E V I L

Friday - Evil's insidious nature

Yesterday in Manhattan, United States District Judge Denny Chin accepted Bernard Madoff's guilty plea on 11 felony charges: securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and theft from an employee benefits plan. There was no plea bargain. He faces 150 years in prison.

• On Wednesday, in the southern German town of Winneden, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer went on a three-hour rampage that took him from his old high school to the center of a nearby town, leaving a trail of 15 dead, mostly women and girls. Cornered by police, Kretschmer committed suicide. German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the slaughter as "incomprehensible."

• Also in Germany, prosecutors have charged retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his actions at the Sobibor death camp. To face justice, however, the 88-year-old will have to be extradited from US.

• "If you had met him two days ago, you would have thought he was an average 28-year-old young man," said an acquaintance of Michael McLendon, who went berserk and killed his mother and nine others in southern Alabama, just hours before Kretschmer's rampage across the ocean.

Wherever one looks, evil - in various guises - is present: From Ireland, where Catholic extremists are killing again; to Mexico, where more than 6,000 people were slaughtered last year in the drug war; to Somalia, where pirates rule the seacoast; to Equador, which is on the road to becoming a partly-owned subsidiary of Iran in return in for power plants and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. Move on to Iraq, where a suicide bomber killed 33 tribal leaders who were on a reconciliation walk through a market.

Closer to home, an elderly Afula couple, he a cancer-ridden Holocaust survivor, she infirm, were this week viciously beaten in their apartment by robbers.

EVIL. The term must not be bandied about lightly or irresponsibly. Yet the real thing needs to be recognized and faced down, and not merely relegated to the fields of forensic psychiatry, philosophy or theology. Because evil is so insidious, it has a way of manipulating even that which is pure to serve its nefarious ends. Thus policymakers, and the informed public, need to be alert to its presence.

Take how Hamas, whose genocidal intentions toward the Jewish state make it evil, is benefiting from the pressure campaign being waged (legitimately and understandably) by the Schalit family and (less altruistically) by much of the local media and various politicians, some of them transparently self-serving. As a consequence, perhaps, Ofer Dekel, the prime minister's aide charged with negotiating Gilad's freedom, has reportedly proposed releasing 210 of the terrorists "with blood on their hands" that Hamas is demanding. As far as we know, the "worst of the worst" have not been included - yet.

Gilad's desperately anguished parents, Noam and Aviva, who have set up a protest tent near the prime minister's residence, fear that the next government's negotiating position will be less malleable than Olmert's. They and their supporters have intensified pressure on Olmert to unconditionally free each and every terrorist on Hamas's wish list. President Shimon Peres and even Aliza Olmert have given Gilad's parents succor.

Across the street, another protest tent had folded up for lack of interest.

"We came to Jerusalem to let our voices be heard," said Ron Karman, whose 17-year-old daughter, Tal, was one of 17 fatalities of the March 5, 2003 bombing of Egged bus No. 37 in Haifa. "When we were sitting shiva, the politicians made all sorts of promises. They said their doors would always be open to us. We found those doors [of politicians and the media] closed."

Karman was joined by Yossi Mandelevich, whose boy, Yuval, 13, was on the same bus; and by Yossi Zur, whose son, Asaf, 17, was also killed there. The fathers said that they opposed the release of prisoners with blood on their hands - for the sake of other people's children.

In the waning days of the Olmert government, there is a very real danger that an emotionally co-opted public will, with the purest of intentions, pressure a discredited premier to hand evil another appetite-whetting victory.

Yesh Din

Wed. & Thursday - Israel's latest crime


To the ever-lengthening litany of Israeli wickedness - crimes against humanity, war crimes, occupation, genocide - add quarry pillaging. So says Yesh Din, a group of "volunteers who have organized to oppose the continuing violation of Palestinian human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory." Yesh Din says that as part of its "brutal economic exploitation" of the Palestinians, Israel has been stealing their rocks.

Much of the gravel Israel quarries for marble kitchen counters and such comes from the West Bank. "This type of activity," Yesh Din asserts, "constitutes a violation of the laws of belligerent occupation [and is] pillage."

Yesh Din wants Israel's Supreme Court to enjoin companies from transporting rocks across the Green Line because, bereft of rocks, Palestinians would find it impossible to build a state. Or, in the words of the front-page headline in Sunday's International Herald Tribune: "West Bank losing land to Israel, rock by rock."

IN FACT, the West Bank is disputed: When the Palestinians rejected the two-state solution in 1948, Jordan annexed the area. In 1967, Israel repelled a Jordanian attack and captured the territory.

The 1949 Geneva Convention - the basis for claims that Israel is violating international law - applies in cases of armed conflict between signatories to the convention. While Jordan and Israel are signatories, virtually no state recognized Jordan's annexation of the West Bank. Hence the area was and remains in legal limbo.

While Israel, de facto, adheres to the humanitarian provisions of the Geneva Convention, it has a right to quarry in the contested territory. No one suggests the quarries have been illegally confiscated or are private property.

It's legitimate to call attention to the environmental impact of quarrying or the depletion of natural resources. The territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, encompassing Israel proper and the West Bank, is one integral unit. What happens in the mountainous interior affects the coastal plain, and vice versa. The New York Times recently reported that Israel is heading toward a "serious shortage of raw building materials," noting that West Bank quarries supply 25 percent of the sand and gravel we use.

Perhaps our regulatory authorities need to do a better job of monitoring the environmental impact and economic consequences of quarrying in Judea and Samaria. But these issues are not Yesh Din's primary concern.

THE GROUP, founded just four years ago, is the recipient of considerable largesse. Funds flow, legitimately, from The New Israel Fund, Oxfam, Hermod Lannungs Fund, Jacobs Charitable Trust, The Marc Rich Foundation and the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation. It is also supported by the powerful Israeli law firm of Yigal Arnon.

But it's the money Yesh Din gets from foreign governments that's troubling. The European Commission, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and the UK all want Israel out of the West Bank. We suspect they give Yesh Din money because its work helps delegitimize Israel's presence there.

Unfortunately, Israel lacks anything like America's "Foreign Agents Registration Act," which requires persons to disclose if they are "acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity."

Yesh Din's volunteers and individual contributors are doubtless sincere about promoting human rights; but this is one of several organizations funded by foreign governments that work against the interests of Israel's mainstream by chipping away at any Jewish claims beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines.

Israel's security concerns - for instance, how to prevent the West Bank from becoming a Kassam launching-pad against the Jewish state's main population centers - do not interest Yesh Din; nor does the threat of terrorist infiltration.

Not even Palestinian political intransigence, reflected in the unwillingness of relative moderates like Mahmoud Abbas to meet half-way willing Israeli partners - Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 - has relevance for Yesh Din: The group and the foreign governments that fund it want Israel out of the West Bank. Period.

Thus, while "promoting human rights," an organization subsidized by foreign powers encourages Palestinian negotiators to hang tough while it lobbies their interests.

Clearly, casting an avalanche of criticism at Israel's "violations of international law" is easier for Yesh Din than plumbing the ethics of its dependency on foreign powers.

It's Purim all over ...but, Jerusalem Celebrates Purim on Wed

Tuesday - Too good to be true


The deluge of good news, on a variety of fronts - coinciding with this year's Purim festival - demands we pause from our usual dreary agenda to offer praise where it is due.

To Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, for acknowledging that he had no good reason for dragging out the indictment of former president Moshe Katsav. "I have issues with procrastination," he noted, "but this time I think I really am ready."

To former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, who admitted that "Judges should not dominate the process of selecting judges. We need a system with checks and balances," he told the Bar Association.

Law and order was further boosted when Israel's crime syndicate - moetzet gedolei ha'avaryanim - declared its constituents would no longer engage in human trafficking, extortion or the drug trade. A top mobster confessed: "We have become nothing more than Hebrew-speaking thugs. Enough!"

THE Finance Ministry deserves our esteem for promising it would pull out all stops to fast-track completion of the express rail line linking Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making it operational by 2012.

El Al lifted spirits by announcing it would not follow Ryanair's lead of making passengers pay for the right to relieve themselves on flights. "It's clever of them to offer free bottled water while charging for the use of the toilets, but we intend to focus on long-term customer loyalty by giving economy class passengers 15 percent more leg room," said spokesman Matos Avir.

Editors of the British newspapers The Guardian, The Times and The Daily Telegraph made encouraging headlines by jointly pledging to take a more balanced stance in their coverage of Israel and leave the task of delegitimizing the Jewish state primarily to The Independent. In a related praiseworthy development, the ombudsman at the International Herald Tribune admitted that using a photograph of Arab women marching past the ruins of a bombed building in the Gaza Strip as the paper's lead photo on International Women's Day was "tendentious."

Kol Hamusika, Israel's classical station, struck a positive note by promising to play music listeners might enjoy instead of the atonal post-modern din which dominates its playlist.

We're impressed, too, that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker decided to forgo a trip to the Gaza Strip and focus attention instead on genocide in the Sudan. "Sure I could jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon," she said. "But Palestinians capture a disproportionate amount of press attention, which detracts from far more pressing issues."

SPAIN is to be congratulated for repealing a law allowing its courts to apply "universal jurisdiction" to harass Israeli security personnel involved in the 2002 liquidation of Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh. A Spanish legal scholar explained: "We just felt that with our history of inquisitions and persecution and false neutrality during the Holocaust, we really had no moral standing to denounce Israelis for defending themselves."

The organizers of the UN Conference on Racism (Durban II) deserve appreciation for cancelling the event because "the enterprise had devolved into a frenzy of non-governmental Jew-hatred."

HERE AT home, we are delighted by the IDF's announcement that, for the first time in decades, the West Bank will not be sealed off from Israel proper over the Purim holiday. With the notion of Palestinian Arabs blowing up buses or threatening children's Purim parades now fantastical, the need for closures is, thankfully, obviated.

India is to be commended for its pledge of $5 million to help rebuild Sderot, matching its $5 million for similar reconstruction in Gaza. To the Palestinian Authority's credit, it has rejected the cash, saying it couldn't account for billions of dollars in previously donated international contributions. "What we really need," said Mahmoud Abbas, "is not more money but a trusteeship for Palestine to help us create a culture of tolerance and respect for minority rights."

But the ultimate praise goes to Iran, which now admits that it has been working on an atom bomb, but has decided to stop as a result of a vision which came to Ayatollah Khamenei. "The Prophet sent an angel to tell me that God wanted the Children of Abraham to work out our differences amicably," he told a delirious throng in Teheran's Revolution Square.

Delirious indeed.

Avigdor Lieberman - Israel's next foreign minister

Monday - From Eban to Lieberman


Avigdor Lieberman is no Abba Eban, yet destiny - or more accurately, a fragmented body politic and an outmoded method of building governing coalitions - has decreed that the Israel Beiteinu leader will likely become this country's next foreign minister.

Eban was suave, cosmopolitan, Cambridge-educated. He made his first appearance before the UN Security Council in 1948. More popular abroad than at home, he served nine years as our ambassador to both Washington and the UN. Word that he was appearing helped fill Yankee Stadium at a Salute to Israel rally in 1956. As foreign minister during both the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, his mellifluous voice became synonymous with the justice of Israel's cause.

Lieberman, in contrast, is far more popular at home than abroad. The foreign press labels him, not without justification, "a provocative nationalist." His party captured 15 Knesset seats (behind Kadima's 28 and Likud's 27) thanks to a demagogic campaign advocating that Israel's Arab minority prove its fidelity.

This newspaper rejects the notion that individuals who are already citizens be required to sign a loyalty oath. Fortunately, there is zero chance of Lieberman's populist rhetoric getting translated into government policy.

Of course, Lieberman would not be standing on the threshold of the Foreign Ministry had Kadima leader Tzipi Livni put country first and accepted Binyamin Netanyahu's offer to become a senior partner in his government. She was willing to serve as his foreign minister only if he agreed to serve as hers in a four-year rotation government.

Israel's previous experience with a rotation government occurred in 1984, when similarly inconclusive results led Labor's Shimon Peres and the Likud's Yitzhak Shamir to join forces: Peres served as premier for the first two years, with Shamir as his FM; the two then switched places midway. It was a dysfunctional marriage, which then US ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis said required him to deal with "two Israeli governments." Israel was left diplomatically rudderless, absent a hierarchy, and for four years its friends were at a loss to discern who spoke for Jerusalem. Netanyahu is right to reject a repeat of this nightmare scenario.

Livni's claim that policy differences over negotiations with the Palestinians are keeping her out of the government is hardly credible. What supposedly sets Kadima and Likud apart is the theoretical matter of how talks with the Palestinians should be concluded. Given that Mahmoud Abbas would not cut a deal with Ehud Olmert, the latter's generosity of spirit and political desperation notwithstanding, we fail to understand why a possible divergence of views over the precise nature of a far-off Palestinian sovereignty should, at this stage, keep Livni in the opposition. Her refusal to join the government at this time of unparalleled diplomatic, security and economic challenges will serve neither her nor Kadima.

WE ARE not enamored with the government in the making; not with Lieberman at the Foreign Ministry; not with Shas's Eli Yishai at Interior. The incoming government will have neither the ability nor inclination to pursue electoral reform or religious pluralism. It will lack the diplomatic agility necessary for creative statecraft.

Lieberman will be to Netanyahu's Foreign Ministry what Amir Peretz was to Olmert's Defense Ministry - a patronage appointment in a job that begs for a sophisticated actor of world stature and an engaging media presence - Israel's face to the world. That Livni has fallen short of these criteria does not assuage our concerns over Lieberman. While his spoken English is no worse than hers, we saw the consequences of her ineloquence during Operation Cast Lead.

IN THE aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, Eban addressed the 1973 Geneva Conference: "The crisis in the Middle East has many consequences, but only one cause. Israel's right to peace… indeed its very right to live, has been forcibly denied and constantly attacked. In no other dispute has there ever been such a total denial, not only of the sovereign rights of a state, but even its legitimate personality."

Sadly, Eban's words hold no less true today than they did 35 years ago. Equally disheartening, perhaps, is that eloquence of speech and clarity of thought are no longer a prerequisite for the job of foreign minister.

The man who rules Iran: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Friday - Optimism in Teheran


It isn't everyday we're given insight into the strategic thinking of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But on Wednesday he addressed the Fourth International Conference for Support of Palestine in Teheran. Among the luminaries rumored to be in attendance was Hizbullah's Hassan Nasrallah.

Iranian presidents come and go; the supreme leader, who sits atop the regime's political, judicial and military hierarchy, rules for life.

Khamenei professed to be in an optimistic mood following the "amazing military and political defeats" Israel suffered in the Second Lebanon War and more recently in Gaza. Still, he was bitter about what the "Zionist criminals" did - "impaling of infants" for instance. Fortunately, he noted, "advances in technology" (read al-Jazeera) have exposed "the magnitude" of Israel's atrocities.

He denounced Muslim "pragmatists" who, in the mistaken belief that Israel was too strong to destroy, have been willing to temporarily accept its existence. And he had even less patience for those who genuinely "entertained hopes of peaceful coexistence."

After 60 years of "occupation" the "illegitimacy" of the Zionist regime stands undiminished. The Holocaust must be denied because it "served as an excuse for the usurpation of Palestine." On the bright side, he noted that Israel's image has never been more tarnished and lauded the "spontaneous" protests conducted by Israel's enemies around the world. Israel was a "fake and counterfeit nation" a "cancerous tumor" that could not be negotiated with - though some Palestinian leaders make the mistake of doing so. The only way for Muslims and Palestinians to achieve victory over the "Zionist usurper" is "resistance."

Claiming that "the question of Palestine is the most urgent problem of the Islamic world," Khamenei denounced the Obama administration for its "unconditional commitment to Israel's security." It's a policy that amounts "to the same crooked ways of the Bush administration and nothing else."

Khamenei proposed that a referendum be held of "all those who have a legitimate stake in the territory of Palestine, including Muslims, Christians and Jews" wherever they may be. He presumed, however, that just as the West did not honor the genuinely free election of Hamas among Palestinians, so too, it would not allow the future of Palestine to be determined by a worldwide plebiscite of Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Typical Western hypocrisy, Khamenei concluded.

THE IDEA that Khamenei will modify so perverted, so deep-seated, a worldview as a result of Obama administration suasion, or European economic incentives and political inducements, is risible.

For Khamenei, Israel is a cancer alright, but America, Britain and Western values generally are the carcinogens; excising Israel alone will not bring the supreme leader the global caliphate he seeks.

Thus the more propitiously President Barack Obama "engages" with Teheran, the quicker Khamenei's creed will come to the fore, and the more transparent it should be that candidate Obama's pledge: "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" deserves to be honored.

WE MAY never know what possessed a Palestinian Arab in Jerusalem yesterday to use a construction vehicle as a weapon. We can surmise, however, that like others before him he was socialized within a religio-political milieu which encourages belligerence, victimization and martyrdom - precisely the ideals inculcated into the minds of Khamenei's own Revolutionary Guards.

For all its homicidal tendencies, there is no evidence that, at its apex, Iran's regime is suicidal. Yet its most loyal cadre has been whipped-up by a messianic dogma that blends Persian imperialism with Shi'ite embitterment - belligerence, victimization and martyrdom. One shudders to think that if Iran's nuclear ambitions aren't foiled, some overly zealous revolutionary guard might have more than a tractor at his disposal. The Soviet-era template of containment and deterrence simply won't apply.

This week, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal urged the Arabs to come together in the face of the "Iranian challenge." Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Iran to stop interfering in Palestinian affairs. While the Arabs fret about the instability wrought by Teheran in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan they, like Europeans and Africans, are hedging their bets.

So the longer Obama takes to crystallize his policy, the harder it will be to stop the Iranian bomb.

No wonder Khamenei feels optimistic.