During my childhood in Jerusalem in the 1950s and 1960s, our nursery and grade school teachers used to send us into the streets every few weeks to wave the little flags of various friendly African countries when their respective leaders would honor Israel with a visit. Kol Israel radio used to talk about what a great “friend of Israel” was visiting and the newspapers followed suit. One year Idi Amin was listed as such a friend of Israel; Mrs. Eshkol danced with him, Moshe Dayan and Abba Eban took photos with him. Only when we refused to sell him phantom jets did the crazy, murderous leader turn into an enemy of Israel.

Thus we were also taught to love the “friend of Israel,” the president of France Charles de Gaulle. We swooned over his picture with Ben Gurion. He sold us arms and supported us in the international arena, up to the moment we destroyed the Arab armies in six days against his advice. And when we “stole” our own boats from his Cherbourg, he called us a proud and overbearing nation and betrayed us. Thus ended the friendship.

I remembered all of these things when I read in last week’s Ha’aretz weekend supplement Meir Zamir’s excellent article on “Britain’s Betrayal, France’s Revenge.” Winston Churchill, the person the Jews called “a friend of Zionism,” betrayed the Jewish people, the Zionist cause, the Balfour Declaration and the raison d’être of the British Mandate to build a national home for the Jewish people. Churchill secretly planned to establish a “Greater Syria” to include Eretz Israel (both banks of the Jordan River), Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. This was supposed to be a pan-Arab kingdom serving British interests. The plot failed because France and the United States saw it as a move by Britain, their ally in the World War that had not yet ended, to take over the Middle East. I myself never understood why Churchill, who in 1922 published the White Paper that tore off two-thirds of our national home (the East Bank of the Jordan River) and gave it to the Arabs, was ever called “a friend of Zionism,” and why the Organized Yishuv liked, supported, and toadied up to him. I never understood this but I never bothered researching it. In any case, the cat is now out of the bag. He was not a true friend of the Zionist enterprise, but rather was trying to destroy it. So goes another friend.

Where am I going with all of the above? To George Bush, the president of the United States, “one of the great friends of Israel,” as Olmert calls him. Well, Bush is obviously a friend of Olmert’s: he often pats him on the shoulder and agrees to Olmert’s requests to pressure Israel to give in to Arab demands. But is he a friend of the State of Israel? Undoubtedly the U.S. intelligence services didn’t keep the U.S. president waiting until the recent publication of the Winograd Report, but long ago told Bush that Olmert is the greatest failure and the most corrupt and dangerous prime minister Israel has had in recent times, and that the United States cannot rely on him during a war with Hizbullah and Syria, just as the people of Israel cannot rely on him. If Bush has nonetheless decided to enhance his friendship with Olmert, it can only be because Bush is exploiting him for his own needs, just as Idi Amin used Dayan and Eban, De Gaulle used Ben Gurion, and Churchill used Weizmann. It must be remembered that Bush is the first American president to recognize a “right” of the Palestinians to an independent state. Bush forced Israel to allow Hamas to run in “democratic elections” and helped it gain power. He pressured Israel to remove road blocks in Judea and Samaria, and to take down what are called “illegal outposts.” Like his predecessors who may have been “less friendly” even though they did not give the Palestinians a state, he has refused to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and he has not freed Pollard. And so, why does the laurel of friendship rest on his head? Apparently because of a commitment to guarantee the security of Israel and not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, even jeux de casinos en lignegamme com jeucoupons bonus casino770supermarch� casinocasino games proannuaire casino en ligneregles de la roulettejeux keno gratuitesjeux de casino pctelecharger jeu casinojeux du casinocomment gagner a la roulettejeu video poker,jeu video poker a telecharger gratuites ,jeu video de pokerwww g�ant casinos frcasino partouchejeu slots en ligne gratisjeux baccarat gratuitescasino barriere jeuxplay blackjackjeux gratuits du casinoplay black jack onlinecasino bonus whorefree black jackcasino 1 heure gratuitesloterie en lignewww casino frwww casino do comjeux casino gratuits en lignejack black soundboardjeux casino francaisholden poker gratuitesjeu de poker gratuistud poker en ligneles regles de pokerfull tilt pokerjeu de poker holdemregles de jeux du pokerstrip poker virtuel,poker virtuel,poker en ligne argent virtueltexas holdem macjeux pokersalle poker en lignejeux de poker online gratuitespoker holdemjeux poker texas holdemt�l�charger jeux poker gratuitsdes r�gles du jeu pokerjeu de poker virtueljeux de poker gratuitementjeu de poker pcpoker en ligne fun if this would mean American military action in Iran.

Therefore his betrayal of Israel is so profound. Following Israel’s failure in the Second Lebanese War, he dropped this commitment, and as an excuse he released a U.S. Intelligence report, which was understood quite well in Iran: the U.S. was not going to attack a country that had stopped developing nuclear weapons four years earlier. Olmert, whose entire political career is dependant on his “friend” in the U.S., and on the peace-within-one-year that was planned in Annapolis, without which the Israeli Left would not be sustaining him - Olmert will never dare reveal Bush’s betrayal. We face Iran alone. Would that we were also without Olmert; because with friends like these and a prime minister who is a failure at warfare, who needs enemies.

Sixty-six years ago, on the twenty-fifth day of the Hebrew month of Shevat 5702 (February 12, 1942), in a little rooftop room on Mizrachi Bet Street in Tel Aviv, British detectives shot and killed Avraham Stern (known as Yair) though he was manacled at the time. The British police told the press that Stern was shot while trying to escape.

Three days ago the Knesset held a special ceremony marking the one hundredth anniversary of Yair’s birth. The prime minister spoke, and he spoke well. He referred to Yair the fighter, the man of culture, who loved his people and his land, a fiery zealot and a poet. Afterwards, he spoke about Yair’s loneliness, the loneliness of a fugitive hunted by his brethren and the foreign enemy, by the Jews and by the British. The awful loneliness in that little room, knowing of the inevitable closeness of his death, burning with the belief that from that lonely room the spirit would go forth that would redeem the Jewish people and land. For a moment I thought the prime minister was speaking of his own loneliness, the loneliness of a leader in those difficult moments when he must reach tough decisions and take responsibility. And Olmert asked about Yair, and perhaps also about himself, “What was he hoping for? What was he praying for? What was he unable to give up?”

Yair was hunted for months, from one hiding place to another. All he owned was a cot that folded into a suitcase and a grand vision. He had no survival plan. He was offered refuge in a kibbutz if he would end his war against the British, but he refused to save his life if it meant surrender. Without possessions, with his hunters closing in, and the Jewish community cursing him, he wrote songs and The Eighteen Principles of Rebirth, and when he related to his death, it was only in order to turn it into a force in the war for freedom. When the British killed him, they were sure they had thereby eliminated the underground Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi), but Yair had written before his death enough songs, and they and his Principles of Rebirth were a great force propelling forward the war for freedom. His life and death became legend and the fighters for the freedom of Israel who regrouped emerged from his songs and defeated the British Empire.

Two days ago, after months of investigation, Justice Eliyahu Winograd submitted his investigatory commission’s report. The commission’s interim report, which is part and parcel of the full report, had already stated that Olmert was responsible for the failure of the Second Lebanese War. That should have been enough. But Olmert, who then and now lacks all vision, does have at his disposal all the accoutrements of the prime minister of Israel: unlimited resources for political bribery and a local media willing to change its stripes. After demanding of him that he resign following the war, it is now prepared to call him the world’s best-ever prime minister, simply because he has promised to establish a Palestinian state more or less along the 1967 lines and with the state’s capital in Jerusalem. Olmert has no vision and no agenda. And as he says, he doesn’t need any. He has a personal survival plan, and top P.R. men and spin-masters, who inform journalists that “the commission’s report makes Olmert look good.” These guys are slick and rich enough to accomplish their task, and the journalists now say they admire Olmert’s staying power. They’re obviously not asking themselves how a man who at the Herziliya Conference declared that he had been wrong for 40 years, his entire political life, and of whom the Winograd Commission already said all that could be said about his warped decision making process during the war, how this man who has been unable to make one proper decision - will manage to fulfill their dreams.

What a chasm lies between the loneliness of Yair who fought to the death, with no plan for personal survival, knowing that his death would move armies to fight until victory, and this prime minister willing to fight to our death for his own personal survival. He knows that clinging to his office and refusing to take personal responsibility weakens an entire nation, erodes an entire country, causes hundreds and thousands of the best of Israel’s citizens and soldiers to despair of the country, of the values they have been taught, of Zionism, and brings the entire public to despair and cynicism. Olmert, who refuses to resign even after the issuance of the report, induces thousands of soldiers and their commanding officers, those who will have to protect us and fight the enemy in the next war, to pause and ask themselves if they really want to risk their lives in such a war. Are they really fighting for their homes, or perhaps for Olmert’s premiership? Is the target they are supposed to charge necessary for the people of Israel and the war effort, or is it a publicity stunt, a photo op, a spin, necessary for Olmert for whatever reason he has? How can they have confidence in the orders they are getting when they know who is issuing them and the quality of his decision-making process, and what was said about him by the government investigatory commission that he himself appointed and whose report he is now laughing at? In its final report, the Winograd Commission said, “Israel cannot exist without it and the surrounding countries knowing that it has a worthy leadership.” The citizens of Israel and the Arabs all know that Olmert is a failed leader.

There’s loneliness and there’s loneliness. Yair established the state from his loneliness, for his life was not more important than the state. He had no survival plan, only a willingness to be the match that would light the flames of the war for freedom. Olmert in his loneliness is prepared to destroy the country. The country is part of Olmert’s survival plan. Yair’s light shines ever more strongly 66 years after his death, for he used his life to light the nation’s way. Olmert’s light grows ever dimmer, for he is prepared to burn everything in order to retain power. Olmert is also lonely. He is surrounded by puppets, for only in complete solitude will Olmert find an environment that does not bring attention to his failures and demand that he take responsibility and resign. In some countries, a prime minister who received the likes of the commission’s report would ask forgiveness from the public and shoot himself in the head. Olmert prefers to stay where he is and sacrifice us.

Cabinet Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not resign because the Israeli government has just now put the “core issues” on the table in its negotiations with the Palestinians. The minister for strategic affairs obviously knows that Olmert and Abu Mazen have not spent the past few months chit-chatting about rising real estate prices in Jerusalem. And Lieberman could not have resigned because the division of Jerusalem is now being negotiated, since he himself supports such division and it even appears in his party’s platform. He joined the government in order to prevent Netanyahu becoming prime minister and he left because of recent public opinion polls.

Lieberman’s red lines had nothing to do with Olmert’s proclamations but rather with the poll results he’s reading. Lieberman’s voters were not quick to abandon him. It took a strong media campaign to prove to them that they were supporting a leader who doesn’t keep his word and who cannot be relied on. And even though a good number of Lieberman’s voters wanted him to continue in the cabinet, tens of thousands of others were leaving him, and they tilted the scales. There’s a limit to how much a person is willing to pay to stop Bibi.

And now for Shas.

On the face of it, we face a more difficult problem. There seems to be no point in convincing Shas’s voters, or even its representatives in the Knesset, of anything since the decision is not in their hands: Shas presents itself to its voters as a party under the command of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and its members of Knesset do not exercise freedom of will or their ability to think rationally. The rabbi’s position on strategic matters is reached based on his assessment of the question of pikuach nefesh, a danger to life; on this basis Shas abstained in the fateful vote over the Oslo Accords, thus opening the gates of the country to Arafat and his gangs. Unfortunately, fifteen hundred Jews have been murdered since then. The rabbi also ordered Shas to vote against holding a national referendum on the question of the withdrawal from Gaza. Arafat’s partners in Israel’s Knesset, along with people who wanted to uproot Jewish settlement in Gaza and northern Samaria, and those who are now attempting to establish a terrorist state in the heart of our country (and this terrorist state with its capital in Jerusalem), have long promised that surrendering to the Arabs will prevent further bloodshed. Twice Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has fallen into their trap. Will he fall for a third time and take with him the entire State of Israel?

Apparently, getting Shas out of the government will not be an easy matter. True, Shas party leaders and its apparatchiks who obey the rabbi’s orders know how to read polls, and not all of Shas’s voters want to blindly follow his political directives; if Shas stays in the government, it will lose half its supporters. Unlike Lieberman and some of his supporters, no one in Shas is ready to raise his hand against Jerusalem. But Olmert knows this, and so he’s promising Shas’s Minister Eli Yishai that the question of Jerusalem will arise only at the end of negotiations with Abu Mazen, and until such time Yishai should stay in the government and allow it to move forward on all the other issues: cessation of construction in Judea and Samaria, the immediate evacuation of outposts, uprooting all settlement in Judea and Samaria, and bringing Arab refugees into Israel - and Jerusalem will wait until the end. Olmert will make promises to Eli Yishai, and even take the trouble to visit Rabbi Yosef in order to show deference and “hold strategic consultations with him,” while he mocks the rabbi behind his back, having promised that he will direct the negotiations such that Shas’s image will not be that of “he whose hands have shed this blood.” And we cannot forget that Olmert has just promised Shas to rebuild the Ministry of Religious Affairs for the party; how will they be able to pass up this offer?

But Shas’s voters already know that Olmert’s government and his plans depend solely on them. (And though some Shas spokesmen will attempt to excuse their staying in the coalition on the grounds that if they leave, they will simply be replaced by Meretz and Agudat Israel – this excuse doesn’t hold water: bloodshed is bloodshed). Shas bears responsibility for bringing Arafat into Eretz Israel, and for all the blood that has been shed following the Oslo Accords. How can Shas voters and representatives now be partners to more crimes against the people and land of Israel?

It may be that the Shas voters are not yet fully aware of the implications of their being in the government, but they will be soon. Lieberman did not leave the government until his political power base was eroding. Shas will share this fate, as soon as a media campaign shines the light on them and on their leader, showing that they are aiding in the destruction of Israel. Lieberman was famous for being someone who stubbornly stuck to his position the more one attacked him, yet he was not willing to commit political suicide. Stuck between the rock of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s Torah-based rulings and the hard place of public criticism of the party and its leader, we can assume Shas will also choose not to commit suicide, either in obeisance to a Torah ruling or in fear of the electorate.

If Shas does choose to remain in the government following publication of the Winograd Report, and if it thereby allows Olmert to lead the state to its destruction, the party will find that it, too, has destructed. When guessing what Shas will do, however, it would be well to remember that even if the rabbi doesn’t read public opinion polls, Eli Yishai does.

A few months ago, Israeli intelligence reported that Hamas in Gaza possesses anti-aircraft missiles. The Israeli government decided, secretly of course, to stop Israeli crop dusters from flying near Gaza. This was another step in the abandonment of Israeli sovereignty even within the boundaries of the Green Line.

Then Katyusha rockets were fired on Ashkelon, and the prime minister said that this is crossing a red line, as if the blood of the residents of Sderot was not red and no lines protect them. The Israel government refused to order the needed broad land operations and apparently decided to wait for a rocket to hit a school, at which point the bodies of children would provide an excuse for the government to do something. As if according to international law, thousands of rockets falling on a state’s sovereign territory is not excuse enough to fight a war. This week’s murder by Arab snipers of Carlos Chavez in the fields of Ein Hashlosha confronts the Israeli government with a difficult decision: whether to continue tilling the fields near the fence with Gaza or to retreat from the fields, which in any case are no longer being crop dusted. To surrender to terror or fight it? To evacuate the residents of Sderot or the residents of Gaza’s Beit Hanun? A broad land operation became necessary the day after the expulsion of the residents of Gush Katif and the retreat from Gaza, as soon as a Kassam rocket was fired. But at that point Sharon was incapable of admitting his awful mistake that allowed Hamas to establish its terrorist state, a state that the Israeli army’s welcome but limited responses cannot uproot.

Olmert intends to handle this dilemma in his own warped way, which may well turn the Israeli army from the Israeli Defense Forces into Abu Mazen’s Defense Forces. Even if Olmert orders the IDF into Gaza for a broad land operation, it will not be in order to recapture and hold the Philadelphia Corridor, to cut Hamas off from its supply of weapons and money. Nor does Olmert intend to order the IDF to enter northern Gaza in order to rebuild the ruins of the communities he destroyed as Sharon’s right-hand man. Nor to be a buffer zone between the missile-launching bases in Gaza and the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. He intends to send Israeli soldiers to capture key areas in Gaza in order to turn them over to Abu Mazen who lost Gaza because he and his soldiers were unwilling to fight. Now Abu Mazen has found a sucker: Israeli soldiers will fight for him. These are the understandings that were reached between Olmert and Bush during the latter’s visit to Israel. This is the basis on which the U.S. “permitted” Israel to employ in Gaza the right of self-defense that every country has. Bush wants to establish a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, with territorial continuity between these areas, and Olmert is sending Israeli soldiers to fight against Hamas for Fatah and to establish a state for Abu Mazen.

We witnessed something apparently similar in 1982 during the first Lebanese War. But then the Israeli army set out to destroy Fatah in Lebanon and to allow the elected president, Israel’s ally, Bashir Gemayel, to rule in his country. The Israeli army had no difficulty beating Fatah and expelling Arafat from Lebanon, but was unable to prevent the murder of Gemayel by the long arm of Syria. The main goal was the destruction of Fatah; strengthening Gemayel was secondary. So there was nothing wrong with ordering the army to accomplish a mission whose main goal was the destruction of the enemies of Israel, and whose secondary goal was to strengthen Israel’s friends. In Gaza, no one is even pretending that the main goal is the elimination of Hamas, and, in contrast to Bashir Gemayel, Abu Mazen will never take up arms against the Arab terrorist organizations fighting Israel. Naturally, the cynical use of the Israeli army to fight for someone who can never help Israel is also utter foolishness from a practical point of view. If Olmert repeats Sharon’s Lebanese mistake, Abu Mazen’s fate will be that of Bashir Gemayel. But we are not worrying over Olmert’s fictitious partner. We worry over the lives of the Israeli soldiers being sent to battle not in order to destroy terrorism in Gaza, but rather to install there Abu Mazen - whose police force murders Jews and bears arms supplied by Olmert. Israel needs to fight in Gaza in order to destroy Hamas, not in order to turn Israeli soldiers into Abu Mazen’s mercenaries.

Anyone who perceives an internal contradiction in what I have described would be correct. If Olmert wants to strengthen Abu Mazen, why would he speed his demise by sending the Israeli army to fight for him? But the Winograd Commission has already expressed itself regarding the absence of calculation and rational thinking on the part of the prime minister.

Arieh Eldad is the founder of the new Zionist youth movement in Israel, Ami Chai. As the father figure of the movement he describes the current situation in Israel as a “leadership crisis,” and recognized the need for a youth movement that justified the right wing stance in Israel without having to be religious. With a plethora of left wing Israeli youth groups and a number of right wing religious groups, he is making Ami Chai an educational and social outlet for non-religious Zionists. Eldad says he agrees with many aspects of religious Zionist groups like Bnei Akiva, “but you can’t join if you don’t wear a kippah.” Ami Chai welcomes religious youth because it aims not to be exclusive.

Eldad noticed the need for Ami Chai after he debated MK Yossi Beilin on possible resolutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict in 31 non-religious schools. Eldad presented the right wing idea of a population transfer and Beilin presented the left wing idea of land for peace. The students would then vote for the resolution they supported and Eldad only lost at one school. From this Eldad knew that there was a non-religious youth population that generally supported the right wing. He believes the time in the army sometimes turns these youth to the left wing after their service, Eldad says that “even though they are right wing in their views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, they leave the army with not knowing why and they drift back to the left.” He wants Ami Chai to be able to educate the kids on the history of Israel, the conflict, and the Jewish right to live in all of Israel.

Eldad believes the Israeli school system does a poor job in teaching kids their nation’s history and their claim to Israel. When growing up he says the Israeli school system didn’t teach him anything about Zionism or Jewish history, he learned everything from his father. Israel Eldad is a distinguished Israeli philosopher and was a founding member of Lehi or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel. Arieh Eldad claims, “If I wasn’t educated at my father’s home then I wouldn’t know what I know today.” When asked how strong of an influence his father had on him, Eldad answered, “All my ideology comes directly from him.” Through his father’s Revisionist Zionist direction, Eldad hopes to give the kids of Ami Chai the educational basis to their right wing political inclinations.

The Ami Chai youth movement is not all about politics. It aims to provide the kids with the tools and practice to become leaders in their communities and in Israeli society. Through community service, volunteer work, and recreational activities such as hiking trips, Ami Chai looks to give the kids the training to be the leaders of the future. Eldad describes the foundation of the Ami Chai movement, “We raise two flags. One of the political and one of community service and recreation.” Through these two flags he hopes Ami Chai will attract large numbers of the Israeli youth.

While Eldad was getting ready to go to the ceremony of the swearing in of the new Israeli president Shimon Peres, he had to fasten a flower pin to his blazer. With the blazer on his desk he placed the flower on the right lapel of the blazer and then caught himself and said that he did it incorrectly. When asked why the flower was wrong, insightfully he replied, “It goes on the left. That’s the way it goes around here, everything to the left.”

A storm erupted in Israel a few weeks ago over news reports of alleged abuse of monkeys in the laboratories of the Weizmann Institute. Many of us were shocked by pictures of monkeys whose skulls had been partially removed, with electrodes extending from their uncovered brains. The pitiful state of these monkeys was fixed in the eyes of viewers. Israel’s animal rights organizations demanded that the cruel experiments be stopped and the experimenters made to stand trial.

Anyone experimenting with animals is certainly obligated to ensure that only vital experiments are undertaken, the animals are provided with food and water, and they are not forced to endure unnecessary suffering. But the news reports were either uninformed or purposely misleading, and most readers had no way of knowing that the accusations of “operations performed without painkillers” were ridiculous: there are no pain sensors in brains; every year hundreds of Israelis undergo brain operations while they are completely awake, cooperating with their surgeons and feeling no pain. Anyone opposed to experiments on live animals for basic research or in order to develop vital medicines should be honest and courageous enough to promise never to use medicines developed by the aid of such research, and, even if the lives of his loved ones are hanging in the balance, he should refuse to save them by means of surgery or medicines developed through experiments on animals. One can respect such a principled position of a person towards himself and allow him to die, though one should also be quick to appoint a guardian for his helpless children, should he refuse to grant them life-saving treatment. But anyone who opposes such experiments who would not refrain from saving his own life by means of what was accomplished through the experiments is only hypocritical.

Eastern cultures have popular images of three monkeys: one covers his eyes, a second his ears, and a third his mouth. These monkeys seem happy. The see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. The Israeli public, which was so shocked by the suffering of laboratory monkeys, has not noticed - as it rushes from one media story to another - that it is itself the subject of an unnecessary experiment and none of its leaders are trying to spare it suffering. During the second Lebanese War, a missile boat, the Hanit, sailed opposite Beirut with all of its warning systems shut down. A missile fired from shore hit the boat and killed four of its crew. The army conducted a thorough investigation and declared that lessons were learned and matters rectified. A year later three Katyusha rockets hit Kiryat Shmona and the warning system did not work. The deputy defense minister responded to my question in the Knesset and declared that there had been a glitch and the glitch was fixed and other than a few miniscule areas, advanced warning systems were providing full coverage. A few days ago Katyushas were again fired, this time hitting Shlomi. The warning system saw nothing and heard nothing and warning sirens were not activated. Is Shlomi one of the “miniscule areas” the deputy defense minister was referring to? Or maybe they once again fed us a line, sure that we are blind and deaf and know not how to ask. Early this week, a Katyusha hit northern Ashkelon, and the prime minister declared that this is “crossing the red line.” Such a statement implies that the thousands of rockets fired on Sderot were not crossing any such red line. Maybe Sderot is also “a miniscule area.” Or maybe Olmert is sure that Sderot’s residents have already been deafened by the explosions and so wouldn’t hear his insulting declaration.

Three months ago, Holocaust survivors demonstrated in Jerusalem, and the government promised that in early October, benefits would be paid to the most needy. At the beginning of January, a minor bureaucrat came to the Knesset and declared that perhaps the money would be paid in March. Holocaust survivors attending the hearing said that from the time the promise had been made, 4,000 of them had already died. The prime minister knows that the survivors are old and ill and every month of mendacious delay saves the state treasury millions of shekels. These Holocaust survivors are in their own way “miniscule.” Some of them are blind, some of them are hard of hearing, and they don’t have any more strength to shout. So why rush?

Three of the ministers serving in Olmert’s cabinet: Bar On, Herzog and Rafi Eitan, responsible for Finance, Welfare, and the Elderly, respectively, are trading accusations as to who is delaying the transfer of funds for the Holocaust survivors and who is preventing changes in the regulations regarding entitlements for old age benefits. Olmert must be laughing watching this squabble in the cage. And all of them must be missing the state’s former accountant-general, whistleblower Yaron Zelicha, whose honesty, persistence, and revelations earned him his dismissal. He was the perfect scapegoat, and now that he is gone, the government surely misses him, this blind and closed-minded government. Actually, even the silent monkey is missing from this government: they do after all know how to chatter and promise.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel recently published its annual report for 2007. The report was released to mark International Human Rights Day. The association claims that its purpose is to defend all human rights for all people in Israel. More than half of the report relates to violations of Arab rights, and I could not find even one line about violations of the rights of those expelled from Gush Katif, or about discrimination against Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia.

The highlight of the report, which received much media attention, is the chapter dealing with the rights of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. Its conclusion is that racist winds are blowing in Israel. The report cites polls by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Center for Combating Racism. According to these polls, 78 percent of the Jewish population opposes having Arab parties or ministers in the governing coalition, 50 percent is afraid when they hear Arabic in the street, 75 percent would not agree to live in an apartment building with Arabs, and 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage the emigration of Arabs from Israel. The authors of this report compared the current situation with previous years’ and concluded that racism towards Arab citizens is on a continual rise.

The report is full of citations and quotes, statistics and footnotes, and pretends to be a scientific document, but its premises are baseless and therefore it is not even worth the paper on which it is printed, and it is a shame that so many trees had to be felled in rainforests in order to publish this propaganda. Let’s take as an example the manipulative use the report’s authors make of the term “racism.”

Racism is defined as a position or a behavior discriminating against people on the basis of color, ethnicity, nationality or religion. The German destruction of the Jews was racist, as was what they did to the Gypsies, and what the Turks did to the Armenians. However, the hatred of the Russians for the Germans in the Second World War was not racist. In that terrible war, the Russians hated those who invaded their homeland, brought destruction upon them, and murdered millions. When 50 percent of the Jews in Israel say they are afraid when they hear someone speaking Arabic in the street, is this racism? Or perhaps the fear stems from the remarkable phenomena that 100 percent of the suicide bombers in our streets have been Arabic speakers? Whoever hears the shout Allah hu akhbar does not hate Moslems because he is racist, he just fears becoming the next victim of Jihadi terrorist organizations’ attempt to murder Jews wherever they are and destroy Western culture simply because it is Western culture.

The authors of the report act as if they are aliens from a far away planet who have landed in Eretz Israel, where they see a Jewish majority hating an Arab minority, and they pity the Arabs. Were they to take a slightly more comprehensive perspective, they would see 6 million Jews living in a sea of 200 million Arabs who for a hundred years have been exerting all their energies to destroy us. Maybe then they would pity the Jews. But not to worry, the Association for Civil Rights has chosen the perspective by which its “discoveries” fit its world view.

The report’s authors do not for one moment ask themselves why hatred towards Arabs has increased in recent years. They ignore “The Future Vision” report published by The Arab Israeli Follow-up Committee, which negates the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. They ignore the Arab demands to turn Israel into a bi-national state where Arabs would have the right to veto decisions by “the Jewish side.” They ignore calls by Arab leaders to boycott any young Arab who dares volunteer for national service, and they boycott Independence Day celebrations. It would be better if Israeli Arabs and those who assist them, who openly identify with Israel’s enemies who call for its destruction, examined themselves before they call “racist” the hopes of half of the Jews that the Arabs will emigrate. The Arabs have honestly earned every expression of enmity and hate.

Is there then no racism in Israel? Of course there is. If 74 percent of the youth believe that “Arabs are unclean,” this is ugly racism that needs to be uprooted. And there are other instances: the discrimination against and isolation of immigrants from Ethiopia, and the setting of limits on the immigration of the Falashmura. During the time of the British White Paper, which set limits on immigration by Jews, tens of thousands demonstrated in the streets in opposition. Similar decisions are now being implemented by a Jewish Israeli government against Jews in Ethiopia. This is racism pure and simple. The fact that the Association for Civil Rights ignores this is apparently further evidence that the Falashmura are Jews.

The U.S. intelligence report that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program four years ago hit the Israeli government like a bolt from the blue. The immediate implication is that the United States is not going to use military force against the Iranian nuclear industry. The line put forth by the Olmert government has collapsed, and Israel, which had hoped that Bush would take out Iran before he leaves the White House, is now alone. For the last two years, Olmert has been repeating a single mantra: Iran may be threatening to destroy Israel, but it is a threat to the whole world, and Israel should not play a major role in the fight against Iran; we should let the world do the work.

But the world does not hurry to fight for Jews. The Allies did not fight the Germans because of Auschwitz, and the British and French did not fight Egypt in 1956 because it had closed the Suez Canal to Israeli ships. The United States did not fight in Iraq because Israel was afraid of Saddam Hussein. The United States might have fought Iran were Israel a strategic asset in the Middle East that needs to be defended, or in order to prevent a regional conflagration, if not a world war. These scenarios have been ruled out by Olmert’s foolish policies. Israel has ceased to be an asset and has become a burden following its failure in the Lebanese War, when it was faced with a few hundred Hizbullah terrorists, and following its refusal to an American request to attack Syria. And because Israel argued from every possible platform that Iran is the world’s problem, the world will now decide how it wants to deal with this problem.

Had Israel announced that it would attack Iran and destroy its nuclear industry at any price and by whatever means necessary if by a certain date the free world had not done so, then a U.S. attack might have been a possibility, as the United States sought to avoid a regional war that might follow an Israeli attack. But after the Lebanese War, Israel is no longer a useful player in the war against the evil axis, and therefore Israel may end up being made useful in a different way; for instance, Israel may end up being an excuse, a legitimate reason to destroy Iran after Iran uses its nuclear arms against Israel. Until that time, Israel is the currency being used by the West to placate the Moslems for the catastrophe in Iraq. Olmert went to Annapolis to surrender and shortly afterwards President Bush betrayed him with the publication of the intelligence assessment.
Recently a contest was held in England to determine the joke most typical of British humor. The following story won: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson goes on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend.
‘Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes,” replies Watson.
“And what do you deduce from that?”
Watson ponders for a minute.
“Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.
“Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe. What does it tell you, Holmes?”
Holmes is silent for a moment. ‘Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”
This is what has happened to us. We have been so mired in analytical dialectics and reasoning that we have neglected to see the obvious. We have been so busy trying to convince the world that Iran is threatening the entire West, that we have neglected to prepare for the more reasonable possibility that we will have to fight alone. Olmert has been so busy trying to prove that he did not fail in the Lebanese War that he has ignored what the whole world knows: that Israel was defeated and that this disaster caused a drop in Israel’s stature and value on the world exchange. Ehud Barak is so busy threatening to begin a large military operation in Gaza that he has neglected to begin it, though such a move must precede any attack in Iran. Lieberman is so busy issuing threats that he has fallen asleep at his strategic post and not noticed that we were left alone. And Tzippi Livni is so busy obsessing about withdrawing from Judea and Samaria and thinking about her beautiful friendship with Condoleeza Rice that she has not noticed the poison Rice has prepared for Israel – the poisonous intelligence report claiming that Israel’s fears of Iran are mere paranoia. All of the above are busy with their own business and do not see the simple, obvious picture: In 2009, Iran will have nuclear weapons and our tent is gone. Israel will have to fight alone; but not with its current leadership.

When a crime family decides to take over some stores, the head of the family usually sends a junior member to first offer the owners a paltry sum. Whoever doesn’t get the hint will soon find himself facing thugs who break his windows or his bones. Whoever still doesn’t get the hint will find his property going up in flames. And if none of this helps, the head of the crime family will order the murder of one stubborn storekeeper in order to make clear to the rest that this will be their fate if they do not sell soon.

When several members of Knesset of the extreme Left submitted a “voluntary evacuation and compensation” bill for residents of Judea and Samaria who live east of the security fence, they draped their offer in the garb of “humanitarian aid” for those settlers who seek “quality of life” and who are fed up with the shaky security situation, and who are now ready to sell their property and move back within the Green Line but cannot find buyers for their homes and are now hostages of a sort. When Ehud Barak threw his support behind the plan, all pretenses of humanitarian gestures were dropped. This is a political plan for voluntary evacuation. When this plan originates with those who are implementing a policy of choking the settlements and preventing any construction, including that made necessary by the natural increase in population and including even the construction of nurseries or kindergartens, this is just plain extortion. When Olmert announced that “at this stage” the plan the would not be discussed in order to preserve his coalition, and the same week he released hundreds of terrorists into those territories and gave permission for the posting of Palestinian police in Shechem (three of whom murdered Ido Zoldan, may God avenge his blood), arming them with guns, ammunition, and armored vehicles, this is extortion by means of threats, terror, and murder, so that those who do not want to sell will be forced to sell.

In case a reader finds the above analogy offensive, I should like to offer a mirror image. Imagine that as part of Israel’s demand to maintain the “Jewish character” of the State of Israel, a bill were to be submitted to the Knesset offering “evacuation and compensation” to the Arabs of Israel, with emphasis on the Arabs of Jaffa, Acco, Lod, and Jerusalem. The bill would offer a generous sum (at state expense, of course) to any Arab forgoing Israeli citizenship and leaving the country for good. Two weeks later the minister of interior would announce a policy of aggressive enforcement of construction laws and announce that within a year the 60,000 illegal homes built in the Arab sector would be destroyed. A week later the prime minister would announce that in order to deal with rising violent crime in the Arab sector, armed units of the Civil Guard would be established comprised of ex-cons, who would be stationed in cities with mixed populations.

The evacuation-compensation bill for residents of Judea and Samaria is part of the policy of choking the settlements and encouraging the murder of the settlers, by freeing, arming, and posting hundreds of terrorists in the area. The bill is supposed to be humanitarian, stemming from “true concern” for those poor people stuck in a tough security situation who cannot sell their homes and flee. But this is the exact situation facing thousands of residents of Sderot today; and, soon enough, with an increase in the range of the Kassam rockets and the arming of Hamas with Katyushas, tens of thousands residents of the western Negev and the southern coast. The State of Israel has abandoned these people to their fate amidst the falling shells. Their lives are hell. Yet no one who considers himself a Zionist would think of offering to buy their homes so they could flee. Violent crime, drugs, and hate crimes perpetrated by Arabs have made the lives of Jews living in various neighborhoods of Lod unbearable. Would Israel’s crazy Left offer them evacuation and compensation? Would the minister of interior forbid Jews living in those neighborhoods from erecting fences, sealing their porches, or building a synagogue? Would the minister of internal security announce his support for such an anti-Zionist plan?

The government of Israel has not held a single discussion concerning the future of Judea and Samaria. There has been no government decision, and obviously no plan to expel the Jews of Judea and Samaria has been approved by the Knesset, yet Israel’s leftist extremists are implementing an ethnic cleansing of the Jews of these areas with the support of the minister of defense and the apparent approval of the prime minister, who is supporting the policy with “gestures” designed to “strengthen Abu Mazen” and which of themselves cause the murder of Jews. All the parties that are today members of Olmert’s coalition are full accomplices to these crimes and bear responsibility even if they vote against the “Annapolis declaration” and feign innocence. There is blood on their hands, too.

Four forces operate in the material world in which we live. We are always aware of some of them: an apple falls from the tree to the ground in conformity with the laws of gravity. The plumber’s advertisement sticks to the refrigerator because of the electromagnetic force. The other two forces operate on a subatomic level, hidden from view, and concern us only if we are curious about the building blocks of matter or if we are worried about an Iranian bomb.

Physicists have for year been trying to find a common denominator, an overall order that will explain the four basic forces. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity explains the laws of gravity. Quantum Mechanics explains the other forces. A unified theory to explain all the phenomena has yet to be discovered. One often-accepted possible explanation is called String Theory. Those who are not mathematicians or physicists find this theory hard to understand because it describes a universe that includes ten dimensions. We mere mortals, who barely manage to handle three spatial dimensions and have no time left for others, find it hard to understand where more dimensions are hiding. Some physicists explain that these dimensions are very small, very dense, and therefore nobody can see them or measure them. A few days ago I read an article by Ofri Ilani in Ha’aretz about Garrett Lisi, an almost unknown physicist in Hawaii, who shocked the world of science by offering a “simple” theory unifying all the natural forces. Lisi’s amazing innovation: he proposes no dimension that we cannot see or understand. He accepts the world as it is.

As for myself, I admit that I understand nothing in physics, and I won’t even try to guess which of the physicists is correct. But I found myself fascinated by an analogy to the situation Israel is in.

Many forces operate in our region: the national and religious forces of the Arabs who want to destroy Israel, Global Islamic Jihad, the self-destructive self-hatred that threatens to dismantle us from within, the desire for peace, the Eternity of Israel, Zionism, faith, and our one God. Anyone who wants to find a solution for the conflict in our region, an order that will mediate between all these opposing forces, needs to choose a theory.

To our great misfortune, most of our leaders have accepted String Theory. If reality contradicts their hallucinatory peace, they create an alternate reality in which the Arabs do not want to destroy us. According to their approach, the Arabs possess unseen and un-measurable dimensions. Peace with the Palestinians is one such dimension. And if we, mere mortals, fail to perceive or see this dimension, they explain that it is still very small, hidden from view and from any existing measuring device. But they assume that it exists because otherwise their entire theory collapses.

I, however, prefer, at least for the purpose of finding a political solution, those who say that reality cannot be manipulated or new dimensions invented in order explain it. The Arabs who want to destroy Israel are a fact. The others who Olmert and his colleagues on the Israeli left consider their “partners” do not exist at all, or perhaps they are so small and so weak, maybe even not born yet, and therefore they are irrelevant except for purposes of theoretical research. He who seeks a real solution for our problems cannot rely on hallucinations or alternate reality. We are familiar with four dimensions in the world of physics and in the world around Israel. The land of Israel has minute length and width within the thousands of miles of Arab states. The dimension of our depth includes the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the Book of Books, and heaven above us. And the Arab dimension of depth includes oil, Jihad, and hatred for anyone who is not a Moslem. Our dimension of time is four thousand years of the Jewish people’s history from Abraham until today. Olmert and his colleagues who have lost their Jewish and Zionist way and cannot find it within the familiar dimensions are creating an alternate reality, dimensions which do not exist, or are not relevant. They are creating “partners” who can not only take our land but can also provide us security, and they rely on these “partners,” even as they leave behind the existing and familiar dimensions: Eretz Israel, strategic depth and defensible borders, sources of water, the cradle of the nation, and the future.

In the world of abstract physics, if a theory proves baseless, the real world does not collapse. In the world of geopolitics in which we find ourselves, Israel may find itself destroyed in a big bang because of the irresponsible gamble of these helmsmen of an alternate reality.