have been routinely deposited failed to materialize, a persistent Horowitz staffer made a series of inquiries which led, astonishingly, to a pithy telephone exchange with the august Bernard L. Madoff, whose firm had been managing the funds bequeathed to the foundation. Lately, noted the staffer, payments have been late in coming, and the November monies haven't arrived at all.

"You'll get your money," said Madoff, before abruptly hanging up.

Now it appears that the Yeshaya Horowitz Foundation has been wiped out - one of a long list of praiseworthy organizations laid low or mortally wounded by the unspeakable avarice of Madoff and, as of this writing, his unknown co-conspirators.

It is the most awful philanthropic scandal in history.

Throughout the Jewish world, communal leaders are endeavoring to ascertain which of their prosperous members - precisely those who carry the heaviest philanthropic burden - have been swindled by Madoff. Some federations in Boston, New Jersey, Los Angeles and Greater Washington have, we know, been hard-hit. But the number of charities, not-for-profits and educational institutions whose work, if not their very existence, has been jeopardized is too long to itemize here. They include Yeshiva University, fortunately positioned to weather the storm, and Hadassah, which has lost $90 million and been forced to cancel its 2009 convention in New Orleans.

Among those who will pay for Madoff's greed are cancer patients, the aged and Jewish day schoolers. For instance, the Chais Family Foundation's assets of $178 million have been wiped out. Chais had recently allocated $1 million to the ORT educational network. All gone.

The Robert I. Lappin Foundation, a major benefactor of Birthright, has been forced to close. Yad Sarah, too, has taken a hit.

Obviously, it's not only charities which have been affected. So have leading Israeli insurance and financial services companies. Reports say Phoenix had a $15-million exposure to Madoff; Harel $7.5 million, and Clal $3 million.

Outside the Jewish world, the pensions of fire-fighters in Colorado and teachers in South Korea have all been impacted.

ALL THIS bad news comes on top of a worldwide economic meltdown that had anyway been threatening the budgets of schools, universities, hospitals and Jewish communal institutions. These were already very dark days. They've just gotten darker.

The Jewish world finds itself shaken - by the financial losses caused by the international economic downturn, by the blows inflicted by Madoff, and on top of these, by a profound sense of embarrassment at the perpetrator's openly aligning himself with modern Orthodox Jewry. If we tell ourselves that Muslim terrorism is enabled by a larger collective that tolerates extremism, what do we say about a swindler with such close ties to our community?

Was not Jerusalem Post financial columnist Pinchas Landau spot-on when he inquired whether it was Madoff alone who had lost his moral compass? Landau is surely justified in emphasizing the ethical component to Judaism and arguing that too many of us, focused on ritual, have lost sight of its centrality.

We must be grateful that in our age of unbridled materialism and moral relativism there are still members of our community who haven't lost their capacity for shame.

The Jewish people has engaged from time immemorial in a never-ending struggle to be a light unto the nations. Madoff is a dismal reminder that we still have a long way to go. Our capacity for communal soul-searching is a strength. Let's not shirk it.

And let's remind ourselves, too, that US Jews, who comprise 2 percent of the population, donate as if they comprised a quarter of Americans.

The best answer to Madoff is for more and more Jews - not just the rich - to give charity.