The Complete Maccabean Online: March, 2008

My father, Edward Honigman, of blessed memory, returned home after spending four years as a gunner in the U.S. Navy's Armed Guard (assigned, especially, to protect Allied shipping from U-Boats and such) in World War II, met my mother, Sylvia, and soon joined the ranks of many others siring another baby boomer.me.

I made my grand debut on May 8, 1948, Harry Truman's birthday.the President who would fight his own State Department within just a few days of my birth when he officially recognized the rebirth of Israel on May 14th. Thirteen years later I would become a Bar Mitzvah on that very same date.

     So, I guess you could say that modern Israel and myself have sort of grown up together.

     I have watched, with pride, as an Israel reborn arose from the ashes--the risen phoenix of my millennially persecuted, subjugated, and massacred people. It did so on a miniscule portion of the world's real estate, where Jews have 4,000 years of continuous history, and proceeded to produce one of the most vibrant, advanced, and productive societies on Earth.things which only make assorted anti-Semites (including those masking themselves as anti-Zionists) hate it even more. While imperfect for sure, as all human endeavors are, compared to the largely tyrannical mess which surrounds the Jew of the Nations in its neighborhood, Israel is indeed a light unto the nations.the Biblical mission of its "chosenness."

While Arabs deliberately target the most innocent of Jews, Israel's Hadassah Hospital flies in Arabs for life-saving medical treatment unavailable in their own countries.

Recall that when Theodore Herzl--the father of modern political Zionism--approached Pope Pius X for support around the turn of the 20th century, he was told that this would be impossible since Jews--the alleged deicide people--were condemned to be perpetual wanderers since they rejected the divinity of Jesus. Herzl was later quoted as saying that, in retrospect, maybe his refusal to kiss the Pope's ring ticked the latter off even more and sealed the fate of their meeting.

The road to Auschwitz was paved by many of such "sacred" teachings.including those of the Vatican's nemesis, Martin Luther, and even earlier in the Christian New Testament itself. The Gospel of John calls the Jews--not "just" Pharisees--children of the Devil. Not to mention similar problems in the Muslims' Qur'an.

     If ever an Hebraic prophesy could send chills up one's spine, certainly Ezekiel 37 (the Valley of the Dry Bones) rang true in the aftermath of the slaughter of one third of all world Jewry during the Holocaust. Listen.

     The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.

And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.
Again He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.

Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:

And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.

Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

Then He said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.

Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.

And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves...

Within a few years of the Holocaust, besides remnants from the West, more Jews would flee Arab/Muslim lands to Israel than Arabs who fled in the reverse direction as a result of the combined Arab invasion of the renascent Jewish State in '48.

I have watched (and fought with my pen) from afar as an Israel, constantly under the spotlight's glare and subjected to hypocritical double standards by much of the rest of the world (including the American State Department--still fighting Truman's ghost), struggled as hard as humanly possible to honor the moral and ethical imperatives of its Hebraic traditions while fighting enemies who delight in disemboweling Jewish children and their own as shahids.

As I have often noted, how dare Jews want, in one resurrected state covering less than one-sixth of one per cent of the Middle East (requiring a magnifying glass to find it on a world map), what Arabs have carved out for themselves in almost two dozen nations on over six million square miles of territory. Recall also that most of that territory was forcibly conquered and Arabized from native, non-Arab peoples. To Arabs, however, the area is simply purely Arab patrimony.

To understand the meaning of reborn Israel to the Jew, one needs to know what Jewish history was like for two thousand years after the Jews dared to take on the conqueror of the world for their independence. A reading of the contemporary Roman-sponsored historians--Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Josephus, etc.-- gives a 'non-Zionist' account of the fervor with which Jews fought for the freedom of their land.

Listen to Tacitus in Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus:

Vespasian... succeeded to the command.... it inflamed his resentment that the Jews were the only nation that had not yet submitted.Titus was appointed by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea... he commanded three legions in Judaea itself... To these he added the twelfth from Syria and the third and twenty-second from Alexandria... amongst his allies were a band of Arabs, formidable in themselves and harboring towards the Jews the bitter animosity usually subsisting between neighboring nations

This was during the first revolt in 66-73 C.E. The Arch of Titus stands in Rome to this very day to commemorate this victory over the Jews.

     Later, the emperor Hadrian became so enraged at the Jews' persistence that in 135 C.E., after the second major (and even more costly) revolt, he renamed Judaea Syria Palaestina--Palestine--after the Jews' historic enemies, the non-Semitic, non-Arab Philistines (who originated in the area around Crete), in an attempt to end the Jews' hopes once and for all.

     Forced conversions, being branded the "deicide people," inquisitions, demonization, dehumanization, ghettos, blood libels, massacres, expulsions, the Holocaust, and constant existence as perpetual stranger in someone else's land became the plight of the Wandering Jew.

     Estimates have placed the number of Jews murdered as a result of these experiences, prior to the Holocaust, in both the Christian West--where they were considered to be "G_d killers" and children of the Devil--or in the Muslim East, where there was no Holocaust per se, but where Jews were still frequently regarded as "killers of prophets" and kilab yahud "Jew dogs" (frequently never knowing what the morrow would bring) in the millions.

With all the imagined, real, and potential sins of nationalism, if ever any people needed the protection of their own nation state for just their very survival and to preserve their dignity, the Jews certainly fit the mold. Even the United States' General Ulysses S. Grant (the future President) issued expulsion orders to the Jews of the South during the Civil War.

As we approach both of our birthdays, my wish for Israel is that it regains leaders who will maintain the highest standards for Israel being a light unto the nations, but not at the sacrifice of its own long awaited resurrection and well being.no matter who is tightening the screws.

Finally, as a footnote, I will receive a very special gift this year...

Modern Israel, on the Hebrew Calendar, also turns sixty on May 8th.

Nakba Crapka…

by Gerald A. Honigman

Honigman… How can you be so insensitive!!!???

Perhaps the following will help explain…

The lunar Hebrew calendar date for Israel Independence Day (May 14, 1948) falls on May 8th this year. The resurrected nation of Christianity’s alleged Deicide People, the “Wandering Jews,” and the Arabs’ kilab yahud (“Jew dogs”) and myself both turn sixty, G_d willing, on the exact same day.

Shortly after the festivities, the world will face another “celebration” of sorts…the Arabs’ “Nakba” day, on May 15th of each year. That’s what the Arabs call their catastrophe…Israel’s rebirth, placing a guilt trip for their own post-'48 predicament on Jews.

They’ll demonstrate all over--including in Israel itself--and assorted media will give them as much if not more coverage than they did for Israel Independence Day.

While I don’t deny Arabs attention, would the same protests of scores of millions of black Africans (in the Sudan and elsewhere), Copts, Imazighen (Berbers), Kurds, Assyrians, Jewish refugees from Arab/Muslim lands (and the few Jews still remaining there), and other non-Arab victims of Arab imperial conquest, forced Arabization, murder, expulsion, and so forth over years get the same media publicity?

Of course not.

None of the Arabs’ multitudes of victims dare to even demonstrate without placing their own lives on the line. And when they rarely do, few--if any--people elsewhere in the world usually get to see or hear about such things anyway. It takes Arab mass murder of such folks as in the Anfal campaign in Iraq or in the Sudan before anyone even notices. So forget about what Arabs are doing to Kurds in Arab Syria right now without anyone saying a word. The murdered aren’t numerous enough yet, I guess…forget about their on-going subjugation.

All right…but, still, didn’t Arabs also suffer because of the Jews’ insistence on casting off their perpetual victim and statelessness condition?

Yes, some did, but here’s the main point…

The Arab nakba was a catastrophe which didn’t have to be.

Arabs were mainly victims of self-inflicted wounds which occurred due to their own subjugating, racist attitudes towards all others daring to stake a claim, no matter how small, after the break up of the four century-old Ottoman Turkish Empire in what Arabs proclaimed to be--as a result of their own earlier imperial conquests--purely Arab patrimony.

While no one is squeaky clean once hostilities erupt, the post-‘48 Arab predicament was sired overwhelmingly by themselves.

When bullets and bombs start to fly and comrades start to fall, too often all Hell breaks loose.

But if Arabs had not repeatedly attacked Jews and invaded a reborn Israel in 1948, the Arab nakba would not have come to pass. Massive non-Zionist contemporary evidence (including from Arabs) testifies to this. And some Arabs (most new-comers themselves into the Palestine Mandate) would have come to live (as many now do) in one Jewish State--which made Arabic a second official language and where Arabs who side with Hamas sit in Israel’s Parliament--as millions of non-Arabs (including many Jews) have lived in almost two dozen “Arab” states. Contrast the Israeli Arab example with many non-Arabs who had their own languages and cultures outlawed in "Arab" lands.

In the State Department's current darling, Mahmoud Abbas’s, own words, as quoted on March 1976...

The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians...but instead they abandoned them, forced them to leave...and threw them into prisons (refugee camps) similar to the ghettoes in which Jews were earlier forced to live ( Falastin a-Thaura ).

So, then, when is a catastrophe not so?

When it is--or was--totally avoidable and brought about primarily by oppressive attitudes and actions of the alleged victims themselves.

While tragedy occurred, it was born of subjugating, racist attitudes and mindset which declared that none besides Arabs were worthy of political rights in the region. For Arabs, colonialism and imperialism are nasty only when someone besides themselves are the perpetrators.

Unlike Arabs, who were offered repeated compromises over the land, no such accommodations were ever offered to the Arabs’ national competitors. Think hundreds of thousands of murdered and gassed Kurds, even greater genocide in the Sudan, burned down Egyptian Coptic churches, what the real struggle is largely about in pre-Arab Lebanon (King Solomon built the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem from his Phoenician ally, King Hiram’s, famed cedars in Lebanon), and so forth.

In 1922, Arabs were handed over three quarters of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine when they received all of the east bank of the Jordan River from the Brits. In 1947, they were offered about half of what was left in a second partition.

Arabs rejected the above because dhimmi Jews --as “People of the Book,” one of the protected peoples who, after paying Mafia-style “protection money” via a special poll tax (the jizyah), were at least usually not massacred and forcibly converted en masse like others were with the spread of the Dar ul-Islam--were entitled to no political rights whatsoever in Arab eyes.

Had Arabs accepted the ‘47 partition, they would have wound up with two Arab states covering about 90% of the original territory of "Palestine." Thirty-five million truly stateless Kurds are still struggling to have the world recognize their own plight, with America’s State Department Arabists--key proponents of Arab State # 22--leading the opposition.

The very name “Palestine” came to be only after the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, got so fed up with the Jews after their second major revolt for freedom and independence that he renamed Judaea “Syria Palaestina” after the Jews’ already well-known, historic enemies, the non-Semitic “Sea People” originally from the area around Crete, the Philistines, in order to pour salt onto the wound. Rome’s own contemporary historians wrote much about this themselves--Tacitus, Dio Cassius, etc.

Check out Dio…

580,000 men were slain, nearly the whole of Judaea made desolate. Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war ( 133-135 C. E., the Bar Kochba Revolt). Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, ' I and the legions are in health.'

Hadrian was so enraged that, in the words of the esteemed modern historian, Bernard Lewis, Hadrian made a determined attempt to stamp out the embers not only of the revolt but also of Jewish nationhood and statehood... obliterating its Jewish identity.

Despite all the whitewash, Arabs--Abbas’ Fatah Arafatians, Hamas, etc.-- still insist that their new State (again, second, not first, in “Palestine”) will arise in place of Israel -- not along side of it -- as a quick look at any of their maps, websites, and such shows. Or try listening to or reading a sermon given by one of “moderate” Abbas' imams. He simply plays the Jew-baiting game better…i.e., with more dishonesty. Say one thing to the West, and another thing to your own folks in Arabic…although nowadays, much if not most of dhimmi Europe usually doesn’t even expect that.

Would that Jews possessed some two dozen other states like Arabs have, perhaps, one could argue, there would have been no need for the rebirth of Israel.

But the Jew did not possess even one state, let alone two dozen. And, unlike Arabs, the plight of the Jew prior to 1948 was a nakba not of his own making--despite the unfortunate “theological” claims of some.

The sad reality is that the Arabs’ misfortunes occurred because they insisted that the millennial nightmare of the Jews should continue into perpetuity. No compromise was feasible with "their" dhimmi Jew dogs in the Dar ul-Islam. And this goes beyond “merely” religious stuff…as fellow Muslim--but non-Arab--Kurds, black Africans in Darfur, Berbers, and others know only too well.

Summing it up, had Arabs been willing to grant Jews a miniscule slice of the same human dignity and justice that they so forcefully demand for themselves, the Arab nakba could have been resolved decades ago.

The day Arabs confess their own much greater original sin for all the above is the day they gain the right to protest others’ imperfect struggles to obtain a modicum of justice for themselves.

Until then, regardless of how politically incorrect it sounds...

Nakba crapka.

All In A Day's News...

by Gerald A. Honigman

Along with other related articles, three covering the Middle East and
North Africa caught my eye on April 26th.

The first was written by a journalist whom I have long admired--and I
don't admire many in the mainstream media.

I met Tom Teepen, now a syndicated columnist for Cox News, some three
decades ago. I was visiting Cincinnati for a few days out of my Columbus
office and had assorted media, university, and other visits, lectures, and
televised debates scheduled. We have, on occasion, briefly touched base
afterwards over the years.

Tom was editorial editor, I believe, for either the Cincinnati Post or
Enquire. We spent a good deal of time reviewing the Middle East. Unlike too
many others in the liberal camp, Tom still has maintained clear vision when
it comes to Arab-Israeli politics. The real surprise was that my local
newspaper published his op-ed. After many years of batting heads with the
paper brass (first on my own, then with others), I'm finally noticing a bit
more balance.

So, Tom's Blaming Israel, Freelancing On Hamas--What Is Jimmy Carter
Thinking? made it into the Daytona Beach News-Journal. He recapped Mr.
Peanut's recent hot date with Hamas in Syria, where Carter tried his best to
make the deliberate disembowelers of Jewish babes and other innocents look
good by getting it to provide him with some foggy cover for his non-stop
assault on Israel, but Hamas--to its credit--wouldn't let him. Headlines
soon claimed, anyway, that Mr. Peanut achieved a breakthrough, with Hamas
offering to 'accept' Israel.

When will they learn? Tom exposed Carter's nauseating comedy act.

While an allegedly 'born again' Carter evidently doesn't put much value
in honesty, Hamas does. It has no--and will never have--any intention of
granting Jews in one tiny state what Arabs demand for themselves in some two
dozen others on over six million square miles of territory...including one
already created from almost 80% of the original 1920 borders of Mandatory
Palestine renamed 'Jordan.' The new state Arabs insist on creating on the
ashes of Israel, not along side it, would be their second--not first--in
'Palestine,' the name the Roman Emperor Hadrian gave to Judaea after the
Jews' second costly revolt for freedom in 133-135 C.E. He renamed the
country after the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines--a non-Semitic sea
people from around Crete. Contemporary Roman historians such as Tacitus, Dio
Cassius, and others wrote extensively about this themselves.

To most Arabs, the whole region is simply purely Arab patrimony...in
their own words. As for the scores of millions of non-Arabs who have been
conquered, massacred, and suppressed, Egypt's past Uncle Tom Copt Foreign
Minister, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, perhaps said it best...accept forced
Arabization and /or dhimmi status (like he did) or else. Copts were the
native Egyptians conquered by Arabs after the 7th century C.E. along with
numerous others.

As Mr. Peanut also knows, regarding the above, Hamas is no different
than the alleged moderates of Abbas's latter day Fatah
Arafatians--regardless of how much whitewash he, Washington, and others
throw upon them both. In order to force the Jews to play ball, a supposed
Arab good cop had to be created to counter the State Department's Arab bad
cop.

Fatah (with as much, if not more, blood on its hands than Hamas) is
simply more willing to play the Arabs' well-known destruction in phases
'diplomacy' game vis-à-vis Israel to use petrodollar greased-international
pressure to force Israel back to its pre-'67, 9-mile wide, armistice
line--not border--existence to set it up for a combined Arab/Iranian final
blow...something that UNSC Resolution 242 expressly stated was not to happen
in the aftermath of the 1967 War.
But, Honigman, you say, you keep repeating these same points in many of
your articles.

Yes, I do.

And as long as Arabs keep on repeating their lies and distortions, and
morons or deliberate accomplices like Mr. Peanut do the same, those of us
who care must repeatedly answer them. Their approach is if they repeat a lie
often enough (and it goes unanswered), it will be accepted as truth.

Teepen did a good job with his short op-ed, especially since he has
been a fan of Carter in the past. But let me continue to pick up yet a bit
more where he left off.

With a new Presidential election approaching, I'll never forget the
last televised Democratic National Convention featuring 'Apartheid Israel'
Mr. Peanut chasing 'Israel is one of the top three evils in the world'
Michael Moore all over the convention floor. Closer soul brothers do not
exist--unless you want to throw in a more slick Obama and the company he
keeps to make a trio.

It was befitting that Carter visited Hamas in Syria, for Syria--not
'Palestine'--was indeed the birthplace of Hamas's patron saint, Sheikh
Izzedin al-Qassam (for whom its 'militant' wing and rockets are
named )...Latakia, to be exact. Of course, back then, many if not most Arabs
in the area considered themselves to be southern Syrians, espousing one
version or another of a Greater Syria plan. 'Palestinians' were the Jews.

Along with scores (if not hundreds) of thousands of others who poured
into the Palestine Mandate (after the break up of the over four century old
Ottoman Turkish Empire) due to its economic development by Jews, the Sheikh
joined numerous other 'native Palestinians' who entered relatively recently
from the latter 19th century onwards from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere in
rejecting the rights of Jews to do the same thing in any part of the 'purely
Arab patrimony,' the Dar ul-Islam. Recall that half of Israel's Jews were
refugees from so-called 'Arab' and /or Muslim lands.

Moving on.

Article # 2, in the same paper, quoted Mahmoud Abbas complaining that,
in his recent Washington visit, no one was talking about forcing Israel back
to the ''67 borders.'

I do admit, that was a pleasant surprise.

While the State Department (and President Clinton and President Bush
off and on) has tried its best to ignore 242's call for the establishment of
secure and recognized borders to replace Israel's absurd 1949 armistice
lines (which simply marked the point where Arab invading armies were halted
upon Israel's rebirth in 1948), Israel, despite the weakness of Prime
Minister Olmert and his crew, has evidently made it clear that it took
President Reagan's words seriously when he stated on September 1, 1982:

In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10-miles wide...the bulk of
Israel's population within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about
to ask Israel to live that way again.

Not only were there mostly no Arab-Israeli 'borders' back then, but the
Abbas/Arab claim that Israel is setting up settlements on Palestinian land
has the same amount of truth in it as does the '67 border claim.

When Transjordan (army led by British officers)--created from most of
the Mandate of Palestine in 1922--attacked Israel along with a half dozen
other Arab states loaded with arms left over by the Allies in World War II
in 1948, it seized Judea and Samaria...British imperialism's west bank (of
the Jordan River) as opposed to the Trans('across')jordanian east bank. Sir
Alec Kirkbride, the Brits' East Bank rep, wrote extensively about this in
his A Crackle Of Thorns: Experiences In The Middle East.

The Arab land grab was illegal, only two nations recognized it. Still,
Transjordan renamed itself Jordan, since it now held both banks, and saw to
it that no Jews could reenter lands where their ancestors had lived and
owned land for thousands of years until their massacres by Arabs in the
1920s and 1930s.

At the same time, huge numbers of Arabs continued to pour in...more
Arab settlers setting up Arab settlements.

All together, so many Arabs were recent arrivals themselves into the
Palestinian Mandate that the United Nations Relief Works Agency--UNRWA--had
to adjust the very definition of the word 'refugee' from its prior meaning
of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the
Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948 when counting those
who fled the fighting Arabs started upon Israel's rebirth.

Contrary to the Arabs' claim that these were 'occupied Palestinian
lands,' Judea and Samaria were non-apportioned parts of the Mandate, and
leading international legal authorities such as Eugene Rostow, William
O'Brien, and others have stressed that these areas were open to settlement
by Jew, Arab, and other residents of the Mandate alike.

How could you occupy lands taken from an illegal occupier?

The territory in question is indeed disputed...not occupied Arab lands
a la Abbas, Hamas, and Mr. Peanut.

When Israel captured Judea and Samaria in the '67 War as a result of a
bad decision by Jordan to join Egypt's Nasser, Syria, and others in the
Arabs' latest attempt upon its life, it came to hold territory of the
Mandate officially apportioned to no one...not 'Palestinian' land. The Arabs
themselves rejected a proposed 1947 partition of the remaining 25% of the
Mandate left over after the creation of Transjordan in 1922.

While I do not advocate Israel holding on to the entire area, certainly
a reasonable territorial compromise which corrects the travesty of the '49
armistice lines--a la 242--is a must. And Judea--land of the Jews--must
never become Judenrein again...unless Arabs are prepared to see the
one-fifth of Israel itself who are Arabs--many hostile--get the boot as
well. Such population transfers have indeed already occurred elsewhere.
Consider those involving Turks, Greeks, and Bulgars, Israel's Jewish
refugees from 'Arab' lands, and India and Pakistan for starters.

Now, about those Jewish settlements Abbas complains about in that
second article.

If Jews are to return to Judea and Samaria in the context of a 242-type
territorial compromise, then how and where else will this come about if not
by establishing/reestablishing Jewish towns and so forth--'settlements?'
Without the latter, Israel doesn't get the former.

Article # 3...

The News-Journal finally gave the genocide in Darfur some of the
attention it deserves...large front page article with maps and big pictures.

Unlike the Arab-Israeli mess, however, the perpetrators might as well
have come from Mars. No where was the word Arab mentioned.

After the Arabs burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century
C.E. and forcibly Arabized millions of non-Arab peoples in the process, the
Sudan (Nubia, etc.) held out for quite some time. In other parts of North
Africa, native Jews aligned with Imazighen ('Berbers') to resist this
conquest as well. We'll revisit this a bit later.

Back in the '60s, the first modern civil war broke out between the
non-Muslim black African south and the Arab and Arabized (remember Dr.
Boutros-Ghali's comments above?) north in the Sudan.

Sudanese President Nimeiry's stated during the slaughter of over a
half million blacks at this time (and over a million more ever since)
that...

'the Sudan is the basis of the Arab thrust into...black Africa, the Arab
civilizing mission (Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics, Journal of
Modern African Studies, Vol. 11, #2, 1973, pp. 177-78).'

Rudyard Kipling's late 19th century poem, 'The White Man's Burden,'
supposedly typifies Western colonialist and imperialist attitudes towards
the Third World. If that's the case, then what does Nimeiry and the other
example below, expressed in the Syrian Arab Constitution of the Ba'th,
typify?

'...The Arab fatherland belongs to the Arabs. They alone have the right to
direct its destinies...The Arab fatherland is that part of the globe
inhabited by the Arab nation which stretches from the Taurus Mountains, the
Pacht-i-Kouh Mountains, the Gulf of Basra, the Arab Ocean, the Ethiopian
Mountains, the Sahara, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea.'

Yet, the more recent full scale outbreak of violence in the Sudan in
the 21st century has an even more revealing twist.

While earlier bloodshed there and elsewhere could largely be seen as
modern extensions of the fourteen century-old clash between the Dar ul-Islam
and the Dar al-Harb, the one in the Sudan's Darfur (as those in
Arab-occupied Kurdistan and much of the rest of North Africa) is mostly
about Arab racism and chauvinism...pure and simple. You know, those folks
who like to scream about 'racist Zionism.' Over a thousand years earlier,
this led to the overthrow of the Syrian-based Arab imperialist Umayyad
Caliphate.

So, in Sudan's western region of Darfur, it's Arab and Arabized versus
black Africans...regardless of religion. Ditto for Arab versus Kurd,
Amazigh, and so forth. These victims are mostly Muslims.

In Sudan's largely non-Muslim south, it's a combination of both Arab
racism and the conquest of the Dar ul-Islam--as exemplified also in the
expected subjugation and dhimmitude of Egyptian Copts, Lebanon's Christians,
Near Eastern Assyrians, and Israel, Jew of the Nations, and home to whom
Arabs call 'their' kilab yahud...Jew dogs.

An Amazigh (Berber) publisher friend (
http://www.north-of-africa.com/ ) recently sent me a video produced by the
highly respected Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Its contents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XROAu1cTcQ8 showed a debate on Al-Alam TV
(Iran) on July 21, 2007over a new Berber-Jewish Friendship League set up in
Morocco. Even more recently, Morocco has outlawed the creation of an Amazigh
political party...especially since it espoused good relations with Israel.

Keep in mind that Morocco has had, relatively speaking and as an 'Arab'
country, reasonable relations with Israel itself. Hundreds of thousands of
Israeli Jews had their roots there. But the prospect of former and current
fellow victims of forced Arabization getting together has implications for
Arabs that even the Moroccans can't allow. Much if not most of North Africa
is of Amazigh--not Arab--descent.

Among other comments in that debate, the Amazigh spokesman pointed out
that both Jews and Berbers predated the Arab conquest by thousands of years,
fought long and hard against that conquest, and want nothing to do with Arab
identity and forced Arabization. Keeping in mind that in modern times many
Berbers have already been killed by Arabs for less, very brave words indeed.

To sum things up, those three news articles on April 26th were loaded
with important material.

The problem is that, without further extensive explanation such as what
I've attempted here, the issues are too complex for many readers to grasp.

Having said this, journalists and folks like ex-Presidents shoulder
huge responsibilities and should therefore dig much deeper before commenting
and pontificating a la Carter on such issues.

By the way, when's the last time anyone heard Carter comment on any of
the above non-Arab civil, political, and humanitarian issues?

If they don't involve Arabs, he doesn't want to know. And a look at the
contributors to his library and such may explain at least some of Mr.
Peanut's Arab-colored vision.

Every year during the month of Iyar, sometime in May, debate resumes in Israel about whether those who love and seek the sovereignty and settlement of a Jewish state at least in all the land west of the Jordan should celebrate the official independence day Iyar 3 (this year, May 8) [1]. Given the failure of every government, increasingly obvious since 1967 and in place with the official Zionist leaders by 1930, to fulfill this promise, some argue that to celebrate the existence of a State that works with the enemies of the Jewish people to frustrate redemption is confusion and self-contempt. Others still see the day, for all the failures of all the governments as a miracle, the beginnings of the truly sovereign Israel that the greatest sages say will mark the redemption [2].

Surely Jews do not celebrate the governments perhaps not even the quasi-Jewish state established by those governments. Those who love Israel and its role in the world should celebrate a significant step in the achievement of Jewish sovereignty because miracles are not made in one day.

May 14, 1948 (3 Iyar 5708), when David Ben Gurion read the Declaration of Israel’s independence was a great day, an eventful day, a disappointing day and part of a miracle unfolding for a very long time. The expulsion of the British occupiers took almost twenty-six years of explaining, urging, appeals to justice, scholarship, organization and armed resistance by many people. Many of them opposed and even hunted by the official Zionists who played ball with the Brits. Steady building of the yishuv proceeded during twenty-eight years of incitement by British officials and officers beginning in March 1920 [3]. The miracle that was more apparent that day in May surely included Aaron Aaronsohn, the resourceful and self-sacrificing members of Nili who made possible the British-Australian-Jewish conquest of the Turks and Germans, the Jewish Legion and its main promoter, organizer and officer, Zev Jabotinsky, the pioneers of the 19^th century, their daily heroism and labor, the heroic sanctity and aliyah of Rabbis Moshe Chaim Luzzato and Chaim ben Attar in the 1730s [4]…the Jews who in defiance of their own government and the Quartet, the powers of the world are rebuilding Homesh day by day; all those who throughout the ages, since the war for independence led by Bar Kokhba, the Maccabees; the return to Zion under Ezra and rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple; the resistance to Babylon and Assyria… miracles are the work of many souls and much time, discernment, doubt, hope and self-sacrifice. Everyone has a part to play and for the miracle to reach full ripeness, everyone must do their part. The redemption of Israel is a vast work of the art of making a holy life; it has a cast of millions, a span of millennia and is celebrated everyday Jews perform mitzvoth, be it planting a date tree or blades of wheat, praying the morning prayer in the promised Land. All else is practice, necessary but inadequate, “the chirping of small birds” [5].

One could write a book on the miracle of Jewish history, memory, courage, faith and hope but here we will look at a brief strand of signal events that show how the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land.

The sages teach that the first redemption, from Egypt is the pattern for the final redemption when Israel regains the sovereignty it rejoiced in on the shore of the Reed Sea (Yam Suf, Exodus 15). “This is my God and I will build him a sanctuary; the God of my father, and I will exalt Him. Hashem is Master of war; His name is Hashem” [6].

But the miraculous destruction of the armies, arrogance and denial of the Almighty by Pharaoh did not begin at the sea, whose miracle was accomplished through the forces of nature, human emotion, faith and deeds, but rooted centuries before that signal event in world history. When Moshe returned from his forty years tending flocks for Jethro, he had to accept the providence of the Eternal and gave full play to his plausible human doubts and fear. He knew and witnessed the degradation and decimation of the Hebrews in Egypt. It also was necessary for the Hebrews to hear his words, recognize the code of remembrance (pakod yifkod, pakod pakadti) passed long before from Joseph to his brothers and from them through their generations. These beaten and beaten down slaves had to remember, affirm and follow a fellow speaking in the name of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob for all that followed to ensue (Genesis 50:24-5, Exodus 3:15-19). And Pharaoh had to be gripped by his lust for power and supremacy for the drama to play out as the Highest Wisdom knew: humans addicted to power are not rational; they cannot read “the writing on the wall.”

And these words, this promise by Joseph, so long treasured in memory and actualized in faith (emunah, from amen) did not begin as he lay dying. The unification of the brothers, shevet achim gam yachad, even in a foreign land, required that Jacob descend to a slave empire from the land of freedom; even the enormous incentive of seeing Joseph could not put him at ease about this, only a direct assurance from the Highest, ‘speaking’ to Jacob’s faculty of knowledge, the form of the soul (Genesis 46:1-5). And the re-union of the brothers required their prior separation, quarrel and jealousy, which hardly seemed like ingredients in “a great deliverance” (lifleitah gedolah, Genesis 45:4-13), but it was. Joseph had knowledge and some traits that his brothers could not but fear and detest; they even disturbed Jacob: “what, are we to come – I and your mother and your brothers and bow down to you to the ground!?” (ibid. 37:9-14). Yet Jacob sensed providence in the tensions and despite the obvious risks, sent Joseph to his brothers after taking him for “deep counsel” “from the depth [valley] of Hebron to Shechem – Elon Moreh, a geographic line of holiness, history and providence that is central to Israel’s ultimate redemption, as now all the nations (the “Quartet”), led by the powers of Esau seek to preempt [7].

The miracle of strife, grief, repentance, love and reunion that set the stage for the terrible oppression foretold to Abraham (Genesis 15) required Jacob’s lonely persistence, drawing only on the example of his forefather’s lives, principles and teachings to see him through the manipulations and threats of Uncle Lavan to found and nurture his family, to appease, fend off and remain distinct from the deceitful, appetitive and murderous Esau and return to his fathers’ settlement in “the fields of Mamre, Kiryat Arba, which is Hebron” (ibid 23). Beyond this heroism stretch the fields of Isaac’s persistence and restraint, courageous self-sacrifice and the insight, unshakable faith and bravery of Abraham from his formative proclamation of the living God in Mesopotamia, Ur Kasdim, the land of the Chaldeans which remains in turmoil to this day, his graciousness to his nephew and to all wayfarers, and his prowess and bravery in battle (Genesis 14:10-16) [8]. It is for this grace and courage, this loving kindness and strength that Abraham was chosen and with specific offspring (Genesis 21-2, “please take your son, your only one, whom you love – Isaac,” 26-8, “nevertheless, he [Jacob] shall remain blessed!” 35, passim); these qualities of seemingly superhuman persistence, remembrance, honor and faith imbue all Israel, however clouded at times and denote its history, the history of a living, developing miracle. Because it is the proof of miracle and of the design of the Creator, of the coherence and grace of the world that the powers of the world, that worship their own works and fantasies want above all to blot them out from nationhood, so Israel’s name will not be remembered anymore” (psalm 83) buried beneath the big lie of “Palestine” and a “Palestinian people” soon to be submerged in a Middle East Free Trade Association, itself merged into the Mediterranean Peace and Prosperity Zone itself interlocked with the EU and NAU, a new Tower of Babel on the way to global tyranny and fragmentation, for the “force and fraud” of tyranny are always a step away from anarchy, and it is from this combination of tyranny and disorder that David prayed for deliverance through Solomon and his seed and that the Eternal One formed Israel as an alternative model. “He” knew that it would be a battle in which every evil impulse of human nature would rise up in rebellious longing to join the animal world and bury the sparks of our responsibility, dignity and freedom, the essence of Yom Kippur and the Jubilee year, the return to one’s patrimony being the foundation of freedom and the charity and national consciousness that attend it (Leviticus 25).

The miracle continues to unfold: it can be only by heroism and self-sacrifice, undermined in our days, not for the first time, by the appeal, blackmail and bribery of Yavan-Edom. Battles, literal battles must be fought, for a pre-occupation with books, particularly books of empty wisdom, like astrology “abolished our kingdom, destroyed our Beit HaMikdash, prolonged our exile and brought us to our present predicament,” wrote Rambam [9]. They imagined that these wisdoms were glorious and beneficial and they did not study warfare and land conquest…therefore, the prophets called them fools, and they certainly were fools for they followed vanities that cannot avail nor rescue…” (cf. 1 Samuel 12:21). Rav Teichtal comments “we should use the natural means that become available to us [to re-conquer the land, re-establish the kingdom and rebuild the Temple] then Hashem will send us heavenly assistance. “Each stage [of redemption] has its own time,” he adds, “like the rising of the dawn. This is why the Davidic dynasty is called “sun” as it says, “his throne shall be like the sun before Me” (cf. psalm 89:37).” The sun will not rise before dawn, Rav Teichtal notes; “God will bless the man who is zealous for His Name” and begins with all means to bring on the dawn and day of Israel’s redemption. “Therefore, the gedolim and shepherds of Israel must lovingly accept any opportunity for redemption and strive to bring it to completion” [10]. “Settling Eretz Israel is an extremely precious mitzvah. It is the sum-total of all other mitzvoth and encompasses the entire Torah…our nation’s entire existence depends on it…for if Jews would not live there, the Torah would vanish, God forbid” [11].

The great and martyred Rav Teichtal did not know the extent to which Great Britain and America interdicted the aliyah which the League of Nations had mandated that Britain facilitate. He did not guess, in his fervent love and desire to awaken and save that a group of Jews would become so hostile to their fellows and to Torah that they would ally with foreign interests to uproot and crush Jewish settlement and a Jewish State. Despite these horrors, human choices that have complicated redemption with pain and confusion, the Jewish people, the Children of Israel continue to show cohesion that is a miracle of shared purpose and of some segula, precious quality of soul in their history and awareness of the Creator and purpose. Our time is one that uniquely tests these qualities as they approach possibility of great fulfillment. That is why they rush to blot out the past, to bury Israel.

From a different perspective, Dr. Daniel Pipes captured the contemporary situation well as Israelis and Jews everywhere wonder whether or how to celebrate the founding of the State, by the wrong people and with purposes that were partly wrong but that harnessed long pent energies to accomplish miracles: “for all its achievements, the Jewish state lives under a curse that other polities never face: the threat of elimination. Its remarkable progress over the decades has not liberated it from a multi-pronged peril that includes nearly every means imaginable: weapons of mass destruction, conventional military attack, terrorism, internal subversion, economic blockade, demographic assault, and ideological undermining. No state faces such an array of threats; indeed, probably none in history ever has…”

No, none ever has or will; the attacks upon the restoration of renewal are attacks upon the humanity, memory and nature of human beings and the possibility of a humane society of abundance and peace. So yes, celebrate 3 Iyar 5708 but also grieve its misdirection and bad leadership; celebrate what was gained despite needless costs and celebrate what can be done when Israel has a proper flag, a banner featuring the Menorah, testifying to the Creator for which all hunger, and the lions of Judah to indicate the specific place from which the knowledge, gratitude and service denoted by the Menorah are to be realized. And if it is Israeli sovereignty then that must mean Jewish sovereignty that is celebrated and fulfilled [12]. Know above all that the miracle to celebrate is the Hebrew discovery that we are far more than clever animals, that there is a Creator, purposefulness and a purpose eloquently described in the Hebrew Scriptures and that human intentions, words and deeds can realize the miracle everyday like the steady lightening to luminescence and brilliance of the dawn, Kokhav Ya’akov. This process of realizing the miracle was addressed by Rav Kook in his comments on Tehillim 126, “we were like dreamers”; the dreams, hopes, remembrance and efforts to live the dream prepare the road for the people to flow to the holy hill and the ultimate and ongoing celebration that is the antithesis of the descending dark road down which the powers are taking the world. There is a choice and we all have a part to play.

1. The Hebrew calendar integrates the solar and lunar cycles. Days and weeks are marked by the earth’s rotation around it own axis and around the sun; festivals and months are measured by the cycles of the moon, -- its orbit around the earth. The sanctification of each month and Sabbath are like the mother and father of Jewish sanctification of time and the three pilgrim festivals plus Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the annual sanctifications of the entire nation done together in their time. Approximately once every three years a new month (a second Adar, “strength” and joy) is added to the calendar so that Pesach (“Passover”) always occurs in the spring, as is stipulated (Exodus 23:14-15, 12:14-28) and their basis in the land persists, Sukkoth for example being both the fall harvest festival and that of the sanctification of the altar and the joy of Israel’s holiness, modeled for all nations. Pesach is considered the first month in the annual cycle of holiness as the birth of the nation at and on the way to Sinai inaugurated its mission of sanctifying the ‘everyday’ world. The creation of the natural human world and human history begins with the first day of the seventh month (Tishrei) on Rosh Hashanah.

2. Rambam Hilchot Melachim 11:1-4 and 12:1-2 on Rav Shmuel in Sanhedrin 99a3 and Brachot 34b; Hilchot Teshuva 9-10. The point is that the final redemption is a process, its duration influenced greatly by the actions, or failures to discern and act of human beings, even the Messiah. “One should not presume that the Messianic king must work wonders and miracles, bring about new creations within the world, resurrect the dead or perform other similar deeds. This is not true” (11:3); “the main difference is our liberation from subjugation to foreign kingdoms” (12:2). If a king, appointed by a council of 71 sages, “fights the wars of God, defeating all the nations around him” (against the enemies of Israel, land and people), “is learned in Torah and observant of mitzvot we may consider him the Messiah. If he succeeds in the above, builds the Temple in its place and gathers the dispersed of Israel he is definitely the Messiah (11:4).

3. See Shmuel Katz, Days of Fire (Doubleday 1968) for 1939-48 and his two volume biography of Zev Jabotinsky, Lone Wolf (NY 1996) for in-depth treatment of the 1914-40 period beginning with the efforts to secure permission to form a Jewish Legion to fight for the liberation of Eretz Yisrael from the Turks. For multi-faceted Jewish efforts spanning four continents in this period and covering fields of diplomacy, science, agriculture, war and espionage see Katz’s The Aaronsohn Saga (Gefen 2000; English 2007). Katz (1914-2008) is the great historian of modern Israel beginning with the birth of Jabotinsky in 1880. See chapter four of his Battleground (1983, 3^rd revised edition) for a short history of Jewish continuity in the land and one grasps the lengthy process involving millions of people that began producing notable fruits by the 19^th century.

4. Rav Chaim Ben Attar (1696-1740) of Livorno Italy made aliyah with his congregation in 1736 and built a synagogue in Jerusalem. Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato, the Ramchal (1706-46) author or Derekh Hashem, Daas Tevunos and many other great works made aliyah in 1743. Nachmanides, the Ramban, author of the magisterial symposium-commentary on the Books of Moshe, the heroic expositor at the Disputation of Barcelona made aliyah in old age in 1267 soon after the desolation of Eretz Yisrael by the Mongols, oversaw renewal of the Jewish community there and built a synagogue.

5. Rav Yehuda ha Levi (1080-1140) in his Kuzari 2:24; the Rav made aliyah from Spain where he was a distinguished scholar and liturgical poet and was murdered in Jerusalem to sanctify God’s Holy Name.

6. Exodus 15:2-3, passim. Note regarding the pronouns and human qualities (emotions, actions) attributed to the Eternal One, the Highest Wisdom (HaChakhma HaElyonah as Ramchal denotes the Eternal) that Rambam explains the familiar Jewish wisdom that “the Torah speaks in the language of man” (Yesodei HaTorah 1:9, 12, cf. Berachoth 31B, Ketubot 67a). It uses “metaphoric imagery” (mashal). “Does He have a sword? Does He need a sword to kill?” Rambam asks rhetorically. “His power is not the power of a body; form and separation are not relevant to him…He is unified and there exists no unity similar to His in the world… He has no image or form…’Can you find the comprehension of God? Can you find the ultimate of the Almighty?” [Job 11:7]. It is not within the potential of a living man to comprehend this matter in its entirety. Neither sleep nor waking, silence nor speech, joy nor sadness, anger nor laughter in the human understanding are appropriate to Him” (ibid. 1.7, 9-11, 2:1-6). The Tanakh speaks in “prophetic visions and parables” in our attempt to grasp how the Highest Wisdom feels in the world to us. Our “essential nature, the soul of all flesh…is the form of man who is perfect in knowledge which knows and comprehends immaterial ideas…knowledge is the form of the soul [HaDaat shehi tzurat HaNefesh] and it is this form of the soul, which does not require a body…which comprehends knowledge above matter, knows the Creator and will exist forever. This is the form of man “in our image and likeness” [Genesis 1:26] (ibid. 4:8-9, the “life energy,” chayyot HaKodesh that is our essential being, our DNA and cosmic plasma around which the complementary body and soul (guf and neshama) were formed in the garden (ibid. 2:7, Genesis 2:7). This explication by Rambam (Maimonides) of the essentials of the Eternal One and of man is a key stage in fulfilling the miracle of redemption when its knowledge will purge the nations of their fantastic conceptual dross, enable them to speak a pure language and live in peace with Israel whose integrity (shaleim) alone will bring forth peace (shalom) as the etymology, scripted by the Highest Wisdom denotes.

7. The sages note that Hebron is a mountain with a series of peaks so ask, what can the phrase “mai-emek Hevron,” (the depth of valley of Hebron) connote. Their consensus is that Jacob took Joseph to the double cave (Machpelah) where Abraham and Isaac, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah were buried to imbue his words with their strength and their wisdom for what Jacob expected would be a very long and momentous journey of strife, enduring love, contrition and reunion, all as part of the complex path by which through our free will and humanity we take various ways to arrive at the fulfillment of Wisdom when “ripeness is all.” See Ramchal, Derekh Hashem 2.3.5-7, passim

8. See Ramban’s discussion of the comments of Rashi and the sages on this passage of the combined honor and graciousness of Abraham to the defeated kings of Sodom et al, his pursuit and defeat of the five kings, and his rescue of Lot, “he deployed against them by night, smote them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus,” Ramban, Bereishis Volume I (Mesorah 2004), 326-31

9. Iggrot Shonot, quoted by Rav Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, Em HaBanim Smeichah: On Eretz Israel, Redemption and Unity (Jerusalem 2000; English translation, Rav Moshe Lichtman), 272

11. ibid. 236-7, quoting Rav Moshe Sofer (the Chatam Sofer) and Rambam in Hilchot Kiddush HaChodesh

12. Arabs who increasingly use the day to commemorate their “catastrophe” (defeat in 1948) and to attack Jews, in Israeli know that the issue is Jewish sovereignty which is what Israeli sovereignty must become. Judaism is not democracy (neither is the American Republic meant to be) though it has democratic aspects. Neither can a Jewish state be multicultural, a fractured polity with multiple identities as now is the case.

White House candidates proclaimed their ties to Israel and vowed to stand by the Jewish state as the key US ally celebrated its 60th anniversary.

Obama: "What I love about Israel is it is such a robust democracy and... So it is critical that we send a message around the world, we will stand with Israel, we want them around not just for 60 years..."

Hillary Clinton: "In every generation, Israel faces serious challenges to its security and threats to its existence… united by shared values and strong bonds of friendship... and strengthen these bonds, so that the State of Israel will continue to grow, from generation to generation, in security and peace."

McCain: "Let no one doubt that, while the challenges will continue, Israel will survive and it will flourish. There will always be an Israel, and there will always be a vital bond between our two peoples."

None of the White House hopefuls was strong on specifics and willing to state on record: that Jews have the right to live in peace on their ancestral land – Eretz-Israel; that 60 years of Arab aggression against the state of Israel must be stopped now; that the fake peace process does not work and extends the suffering of Jews from Arab terror.

In short, each one of them will continue to apply pressure on Israel to sacrifice Jewish land to create another, 23^rd, Arab state - the terror-infested state of a fabricated nation, whose sole purpose will be the destruction of Israel!

Just empty words! Just survival at any cost is not an issue any more; the right to live in peace on Jewish land is. According the 1922 resolution of the League of Nations, the Palestinian mandate was created to establish a Jewish state - Eretz-Israel. Just because Jews were weak before and desperate after WW2 and did not have oil to offer to the Western 'masters' does not make the systematic robbery that has been committed against Jews since 1922 right (the illegal creation of Jordan – 77% of the Palestinian mandate, the shameful UN partition plan of 1947, the current demands for the creation of another Arab state on Jewish land)!

Anything less than a clear endorsement that Jews have the right to live in peace in their homeland, the land of their ancestors, is just empty words and unadulterated hypocrisy! At the moment there are three runners for the position of the President of the United States; not one of them had integrity to admit the mistakes of the past and speak up with clarity about the rights of Jews and the state of Israel. It means that all of them will conduct the same policy of stupidity and duplicity, facilitating the rise of terror and the prolongation of injustice against Jews in Israel!

Yet many colluded to ignore this reality. First of course there is Israel. The Olmert-Livni government has upheld Resolution 1701 and its prescribed deployment of the Lebanese army to the border with Israel as their crowning achievement in office. They have to maintain the fiction that the Shi'ite-dominated Lebanese army opposes Hizbullah control over Lebanon in order to keep up the appearance that Resolution 1701 was a good deal for Israel.

Moreover, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have upheld the fiction that UNIFIL's 15,000 ground forces and naval detachment are actually deployed in South Lebanon to defend the Lebanese government and Israel from Hizbullah and to prevent Hizbullah's rearmament and redeployment. In line with this fantasy, rather than take effective action to prevent Hizbullah's rolling takeover of Lebanon, Livni and Olmert have sufficed with issuing complaints to the UN regarding Hizbullah's massive rearmament and redeployment along the border. Again, actually contending with reality would involve acknowledging their own incompetence.

At the outset of the war two years ago, Olmert announced rightly that Israel held the Saniora government responsible for Hizbullah's aggression. Olmert's announcement was reasonable because at the time, Hizbullah was a full member of the Saniora government which effectively acted as Hizbullah's mouthpiece. Yet the US would have none of it.

In the early days of the war, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Israel take no action against the Saniora government which she claimed - wrongly - was a credible US ally. Largely as a consequence of Rice's demand, and of the Olmert-Livni government's refusal to target Hizbullah and Hamas training and logistical bases in Syria, the Olmert-Livni government's strategy against Hizbullah lost its strategic rationale. From then on, Israel's defeat was just a matter of time.

AFTER THE war, the US was given an opportunity to actually support democratic, anti-Iranian-Syrian forces in Lebanon by supporting the Saniora government when Hizbullah abruptly bolted the ruling coalition and backed by Iran and Syria attempted to take control of the government by assassination and terror.

The US could have taken action against Syria or Iran. But instead it sought to appease Iran and Syria in the hopes that they would temper their support for insurgents in Iraq. The pinnacle of this US abandonment of the March 14 movement was Rice's decision to invite Syria to participate in her peace confab at Annapolis last November.

Both the US and Israel's silent acquiescence to Iran's takeover of Lebanon through Hizbullah complements their acceptance of Iran's takeover of Gaza through Hamas.

Again, in an effort to hide the failure of their signature policy of withdrawing IDF forces from Gaza and expelling 10,000 Israeli civilians from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria in 2005, the Olmert-Livni government has refused to take action against Hamas's Iranian backed regime in Gaza. Then too, just as it protected Hizbullah during the 2006 war by siding with Saniora, who was then keeping house with Nasrallah, so too, today, the US protects Hamas by siding with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas who kept house with Hamas until Hamas threw him out of the house last summer and who has been desperately seeking to reunite with Hamas ever since.

With Egypt's Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman's visit to Israel Monday, the Olmert-Livni government exposed the depth of its recognition of the Hamas regime in Gaza. Suleiman came to present the government with the ceasefire agreement Egypt has negotiated with Hamas. The agreement will bar the IDF from overthrowing Iran's Palestinian proxy and enable Hamas to keep its Iranian armed, trained and funded army. Hamas's Katyusha rocket attack on Ashkelon Monday morning signaled clearly where that ceasefire will lead.

And yet, the Olmert-Livni government embraces it. And the Bush administration supports it.

During his festive visit to Israel this week, President George W. Bush is expected to celebrate the US's strategic alliance with the Jewish state. It is a great tragedy that the strategies this alliance has advanced in recent years have paved the way for Lebanon's demise and for Israel's encirclement by Iranian proxies.

The tragedy is only heightened by the fact that this outcome was eminently avoidable.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Wednesday night they tried having a Yom Hashoah ceremony in Sderot but it was interrupted by incoming rockets. For its part, Hamas marked the Holocaust with a documentary series claiming that the genocide of European Jewry was a satanic Jewish plot to cull the Jewish population of its handicapped and to manipulate the world media.

Hamas captured headlines this week with its allegation that Israel was responsible for the death of a Palestinian woman and four of her children in an explosion in Bet Hanoun in Gaza as the IDF targeted Hamas terrorists from the air. The IDF conducted two investigations showing that the woman and her children were killed by something else: a secondary explosion caused by bombs the Hamas terrorists - one of whom was her husband - were carrying at the time the IDF targeted them.

Hamas's allegations that the IDF killed four children and their mother were reported by both the international and Israeli media as facts. Those "facts" were only questioned when the IDF began its probes. Neither the local media nor the international media thought the fact that the source of their accounts was Hamas should make them question the veracity of the initial reports.

When its spokesmen are not busy accusing Jews of planning genocide and Israel of killing mothers and children, Hamas devotes its efforts to accusing Israel of killing sick Palestinians by refusing to let them into Israel for free medical care. As no good deed by Jews goes unpunished by the UN, early last month the World Health Organization punished Israel for admitting more than 7,000 Palestinians from Gaza for free medical care during 2007. Echoing Hamas propaganda, the WHO accused Israel of causing the deaths of 33 sick Palestinians between October 2007 and March 2008. They died, the WHO claimed, due to the Jewish state's heartless refusal to allow them into its hospitals.

The WHO report made mention of the fact that Hamas now controls the hospitals and clinics in Gaza. No mention was made of the fact that Israel bears no responsibility for providing health care to non-citizens from enemy territories, or of the fact that there is no place in the world where such care is provided other than Israel. No mention was made of Hamas intercepting and hoarding hospital supplies for propaganda purposes. No responsibility was assigned to Egypt - the other country bordering Gaza - which does not admit any Palestinian patients. The report never questioned the credibility of its Gazan sources.

As Andrea Levin, the executive director for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East reporting in America (CAMERA) noted this week in The Jerusalem Post, it was only due to the quick and detailed response of Israeli officials refuting Hamas's allegations that Israel wasn't widely condemned for murdering sick people.

The most interesting aspect of these media reports is that for the most part, the news agencies reporting Hamas's wild allegations don't even have correspondents in Gaza. Hamas's habit of kidnapping Western - even pro-Hamas - reporters caused most Western media outlets to remove their correspondents from Gaza more than a year ago. The Israeli media have not had correspondents on the ground since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005.

Yet the same media outlets that realized Hamas is too radical to be trusted to respect their own reporters' lives refuse to question the veracity of Hamas's stories and are more than willing to credit these stories as fact well past the point of professional embarrassment. Indeed, no media outlet - either Israeli or foreign - has ever asked whether it even makes sense to run Hamas's propaganda in the first place. They have certainly not bothered to inform their audiences that the source of their stories is a genocidal terror group that is currently waging a missile campaign against Israeli civilians whose goal is to terrorize and kill them just because they are Jewish.

BUT THEN, the media can perhaps be forgiven for their refusal to admit that their reports from Gaza are generally nothing more than terrorist propaganda for they are far from alone in their refusal to acknowledge the significance of Hamas's regime. From Jimmy Carter to the Bush administration to the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, denial is the order of the day.

Carter defends his decision to meet with Hamas's leaders in Syria and Judea by noting that the jihadist, genocidal, Iranian-sponsored terror group won the Palestinian elections. Since a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas and still support it, the jihadist, genocidal, Iranian-sponsored terror group is legitimate, Carter argues. Certainly no peace agreement can be reached without it.

But then as Hamas clarified just after its leaders met with Carter, any deal it may reach with Israel is merely a tactic in its ongoing war to destroy Israel. So while it may be true that no Palestinian-Israeli peace is possible without Hamas, it is absolutely true that no Palestinian-Israeli peace is possible with Hamas.

The fact is that far from demonstrating the necessity of negotiating with Hamas, Hamas's popularity shows the futility of attempting to coax peaceful coexistence out of a Palestinian society committed to its neighbor's destruction. Yet just as the media and Carter refuse to acknowledge the significance of Hamas's terror regime, so the Bush administration refuses to acknowledge the significance of its broad-based popular support among Palestinians.

In her remarks Tuesday before the American Jewish Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that Palestinian society today overwhelmingly supports Israel's annihilation through terrorism when she said: "Increasingly, Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my age. And I'm not that old, but I'm a lot older than most of the Palestinian population."

But then, after acknowledging that most Palestinians do not support peaceful coexistence with Israel, Rice argued that Israel must give them more land, more guns and more money because as she sees it, now is the time for a Palestinian state and leaders need to "make hard decisions confidently for the sake of peace and for the sake of their people."

Rice went on to explain that this appeasement must be done while enabling the Hamas regime in Gaza to remain in place. As she put it, "The only responsible policy is to isolate Hamas and defend against its threats, until Hamas makes the choice that supports peace."

So from Rice's perspective, not only must Hamas not be defeated, it would be irresponsible to even try to defeat it. The only "responsible" policy for Israel is to allow Hamas to continue stockpiling arms and building its army while trying to reach a cease-fire with it. Then too, as far as Rice is concerned, Israel must curb its counterterrorist operations in Judea and Samaria, dry out Israeli communities there and in post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhoods and allow US-trained and armed Fatah militias (who are also terror-supporting) to deploy in Palestinian towns and cities by the thousands. This, she believes, is the best way to make Hamas transform itself into a peaceful political party willing to live at peace with Jews.

AS FOR Israel, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government clearly agrees with Rice, for it is following her policy.

Wednesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to comment on his government's involvement in cease-fire talks with Hamas during the security cabinet meeting. When pointedly confronted by Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter about his apparent decision to allow Hamas to remain in charge of Gaza with its Iranian trained and armed terror army, Olmert simply said that it would be inappropriate to discuss such things.

Thursday, The Jerusalem Post reported that the government is enthusiastic about the proposed cease-fire agreement with Hamas, strangely claiming that it may pave the way for a second and unrelated agreement in which Israel ransoms hostage Gilad Schalit from Hamas captivity by releasing hundreds of terrorists.

Then too, the government claims triumphantly that Hamas has agreed to have Fatah forces deploy at the international border with Egypt. But since both Hamas and Fatah enjoyed a nearly unimpeded flow of weaponry through that border when Fatah was responsible for it, it is far from clear why this would be a positive development.

The simple truths that the media, Jimmy Carter, the Bush administration, and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government are all unwilling to acknowledge are that Hamas is a genocidal terror group sworn to Israel's destruction and that it represents the will of the majority of Palestinians who elected it to office in 2006 and who continue to support it today.

This plain reality demonstrates that there is only one responsible policy for Israel to follow and for the international community to support if they are truly interested in peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That policy is for Israel to lay waste to Hamas's terror army in Gaza and overthrow its regime. Only when they are forced to pay a real price for their support for terror and jihad - as opposed to being rewarded for it with further Israeli land giveaways - will the Palestinians be forced to reconsider that support. Only when they realize that terror will get them nowhere - as opposed to anywhere they wish - will the Palestinians be forced to accept Israel as an unchanging reality with which they must live in peace.

Dichter's condemnation Wednesday of his government's pro-Hamas policies was not the first time the Ashkelon resident and former head of the Shin Bet has argued that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's policies are dangerous for the country. And Dichter, together with Transportation Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who has similarly criticized the government's policies as dangerous, could end the current situation if they had the courage to act on their convictions. Were they to band together with eight of their colleagues in Kadima's Knesset faction and leave the government, they would bring on new elections.

Yet so far, they have refused to take action. Until they do, Dichter, Mofaz and their colleagues are enabling Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to continue endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis through their bluster and appeasement of Hamas.

Until they do, they are as guilty as the media, Carter, the Bush administration and their government colleagues of whitewashing and protecting Hamas to the detriment of their country and to the cause of peace.