A Shot from the Hip

The Third Jihad

2012-02-09T15:50:00.000-08:00

EU tough on Greece, soft on PA

2012-02-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

February 7th, 2012

Just a small part of how the EU helps the Palestinians

News item (WAFA is the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority):

JERUSALEM, February 7, 2012 (WAFA) – The European Union and Sweden Tuesday contributed €24.7 million to the payment of the January salaries and pensions of around 84,300 Palestinian civil servants and pensioners in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to an EU press release. The European Commission made €22.5 million contribution and Sweden made €2.2 million.
The European Commission’s contribution comes from the €155 million package of financial assistance to the recurrent expenditures of the Palestinian Authority committed for 2012, said the release.

The commitment of the EU to the Palestinian cause is remarkable, compared to the way it treats some of its own members. For example, it will be placing tough terms on proposed loans to Greece, forcing the Greeks to repay bondholders first, rather than (for example) government workers. And loans will be contingent on the Greeks laying off 15,000 public sector workers.
Yet the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has just (again) made an agreement with the terrorist Hamas, and which refuses to negotiate with Israel without preconditions, seems to be able to get whatever it asks for, without any demands being made on it. How hard would it be, for example, to insist that the PA enter serious negotiations with Israel before it gets paid?
Speaking of public sector workers, the PA is paying salaries to ‘employees’ in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Either these workers are doing nothing, or they are working for Hamas. And did I mention that the PA pays stipends to prisoners in Israeli jails, including convicted murderers? This, or the rampant corruption of the PA, doesn’t seem to bother the EU.
But this direct aid is not all, by far, that Europe (and the rest of the world) do for the Palestinians. There is the $1.2 billion each year spent by UNRWA on ‘Palestinian refugees’, the only hereditary class of refugees in history, while their leadership and the Arab states refuse to resettle them or treat them like humans. The second largest contributor to UNRWA, after the US, is the EU.
We must not forget the millions of Euros provided every year to support extreme left-wing anti-state NGOs in Israel (see illustration at top), which keep them alive as a fifth column inside Israel, despite their lack of support from Israelis. And, while the EU seems to think a hands-off policy is the best way to help the Palestinians develop a democratic society, they take the opposite approach to Israel. One would think they believe that there’s a new Mandate, which includes countries like Norway and even the Vatican, to rule the land of Israel.
One wonders what they get out of this tremendously expensive enterprise.

The AP’s Gonzo Journalism

2012-02-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism

January 31st, 2012

The decay of the traditional Western media into irrelevance continues, as it sinks to the level of the old Soviet Pravda.
News item (the numbering of the paragraphs is mine):

1. (AP) JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has made two overtures to West Bank settlers in the run-up to his party’s leadership race on Tuesday: It’s offering financial incentives to encourage people to move to settlements and opening the door to legalizing rogue settler outposts.
2. The gestures appear to be aimed at appeasing hardline elements in the ruling Likud Party who are sympathetic to settlers. While Netanyahu is expected to win the leadership race, a relatively strong showing by his ultranationalist rival would suggest many Likud voters consider the prime minister too soft on peacemaking with the Palestinians.
3. The moves threatened to derail tentative new peace efforts with the Palestinians. A round of low-level peace negotiations ground to a halt last week, in large part because of Palestinian objections to Israeli settlement construction. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon is expected in the region Wednesday in an effort to restart the talks…
4. Years ago, the Israeli government halted generous financial enticements designed to encourage Israelis to settle in the West Bank, the occupied territory the Palestinians see as the core of their future state.
5. But in this week’s government decision, 70 settlements appeared on a new list of 557 communities inside Israel and the West Bank that qualify for housing subsidies. The incentives, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office, are “meant to encourage positive migration to these communities.” …
6. In a separate move, the government on Monday appointed a committee to examine land ownership issues in the West Bank. The panel will review a 2005 government report that found several dozen outposts were built not only without state approval, but on privately held Palestinian land. Officials said the report needs to be reviewed because its author, state prosecutor Talia Sasson, later entered politics with a dovish political party, raising questions about her objectivity…
7. …the panel’s makeup aroused suspicions it would legalize at least some of the more than 100 outposts built without government authorization, including dozens Sasson says were erected on privately held Palestinian land.

This is presented as a news story, not an editorial. Let’s look at how it’s constructed.
In the very first sentence, the idea is introduced that these actions were taken in order to improve PM Netanyahu’s chances in the Likud primary. This may be true to some extent — although his opponent, Moshe Feiglin, is in no way a real threat (initial results show Netanyahu with 63% of the vote vs. Feiglin’s 36) — but surely, unsourced speculation about Netanyahu’s motives does not belong in the lead sentence of a news story.
The reporter does not let up in the second paragraph, where he refers to “hardline elements” who are “sympathetic to settlers.” I would hazard a guess that almost all Likud party members are to some extent sympathetic to Jews living east of the Green Line, considering that they face pressure from the Arabs, the US, the EU and the (vanishing but foreign-supported) Israeli Left to leave their homes and become refugees like the former residents of Gush Katif.
In paragraph 3, we get the usual line that “settlement construction” — meaning construction within existing settlements — may “derail” peace efforts. Why is that? It doesn’t change anything, particularly since most of the construction is in the larger settlements or eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods that would be expected to become part of Israel in any reasonable peace agreement. It is a problem only because the Palestinians insist that it will be. One would think that the introduction of the Hamas into the Palestinian Authority and the likelihood that it will win future elections (or coups) would be a much bigger problem! But the writer doesn’t mention that.
Then in paragraph 4, he trots out the “occupied territory the Palestinians see as the core of their future state.” The implication is that Israelis don’t have a right to live here, and Palestinian demands for Jew-free land are acceptable. I’ve discussed the falsehood of this view here.
Only in paragraphs 5-6 do we get to something partially resembling factual reporting. We are led to understand that there is a controversy concerning a 2005 land use report authored by Talia Sasson. The writer tells us that she became associated with a “dovish” party and so her objectivity when she determined that many settlements were built on “private Palestinian land” may have been questionable.
But Talia Sasson is a board member of the New Israel Fund, a member of the Public Council of Yesh Din, a foreign-funded left-wing NGO which carries out ‘lawfare’ against Israel in the name of ‘human rights’, and a Knesset candidate of the fringe New Movement-Meretz party (which has 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset). She is a professional opponent of the Jewish presence in the territories. Her objectivity is more than questionable, it is non-existent.
Finally, paragraph 7 uses the loaded phrase “arouses suspicion” and quotes Sasson as an authority.
Although the writer clearly has a point of view, it would still have been possible to provide some balance by including other interpretations. But this was not done: the article does not quote a single spokesman for PM Netanyahu or the Israeli government. It does, however, give voice to the Palestinian position:

“They are adding obstacles at a time when everyone is intensifying efforts to try to resume peace talks,” said Palestinian government spokesman Ghassan Khatib. “I think with every additional settlement activity, the feasibility of having two states is diminished.”

And just to be fair, a spokesperson for Peace Now also appears:

After suspending benefits unique to the settlements, the government is now encouraging settlers to move to the West Bank under a different program, said Hagit Ofran of the anti-settlement group Peace Now. “They put in 70 settlements, in effect encouraging them to live there,” Ofran said.

I know that there is a place for what Hunter Thompson called “Gonzo journalism,” but it isn’t a wire service news report, where the ancient Five Ws are still appropriate.

‘Palestine’ adores vicious murderers

2012-01-29T17:14:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism

January 29th, 2012

The murdered Fogel family: Ruth, Udi, Yoav (11), Elad (4), Hadas (4 mo.).

The absolute vileness of the “Palestinian movement” is hard for those of us who grew up in civilized societies like the US and Israel to comprehend. As a result, many of us may be prepared to listen when they say that it is about human rights or justice.
But every once in awhile we get a window into what’s really behind it.
Even Israeli police and security personnel, who have seen some terrible things, were shocked last year by the sadistic murder of five members of the Fogel family including a 4-month-old baby whose throat was cut, committed by two Palestinian Arab teenagers, Amjad and Hakim Awad, cousins from the village of Awarta.
Captured after an intensive manhunt, the Awads were both convicted and given multiple life sentences. There was even consideration of applying the death penalty, something not done in Israel since Eichmann was hanged in 1962. Unfortunately, the court decided against it.
One might expect that the official Palestinian reaction — after all, they are preparing to petition the UN for statehood again — would have been something like “we condemn violent extremism, although we understand their frustration, etc.”
But they are past pretending even that much.The official reaction is that the butchers are heroes!
Watch the following video, from official Palestinian TV, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch:
If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get from Adobe.

PA TV host: “We have a call from the family of prisoner Hakim Awad.”
Mother of Hakim Awad: “I thank you for connecting me with my son, because I and all of the family are prevented for security reasons [from visiting him].
Host: “Go ahead, sister, we can convey your voice.”
Mother of Hakim Awad: “My greetings to dear Hakim, the apple of my eye, from the village of Awarta, 17 years old, who carried out the operation in Itamar [i.e., killing of 5 Fogel family members], sentenced to 5 life sentences and another 5 years, in prison.”
Aunt of Hakim Awad: “I’m the sister of prisoner Hassan Awad and of Salah Awad; [I am] Um Habib, from the village of Awarta. My warm greetings to all the great heroic prisoners, to my brother Hassan Awad, head of the village council; to my brother Salah Awad, the heroic prisoner journalist; to the heroic, resolute prisoner, the lion, Yazid Awad, my nephew; and to my nephew Hakim Awad, the hero, the legend.”
Host:“We [PA TV], for our part, also convey our greetings to them.”
Aunt of Hakim Awad: “I dedicate this song to Hassan Awad, Yazid Awad, Hakim Awad, and Salah Awad, in prison:
‘My brother, in solitary confinement, your voice calls to me
You dare not throw down the rifle
That is what the homeland asked of me
In your eyes, we are all self-sacrificing fighters.
I convey greetings to the sound of the bullets of Ahmad Sa’adat and Hakim Awad.’”
Host: “Thank you for being with us, the family of prisoners Hassan and Salah Awad of Awarta.”
– (PA TV, Jan. 19 and 21, 2012)

This is nothing new. According to the Palestinian ethos, murdering Jewish civilians, including (especially) children, is not only legitimate, but praiseworthy.
Now I know that if any Palestinian sympathizers are reading this, right now they will be saying “well, didn’t the IDF murder children in Gaza?”
Actually, no. Pro-Arab propaganda often takes the form of inverting reality, accusing Israel of behaving like Nazis, or (more to the point) Arab terrorists. The IDF’s operation in Gaza in 2008-9, a response to the thousands of rockets that had been bombarding Israeli towns since 2002, resulted in a higher ratio of combatant to noncombatant casualties (about 3 to 1) than any instance of urban warfare in recent times (where the ratio is more like 9 to 1). This is despite the fact that Hamas deliberately operated from civilian areas in order to use the population as a shield.
On the other hand, we have Palestinian Arab ‘military’ actions like these:

The Ma’alot massacre, in which 25 Israelis were killed including 22 children, the Bus of Blood (35 dead, 13 children), the attack on the nursery at Kibbutz Misgav Am (3 dead, 2 children), the Dolphinarium bombing (21 teens dead), the Sbarro Pizza bombing (15 dead, 5 children), the shooting at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva (8 dead, 7 teens), the vicious butchering of the Fogel family (5 dead, 3 children), the antitank rocket attack on a yellow school bus (1 child) — these are just a few of a long, long list.

One of the scandals of the the conflict is that the media have helped the Arabs get away with portraying it as a dignified struggle for self-determination, when it is better described as one to eliminate the Jewish presence from the region, carried out primarily by terrorism against civilians — an attempt to make living in Israel so painful that Jews will simply give up — and only secondarily by conventional war and diplomacy.
Don’t expect to see the details of the Palestinian admiration for murderers in the NY Times, for example.

When the President (of Palestine) is a mass murderer

2012-01-26T18:59:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism

January 26th, 2012

From Ha’aretz:

[Marwan] Barghouti, who is likely to become the next Palestinian President, was convicted by the Israeli justice system of five counts of murder – four Israelis and a Greek monk – during the second intifada. There is no question he supported and encouraged violence.

Actually, as the head of the Fatah Tanzim during the second intifada, he was almost certainly responsible for many other murders. But the prosecution was unable to provide sufficient evidence to convict him of more than five, for which he received five life sentences.
In a normal world it would be impossible to imagine that one country would release a convicted mass murderer so that he could become the president of a state to be established next door. In Russia (or Texas) he would be executed. Here in California, he might be sentenced to death but then remain in prison for life (while running up astronomical legal costs). But he would not be released to become, for example, Governor of Nevada.
The Ha’aretz story continues,

Barghouti’s involvement in past terror attacks does not change the fact that in light of the political developments on the Palestinian side – the possible reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and especially the lack of contenders against President Mahmoud Abbas – Barghouti remains the only Fatah member who could inherit Abbas’ place when the time comes.

In other words, since he is the one murderer that two murderous terrorist organizations find acceptable, then by all means Israel should facilitate unifying them by letting him go free. Incredible logic!
Barghouti appeared at a court hearing concerning a lawsuit filed by the family of Esther Kleiman, who was shot to death in 2002:

Esther Kleiman z"l

March 24, 2002 – Esther Kleiman, 23, of Neve Tzuf, was killed in a shooting attack northwest of Ramallah, while traveling to work in a reinforced Egged bus.
Esther was on the bus on her way to the Samaria community of Ofra where she worked as a special education kindergarten teacher for Downs Syndrome children. At least one terrorist on a ridge overlooking the Abud bypass road fired at the bus as it passed the village of Umm Safah, near Ateret. A bullet apparently penetrated an unprotected part of the bus above the bullet-proof windows, hitting her in the head…
Esther completed high school at Ulpanat Zvia and then volunteered for National Service for two years in the Neveh Sha’anan School for disturbed children in Jaffa, where she worked with both Arab and Jewish children. After completing her service, she studied special education at the Talpiot teacher’s college in Jaffa. Esther was quiet and shy, but she loved working with children, her father said, and preferred relating to the youngsters on a one-to-one basis, rather than in a classroom.
Neve Tzuf residents described Esther as a very kind and pleasant person who always had a smile on her face. She worked as a volunteer with disabled and disadvantaged children in addition to her regular job.

Kleiman’s family is suing the Palestinian Authority for several million dollars, because the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades killed her. Barghouti is supposed to testify on the connection between Fatah, the PA, and the al-Aqsa Brigades. Of course he refused to testify on the grounds that he does not recognize the authority of the court (to be precise, he does not recognize the Jewish state).
One wonders why he was brought to the courtroom in the first place, since he refused to speak at his own murder trial for the same reason. He was, however, given a platform to speak on an unrelated question:

The court hearing provided Bargouti with a rare opportunity to communicate with the Palestinian – and the Israeli public. One of the most important messages he conveyed to the many journalists surrounding him was that an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and the establishment of a Palestinian state will bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An ‘important message’ indeed! As one popular pro-Israel blogger would write, “what could go wrong?”
You might be forgiven for wondering if it would be a good idea to take the word of a mass murderer who in effect promises that if you give him half of what you possess, then he won’t try to take the rest. But the Ha’aretz reporter assures us that Barghouti has repented from his evil ways:

In the past, Barghouti spearheaded the Fatah faction that called for terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank, and from January 2002 he even supported attacks within the Green Line. Like many Palestinians, Barghouti drew inspiration from Hezbollah, which forced Israel to retreat from southern Lebanon in May 2000, and thought that adopting the Shiite group’s tactics will cause Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories.
However, in recent years Barghouti admitted that the Palestinians made a grave mistake by turning to terrorism. In countless interviews he said he supports “popular resistance” – that is, unarmed resistance.

I don’t know about that last argument. For example,

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) (Arabic: لجان المقاومة الشعبية, Lijān al-Muqāwama al-Shaʿbiyya) are a coalition of various armed Palestinian factions that oppose the conciliatory approach adopted by the Palestinian Authority and Fatah towards Israel…
Set up in late 2000 by former Fatah and Tanzim member Jamal Abu Samhadana, the PRC are composed primarily of ex-Fatah fighters and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades members and are alleged by Israel to be inspired and financed by Hezbollah. The PRC specializes in planting roadside bombs and vehicle explosive charges – directed against military and civilian convoys in the Gaza Strip. The PRC is described as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. — Wikipedia

Is that the way ‘popular’ means ‘nonviolent’?
According to the reporter, Israel will have no choice if he is elected ‘President of Palestine’:

…some of the people close to Barghouti have no doubt he intends to run for president, even if it means being elected while still behind bars. He also understands that after the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap – in which he was not included – his only chance of being released is to be elected president. Israel will have a hard time dealing with the international pressure to release an imprisoned president.

It’s hard to think of an analogy. Could California mass murderer Charles Manson be elected Governor of Nevada? Of course not. But then, Nevada is not an artificial entity created simply to oppose and destroy California.
Israel is still a sovereign state, which can keep its convicted murderers in prison despite the pretensions of its enemies. Releasing Barghouti because he may become ‘President of Palestine’, or even if he is elected, would be a surrender of sovereignty, and cannot be permitted.
The best solution, going forward, will be the establishment of a death penalty for terrorist murderers like Barghouti.

The evolution of the Oldest Hatred

2012-01-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism

January 22nd, 2012

An "anti-Zionist" demonstrates in San Francisco, 2009. No Jew-hatred here!

Somebody asked me to expand on the remark I made Friday, when I said,

Today the impulse to hate — at least as it affects the more sophisticated Americans and Europeans — is directed at the concrete national expression of the Jewish people, the state of Israel, rather than at ‘the Jews’ … Irrational, obsessive hate is irrational, obsessive hate. Only the object is different. And the bloody results can be the same.

People that hate Israel every bit as viciously as the Nazis hated Jews are at pains to distinguish their hatred from antisemitism, because although anti-Zionism is acceptable, antisemitism is not.
Today, there is an absolute taboo in educated Western society against racist or ‘prejudiced’ speech. Even some words (or ones that sound like them) are absolutely forbidden. Do you recall this incident?

On January 15, 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., used “niggardly” in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (identified by Howard as Marshall Brown), who interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25 Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it [he was later offered another position] … Howard felt that he had learned from the situation. “I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind. That’s naive, especially for a white person, because a white person can’t afford to be colorblind. They don’t have to think about race every day. An African American does.” — Wikipedia

The Wikipedia article lists several similar incidents. Of course the word ‘niggardly’ has nothing to do with the famous ‘n-word’, in etymology or meaning – it comes from A Swedish dialect word that means ‘stingy’ or ‘miserly’. I mention this to illustrate how incredibly touchy we can be about this kind of taboo.
How did we get here? In America, the fact of slavery followed by institutionalized racism and the struggle to end it was especially traumatic, in different ways, for both whites and African-Americans. Similarly, the Holocaust created a sensitivity to antisemitism in Europe and America. Explicit Jew-hatred is almost never expressed by the educated classes in the US and Europe (although it is quite common in the Muslim world — a recent poll shows that only 2% of Egyptians have a favorable opinion of Jews).
It is almost unthinkable that a university teacher today would deliver a lecture accusing international Jewry of conspiring to take over the world, or saying that Jews have inordinate control over the US government. On the other hand, the equally false propositions that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian Arabs (despite the fact that their number has grown steadily since Israel was established), and that US policy is warped by a powerful ‘Israel lobby’ are heard in classrooms every day.
Especially in left-wing circles, where political correctness is carefully enforced and nobody would dream of accusing Jews of putting Christian blood in their matzot, it is considered perfectly legitimate to accuse Israel of deliberately shooting Palestinian children, or of killing Arabs to steal their organs, on the strength of unsubstantiated statements made by Israel’s enemies — including those who themselves regularly practice murderous terrorism! But that doesn’t matter, because actual evidence is not required when the hatred is irrational.
We find irrational, obsessive and extreme hatred of the Jewish state everywhere on the Left, particularly among Jews. One example is here.
My thesis is that extreme Israel-hatred in this context is simply an evolved form of antisemitism. Let me explain.
Antisemitism is a meme.

A meme is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.”A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. — Wikipedia

While it’s possible to take analogies too far, the biological metaphor seems spot-on in this case. Like a living species, traditional antisemitism developed throughout European cultures (and spread to others) until 1945, because the environment was favorable to it. In fact, one can see the Holocaust as the logical result of this development, the final flowering of it.
But like biological population explosions in which a species’ excessive expansion can change its environment in ways that make it less hospitable to the organism, the horrors of WWII changed the cultural environment in which the antisemitism meme lives. At least among educated Westerners, a resistance to traditional Jew-hatred developed, and the meme was inhibited from reproducing there.
There were other reasons. I mentioned the trauma of white racism in America. An analogy was drawn between racism and antisemitism. A great amount of energy was directed towards extirpating all kinds of prejudice in our society. Political correctness developed, which helped suppress racism and antisemitism, but also has had other non-benign effects.
Unfortunately, like living creatures, memes have the ability to mutate and mutations that improve their ability to reproduce in a particular cultural environment will be strengthened by natural selection. So rather than dying out, the meme evolved. Jew-hatred became Israel-hatred. Instead of being directed at a group of people because of who or what they are, it was directed at the state that they created for themselves. The taboos against racism and prejudice were circumvented, because the meme could be presented as political opposition to a country rather than hate for a people.
Little else changed. The fundamental irrationality of traditional antisemitism, by which Jewish crimes and the evidence for them could simply be made up, remained. The ability of the antisemite to believe anything negative about the Jew no matter how outlandish, remained. The application of antisemitism to every area of human interaction — literature, music, sports, professions, etc., remained (consider academic boycotts, for example). The extreme vitriol that characterizes it, remained. And it appears that the ultimate goal — the destruction of the hated object — remains.
One way to see the connection between the Oldest Hatred and today’s attacks on Israel’s legitimacy is to note that what is being denied by Israel-haters today is that the Jewish people are a people, and they have a right of self-determination.
Keep this in mind the next time — and I’m sure there will be a next time, probably in the next few months — that there are massive anti-Israel demonstrations against the state of the Jewish people having the chutzpah to defend itself. Not much is new under the sun.

What’s good for Israel is good for the USA (apologies to General Bullmoose)

2012-01-21T18:25:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism
January 20th, 2012

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about whether certain bloggers associated with the Center for American Progress (CAP) — an organization ‘closely linked to the White House’ — have crossed the line by using the expression “Israel-Firsters” for American supporters of Israel. Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post provides a relatively neutral summary of the controversy here.
I am beginning to think that nothing is less productive than discussing whether a particular expression or person is antisemitic. Certainly saying that “American Jews are disloyal because they choose Israel over the USA” is antisemitic. But the CAP bloggers who used this expression insist that they are only talking about specific individuals, and their being Jewish is irrelevant.
I’ll be generous and give them this. It’s unimportant (although I’ll add that the expression is quite popular in explicitly antisemitic and neo-Nazi circles).
Today the impulse to hate — at least as it affects the more sophisticated Americans and Europeans — is directed at the concrete national expression of the Jewish people, the state of Israel, rather than at ‘the Jews’.
So what? Irrational, obsessive hate is irrational, obsessive hate. Only the object is different. And the bloody results can be the same.
What is a bit ironic today is that the interests of the US and Israel are more closely aligned than ever before. Speaking for myself, I believe that being pro-Israel is part of being pro-American (if this weren’t the case, I would go back to Israel tomorrow).
The Obama Administration doesn’t agree with me. The thrust of its policy, since the 2009 Cairo speech, has been to bring us closer to the Muslim world, which naturally implies drawing away from Israel, and in particular trying to force the creation of a Palestinian state, regardless — despite what Mr. Obama says in public — of the cost to Israel’s security.
An argument was made in the 1970′s that US interests, in the form of low oil prices, implied that the US should adopt a more ‘even-handed’ (read: pro-Arab) approach in the Middle East. I would dispute this, but at least the proposition makes sense.
Today the situation is entirely different. The tide of radical Islamism that is sweeping over the region is ideologically hostile to the West and particularly to the US. Appeasement of these forces — which is the appropriate way to describe a great deal of Administration policy — weakens our strategic position towards them.
The present goals of the regime in Iran include the elimination of US influence in the region, the control of its oil resources, the establishment of a regional Shiite hegemony under Iranian control, and oh yes, the elimination of the “Little Satan,” Israel. Ultimately the regime’s admittedly grandiose aim is to replace the “Great Satan” (that’s us) as the world’s superpower and spread Islam throughout the world.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has similar goals. The Turkish AKP envisages a new Ottoman Empire. Whether any of these regimes or groups stand a chance of realizing them is another question, but their ideological enmity to the US is unquestionable. Appeasement of any of these will not bring lower oil prices.
In every case, the Jewish state is the active front in their diplomatic, informational and sometimes military war to achieve their goals. Israel has the ability and desire to defend itself, and therefore to help protect US interests as well.
Despite the recent campaign to portray Israel as undemocratic, it is the state that most closely embodies our values of freedom, justice, democracy, free enterprise, etc. in the Middle East. We should do our best to support it, and not work against its self defense as the Obama Administration has done.
Are those the only reasons that I support Israel? Of course not. But they are good reasons for all Americans to do so.

Different values

2012-01-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Talking about political Islam

2012-01-14T20:58:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism

Non-Muslims in the West are beginning to be divided into two groups: those who believe that it is possible and necessary to talk about political Islam, and those who see that discussion as religious prejudice, and therefore taboo.
The present American administration falls into the latter group. While it is committed to fighting against those who are waging war — jihad — against us, it has abstracted the violence from its religious/ideological context, and has done its best to forbid our government and law enforcement agencies from mentioning the context.
This is a logically incoherent position, and prevents us from taking appropriate actions to protect our liberal, secular and democratic way of life.
One of the main problems is that the ideology of political Islam calls for both violent and non-violent action to change the nature of society — American and European society — in accordance with Islam’s ideal, which is as different from ours as seventh-century Arabia is from the 18th century Enlightenment.
For example, recently we have been hearing about the ‘moderate’ Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It is true that the Ikhwan (Brotherhood) is not presently engaged in actual warfare with the West, the way al-Qaeda is. But thanks to Raymond Ibrahim, we have a statement by Dr. Muhammad Badi, leader of the Brotherhood since 2010 that explains its true objective:

Dr. Muhammad Badi, supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said: “The Brotherhood is getting closer to achieving its greatest goal as envisioned by its founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna. This will be accomplished by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system [based on Islamic sharia], with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world.” Badi added in his weekly message yesterday [12/29/11]: “When the Brotherhood started its advocacy [da'wa], it tried to awaken the nation from its slumber and stagnation, to guide it back to its position and vocation. In his message at the sixth caucus, the Imam [Banna] defined two goals for the Brotherhood: a short term goal, the fruits of which are seen as soon as a person becomes a member of the Brotherhood; and a long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life.” The leader of the Brotherhood continued: “The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world” [emphasis added by Ibrahim].

This is somewhat incompatible with the principles of our Founding Fathers, isn’t it!
Especially in Europe after the mass murder committed by Anders Behring Breivik, any deviation from politically correct speech about Islam is criticized as “right-wing extremism,” tantamount to neo-Nazism. For example, in a fascinating interview, the Norwegian blogger Peder Jensen (‘Fjordman’) described his experience:

I have never once met Anders Behring Breivik in my entire life and have been checked out of the case by the police after an extremely thorough investigation that at best operated at the very fringes of what could be considered legal. I am obviously aware of the fact that I am one of the many people who have been quoted a number of times in ABB’s so-called manifesto. I intensely dislike this, as most sensible people would do in my place, but since all of my writings are available on the Internet there is, sadly, little I can do about that. I see no reason why others should be held accountable for the acts of an insane person they have never met.
I did seriously consider quitting as a writer in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks due to the immense international pressure on my person at that time and because I genuinely felt horrible about being quoted by such a man. Being dragged into the Breivik case against my will is the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life. After coming to my senses and recharging my mental batteries I decided to continue after all. I remain dedicated to the truth. Whatever was true before Breivik is also true after Breivik. If I ever quit as a writer I want this to be my own choice, not something I am forced to do by others.

Although Jensen vehemently opposes multiculturalism and calls for an end to Muslim immigration into Europe, he has never advocated violence against Muslims or left-wingers. He is not a racist or extremist, although he is regularly called such, as well as blamed for the murderous actions of Breivik.
If we want to survive as a culture, we cannot continue to ignore reality, to live in a world undergoing a titanic struggle while pretending that the struggle does not exist.
Is it possible for the Enlightenment-based West to coexist with Islam? Is it true a priori that Islam must be expansionist? We need to understand Islam in order to find out.
We can start on the road to understanding by dropping the rules of political correctness. It is possible to distinguish between opposing an ideology that wishes to harm us and irrational prejudice without making rules about what we are allowed to say, and what ideas we are allowed to entertain.

The Iranian threat

2012-01-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

In his article in the Washington Times Reza Kahlili analyzes the possibility of an Iranian victory in a war against the U.S.

Kahlili determines, correctly in my opinion, that such a war won't be a walk in the park for the U.S. His conclusion is based on an assumption of a conventional approach to defeating Iran. If this conventional approach isn't followed the results might be very different from Kahlili's conclusion.

According to Kahlili the Iranians have plenty of means to close the Straits of Hormuz thus disrupting 40% of the world's oil flow. Using their large missile force, submarines (including midget ones) and missile armed speedboats they can inflict serious pain on the U.S. air bases around the Persian Gulf and in Afghanistan.

Iran is a big country, much larger than Iraq and much more difficult to subdue. By the time the U.S. will get its act together and Iran will be in danger of losing the war, the Russians and Chinese will intervene to broker a peace agreement and save the mullah's bacon. In the wake of such a war it's reasonable to expect that the military rulers of Egypt will fall and the ruler of Bahrain will succumb to the Shiite majority. Saudi Arabia will spend lots of resources suppressing uprisings and Israel will be busy defending against Hizballah.

A survivor mullah's regime will be the strongest Islamic force in the world and will be able to act with impunity. The U.S. would have spent large amounts of money it can't afford and, despite all the efforts to conceal it, would have lost face and influence.

Kahlili's scenario is entirely possible, especially with a U.S. administration that will hesitate to start hostilities and if it does, will want to wrap everything up before the elections and declare victory as fast as possible. It will be impossible to win such a war in the conventional sense of the word - Iran will not surrender and will become even bolder if the regime survives.

Iran warned the U.S. not to return its aircraft carrier to the Gulf and the Iranian parliament is debating a law that will make all foreign traffic into the Persian Gulf subject to Iranian approval. The administration's response is not certain, though the President can't appear weak before the elections. The prospect of a difficult war with Iran, even with no ground troops involved, may deter President Obama and hand Iran an easy victory.

But there is another way. The Kahlili scenario involves the use of U.S. air-power against Iranian armed forces, which will lead to an Iranian response and a possible prolonged war. On the other hand the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard are not the regime's weak spot.

The mullah's regime suffers from a fatally weak economy that is dependent on its oil exports. Terminating exports will be fatal to the regime.
Blockading Iran is not a good option since most of the exports are on foreign vessels and we don't want to fight everybody.
The other option would be to damage the oil fields. Assuming the Iranians attack the aircraft carrier when it sails through the Straits of Hormuz, the U.S. could retaliate with a massive attack on the Iranian oil fields. A successful attack would make most of the installations inoperable, not unlike Kuwait. After this we need only wait. It won't take long for the economy to collapse and take the regime with it. We may have to assist the Iranian people by attacking some headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basiij militia and the President will have to express his support for the people of Iran, unlike the last time they tried to acquire freedom.

It is highly dubious whether the Chinese will be able to do anything fast enough to repair the damage. The Russians will have no incentives to help: inoperative Iranian oil field will cause the price of oil to rise and increase Russia's income enough to compensate for the loss of other revenue from nuclear sales and weapons sales to Iran.

The major victims of this strategy will be the Europeans that rely on Iranian oil and, of course, the world economy. The impact on both can be minimized if the action is coordinated with the major oil producing countries: Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait and Oman. They will cooperate for two reasons: getting rid of the Iranian threat and making more money.

The only obstacle to this strategy will be the current administration that cant find an Islamist regime it doesn't like, including the Iranian mullahs.

Political correctness, Jew-hatred and Islam

2012-01-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

From FresnoZionism.org

Dr. Charles Jacobs is a longtime anti-slavery and pro-Israel activist, one of the founders of CAMERA and the American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG). He has also been a persistent critic of the ADL, arguing that it concentrates way too much on ‘old-fashioned’ neo-Nazi antisemitism and not enough on threats from Islamists and the extreme Left. What I found interesting in a recent exchange was this:

Shifting the focus away from skinheads, neo-Nazis, and Christian bigots and onto radical leftists and Muslim Jew-hatred would be extraordinarily difficult. It would require a massive and unpopular effort: leading the Jews to think difficult thoughts about their new situation, thoughts that put them at odds with their comforting universalist theology of Political Correctness. And it would be costly: ADL would forfeit loads of leftwing money – and its liberal bona fides. The organization would hardly ever get a letter published in The New York Times. It would be viciously attacked by Islamist leadership. CAIR would be relentless. Abe Foxman, ADL’s head, acknowledges that Islamic Jew hatred is the biggest threat we face (he’s still shy about the radical left) – yet ADL spends much, much more time, effort, resources and focus on the older, less dangerous threats while practically ignoring the new, more ominous ones.

The problem he touches on is not just an issue for Jews and Israel. The taboos of political correctness (PC) applied to anything connected with Islam or Muslims have the Orwellian effect of making it impossible to describe the motivating force of the great majority of armed conflicts in progress today, or even the future of Western civilization.
PC says that one may not criticize a religion or a group of individuals characterized by a religion. Someone who does that is accused of practicing hate and is called a bigot. Haters and bigots are considered the morally defective dregs of humanity, and anything one of them says can be ignored. Hitler and Bull Connor are common examples of bigots, and the Holocaust of the European Jews is used as a cautionary tale about the wages of hate.
On the other hand, it is considered entirely legitimate to attack ideologies or political or economic systems in the most vicious terms possible. It is even permissible to exaggerate and lie when doing so, because “it’s politics.” Marxism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Zionism, etc. are fair game.
Probably the trauma of slavery and institutionalized racism in the US and the Holocaust in Europe had something to do with the development of the shibboleths of PC, which even have the force of law in many nations. PC can be understood as an attempt to root out the darker aspects of our culture that allowed these atrocities to happen.
PC distorts the truth, and doesn’t even achieve its intended goals. Direct expressions of Jew-hatred in the developed world have been severely limited by PC. But, unfortunately, the same feelings are now expressed as rage against Zionism or Israel, entities not protected by PC rules. Unacceptable Jew-hatred evolved into ‘normal’ Israel-hatred. Today, the inevitable reaction against PC is bringing back traditional antisemitism as well.
Islam is more than just a set of religious beliefs. The main texts of Islam also include a legal system and a political ideology. What we call ‘political Islam’, ‘militant Islam’ or ‘Islamism’ is the attempted actualization of the political ideology of Mohammad — a highly particularist, aggressive and warlike one — in today’s world.
As a political ideology, and an unfriendly one at that, it is essential that we have the ability to learn about, to discuss, and to criticize it. But the position of the major Muslim organizations in the US, the Obama Administration, the ADL, most politicians and political organizations of the Center and Left, most academics, etc. is that the rules of PC forbid this. This has led to such absurdities as a government dictate that official discussions of terrorism must not use the word ‘jihad’, although most present-day terrorism is in fact perpetrated under the banner of jihad!
Part of the ideology of political Islam is that the Islamic legal system, Shari’a, must be applied to Muslims and of course to countries under Islamic control. Principles of Shari’a directly contradict our modern views about the equality of all people, regardless of gender or religion. Shari’a is all about a pervasive hierarchy of rights and privileges given to Muslim men, women, Jews and Christians, and others. Conflict is guaranteed when Islamists become a sizable minority in a liberal culture, as is becoming apparent in the UK and other European countries.
It is necessary and possible for non-Muslims to learn to understand the principles of political Islam and Shari’a. It is not inappropriate to criticize their application to unbelievers and women.
It’s way past time to distinguish the religious and political parts of Islam.

Just for fun

2011-12-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul and foreign policy

2011-12-16T17:03:00.000-08:00

Today I was driving and listening to the radio. This is an activity that may become illegal - distracting the driver - so I enjoy it while I can.
As I often do I was listening to talk radio - the Jerry Doyle show. I like Jerry's show; he is a conservative and an equal opportunity offender. Sometimes he expresses strange views, but this is excusable - if you have to talk on the radio for several hours every day you will inevitably say strange stuff.

The part of the show I listened to today featured a guest: Ron Paul's policy adviser Bruce Fine. Mr. Fine very eloquently presented Paul's positions on foreign policy. These positions make sense, at least superficially. The problems begin when you look deeper and try to explore scenarios beyond the simplistic black and whites presented by Bruce Fine and Ron Paul. For simplicity I'll refer to the positions as being Paul's.

First example: Israel.

Mr. Fine quoted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to Congress where he said, and I am trying to quote accurately: "We don't need you to build our nation, we have already built one; we don't need you to built our democracy, we have already built one and we don't need you to send troops to defend us, we defend ourselves". Based on this quote Ron Paul concludes that his policies are the same as proclaimed in the Prime Minister's speech and therefore he is a friend of Israel, more so than any other candidate. He will stop selling weapons to Israel and to it's enemies thus not discriminating and will not stand in Israel's way when it defends itself.

Sounds good, but:

Only some of Israel's enemies buy their arms from the U.S. The more aggressive ones (Iran and Syria come to mind) get theirs from Russia and China. Turkey, that is becoming unfriendly, is part of NATO and as such can buy arms from other members of the alliance. Will this "even handedness" mean that Israel will be on its own? My understanding of Ron Paul's position is that it will be.
What about spare parts? Israel's air force is using mostly U.S. planes. Does stopping arms sales include spares? If it does, we leave Israel defenseless after it runs out of spares, which will happen within months and until it manages to set up domestic production - which may take years.
Mr. Paul sees no difference between Palestinian terror attacks and Israel's defense of it's citizens. In fact he called Israel's operation in Gaza "a preemptive attack" - ignoring the 3000 rockets that have been shot at Israel from Gaza and that provoked Israel's action. Ron Paul said that "if the U.S.didn't support Israel it wouldn't be burdened by the immoral action in Gaza". He also compared Gaza to a concentration camp. Shouldn't we assume that a Paul administration will see Israel as evil and act accordingly?

Of course if Mr. Paul doesn't care whether Israel exists or not he is not bothered by the consequences of his policy.

Mr. Paul wants to go back to "Jeffersonian principles of offering peaceful relations and commerce to all and defending ourselves vigorously if attacked on our soil". This includes non interference in what ever other countries do. Does that mean that when next time the Palestinians apply for membership in the UN the U.S. will do nothing? If this inaction is because we left the UN I can live with this but not if we are still members.

Speaking of Jefferson: The Marines sing of "the shores of Tripoli". Last time I checked Tripoli is in Libya. This is where the Marines overthrew a regime that supported Berberian pirates that interfered with U.S. trade. The war lasted from 1801 to 1805 and Thomas Jefferson was President. So does a foreign policy based on "Jeffersonian principles" include foreign wars in defense of our interests or just wars to defend against attacks on our soil? Maybe Mr. Paul needs to review his position on this issue.

This brings to the Second Example: Iran

According to Ron Paul we don't need to interfere with Iran's nuclear weapons program. There are two reasons:

We can deter Iran by making it clear that an attack on us will end Iran's existence. "Deterrence works always" according to Paul. Let's assume for a moment that he is correct and the apocalyptic wing of the Iranian theocracy doesn't exist. We do know that Iran is itching to attack us, so does deterrence solve this problem? Here is a scenario: a cargo ship registered in Panama (like so many of them are) enters the port of Baltimore and a couple of hours later a 1 megaton nuclear bomb explodes on board. Baltimore, Washington DC and a big chunk of the Eastern US is gone. Do we incinerate Iran now or do we start an investigation to see who did this to us?
Another scenario: a cargo ship steaming far outside our territorial waters launches a missile from a specially equipped cargo container (Iran recently purchased these missile launchers from Russia). The missile carries a 300Kt warhead and explodes high above the East Coast of the U.S. The Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) is expected to shut down the power grid in the Eastern U.S. and as a cascade reaction the rest of the U.S. will also lose power. The damage can be repaired but it will take at least two years and probably closer to four, to restore some semblance of normalcy. This scenario has been debated and simulated by a number of analysts.
Don't be fooled by Ron Paul - he assumes an Iranian missile attack on the U.S. But the Iranians are not stupid. They would like to destroy us and live another day, which they will if Ron Paul ends up shaping the U.S. foreign policy.
Iran is not going to attack us if we pull out of the region and stop irritating them. The problem with this is that Iran is an expansionist Islamic state. Islamic being the keyword. We are their enemy by virtue of our existence and because of what we do in the Middle East. Leaving Iran to its own devices also means that sooner rather than later the flow of oil from the Middle East to the U.S. will stop. Besides prices going up and causing a serious depression this will also necessitate some kind of action by the West, but if Iran is nuclear the options will be limited. We will be left with one option: appeasement, at least until we develop our own sources.

This post is getting a bit long and though I could bring more reasons to label Mr. Paul's foreign policy as being lunatic I will stop here.

Please feel free to comment.

Palestinian Request for membership in the UN

2011-10-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

Here is letter I received from my Representative in response to the Palestinian Authority's request for recognition by the UN.

Innocents Betrayed

2011-09-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

An excellent movie by Aaron Zelman, the late President of Jews For the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO). This is only the trailer. You can buy the DVD at the JPFO site.

What If...? part two

2011-08-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

The question I asked and didn't answer in my previous post was: What if Begin refused to sign the peace treaty with Sadat?

First let me direct you to an excellent article by Daniel Greenfield.

Here is a quote from that article:

"European models of conflict settlement never mapped well onto a region where there is no enduring form of government. Middle Eastern states are tribal arrangements ruled over by a combination of force and local consensus. A signed treaty with them was not an enduring agreement inherited by a republic, but an agreement with a family or an oligarchy. The overthrow of Mubarak and the subsequent rejection of Camp David by his successors is a reminder that even the most famous regional peace accord could not outlast Sadat and his chosen replacement."

So what if there weren't a peace agreement?

Sadat decided to propose an agreement after having "saved face" by attacking Israel in 1973. Not that the attack was such a resounding success. In fact it was a resounding failure. Israel paid a high price in casualties and undermined self-assurance. On the other hand, the 1973 war ended with Israel controlling not only the Sinai peninsula but also the mountain ranges on the Egyptian side of the Suez canal and the desert up to a 100 kilometers from Cairo. The Egyptian army was thoroughly defeated, lost its best new Soviet equipment and was incapable of any operations whatsoever. Egyptian propaganda persuaded the populace that the war was a great success and Egypt was victorious.

In the armistice negotiations that followed Israel agreed to return to its prewar border on the Suez canal. This agreement was partially due to heavy American pressure and partially due to Israel's reluctance to govern hundreds of thousands of Egyptians and have a land border with Egypt. The Suez was convenient: it prevented easy access by smugglers and infiltrators and posed a natural barrier to invasion, an advantage squandered by the Israeli commanders and politicians in 1973.

It took Sadat 6 years to decide that offering peace to Israel would achieve what he failed to achieve by war. Sadat's next move was courageous and smart: he offered to come to Israel for negotiations and to speak to the Israeli Knesset (parliament). One important reason Sadat made this decision was the fact that the Labor party that had ruled Israel since its independence was defeated in the 1975 elections following the war. A war that was perceived as a disaster by the Israeli public.

Menachem Begin's right wing Likud was in power and Sadat judged, correctly, that the right wing "patriotic" party would be in a position to give him what the leftist government that almost lost the war would not be able to. He was correct. But what if Begin had decided that Sadat's price was too high, instead following the logic laid out by Greenfield in the beginning of this post?

Israeli public opinion was seriously divided at the time of the peace negotiations. It is likely that if Begin refused to sign the agreement he could still have retained his ruling coalition and continued as Prime Minister until the next election. In fact the peace agreement came close to toppling the government.

Since Egypt and Syria were at the time in no condition to start another war the situation on the ground would have continued as before for some time. At the time Sadat came to Israel, Egypt and Syria were doing their best to re-arm and prepare for the next war. Syria was receiving large quantities of arms from the Soviets and Egypt was trying to become a client of the U.S. In the opinion of the Egyptian leadership part of the reason they kept losing wars against Israel was the bad equipment and inadequate training they got from the Soviets. Sadat knew that signing a peace agreement with Israel would allow him to become a client of the U.S. and President Carter obliged.

With no such agreement, becoming a recipient of U.S. arms and training would have been much harder. It is conceivable that Egypt would have become a client of the U.S. anyway - such was the cold war. On the other hand, absent an agreement with Israel the U.S. would probably be less generous. But let's assume that this part of history didn't change and Egypt received all the American arms it did anyway.

Israel didn't benefit at all from the agreement with Egypt. Like Sadat said after the agreement was signed: "Poor Menachem, I got all of Sinai and he got a piece of paper." This was exactly the case. Worse: the destruction and evacuation of Yamit, a Jewish city in the Sinai on the border with Gaza, became a precedent and was used to demand the removal of Israeli towns elsewhere. Before this it was assumed by Israel's enemies that towns and villages Israel build were there to stay. No anymore. The next steps were demands to remove Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria and the destruction of Jewish towns in the north of the Gaza strip.

The peace with Egypt was a "cold peace" that didn't go beyond diplomatic relations. No trade and no cooperation developed because of Egyptian refusal. On the other hand, Gaza now had Egypt in close proximity with only a narrow piece of ground controlled by Israel separating them. This led to weapons smuggling from Egypt - Egypt refused any substantial action against the smugglers - and later opened the door to demands that Israel vacate the border all together - which it did.

The situation now is much worse that it was before the 1973 war and the 1979 peace accords. Due to the proximity to Egypt, Gaza became a heaven for terrorists. The Sinai is controlled by Islamists, Al-Qaeda and Bedouin tribes aligned with them. This puts all of southern Israel in danger of attacks from the Sinai (as was demonstrated recently).

Absent the 1979 peace agreement it is reasonable to expect that Israel would still control all of Sinai and the Sinai would continue as it was: a peaceful area with Bedouin tribes making a good living off tourism. Gaza would be peaceful as well and in the absence of a Palestinian Authority it would also not have Hamas or other organized terrorists. Since there were discussions even before the 1973 war of opening the Suez for traffic it is likely that such an arrangement could have been made to the mutual benefit of both countries.

Israel could also continue to benefit from the modest amounts of oil it was pumping from fields in the southern Sinai and, as we now know, it would have the additional benefit of stable and plentiful natural gas supplies.

On the other hand Egypt would most likely be receiving much less in American assistance. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the cold war, there would be no reason for the U.S. to support Egypt as heavily as it did until 1989.

Israel would be much less vulnerable after the changes that took place in Egypt with the overthrow of Mubarak. It would still have strategic depth and would not depend on the next Egyptian tyrant for its security.

The one possible benefit of the agreement with Egypt was the agreement with Jordan. This is also of dubious value. Israel and Jordan cooperated before the agreement. Israel saved the Jordanian monarchy several times from the threats of Syria and both countries cooperated in the development of the Dead Sea industries. There were no changes for the better in the relationship after the signing of a peace agreement.

What if...?

2011-08-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

It is usually futile to ask the question: "What if we did something different all those years ago?". It is futile, except if by answering the question one can learn something and change behavior or policy in the present.

There are two questions I want answered:

1. In September 1967, after the Six Day war the Arab conference in Khartoum resolved that there will be "No Peace, No negotiations, No recognition of Israel". Israel was still hopeful and offered to return to, mostly, the 1949 armistice lines in return for peace.
What if instead Israel took the Arabs at their word and annexed the West Bank (Judea and Samaria)?

2. On September 17, 1979, the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a peace agreement at Camp David.
What if Begin didn't agree to the terms Sadat proposed, withstood the heavy pressure from President Carter and refused to sign the agreement?

Let's deal first with question #1:

Annexing Judea and Samaria would likely have a similar immediate effect to annexing the Golan Heights: a short bout of complaints from the Arabs and some others and then the matter would be promptly forgotten and ignored. It might come up in different negotiations but Israel wouldn't be demonized or accused of breaking international law for keeping the territory.

The long term effects would be profound and it's impossible to enumerate all of them in a short essay, especially since some are not obvious and would lead to unpredictable consequences 40 years later.

Some effects are fairly simple to predict:

After more than 40 years of being part of Israel Judea and Samaria would have a much larger Jewish population and the prices of housing in Israel would be much lower.

One of the original reasons for not annexing these territories was the supposed "demographic bomb". The Arab population was supposedly growing much faster than the Jewish and the outcome was predictable: the Jews would, sooner or later, become a minority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river. This prediction was based on a linear assumption: the Jews and the Arabs would keep their than current birth rates. As we know now this was a wrong approach. Besides the more than 1 million Jews that came to Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union the birth rates also changed: the Jewish went up and the Arab went down. Including Palestinian emigration the current numbers and the rate of change make the Jewish majority secure and growing.

In the absence of a Palestinian Authority with its corruption and oppression the Palestinian emigration would go down, which would be compensated by a higher standard of living accompanied by an even lower birth rate.

The Oslo accords couldn't happen with Judea and Samaria being a part of Israel. The only reason that the Israeli left succeeded, with no authorization from the government and against the law, to start negotiations with the PLO and the murderous Yassir Arafat was that the territory in question was still open to be negotiated about in 1989/1990. With Judea and Samaria firmly a part of Israel there would be nothing to negotiate about. The absence of the Accords would be profound. The terrorist PLO would not be invited, naively, by the Rabin government to take control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Without a firm base the PLO would have remained what it was before: a terrorist organization living on money donated by patrons who wanted specific jobs done for them. There is no doubt that they would try to continue their attacks on Israel and its interests, but lacking the massive influx of funds, training and arms that Oslo gave them the PLO would keep failing until it faded into irrelevance. In 1989 terror originating in Judea, Samaria and Gaza was insignificant and was in decline. Israel had a firm hold on security and improving living conditions made the Palestinians wary of disturbing the peace.

The same logic can be applied to the Gaza strip: in the absence of the Oslo accords Gaza would remain under Israeli control and would develop into a green area feeding both Israel and itself.

A matter of no lesser importance is the international platform the existence of the Palestinian Authority and the "Peace Process" gave to Israel's enemies. This the main tool used to delegitimatize Israel and to deny it the right to self defense and ultimately the right to exist. It is likely that Israel's international position would be not much different now from where it was in the early 1990s if Arafat and his gang of murderers stayed in Tunisia.

As far as Israel is concerned this would be a much better outcome than the situation we have now. The Palestinians would also profit from the absence of a terrorist proto-state in Judea Samaria and Gaza. Their economical situation would be much improved and they would have proper human rights as opposed to the dictatorial gangster like rule of the PLO and Hamas.

We will deal with the Israel-Egypt peace in a future post.

Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan on Islam

2011-07-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan is VERY courageous. What she says needs to be listened to and acted upon.

Debt ceiling, deficits, taxes and Obama's supposed incompetence

2011-07-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Many conservatives claim that the President and the Democrats are incompetent. They often use the more than $800 billion stimulus as an example: it was, supposedly, wasted and didn't improve the economy or create jobs. The other examples they use are the high unemployment, the Administration's desire to increase taxes and its insistence on increasing entitlements (Food Stamp Programs, Medicaid and others) regardless of fraud or affordability.

But is all this really a sign of incompetence?

I don't think so. It seems to me that both Obama and his party are acting with full awareness of the consequences and the benefits to them.

The stimulus didn't do anything for the economy but it did significantly help states (where most of the money went) and kept them from firing and even helped to hire more state employees. Government employee unions are the strongest and richest, much more so than the private market ones. Since in the last presidential election unions poured more than $400 million into the Democrat's coffers it makes a lot of sense to make them stronger and richer, especially if it's done with taxpayers money. The same is true with the billions poured into the new GM. The UAW is happy and will support the Party in the next election at no cost to the Democrats but at a huge expense to the American taxpayer.

The same logic applies to taxation, regulations and other sources of high unemployment: if the President and his Party suddenly changed course, agreed to reduce taxes, cut unnecessary regulations and generally fostered a pro-business environment the economy would improve. But would they be able to claim the credit for it and receive more votes? Maybe, maybe not. On the other hand if you are unemployed or living on welfare and food stamps would you vote for a party that promises to cut spending on these items or would you vote for the people who promise to put bread on your table? It may be stale and bitter bread but it's something.

All the talk about fairness and "taxing the rich" is the same as "putting the means of productions in the hands of the proletariat" - Soviet Union anyone?

So is the President incompetent? Not if the main goal of his policies is to insure a future stable electoral base for his party and bring us as close as he can to a single party system. He will succeed if the Republicans let him. The only means of defeating both Obama and the Democrats is for the Republicans to refuse any compromises and NOT increase the debt limit unless the President and the Democratic leadership agree to $4 trillion in budget cuts.

What will happen if there is no agreement and the debt limit is not extended? The US Government is taking in about $200 billion/month in income. It's paying out about $300 billion/month, including about $20 billion in debt servicing. Not rising the debt limit means that the Government will have to cut it's expenditure to fit it's income of $200 billion/month. The debt must be serviced as is demanded by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Which means that our Government will have to cut it's spending by about $80-100 billion/month. This is not a bad thing. Several agencies may be shuttered with lots of benefits for everybody (Education Department, Department of Health and Human Services and maybe a couple of others). Another option would be to cut 45% of the budget across the board. It's going to be more than the apparent 33% ($100 billion out of $300 billion) because of the protected spending on Social Security and Medicare.

So: no Government debt default and no fiscal crash. Here's hoping that the TSA will not have funds for the Thousands Standing Around and groping children and old ladies and other such excesses.

A new Flotilla song by Latma

2011-07-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

Please don't take our guns away!

I want to be a Palestinian refugee

2011-07-04T20:08:00.001-07:00

It's REALLY good business. Let's all be Palestinian refugees!

The suffering in Gaza

2011-06-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

The people of Gaza are suffering terrible deprivation. Food is scarce, they live in a concentration camp and the simplest pleasures of life are denied them. We even have the pictures to prove it, courtesy of SpecialAgentHairball of Lockerz.com.

Example of the Horrific Food Shortage in Gaza (WARNING: SHOCKING PHOTO, do not view if you have a weak heart) --

Terrified Gazans Cowering in the Surf and Sand at Gaza Beach. When will their suffering end?

Anguished Palestinian Youths Suffering in Gaza Concentration Camp

Emaciated Gazan Women, Scrambling for Scraps at Depleted Market

Gazan Hitler Youth Meeting

American foreign policy towards Israel

2011-06-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

It makes no sense, but this is what the U.S. does - according to diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks:

The Dumb Sara Palin or not

2011-06-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

Sara Palin is so dumb... Watch this video and judge for yourself

The following is from The Vocal Minority to be found here:

ABC’s of Barack Obama’s Complete and Utter Stupidity

A is for Austrian, which Obama thinks is a language.

B is for breathalyzer, which is what Obama mistakenly called an inhaler for asthma. Incidently, he did immediately correct himself, replacing “breathalyzer” with “inhalator.”

C is for corpsman, which Obama pronounced as “corPSe man” twice in the same speech.

D is for the set of 25 DVD’s Obama gave to British PM Gordon Brown in March, 2009—a lame gift in and of itself—which couldn’t be played in a British DVD player because they were the wrong region. (Can you imagine if George W. Bush did that???)

E is for Europe, which Obama thinks is a country, not a continent.

F is for Fifty-seven, which is the number of U.S. states the most brilliant man ever to be POTUS says he’s been to. That was in May, 2008, so it’s possible Obama’s been to more than 57 states by now.

G is for Skip Gates, the black Harvard professor who exposed the racial chip on his shoulder when he was apprehended by a white Cambridge police officer for breaking into what turned out to be his own house. When asked to comment on it by the media, Obama exhibited his supposed brilliance in law by saying that he didn’t know all the facts, then immediately concluding that the police officer acted stupidly.

H is for Haaaavard. Apparently Obama is so brilliant and prolific that Harvard has his transcripts and written works under lock and key. How’s that for transparency?

I is for inefficiencies. In July, 2009, while selling the disastrous government-run health (s)care bill that has since been shoved down our throats, Obama said, “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.” Whoops.

I is also for Israel. In July, 2008, Obama said, “Let me be absolutely clear: Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.” OMG, could you imagine if Sarah Palin said something like that!?” Actually, at the time of the 2008 election, MSNBC’s David Shuster reported about a McCain aide who blogged that Palin didn’t know that Africa was a continent. But by the time the story went viral, it turned out the blogger was not a McCain aide and the Palin-Africa story was a hoax. But remember, it’s Fox that’s a crappy lying “news” source.

J is for Joe Biden. Anyone who would pick this glittering jewel of colossal ignorance to be Vice President—a man who said J-O-B-S was a three-letter word, who told a man in the audience to stand up before realizing he was in a wheelchair, and who explained to an incurious Katie Couric that when the stock market crashed, FDR (who was not president at the time) got on TV (which was not invented) to address the American people—is by all measures himself a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance.

K is for Karl Benz, inventor of the first gasoline-powered automobile in 1885-86 in Germany. Our genius president apparently did not know this. When addressing in his first address to Congress in February, 2009, said, “I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”

L is for Emma Lazarus, author of “The New Colossus” poem which is engraved on the pedastal of the Statue of Liberty. In a speech at American University last July the purported smartest POTUS in U.S. history not only screwed up the poem, but also royally messed up on the history of the poem and of the Statue of Liberty.

I’ll bet you didn’t even know the Karl Benz or Emma Lazarus gaffes? But I’ll bet you do know about Sarah Palin messing up the history of Paul Revere, right? See how the Obama-worshiping mainstream media works?

And that brings us to …

M is for the Mainstream Media. As documented by many, such as Bernard Goldberg, the liberal MSM has been in the tank for Obama since he appeared on the national stage. If you don’t know most or even some of the gaffes listed above, you can thank the Obama-ass-kissing media for that. They are the reason these huge whoppers by Obama have been hidden while tiniest little misstatement from Sarah Palin is amplified to the hilt and paraded as evidence of the woman’s stupidity. Also, because the MSM have been cheerleaders not only for Obama but for all his failed policies—from the Stimulus Bill to QE/QE2 to his takeover of GM and Chrysler to Obama(Doesn’t)Care to Cash for Clunkers to his Middle East foreign policy—they are just as stupid and clownish as the president they so admire.

M is also for Memorial Day. On that day in 2008, Obama gave a speech during which he said he saw many of the honored fallen heroes in the audience: “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes—and I see many of them in the audience here today—our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

Apparently embarrassed by the claim that he sees dead people, his trusty official campaign blogger erased this gaffe from his website. As Aaron Klein reported at WND, the website transcript reads: “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

Klavan's One-State Solution

2011-06-12T22:59:00.000-07:00

And here is a short history of Israel's borders and other stuff:

The US and the UN

2011-06-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

The UN is funded by its members, with the assessments established according to the best principles of the Communist Manifesto: each member is assessed according to their ability to pay. This ability is determined by the size of the GDP, personal income values and other criteria. The budget is confirmed by the General Assembly.

The top contributors to the UN budget are the following countries:
United States 22.0%
Japan 19.5%
Germany 9.8%
France 6.5%
United Kingdom 5.5%
Italy 5.1%
Canada 2.6%
Spain 2.5%
Brazil 2.4%
Mexico 2.3%
(The above numbers change every year. The top 5 countries remain the same.The most current assessment can be found here)

In other words: the current 192 members decide what to do with money contributed mostly by the above 10 members. But wait. It gets better. The percentages quoted above apply only to the UN budget, excluding peacekeeping missions and other organizations and activities. The number quoted by US supporters of the UN is a measly $516 million per year. The actual number is about $6.347 Billion as explained here and it makes the US contribution much higher than the theoretical 22%.

It seems that the United States (a rich country) is borrowing money from China (a poor country) to pay its UN assessments.

So what do we get for the billions we contribute?
Well, we have the veto power of our Security Council membership. But so do Russia and China each paying a fraction of what we do.

I'm not advocating the abandonment of the UN by the US. It won't happen any time soon and definitely not on President Obama's watch. I am advocating that Congress use its control of the purse to exert influence on the General Assembly and other UN bodies.

In 1989 the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) wanted its status upgraded from an observer to a member of the General Assembly. Both Israel and the US objected but it was clear that the Third World countries, who didn't mind welcoming a terrorist organization into the UN, would vote for the resolution in the General Assembly. The then US Secretary of State George Shultz declared that if the Assembly votes for the PLO's membership he will strongly recommend that President George H.W. Bush stops funding the UN. This threat, along with some additional diplomacy was enough to convince the majority to abandon the idea.

The same tactics could work now, probably better since the US pays more of the UN budget than in 1989.

Congress needs to pass a bill cutting off all payments to the UN if the General Assembly recognizes a unilateral bid by the Palestinians to establish a state. It should also cut off funding to UN organizations that act against our interests. One of these is the Committee for Human Rights that is composed of human rights violators like Iran, (Libya was recently expelled), Syria and their like but finds it necessary to perennially condemn Israeli and US human rights violations.

There is no reason for the US to support an international body that is corrupt, acts against us and our allies and supports terrorist states and entities. To wit: we couldn't push through the UN a meaningful sanctions regime against Iran to stop it's nuclear armaments program. The US would probably do much better in the absence of an international body like the UN by organizing its allies and threatening its foes to cooperate. The UN gave Iran's trading partners Russia and China as well as some Europeans a cover for obstructing any organized action and provided a focal point for a semi-organized opposition to any meaningful sanctions.

One of the root problems with the UN General Assembly is democracy. Not that majority rule is always wrong, but most times it turns into mob rule. This is what happened in the UN. If the United States has one vote as does North Korea or Syria the net result is rule by organized blocks: The Organization of Islamic Conference represents 56 countries and they always vote against Israel and in support of their members no matter what these members do. The Durban Human Rights Conference was, as an example, a festival of Antisemitism and pro terrorism. A number of countries, including the US, chose to withdraw from it but why should we fund these racist terrorist feasts?

The same rule applies to dictatorships, of which there many more than democracies. No resolution can be taken or enforced against even the worst of them, like North Korea or Iran, because the others will oppose and defeat such a resolution.

Democracies that have no restraint on the rule of the majority deteriorate and die fairly quickly. After all a lynch mob is the perfect embodiment of democracy and lynch mobs don't survive for very long. The reason modern democracies survive is that either they are not true democracies but actually representative Republics (like the United States) or have a representative Democratic rule (like Israel, Germany France and others). These mechanisms work only if they are build on top of an established culture of political freedom and tolerance.

The UN has neither a representative body nor a culture appropriate for maintaining a representative democracy. A great majority of its members are dictatorships of one sort or another. This is probably the reason why the democratic UN is becoming less and less relevant and why we should stop funding and supporting them

Turncoat Nation!

2011-05-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

The 1967 borders

2011-05-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

There may not be a problem with president Obama's statement that the Israel-Palestinian negotiations should start from the 1967 borders. I don't think that this is what the president really meant to say, but inadvertently he made a very pro-Israel statement.

The 1967 war started from the 1948/1949 armistice lines. These were not "borders" but the less permanent and formal armistice lines. Armistice lines are never considered borders as they are established by facts on the ground and not by mutual agreement. The only mutual agreement that preceded these lines was the agreement to stop fighting for a while. To wit: the Arabs invalidated those armistice lines by attacking Israel across them.

The war ended at the current borders. Egypt signed a peace agreement (after badly losing the 1973 war). Therefore establishing a proper border mutually agreed by both parties.

The current western border of Israel is actually a more "formal" border than the 1948 armistice lines ever were: the kingdom of Jordan gave up its claims to the West Bank of the Jordan river (not that Jordan had ever had a legitimate claim to this territory). Jordan's abdication could be made legally only in favor of another sovereign power - Israel. So even though the Jordanian king said that he is giving the territory to the Palestinians, the statement was meaningless since there was no sovereign Palestinian entity to take possession at the time. There is still no such entity and even if it came into existence it would have no rights to any land held by the sovereign state of Israel unless Israel agreed to grant it some rights.

I'm sure that President Obama, being an educated man and a lawyer, meant exactly what he said: the 1967 borders. Which means the borders established AFTER the 1967 war and not the temporary 1948 armistice lines. According to the president it will be up to Israel to decide if it is willing to give anybody sovereignty over a part of that land. I'm sure Israel will be generous but I also don't expect them to grant their land to organizations that proclaim their desire to terminate the state of Israel like both the Fatah and Hamas do.

Obama doesn't live in the real world.

2011-05-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

Some things Gene Simmons says in the video aren't accurate, but he definitely got the idea.

The power of Propaganda

2011-05-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Paul Ryan presented a coherent budget that was immediately attacked by the Democrats. This is legitimate - everybody has the right to express an opinion. One of the major points that was attacked is the Medicare vouchers idea.

The Democrats took charge of the issue and framed the debate in a way that will lead to a defeat for Republicans, unless they take it issue back.

There were two claims leveled against Ryan's plan:
1. It will harm seniors by reducing their Medicare benefits.
2. The Ryan plan takes away a good Medicare program and substitutes a questionable voucher one.

This is where the debate is now. The Republicans, as always, failed to respond to the propaganda. Their response was a nebulous statement: "Medicare as it is is unsustainable." This is not a response that explains anything or convinces anybody and indeed polls are already showing that the elderly are scared of the Republican budget.

People who listened carefully know that both claims are false:
1. Seniors will not be harmed since Medicare vouchers will kick in only for those who are now 54 years of age or younger. It will actually help the current beneficiaries by relieving some of the financial pressure on Medicare.
2. Ryan's plan doesn't substitute a "good" Medicare program for vouchers. It substitutes a Medicare program that is running out of money and, according to what the President said in several speeches, will require "death panels": severe rationing of services, procedures and medication. Medicare as we know it is dead and the choice is either severe rationing starting NOW or preserving present benefits and switching to vouchers in the future.

How often did you hear the Republicans state the above? Not very often. The Democrats on the other hand are on message and don't let facts confuse their propaganda campaign. They also don't mention the President's own statements on rationing. If the Republicans don't why should they?

It will not be the first time that a good idea dies because of inept public relations. One thing the Democrats learned well from the Socialists, Communists and Nazis (National Socialists) is the importance of propaganda. If you say something often enough and loud enough there will be enough people who will believe the message.

H.R. 1687 and energy independence.

2011-05-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Open Fuel Standard Act, which has been designated as H.R. 1687, is sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), and cosponsored by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY). It has been referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, of which Congressman Shimkus is a senior member.

This bill will require automakers to make 95% of their fleet as flex fuel vehicles by 2017. The technology is simple and available - make the fuel system impervious to alcohol and moisture. This enables a vehicle to use non-petroleum base fuels, like high Ethanol content gasoline mixes (E85).

I am not against flex fuel vehicles, but am against a government mandate to make them. A flex fuel car will be, on average, $3000 more expensive than a non-flex fuel one. So all of us will pay for this folly that is done in the name of "energy independence".

Don't the dummies in Congress know that Ethanol is expensive to make, eats up billions of dollars in subsidies and drives up the cost of food?

The Ethanol subsidies are one of the targets in several deficit reduction plans. It's inefficient, wasteful, and needs to be cancelled, except that the ethanol lobby will not be denied its share of our taxes. Clearly mandating flex fuel vehicles goes towards continuing subsidizing Ethanol. I say: let's the free marked decide. It is possible that ways will be developed to produce Ethanol cheaply and not from food staples like corn. In this case there will be demand for flex fuel vehicles and no mandate will be necessary. If this doesn't happen we definitely won't need to extend the subsidies and pile on another mandate to justify them.

This is one stupid bill with a Republican being one of the sponsors. I hope that it is defeated by the House. I also wish that the Republican leadership took a stand on this and made clear that this bill will die.

The Holy Muslims

2011-04-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

I was very disappointed today by FOX News. In their news report (not opinion) they reported about the unrest in Afghanistan. The thing that disappointed me was their report of the Florida pastor's thoughtless action in burning a Koran. The way they said it he was responsible for the murderous attacks on UN offices in Afghanistan an for the murder of the employees there.

It's a sign of our times when a supposedly conservative network distorts reality the same way the liberals do. How can anybody burning anything in the U.S. be responsible for murders half a world away?

The pastor was exercising his First Amendment rights and did no harm. It was a murderous Muslim mindset that turned this into a massacre. For some reason even FOX is accusing this guy of causing the unrest.

Do you think that if he burned a bunch of Bibles, writings of the Buddha, Hindu religious books and Das Kapital the followers of these religions would seek out innocent people and kill them? Would the media (including FOX) blame him for anything that happened?

We seem to be giving in to the Muslim onslaught to such an extent that we are now blaming ourselves for what these deranged people are doing. By the way I heard no condemnation of the murders from any Muslim authority

High Capacity Magazines are the Killers

2011-01-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

After the massacre in Tucson the left blamed prominent conservatives and talk show hosts. There was not an iota of evidence but they did their best to make conservatives responsible. This also removed responsibility from the actual murderer. That is how things usually work: if conservatives caused the insane murderer to kill, than he couldn't be responsible.
These accusations finally petered out, especially after it became known that the murderer was not only mentally disturbed but also a leftist and a Bush hater. But you can't let a good crisis go to waste and definitely can't make people responsible for their deeds. Both these progressive imperatives are well satisfied by a call for more gun control.
Since it is not feasible, for now, to introduce more gun control legislation, several members of Congress decided to try to prohibit high-capacity magazines. Representative Carolyne McCarthy (D-NY) brought up this proposal and others are trying to run with it. Her proposal defines a new villain: high-capacity magazines. It is obvious to that it was the crazy murderer's magazine that killed an injured all these people in Tucson. Jared Loughner had nothing to do with the murders.
The danger in this kind of thinking is that superficially it makes sense: only a murderer would need a hand gun magazine that holds more than 30 rounds. But if you think for a moment it is clear that limiting the capacity of magazines that are being sold legally will change nothing, except legitimize more government control.
Here are the reasons why:

Like everything else, if an item is restricted it doesn't mean it's unavailable. Just look at prohibited drugs, criminals buying guns, people driving with suspended licenses or no licenses at all.
High capacity magazines have the potential to make a murderer less effective. Sounds counter intuitive, but think: if a crazy killer has only 10 round magazines available he (or she) will choose a caliber that will make most of these 10 rounds. Why use 9mm? He could use .40cal or a .45cal. If he did that, Rep. Gifford would be dead. It was luck and the fact that Loughner used a 9mm round that saved her life. The same is probably true for some of the other survivors.
Another factor to consider is that a 34 round magazine makes the gun heavy, unbalanced and unwieldy. There is a reason law enforcement carry spare magazines but not these ridiculous high-capacity ones.
Which brings us to the next point: what is to prevent our crazy murderer from reloading? It is cumbersome to reload with a high-capacity magazine but with the normal 14-19 round ones or 10 round magazines reloading take only a couple of seconds.

So by banning "high-capacity" magazines we will do two things: shift the blame, again, to on inanimate object and do nothing to reduce the chances of a maniac killing lots of people. We may even increase the danger.

If the progressives really wanted to increase public safety they would promote gun ownership and concealed carry. After all one armed person in that crowd in Tucson could have stopped the murderer. He was, indeed, stopped by two men who wrestled him to the ground. One of those had a concealed carry permit and was armed. He said later that he would have shot the killer if the killer resisted or posed any further danger. A pity that this man was some distance away, in line at the grocery store and didn't arrive in time to save more lives

The North Korean opportunity

2010-11-24T16:30:00.000-08:00

Our foreign policy is that of Chamberlain just before WWII - try not to upset your enemies and, if necessary, appease them. Chamberlain had at least the excuse that Britain wasn't ready for war and was using every day he gained to build up the country's armed forces. We have no such excuse.

The North Koreans are using our incompetence for their purposes. At the moment the purposes seem to be internal: to consolidate the position of the heir to the throne by attacking the South. The sinking of a South Korean corvette and yesterday artillery barrage on a South Korean island are supposedly a part of this activity. The truth is that we don't really know what they think or plan.

Some of the news media were wringing their hands and declaring the U.S. is in a very tough position in the Far East and really can do nothing about the North Koreans except beg China to restrain them. Apparently our President and Secretary of State agree.

Let's see what the situation actually is:
China has been shielding North Korea for many years. It is in China's interest to have this "bad boy". They are not afraid of the crazy Koreans since China would have no problems crushing them if need be and is indeed maintaining a huge army on the North Korean border. The North Koreans are useful to exert pressure on the South, Japan and the U.S. I don't think that the North is operating under Chinese command and control but it definitely operates to China's satisfaction.
The North Koreans are also useful as a nuclear and missile proliferation proxy: anybody wanting nuclear capability or missiles can buy them from North Korea as long as China approves.

The U.S. and its allies both in the Far and the Middle East seem to be helpless. On the face of it there are few options open to us. And so Syria and Iran are buying technology from North Korea, making the U.S. position in the Middle East difficult. North Korea itself is threatening the South and Japan.

The source of this helplessness is a simple assumption: we can't attack North Korea. Any attack on them will provoke a massive invasion of South Korea and may provoke China to join them. The only alternative left is appeasement in the form of continuing fruitless talks and "humanitarian" aid.

But is this assumption correct?

To answer, we need to examine several issues:

Is North Korea capable of a sustained attack on South Korea?

On the face of it the answer is Yes. The North has one of the largest armies in the world, numbering close to a million soldiers. In the case of of a sudden attack they may be able to overwhelm the South Korean army, that is one fifth of the North's, and the 29,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. Or not. Quantity doesn't equal quality and doesn't necessarily translate into power. (See all Arab wars against Israel). The North has inferior armor and air force as well as unreliable trucks. Which raises the question: would they be able to keep going and defeat the South even if the initial attack is successful? This is questionable. The South and the U.S. have total air superiority in both quality and quantity of aircraft, which by itself may render a Northern attack ineffective. Since only a part of the South Korean army is positioned close to the border it cannot be defeated immediately and can keep fighting - which may be devastating to the North. North Korea has a relatively weak industrial base - not surprising since most of the population is starving. Without a strong military industry and a developed logistics base, wars that take more than a couple of days are unwinnable.

The only chance for a North Korean victory lies with China. If China chooses to support a North Korean attack the situation may become complicated. Should the U.S. fight Chinese forces directly? What if China supports the North only logistically?

The actual question is: is it in China's interest to get involved in a war that has no benefits? They got involved in the Korean war, with Soviet support, to prevent the loss of the North Korean buffer. They stand only to lose by supporting North Korean aggression. Russia can't and won't support China - it has few forces in the Far East and is afraid of China. Chinese trade will be seriously disrupted not to mention that a war against the main importer of their goods is plain stupid.

It seems that the likelihood of a massive North Korean attack on the South is highly unlikely. Which means that the current policy towards North Korea is silly: it rewards and encourages bad behavior with no means to curb it.

Yesterday's artillery barrage presented an opportunity which may still be open: attack the North Korean uranium enrichment plant. Use missiles to make the attack safe for the U.S. and notify the North Koreans that this is retaliation for their attack. At the same time stop all our "humanitarian" assistance to the North and prepare for a North Korean attack, making the preparations open and visible but keeping them obviously defensive.

Such a response may provoke a war but the chances of this are extremely slim. It is much more likely that the North Koreans will pretend that nothing happened and our other enemies will think twice before doing anything rash.

EDIT: As of December 21, 2010 is is clear that Non-Appeasement works. North Korea was threatening to start a war if the South conducts live fire military exercises on its sovereign territory. The South ignored the treats and went ahead with its plans. The result: the North decided NOT to start a war. In other words: challenging a bully and facing them down works every time.

Israel in danger

2010-11-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

Israel is in danger. The danger is existential and has never been as severe as it's now. Not because of its neighbors and not because of an exceptionally unfriendly U.S. Administration. Europe's enmity is also not the reason.

Israel overcame much worse odds in 1948 during its War of Independence and again in 1967. The Yom Kippur war in 1973 was extremely dangerous but not as dangerous as the current situation.

The danger Israel faces is coming from within. It began with the great victory in 1967. The people and the government suddenly felt free of the constant pressure and fear of destruction. The country was invincible. It could be magnanimous to its enemies and start thinking of luxuries like human rights and world opinion.

The error of these ways was demonstrated in 1973. Israel paid a terrible price but came out victorious - this was a given. The Arabs can lose as many battles and wars as they want and still live to fight another day, Israel has no such luxury. The first war it loses will also be the last - its existence will likely be over.

Lots of people took the victory as an affirmation of Israel's strength (which it was) and as a license to continue its liberal and peace seeking policies (which it wasn't). The situation is exacerbated by a leadership problem: the founders' generation is gone and the people running the country now were, mostly, born after the state was established. They tend to take it for granted.

Since the above is correct for a great majority of the population, Israel is developing patterns that fit any other country: bureaucracies that care only for themselves, including in vital organizations like the armed forces, intelligence and Ministry of Defense. Bureaucrats are careful - they don't like the boat rocked and therefore don't encourage out of the box thinking or actions that may endanger their position.

This was sadly demonstrated in the second Lebanon war and a couple of years later in the encounter with the Turkish flotilla (Navi Marmara).

I can't see the current government taking the same decisive action as its predecessors took in Entebe or bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor. True, Olmert's government decided to destroy the Syrian reactor, but only after the U.S. approved it.
Operation Cast Lead against the murderous Hamas in Gaza was terminated prematurely because of world-wide opposition. This not something the ever precluded Israeli government from doing what was necessary to protect its citizens.
Previous governments understood that the world opposes Israel's existence - it never stopped them and it shouldn't stop the current government. Israel doesn't need permission from any U.S. administration or from anybody else to take care of existential threats like Iran.

Much of the blame falls squarely on the Israeli left. These are people who forgot that they live in a tiny country surrounded by enemies that won't think twice before cutting the throats of every last Jew. They see what they want to see in their delusions: a great power oppressing the "poor" Palestinians. They are not the only ones to blame. The Israeli education system hasn't been teaching the Jewish ethos. It switched instead to promoting the Palestinian one - however twisted and false it may be. The media never tell the full story: Israel's vulnerability is rarely mentioned and the people live in a strange cocoon that simulates life in the U.S.
This reminds me to a large extent of the ailments in the U.S. society, but Israel doesn't have the luxury of a 300 million population, the strongest armed forces in the world and isolation. The U.S. has time. Maybe not much but enough to correct its mistakes. Israel is quickly running out of it.

Building Bridges

2010-11-09T15:23:00.000-08:00

The U.S President Barack Hussein Obama arrived in Indonesia and in a joined news conference with the Indonesian President he said among other things:

"With respect to outreach to the Muslim world, I think that our efforts have been earnest and sustained. We don't expect that we are going to completely eliminate some of the misunderstandings and mistrust that have developed over a long period of time, but we do think that we're on the right path."

I'm not entirely clear what misunderstandings he was talking about. The nature of Islam and Obama's distortion of it are very well described here and I will not repeat the analysis. His attempts to mischaracterize Islam or maybe his willful misunderstanding of Islam have consequences, some severe. One of them is the danger of starting a new war in the Middle East.

Asked about Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem Obama said: "Each of these incremental steps can end up breaking that trust between these parties." Again, I'm not clear what trust he is talking about. Is it the trust Israel should put into the corrupt band of thugs called the Palestinian Authority? A group that systematically reneged on every obligation it undertook under the "Land for Peace" agreements - taking the land and offering terror in return. Or is it the trust that the Palestinians put into the "Zionist Entity" the one they hope to destroy soon?

Besides making these statements from Indonesia that doesn't allow Israeli citizens entry, there is a more fundamental problem that seems not to bother Obama and the "journalists" that write about the Middle East: what are "settlements"?

Note that Obama was asked about "settlement" construction in east Jerusalem. What makes this a settlement? The housing in question was approved and will be built on land that belonged to Jews for generations. Some of it was Jewish for a hundred years and some longer. The same is true for the "settlements" of Gush Etzion, houses in Hebron and other places. Some of the "settlements" are built on land that used to belong to the Turkish Sultan and then to the Jordanian state, that gave up its rights to it. What makes these different from Tel Aviv?

The main difference is simple: the Jordanian Arab Legion conquered what is now called The West Bank and east Jerusalem during the 1948 war if Independence. Jordan promptly turned these properties over to Arabs who had no legitimate claim to them. This is how people who want to live in houses their families owned in 1928, before the massacre of the Jewish community of Hebron, are suddenly defined as "settlers".

The Europeans and the President of the U.S. keep calling rightful Jewish owners of land "settlers" only because the Arabs succeeded to take it away by force in a war of aggression. Shouldn't the same logic apply to Jews that took the same land by force in a defensive war? Apparently not.
So what about Tel Aviv? maybe it is also a "settlement" that has to be uprooted?

The firm and conclusive Palestinian response is YES. They are still showing in their schoolbooks maps with a Palestinian state on all the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. The way to eradicate these "settlements" is through the right of return: flooding Israel with millions of Arab "refugees" as part of a peace agreement.
This is not surprising - Islam is absolutely intolerant of any incursion into its domain. How dare Jews set up an independent state in Dar El Islam - the House of Islam? No land once conquered by Islam can be relinquished except temporarily if it's taken back by force and guarded by a superior enemy. This makes Israel only a first in a line of candidates for Muslim restoration. Greece, that Balkans and Spain are next on the list. The mechanism of this restoration will be different but they still are on the Muslim agenda and will come after Israel is destroyed.

So what bridges is Barack Hussein building and where do they lead?

By defining anything built across the 1948 armistice line as "settlements" Obama joins the loud chorus of voices trying to delegitimize Israel's and the Jews right to any land, however long it has been in Jewish hands, if it is not within the 1967 "suicide" borders. From there only a short bridge leads to denying Israel any rights at all. Why are Tel Aviv, Hadera, Netanya and all the rest different from Jerusalem?
The Palestinians and other Arabs see Obama's rhetoric for what it is: blatant denial of Israel's right to exist. With such a strong supporter of their cause the next logical step is an attack. In the last 40 years, after the 1973 war, the Arabs seem to have realized that they don't have the military wherewithal to defeat Israel. Now with Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas ready to strike and the U.S. President in full agreement with them, they may decide to do so.

The other bridge Obama is building is much longer. It leads from the Muslim world into the Western. First Europe and then the U.S. or maybe in reverse order. No bridge built to Islam is two-way. Islam goes only one way: out to conquer. Therefore any bridges Obama is building have one purpose: to facilitate the spread of the "Religion of Peace".

Obama may not be building these bridges to make Islam's takeover of the West easier. He may be naive or stupid or vain or something else or all of the above. None of the above is an excuse to bring on the Islamisation of our society. The Europeans noticed the danger and parties are popping up all over that have stopping Islam's march across Europe as an important item on their agenda. In the U.S. the elites are still talking about multiculturalism and tolerance. I hope that both we and Europe wake up before it's too late.

Lenin is alive and well

2010-09-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

Vladimir Lenin (Ulianov) has been dead for many years. His ideas are well, alive, and being implemented in the United States. To examine the truth of the above statement let's look at some quotes from Lenin. To avoid misunderstandings I've only used quotes that cannot be misinterpreted and stand on their own:

1. A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

The Soviets and Nazis used this thesis with great success. Our current administration is trying to use it with varying degrees of success. Telling us that ObamaCare is good for us doesn't make it so. If enough people believe it, it will become the "truth" and will be treated as such. Telling us again and again that the recession is over or that spending stupendous amounts of our money "created or saved" millions of jobs is a lie, but if enough people believe it it won't matter. Some of these tactics have been successful: a majority of people in this country believe that Wall Street and greed caused the housing bubble and the resulting recession. Few look beyond the propaganda. The fact is that Congress has instituted policies that encourage irresponsible loans to people who could never repay them and backed these loans with Freddie Mac and Fannie May government guarantees. These policies were the major cause for the bubble and recession.

There is not enough space here to count all the lies that are being repeatedly told by the administration, its Congressional allies or the "mainstream media". If you look carefully to find facts for yourself you'll discover the lies. Don't take the government, its lackeys, or anybody else at their word.

2. Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

Every successful dictatorship takes this seriously. The Soviets, Nazis, Chinese, Vietnamese etc. A major requirement for this educational scheme to succeed is central control and uniformity. Lenin's educational goal can't be achieved if education is left to local school districts, private schools, charter schools or parents. A single center has to control the curriculum. In the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany it was the Ministry of Education. We have the Department of Education.
Have you ever asked yourself why we need a Federal Department of Education? The conventional answer (see paragraph 1) is: we need to improve the level of education in the U.S. so as not to be left behind other countries (remember "No Child Left Behind"?). Like many "conventional" truths, it's a lie. President Carter signed the law establishing the Department of Education in 1979. Since its establishment the level of education in the U.S. as measured by the percentage of high school students graduating as Scientists, Engineers or Medical Doctors is steadily declining. The reason: centralized curricula being pushed by the federal department to make as many students as possible "Bolsheviks" forever. Bolshevik means "a member of the majority" - conformity and belief in the same ideology is the main purpose of centralized control over education. For the same reason the current administration and Democratic Congress are hostile to vouchers: these would allow children of modest means to attend private schools that are out of reach of the central system.

3. It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

One can call the current administration and a large part of our Congress statists. This is, in my opinion, overly generous and naive. Being statist may sound good to people who expect the government to "do something" about unemployment or take care of their health. The same approach doesn't sound so good in light of Lenin's statement about liberty. In a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress (12 August 1974) Gerald Ford said: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have." (This quote is widely attributed to Thomas Jefferson but I couldn't find any proof of that). Historically the first thing "big enough" government takes is liberty. Lenin was no dummy.

4. One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

Ever wonder where the left's irrational fear of an armed population is coming from? Lenin didn't invent the concept of a flock of sheep being herded by an armed shepherd - armed to control the sheep - he only worded it in a short and clear sentence. Next time you hear calls for gun control ask yourself why. Be very suspicious, especially if it's to "protect our children". These demands come always from the left. If a "conservative" politician supports gun control it is a dead giveaway: this is NOT a true conservative.

5. The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
6. The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Lenin knew that the capitalist system is strong and stable. Not being a fool, he noticed that it is based on satisfying basic human instincts and rewarding people for what they do. Being a revolutionary, he looked for a way to both destabilize capitalism and destroy its staunchest supporters: the bourgeoisie (middle class). He found the correct formula and implemented it extremely successfully during the Russian revolution. Lenin knew that the Bolshevik takeover of Russia was not secure as long as there was a middle class. This meant that he had to destroy the existing middle class. It could not be done directly as the Bolsheviks were not strong enough - the civil war ended only around 1921-1923 - so another way was necessary. Since just shooting them all wasn't possible at the time, the way he chose was financial destruction. After high taxes on every possible form of independent business combined with inflation and periodic re-issuance of the currency (to prevent hoarding cash) ruined the middle class, it became just one more group of government employees. Easily controlled and disposed of at leisure.

Our current fiscal policies remind me of Lenin's tactic: run up the national debt to the point where our credit rating is seriously degraded, raise taxes under the pretext of paying off the debt, create uncertainty and confusion by adding regulation to the mix and by not defining a clear economic path forward. The probable results: inflation, economic instability, rising unemployment and further strengthening of the government. A large number of small businesses will disappear and big corporations can be dealt with easily by the government's ever-growing bureaucracy. A diminishing middle class will be vulnerable to pressure by the bureaucracy.

7. The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.

Lenin understood the value of mass media for propaganda. He was the teacher that the Nazi Goebbels learned from and apparently was influential in the policies of every leftist or Fascist (not much difference there) movement. If we look at the behavior of our MainStream Media we will discover very quickly that it complies with Lenin's requirements and both propagandizes and organizes the masses. Propaganda is targeted dissemination of lies. Most of our press does it very efficiently.
Thomas Jefferson said that "Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." People who believe otherwise are easy targets for lies carefully formulated to promote certain ideas. These ideas can range from the personal: "Candidate X wants to deny women cancer treatments just because he is mean" to the more general: "Social justice and fairness demand that those who work hard and earn a good living give their money to the Government that will select the poor, lazy or plain unfortunate to whom it will give this money. You, the hard worker, are obviously too stupid to decide what to do with your property."

So, do you still have doubts that Leninism is being implemented in the U.S.? It may be called different names: Progressivism, Socialism, Improvement of Education, Better Health Care for All. Whatever the name it is the same policy: implementing Lenin's imperatives, destabilizing and destroying the capitalist system, re-educating the next generation. In short: CHANGE.

I see no other possible explanation to the huge deficits, high taxes, regulation of everything and creation of a huge underclass of people dependent on the government for their livelihood. It seems that our President hopes that we are one push away from an irreversible transformation of our society into a semblance of what Lenin achieved in Russia.

What Obama Wants

2010-07-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Last week several left leaning columnists in Israel celebrated the reception given Prime Minister Netanyahu by President Obama. Many interpreted this meeting as a return by the US President to relations as usual with Israel and a return to pragmatic, as opposed to ideologue, policies.

This assessment seems to be premature. Only a couple of days after the Netanyahu meeting, the White House changed the status of the Palestinian Mission to the US. Members of the mission were given diplomatic immunity and the mission was allowed to fly the Palestinian flag. A State Department spokesman said that these were only "minor" changes, commensurate with the future independent Palestinian state. This is a telling statement.

There are a number of things that must be clear to the President:

1. Right now is the very worst time to grant the Palestinians any perks of a state. They are refusing to engage in direct talks with Israel and demanding unreasonable concession for just, maybe, agreeing to talk. The President's latest move will only encourage them and make a peace agreement that much more unlikely.
2. The most important issue facing the US and its allies in the Middle East is the possibility of a nuclear Iran. Spending time and political capital on the Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts doesn't solve this serious problem.
3. It is clear that Iran will not be persuaded by further diplomatic efforts. Nevertheless last week a member of Congress, probably at the behest of the Administration, asked the Swiss embassy in Tehran to arrange a meeting with the Iranian leadership, who refused. The request indicates that the Administration is still trying a diplomatic approach or shall we call it a begging approach.

The consequences of a nuclear Iran were described clearly by several senior members of the Administration, including Defense Secretary Gates and Secretary of State Clinton. Among these consequences would be: increased Iranian meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian influence, if not control, of the Gulf states, and control over the main sea routes carrying oil to both the US and Europe.

Kuwait and the Emirates are already re-orienting their policies to be in conformance with Iranian demands. We can assume that the others, including Saudi Arabia, will eventually follow, especially after Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.
A nuclear Iran will also pose a serious danger to the US. It is not likely that Iran will attack the US directly but Iran will be in a position to give nuclear devices to terrorist organizations that will do the Iranian's bidding.

So what would explain the President's efforts to encourage the Palestinians in their refusal to negotiate and at the same time ignore Iran?

At first glance there is no good explanation that makes sense of the current US policy. Several sources, including some Israeli, claimed that President Obama is trying to extort concessions from Israel to benefit the Palestinians and achieve a quick peace agreement. This makes no sense since his policy is actually encouraging the Palestinians to refuse to negotiate, making an agreement extremely unlikely. His policy also encourages Iran to keep doing what it's doing: developing a nuclear weapon and building up proxies to attack both Israel and US allies in the region.

The claim that Obama still believes that sanctions and diplomacy will stop Iran is also unbelievable. Only a moron would believe that the mullahs are willing to negotiate at this point in time. Obama is not a moron.

So what is the Presidents desire and plan?

Actually it is very simple and is based on his beliefs as they have been articulated by him and by people close to him. His Middle Eastern policy is based on a number of major beliefs:

1. Israel has no right to exist and its disappearance will solve all the problems in the Middle East.
2. An interruption of the oil flow from the Persian Gulf is a good thing.
3. If there is no Israel and oil is not flowing, we don't care about the Middle East and Iran can have it.

I don't think that I need to justify the first assumption. Barack Hussein Obama spend much of his childhood in a Muslim environment, his close friends are virulently antisemitic and anti-Israeli and it would be quite surprising if he didn't share their beliefs.

An interruption of the gulf oil flow would fit right into the President's domestic policies. It would make cap and trade less important and push gasoline and energy prices to the high levels he wants them to be at.

If there is no Israel and no oil from the Middle East, the area will be of no importance, except of course as a cradle for Islamic terrorism. But according to the Administration there is no such animal. If we just cuddle the Islamists and give them what they want they will become our friends. Without our support of Israel the Islamists may just go away. This kind of thinking is prevalent on the left and Obama is definitely part of that group. It is stupid to believe that after defeating little Satan (Israel) the Islamists will not have an even greater appetite to defeat the Great Satan (US). Some people persist in their beliefs despite hard facts to the contrary.

So the President's current policy may seem contradictory and inept but it really isn't. There is an inner logic and consistency to it. A logic that may, if allowed to run its course, bring both the US and Israel to the brink of destruction. I only hope that Israeli leaders see Obama for what he is and act in the interest of both Israel and the US to defeat Iran.

Free Gaza

2010-06-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that the people of Gaza are oppressed. They are terrorized, deprived of freedom, have to be content with a very low standard of living and can't freely go where they want. They have to abide by stringent rules that include a dress code, rules of public behavior and limits on their occupation and business.

Gaza needs to be freed the same way the Germans needed freedom from the Nazis, the same as the Japanese needed freedom from their military regime, and the peoples of the Soviet Union needed to be freed from Communist oppression.

I don't remember much objection to the blockades imposed by the Allies on Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. There was a bit more objection to pressuring the Soviets, but that was mostly because people didn't believe that this pressure would succeed.

There is no real difference between big bad boys like the Nazis, Imperial Japanese, Soviet Communists and Hamas. Hamas is oppressing the population, attacking its neighbors Israel and, to a lesser extent, Egypt. Hamas is causing terrible suffering in the Gaza strip. Gaza has to be freed.

So why isn't Gaza being freed? After bickering with each other for a while Egypt and Israel imposed a blockade on the Hamas regime. It's nowhere as severe as those imposed on the Nazis - humanitarian aid is getting through in quantities sufficient for the population to live relatively comfortably. Just today 105 trucks with food, fuel and medical supplies entered Gaza. 30 trucks with supplies brought by the "Flotilla" were denied entry by Hamas. Israel is regularly admitting hundreds of patients that can't be treated in Gaza into Israeli hospitals. Egypt is ignoring massive smuggling through tunnels under its border. I don't recall the Allies sending anything but bombers into Nazi Germany.

The problem, in my opinion, is that Hamas, hiding behind the Palestinian independence mantle is conducting a very sophisticated propaganda campaign. It is well funded by Iran and some Arabs and uses these funds to create an image of an Israeli Goliath crushing a Palestinian David. Since the ultimate goal of Hamas, Iran and most of the Arab world is the destruction of Israel and since there are enough non-Muslims who support this goal, this mode of operation works well for Hamas. It does not work for the people of Gaza or the Palestinians in general but only for Hamas and it's sponsor Iran.

The Islamist movement, of which Hamas is an important part, is a threat to all - including non-fanatical Muslims. But the Islamists are very smart in using what Lenin called "useful idiots". The Soviets and the Nazis used this system to great advantage. The principle is simple: convince idealists, especially famous ones, that your cause is righteous and they will do your bidding. Find people who are known in their own countries, respected and credible. I believe that most of the Free Gaza movement supporters are "useful idiots". There is no doubt that there are many who support the Islamists because they hate Jews and can't see that they are the next on the list of targets. The most credible propagandists sincerely think they are doing good. In reality they are legitimatizing and aiding their own manipulators. It worked for the Nazis, for the Soviets, and it's working for the Islamists.

Ultimately this is a war for public opinion and no war can be won with a defensive strategy alone. Regrettably this is what the West seems to be doing: it explains and responds. The reaction to the Free Gaza Flotilla incident is a great example.

Instead of defending itself from baseless claims, Israel should go on the offensive. Why not start with a series of ads in newspapers followed by articles by respected writers calling for a Free Gaza, free from the oppression of Islamists including Hamas. Israel can use the same terminology its enemies use but turn it on its head. None of this has or should be done directly by the State of Israel. There are a number of organizations, charities and pro-Palestinian bodies that can be used to do the job. "Useful idiots" can be useful both ways.

The Mexican President's Wisdom

2010-05-21T00:04:00.000-07:00

Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke to Congress on Thursday, May 20, 2010. He had some words of wisdom for our legislators.

To begin with he criticized the Arizona immigration law. In his opinion it "ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree." Does he mean that we should do nothing and let our country be taken over by illegals from Mexico? Does he mean that nothing can be done because illegal immigration is unstoppable? Or does he mean the he wants us to do nothing?

The Democrats that applauded him seem to agree with his statements and probably with the underlying desire for us to do nothing. After all, they hope that these illegals, after having been granted citizenship, will vote for the party of welfare that let them live here at the expense of those of us who still work and pay taxes.

Mr. Calderon said a couple of other things applauded by Democrats. He said that it would be nice if Congress reinstated the assault weapons ban so that the drug gangs in Mexico will have less access to "high powered weapons". You see, it is all our fault that the Mexican drug gangs use rocket launchers, grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic weapons against their government forces. Never mind that none of these are available for sale in the U.S. but are freely sold on the international market or plundered from Mexican army warehouses.

What is the Mexican President doing messing with our internal affairs and how come he feels he has a right to say these things?

The second part of the question is easy: he is no fool and seeing how the Administration and the Congressional majority agree with him, felt free to tell us what to do.

The first part is a bit more complicated. The U.S. in its current form has a mildly stabilizing influence on Mexico. This will surely become less true as our standard of living falls and our government takes over more of the economy and takes away our freedoms. In the meantime Mexican citizens can see that the country next door offers a better standard of living, more freedom and more choices. For those who are enterprising, brave and hard-working the solution is simple: move to the U.S.

Now imagine that we get serious about border security. It is true that even concrete walls and mine fields didn't stop everyone from crossing from East to West Germany but they stopped 99.999%. The rest of those who tried mostly died. I'm not suggesting this type of security. On the other hand slightly more border security combined with enforcing existing federal immigration laws and punishing employers could bring illegal immigration down to just a trickle.

This would cause less money to be sent to Mexico but it would also have serious political consequences for Mexico. Millions of people with enough initiative to leave would be stuck. How long would it take for the pressure cooker to explode? Apparently the Mexican President doesn't want to find out. He needs them to go away and the U.S. is a convenient outlet. This also explains why all the attempts by the Mexican government to curb illegal immigration to the U.S. always fail.

As to the ridiculous claim that lack of gun control in the U.S. allows Mexican drug cartels to arm themselves: Mr. Calderon knows that this is a false claim but it is convenient. Accusing the U.S. keeps his Democratic hosts happy and it may result in stricter gun laws here. The current situation is uncomfortable for the Mexican government: it rules a country with strict prohibitions on private gun ownership and astronomically high gun crime rates. The Northern neighbor has an exactly reversed situation (mostly). Is it possible that Mexicans coming back home from the U.S. will notice and want some freedom too?

To Profile or Not to Profile

2010-05-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

The attempted attack on New York's Times Square gave us another glimpse of a deadly disease eating away at our society: Political Correctness. The PC problem is exacerbated by the left's desire to have the "right wing crazies" (their definition) responsible for acts of terror plaguing us.

This time it was New York's Bloomberg that supplied the gems: he was ready to bet that the terrorist was somebody "who disliked President Obama's health-care reform" or somebody similar. When a Pakistani Muslim was arrested Bloomberg warned us not to discriminate against New Yorkers of Pakistani descent or Muslims in general.
Did he hear any talk of discrimination? Did he apologize for his previous statement? Of course not.

The situation is even worse than I expected. The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that the terrorist may try to escape through an airport and put him on the no-fly list. He was apprehended - on board an Emirates airliner that had to be recalled from the runway at JFK. The Department explained that from now on airlines will have to update their lists every two hours so that such a situation doesn't happen again. What wasn't explained is how did the terrorist go through all the other security checks unmolested.

He did everything to attract attention: bought a one way ticket to Dubai for cash, bought the ticket at the last moment and used his own passport with his own, now banned from flying, name on it. I am sure that the baby waiting in the TSA line with him was inspected, he likely took off his shoes and the grandma behind him in line was frisked. Everybody was so busy doing stupid stuff that they never paid any attention to who was going through to the gates.

I hope that all this was just plain stupidity, but I have this sinking feeling that it's not. If you put together how the underwear bomber got on the flight to Detroit this Christmas and how Major Niddal Hassan wasn't even called a terrorist, and still isn't, you may arrive at one of several conclusions:
Either there is a widespread conspiracy to coddle Muslim terrorists and enable their activities or Political Correctness is deeply embedded and encouraged.

I think that it is the second choice. It is quite unlikely that all of Hassan's colleagues in the Army wanted to enable him in his quest to be a good Muslim. It is more likely that PC, encouraged all along the chain of command, was the culprit. The same PC that makes our government bent over backwards to accommodate Muslims, including looking the other way when obviously suspicious activities are underway. The same mentality was likely at work when the latest terrorist was granted entry into the US and later citizenship. He wasn't alone. His brethren were admitted before him and will continue to be admitted into the US.

We really need profiling. We had one crazy guy that attacked a Federal building in Oklahoma City. Since that event the left is all for profiling. Profiling against the right, which is anybody who doesn't agree with them.

The time is right to start profiling against Muslims. Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists, except that one, are Muslims. We really need to take a good look and keep looking at observant Muslims who are compelled by their religion to impose Islam on all of us. Not all of them display the obvious accouterments of their religion, but a close look at their background, friends and activities will disclose their loyalties.

If I'm correct, without profiling we will see a string of more or less successful terror acts until a big one like 9/11 happens again. Hopefully that one will wake this country up. If not, we are royally screwed.

Immigration Reform - Why We Don't Need Any

2010-04-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

All the talk about immigration reform makes me angry. Why do we need a reform?

By the way: "reform" means "improvement" and a change to the current system may not necessarily be an improvement, especially if it includes an amnesty as its main feature.

I would call it "Immigration change". So why do we need to change the current system?

One answer: we have millions of illegal intruders in this country. They interfere with our economy both by consuming resources and taking jobs away from people who are here legally. They are also dangerous: we have no idea who is coming over our borders (both North and South) - these may be peaceful job seekers or criminals.

Most of the illegals are here to earn money. To deter them from coming over the border we don't need new laws, we only need to enforce existing ones and, possibly, make punishment for not following the rules more severe.

I'm not talking about punishing the illegal immigrants. I'm proposing to focus on the people who employ them.

It is my belief that a person or a company that gets caught employing someone here illegally should be punished severely. The employment will stop if fines are equal to a 100 times the yearly wages paid for the job the illegal was hired to do and maybe criminal prosecution. With no jobs available the illegals will go home. This was proven when the current recession started. Many couldn't find jobs and returned to wherever they came from.

It is true that probably not all of them will go away. Some will stay because they get medical treatment they can't get in their country of origin, because their kids get a better education here or for whatever other reason. Those who chose to stay will have to support themselves either by committing crimes or being supported by somebody. As things happen, serious criminals are usually caught, especially if they don't have a large illegal immigrant community to hide in. These communities are notorious for not cooperating with police. It may take a while but the criminals will end up in jail with their families deported. The ones supported by friends and family will be few and won't really bother us.

When the massive flow of people sneaking across the border diminishes, it will be much easier to catch those who still insist on crossing illegally. It can than also be assumed that they are either criminals or terrorists and can be dealt with accordingly.

The question may be asked how can a small business owner, or a big company, know that they are about to hire an illegal. It wouldn't be fair to punish them severely for not knowing. Some of the illegals carry convincing fake driver's licenses and Social Security cards.

The answer is simple: an employer can go to http://www.ssa.gov/bso/bsowelcome.htm, register and check whether a person they want to employ is legally in this country. You just type in their Social Security number into the system and it will tell you whether it's legitimate and to whom it belongs. If name and number don't match, or the number doesn't exist the person is illegal. Same is true if the number comes up belonging to a dead person.

Arizona should have passed a law imposing severe penalties on employers of illegals. The law they passed will cause a lot of conflict and will, in the end, not solve anything. As long as jobs are available people will come and hope to escape law enforcement. Only removing the incentive will diminish illegal immigration.

It would be wise for the states to pass such laws, as Congress seems to like passing bills that are at least a thousand pages long and have all kinds of nasty surprises hidden in them.

Common Security

2010-03-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

I was thinking for a while about US - Israel relations as managed by President Obama. Israel's actions have serious implications to our security. If Israel does what it needs to do to protect itself from its enemies, our security and prestige in the region will also improve. This is one part of the world where the strong are respected and the weak are trodden upon. A strong and resolute ally will reflect positively on the US.

There are two standard interpretations of the President's pressure on Israel and rude treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu. One is that Obama as a matter of policy is mistreating our allies and kowtowing to our enemies. The other is that he and his advisers believe that Israel is the problem in the Middle East. If only Israel agreed to Arab demands peace would sprout, Iran would stop its nuclear program and everybody would be happy. The fact that no Israeli concession could ever be enough doesn't matter to the Administration.

But there may be another motive behind the President's behavior.

It seems that the big dispute with Israel is not really about building in Jerusalem but about the US Iran policy. Israel justifiably feels threatened and hopes the US will do something before Iran goes nuclear. The US is reluctant. Obama doesn't want to act alone. Action by the UN is unlikely so he does nothing. Maybe he hopes that his charisma and personal charm will convince the ayatollahs to reconsider their policies.

Reportedly when Netanyahu sought US agreement and assistance for an Israeli attack on Iran, Obama refused. He also threatened that the US would not replenish any losses Israel might suffer in such an attack.

Those losses could be significant if the Iranian air defense is any good. Also, without US cooperation Israel is likely to have only one run at Iran, which may not be enough to destroy all the nuclear targets there. As a result Israel is faced with three options:

The first is to do nothing and face a nuclear Iran that has promised to wipe it off the face of the earth. This is obviously unacceptable.

The second would be to attack Iran using the air force and bunker buster bombs. This approach carries a number of dangers: if the US refuses to replenish the air force's losses, Israel will find itself weakened just when Iran and its allies Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas will likely attack. Since these attacks will mostly use missiles and rockets, Israel's civilian population will be at great risk. With a weakened air force Israel may not be able to deal with these attacks effectively.

Even if there was no threat from President Obama, such an attack on Iran may be too dangerous. If the losses of aircraft and pilots are serious enough, a US replenishment plan may not be timely or effective. Another problem is that bunker busters are probably not powerful enough to destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities.

This leaves a third option: attack Iran using tactical nukes. The disadvantage is obvious: Israel is likely to be proclaimed a criminal state by the rest of the world. The Arab world will be in an uproar, at least for a short while.

But, if the attack is massive enough, that will be it. Since Israel is already condemned for crimes it never committed and is denied the right to self-defense its position may actually improve: lots of enemies might not be willing to seriously mess with a country that has used nukes to defend itself.

I doubt that Iran's allies will attack Israel after Iran's capabilities are diminished and after Israel has demonstrated its resolve to destroy its enemies. Such an attack will also cause serious internal problems in Iran which has large, unhappy minorities fighting a guerrilla/terror war against the regime.

The third option will solve everyone's problem with Iran and take a great burden off Obama's shoulders.

Maybe that is exactly what our President is trying to do: make it inevitable that Israel attacks Iran in self-defense and make sure it's a nuclear attack by denying Israel assistance or replenishment of losses.

A scary and cynical policy but not beyond what our President has already demonstrated being capable of.

Swabbing for security

2010-02-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

The TSA started swabbing passengers' hands for explosives residue. This is the first sensible thing they have done is a very long time. The procedure has many pitfalls but also may be effective if used correctly.
Explosives, if handled with bare hands, will leave a residue that can be detected. The problem is deciding which chemicals to look for and how to use the swab test's results. First the chemicals: since most explosives, especially those easily accessible to potential terrorists, are based on nitrates it makes sense to try detecting those first. The next in line would be components of black powder - sulfur being one that is easy to detect.
The pitfalls are obvious: does the positive result we just got from the 80 year old grandma indicate that she made bombs just before leaving for the airport or is it an indication that she took a nitroglycerin pill for her heart condition? Here is where common sense should be used. It would be best if some profiling was implemented so that this grandmother wouldn't be bothered in the first place - but our Government is not very good at this.
Then there is the danger of relying on the test for most of our security. The fact that the nice young man from Nigeria who just came from training in Yemen and has no return ticket or passport did not test positive can mean that he didn't touch explosives recently. It can also mean that he handled them with rubber gloves which he neglected to submit for swabbing or that he handled an explosive we are not testing for. Letting him on a plane just because he seemed to be clean may lead to serious consequences.
I am not sure that the TSA employees have the training to determine what to do but this is a step in the right direction.

Pseudo security and a lot of hassle

2010-02-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

A while ago I discovered that the U.S. Postal Service introduced a new rule: packages weighing 13oz (370gr.) or more and paid for by stamps have to be mailed at a Post Office counter. You can't just drop such a package into a mailbox.

I was curious about this regulation, which is described by the Post Office as a "security issue". So I sent an email to the USPS and asked why?
Here is the response (with the names edited out):

Dear X,

I understand you want to know why items over 13 ounces must be taken to a Post Office for mailing.
If you use our Click-N-Ship service or another PC provider to create postage online you will not need to visit the Post Office personally. These postage options will identify you as the sender, where postage stamps are anonymous.
The weight limit is for security purposes. When mailing a package, the window clerk will ask any questions which may be applicable to the package and for any security concerns. Please click on the following link for full information. You may also want to click on the hyperlink for 'frequently asked questions': ....

So now we have to take those packages to the Post Office. Do you feel safer now?

I don't and this is why:

Let's assume that a someone (not me) wants to harm somebody else and send them a bomb - this happened before and is not an outrageous proposition. How did this new rule make the recipient safer? It limited the amount of explosives (if this is what the bad guy wanted to use) to less than 13 ounces. Does the Post Office know how much damage can be caused by 12 ounces of PETN or other high explosives? To destroy a car you would need less than 12 ounces - 5 would probably be enough. To kill or seriously injure a person you would need even less.
You may think that limiting the amount you can mail anonymously will reduce the danger of major explosions. But will it?
When you go to a Post Office and give your heavy package to an employee it will be mailed without any further questions, the worst that can happen is you being asked a couple of polite questions (didn't happen in my case). They will still have no clue who you are and what is in the package. A terrorist (if this is the target of these new regulations) would likely NOT mail the package from an office they visit regularly (if they live in the U.S.) so even the fact that somebody may recognize them is irrelevant.
The real question is WHY? Why do we need these regulations that are a hassle and don't add to our security?
Well, we the people don't need them. The government does: if their aim is to make the stupid people feel safe this kind of hassle may make sense. The problem is that most people are not stupid and a false sense of security is worse than none. We are stuck with the hassle with no added benefits. The government thinks that we are really stupid.

Security delusions

2010-02-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

The bomber will always get through was a phrase used by Stanley Baldwin in 1932, in the speech "A Fear For The Future" to the British Parliament.

I was reminded of this phrase yesterday (January 26, 2010) when the Bipartisan Committee on WMDs (or some such body) published its grades on the Obama administration's work in preventing a biological attack on the US. They gave the administration an F.

The reason for the low grade: the plans for a response to an anthrax attack on a New York subway station were to shut down the subway system. The committee found this unacceptable. I think this is silly and will explain why in a moment.

The administration's response was typical (I'm paraphrasing): in the last year the President reviewed the procedures and ordered changes and improvements. These have not yet been implemented.

This is also silly.

Now to the silliness: Baldwin was right. It has been proven many times over the years in different contexts and different situations: the bomber always gets through. It may be only one, but he (or she) will get through. Expecting anybody to be able to seal this country hermetically is ridiculous. Even if somebody succeeded, what is to prevent terrorists from cooking up something inside the country?

This is not to say that we shouldn't try - which the current administration seems to have neglected - but don't expect a 100% success rate. Even attempting to achieve a 100% intercept rate will cost us resources that can be better spent elsewhere.

Consider a simple question: why is Al Qaeda, that organized the sophisticated 9/11 attacks, now trying things like the underwear bomber? Basically sending an inept and not well-trained individual who ultimately failed?

The reason, in my opinion, is that the organization's leaders have been under pressure and stress for a long time. The Bush Administration's policy of constant pressure worked fairly well. It didn't prevent all attempts but it successfully degraded the organization's ability to do us harm. According to some intelligence sources Al Qaeda is reorganizing in Europe and again setting up 9/11 style cells. We need to keep up the pressure; it is much more important than plugging up all possible security holes, which is a losing proposition and leads to diminishing returns.

The other silliness of both the committee and the administration is the assumption that the Federal Government has to be responsible for everything. Why should there be a Federal plan on what to do in the case of a biological attack on a New York subway station? Isn't New York more qualified to plan for that? It may need, and should get, Federal assistance if it asks for it but the Feds can't plan and take care of all the possible emergencies in this big country. If we attempt this kind of solution we will end up with a much bigger and much more inefficient and oppressive federal bureaucracy and not more security (TSA anybody?).

There is another danger in the current approach: we can't keep telling the public that we are safe. This is a dangerous lie. It is dangerous for a number of reasons. If people think they are secure they pay no attention to their surroundings, making it easier for terrorists. A complacent public is also more likely to respond with a massive panic attack if a terror act happens or it may respond with complacency which is as deadly.

In my opinion it is best to tell people the truth: "The bomber will always get through". So be ready and keep your eyes open. The public's response to the shoe and underwear bombers was admirable. Why not co-opt it for our common security?

The Massachusetts Quake

2010-01-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts special election was stunning. I feel relieved that the Democrats and President Obama don’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and are much less likely to impose new taxes, socialized health insurance or unreasonable environmental laws.
On the other hand I see no particular reason for Republicans to celebrate a great victory. The victory was Scott Brown’s. If anybody is entitled to slap themselves on the back it’s the conservatives.

Many Republicans seem to believe that the Massachusetts vote was a vote for them. It wasn’t. The party should be very careful how they interpret the victories in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. If they decide that it is a Republican win and keep behaving like they did in the last couple of years they will find themselves pushed aside. The recent elections show clearly that Americans don’t like radical socialist policies. They don’t like radical right wing policies either. We are mostly a centrist country, where socialists (progressives) are slowly but surely pushing through some of their policies. The voters accept this, as long as the movement to the left is slow. As soon as it becomes obvious and blatant the voters rebel.

My advice to the Republican party: do your best to carefully move back in the direction of liberty and personal responsibility, otherwise you will not last long. The Tea Bagger movement may move the party in that direction, if the Republicans pay attention and learn the lessons of the last several years. If they don’t, I expect the party to lose importance and be replaced by a party that will be closer to the principles of liberty, small government and personal responsibility. It is also conceivable that enough of the "moderate" Republican representatives will be replaced to make the party more acceptable to the voters. Don't try being like the Democrats - that way leads off the cliff.

Airport security

2010-01-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

To continue from the previous post: we can’t win the war against terrorists (and it is a war) by just defending ourselves. This doesn’t mean that defense isn’t important. In fact a good defense will sap major terrorist resources and also deprive them of the publicity and recruitment value of a success or a near success. There is no doubt in my mind that the “panty” bomber’s Christmas day attempt will be used by his dispatchers to recruit more volunteers.

So what are we doing to defend ourselves on the narrow front of air travel?

It is quite obvious that our intelligence system is screwed up. According to the President, even when we have the information it is not available in an actionable form and its use is hampered by political correctness. The last is my conclusion.

There is a last line of defense: the airport. The President promised more money and more people to secure us. The money will be spent on more full body imaging machines and the additional guards will be, presumably, standing around and looking at our things.

Let’s do some arithmetic:

One of the busy airports of the nation, McCarran International in Las Vegas, has about 40 million passengers going through it every year. If we assume that an average flight holds about 200 passengers. This is 200,000 flights per year or 570 per day. This is based on 350 working days per year, which should somewhat compensate for seasonal fluctuations in traffic. Of course only half of these people are going out and need to be screened. This make it about 285 daily outgoing flights. The above numbers are based on statistics published at http://www.mccarran.com.

Now back to our calculation: a full body scanner of the type used now requires about 30 seconds to complete a scan. Assuming only 10 seconds for a person to get in and 10 to get out and flawless operation we need 50 seconds per passenger. Since few outgoing flights are scheduled late at night, we can assume that our 285 flights are spaced unevenly and happen during about 18 hours every day. A majority will be going out in a 10 hour period, but we will not include this in our calculations. That makes it 16 flights per hour on average, or 3200 people per hour to be scanned. It means 3200x50=160,000 seconds or 26.6 hours of scanning per hour of passenger traffic. It seems that the minimum number of machines to be installed is 27 – they need to scan all the passengers within an hour to prevent the lines from building up. In practice there will have to be more machines to deal with peak hour traffic and breakdowns, and not all machines will be in use when traffic is down.

At a cost of about $150,000 per scanner we need an investment of at least $40.5 million just to buy the machines. That’s for just one airport and not the busiest one either. The other problem is that lines will be at least 1 hour long (that was our basic assumption). There is also a human factor to be considered: the person looking at the scanner display will have to see 72 people every hour. How long will it take them to get bored and lose concentration? What happens if they see something and decide to alert the guards? More delays?

There is another problems with full body scanners: what to do with passengers that have, or claim to have, medical attachments. A urine bag attached to a catheter is the first that comes to mind, but there are more. Do we just let them go, ask for a letter from a doctor or just refuse them entry?

The last concern is radiation: the scanners operate by showering the body with low energy microwaves and measuring the reflected energy or using the back scatter from low intensity X-rays. Do you feel safe standing for 30 seconds inside a low power microwave oven? What about cumulative effects? The X-Ray intensity used by these machines is thousands of times lower than a chest X-Ray or a CT scan, but X-Ray damage is cumulative and there will be some people who will get sick. Maybe the National Health insurance program provided by our benevolent Government will cure us all but I wouldn’t bet on it.

So we invest $200 Billion (just an estimate) to equip most of our airports with full body scanners and what do we get for it? Will we be safer? No. A moderately creative mind will find ways to smuggle stuff aboard an airplane without carrying it on one’s body. I will not enumerate the ways it can be done within the parameters of the current system, or any future one – maybe the terrorist are not as smart as all that and I don’t want to give them ideas.

Actually we will be LESS safe. The money that will be spent on machines, their crews and service will not be spent on other, more effective measures.

The way to go is profiling. Israel does it and we can do the same. The way Israel defends it’s airports (there are several) is simple but effective: a layered defense based on behavioral profiling.

There is a gross misconception about how this system operates. I heard the other day several TV talking heads espousing the benefits of profiling Muslims. “Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims” is a catchy phrase, but completely wrong. I found myself agreeing with a guy from CAIR that was objecting to such profiling.

This is why Israel doesn’t profile Muslims – how can you know who is Muslim? Will a terrorist necessarily admit that he/she is? What about a 1988 case when a pregnant Irish woman was about to get on an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv. She wasn’t Muslim and British security checked her carry-on bag and found nothing. The El Al profiler at the gate asked her a couple of questions and decided that something was wrong. A thorough examination of her bag uncovered a sophisticated bomb inside a calculator. The woman didn’t know about it. Her Jordanian boyfriend, and father of her baby, gave it to her knowing that she and his unborn child would die when the plane reached 39,000 feet.

Behavioral profiling is just that: it’s BEHAVIORAL. If you behave strangely you are a suspect whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or something else. The only requirement for this is to have trained people look at the passengers, not only their stuff. You can never discover all there is to discover about stuff, which will always leave an opening for a terrorist. You can see enough to decide that some people need to be screened more thoroughly than others. Some of this can be done by machines – a passenger without luggage paying for a one way ticket to the US with cash should have been flagged by a computer program – but it will always be a person that decides who is to be thoroughly searched.

Last time I left for the US from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport the whole security check took less than 15 minutes. Luggage to be shipped through is screened in your presence BEFORE you give it to the airline. My carry-on, with the laptop in it, went through the same machine and I didn’t have to take the laptop out. The metal detectors are set NOT to go of if I wear my watch and belt (I have to take them off in US airports) and we were not asked to take off our shoes. We did spend several minutes talking to a security profiler (a nice girl) and another short conversation at the airline counter (another profiler) while getting our boarding passes and turning our suitcases over to the airline. They would have sounded an alert if we were unnecessarily nervous or seemed to lie. We were also watched all the time, from the moment our taxi entered the airport gate, by people who were looking for suspicious behavior.

I have heard many objections to an Israeli-style system being implemented in this country. The main one was size. Ben Gurion has only 12 million people going through it each year. That is a smallish airport on the US scale and people say: “what they do can’t be easily scaled up”. This is wrong. A larger airport will need more profilers and a means to better control passenger movement but it’s not rocket science.

For example: it shouldn’t be a problem to have a security check point at the entrance to McCarran (or JFK or any other airport). Armed guards would stop every car and ask the driver and passengers how are they doing and where they are coming from. The next question would be (depending on who is in the car): "Can you please open the trunk: Oh you have no luggage. Please move to the side of the road (or whatever)". And we have one more suspect either caught or thoroughly checked and let through for the next layer to take care of. Sounds simple, but it is very effective in screening out the obvious dangers. This kind of check point doesn’t need to slow traffic down much and is not very expensive.

Until we have a system like the Israeli one we will be more and more harassed, costs will go up and there will be no improvement in security. I am not optimistic about the Israeli-style security coming to an airport near you any time soon.

What to do about Al-Qaeda

2010-01-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

Al-Qaeda seems to be like a balloon: you squeeze one point and it bulges out at another. So why are we still pushing in Afghanistan? It seems that the organization mostly relocated to Yemen and is operating from there. My guess is that if we push there they will pop up in Somalia.

It is quite obvious that we can’t push hard everywhere at the same time – we don’t have enough resources for that. It is also not productive: playing a game of “smack the gopher” is just a waste of time, money and human lives.

The first question is: what can we do to disable the Islamist terrorists? The second: are our current efforts doing us any good at reducing the terrorist threat?

To answer the easy one first: apparently right now we are NOT doing the right thing. Judging by the constant, and increasing, attempts to harm us we are not pressuring the terrorists. It is not enough to be defensive (even if the defense is effective, which ours isn’t). Defense doesn’t win wars, only offense does.

Let’s take a look at what we are doing:

1. Intelligence gathering - The US collects huge amounts of information. It comes from both human and machine sources (satellite images, telephone intercepts, etc.). Some of the information leads to direct action, like the attack on a terrorist gathering in Yemen where several Al-Qaeda leaders may have been killed. Some is ignored – the Nigerian Christmas bomber was one of those.

2. Military activity in Iraq - For a long time Iraq seemed to serve as a flytrap for terrorists: the faithful flocked there to fight the US forces and left the rest of us alone. With the Iraqis mostly running the show the flytrap doesn’t seem to work anymore. This doesn’t mean that we need to pull out of Iraq. President Obama is eager to get out of there, but that would be a serious mistake. Iraq is not really stable and Iran will step in as soon as it feels it’s safe to do so. (We will get back to Iran in a moment.)

3. Military activity and nation-building in Afghanistan - When the Bush administration attacked the Taliban after 9/11 it had a good reason to do so. The Taliban were sheltering Al-Qaeda and providing it with a safe operational environment. The US didn’t need to spend significant resources on toppling the Taliban – local forces did most of the heavy lifting. What we are doing there currently is of dubious value. Afghanistan will not become a nation state any time soon and completely uprooting Islamists from there is probably impossible. Therefore a victory in the simple terms of defeating the enemy, whoever the enemy may be, is impossible. Especially if we are not clear about who is the enemy. It seems that at the present time our effort in Afghanistan is mostly a waste of resources and American lives.

The above is a short and very incomplete summary. There is not enough space here to mention everything we are doing, even if knew everything.

The first question was: what can we do to disable the Islamist terrorists? This is not an easy one, but here is my best effort:

1. Keeping with the balloon analogy, we need to keep squeezing. We don’t have to squeeze as hard as we do in Afghanistan. Squeeze just enough to make life hard for the terrorists, prevent them from operating in the open and settling down. The attack in Yemen is a good example of such a policy. We can do the same or nearly the same in Afghanistan (as we did in the past) to keep them off balance and in hiding. We can save a lot of resources by getting most of our forces from out of that country. The smart thing would be to redirec those resources into building up a good human intelligence base. This is the only tool that will enable targeting the Al-Qaeda leadership – and it’s the leadership that matters.

For this policy to be effective we need to discard some of our squeamishness and political correctness. For example: the Institute for Arab Language Studies in Yemen is a known training ground for terrorists. It should have been visited by a couple of missiles a while ago. Instead we do nothing and then are surprised that a Nigerian citizen who spent some time there attempts to detonate a bomb on a Detroit-bound flight.

2. Let's we look at our balloon and see what keeps it pumped up. Not surprisingly, it is mostly money. Al-Qaeda, like every other terror organization needs money to survive. Cutting off its sources of financing will deflate the balloon. How can we do that?

Financing for Al-Qaeda comes from many sources. It would be impossible to cut off all of them, but we can cut off the major ones. Here is where we come back to Iran. It is a major source of financing for a number of terror organizations: Hizbulla, Hamas, Al-Qaeda and a couple of smaller ones. It also provides a lot of the technical know-how to these terrorists. Cut off this help and suddenly the balloon is half-deflated.

The other sources are not as easy: Saudi Arabia, despite all the denials, is a major source of money, as are Muslim charities all around the world. Something can be done though. All that money has to go through banks. If the US devoted only a fraction of the effort it puts in to catching tax evaders with foreign bank accounts to stopping the money flow to terrorists we would be able to deflate the balloon almost completely.

3. There are secondary but important things we can do: devote some resources to bringing down Islamist web sites. It is really not that difficult and would both reduce their recruiting ability and seriously damage their communications network.

There is more I have to say, but this is getting long and I will continue later.