The Shoaib Chronicles: A new face--friend or foe?

Shoaib Choudhury's case (for background see here and here) goes back to the Dhaka courtroom January 15, with a bit of a wild card--a new face behind the bench.

Bashir Ullah is the court's new judge, his predecessor having been appointed to the Bangladeshi High Court.

"Although my counsel advocate, Samarendra Nath Goswami, and his team have very successfully proved that there is no substance to the case, the only point which makes me seriously concerned is a pre-set mind of many people in the Muslim countries, who unfortunately hold anti-Semitic notions," Choudhury tells Zion's Fourth Estate. He acknowledges that the "media in the Muslim world regularly publish and broadcast anti-Semitic thoughts. We have previously seen that judges were not free from such bad influence," and there is not telling on which side of this Bashir Ullah falls.

Of course, Choudhury's case should have been dropped long ago, as he's well aware. As confident as he is, Choudhury no longer buys into the false promises of the Bangladeshi authorities. It's now been more than five years since his arrest, incarceration, torture, and the beginning of his saga of withstanding any and all abuse to continue advocating for a peaceful Islam and Muslim Zionism--two things in short order in Bangladesh and the rest of the Muslim world.

But the Bangladeshi Islamists are learning the hard way just how difficult it is to discourage Choudhury.

"But, whatever the reason may be, my family and I have learned to live in extreme adversity, by the grace of G-d," he says. "We shall continue to fight our good battle against radical Islam. And, one day, we shall win."

Stay tuned for more updates on Shoaib's trial.

Why Hillary as secretary of state is a win for Israel

It may not be a glass ceiling, but Hillary Clinton's appointment as secretary of state has put a much-needed floor under the risky business of engaging the Arab-Israeli conflict in search of a lasting peace deal.

Rarely do you feel, from six thousand miles away, the smile evaporate from the faces of Israel's enemies. But that's exactly what many in the pro-Israel community experienced when the home page of the Sunday, Nov. 23 edition of the Washington Post Web site offered its candidate for Understatement of the Year with this headline: Some in Arab World Wary of Clinton.

Who's smiling now? Hint: not Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, who recently told a U.N. conference that Jerusalem is holy to two religions - Islam and Christianity, making it clear that there is no room for Jews in Jerusalem.

And I bet not North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, who may sorely miss the time he spent together with former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in North Korea in 2000. Upon leaving, Albright presented Kim - a huge fan of the NBA - with a basketball signed by Michael Jordan.

"It showed him we went through some effort to get the signature," Bob Carlin, a former North Korea analyst for the State Department who accompanied Albright on that trip, later told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "They realized it wasn't just an ordinary ball."

It's hard to believe Kim had the audacity to push forward with his nuclear ambitions. After all, "it wasn't just an ordinary ball" we brought him.

But more to the point, there are two main reasons that Clinton is a good pick for secretary of state: Israel and Joe Biden.

First, Israel. The U.S. State Department is made up of, generally speaking (and excepting people like John Bolton, of course, the finest U.N. ambassador by a long shot and true friend to Israel) career bureaucrats who are experts on Russia and convinced of the coming war with China. Then they go to Israel to negotiate a peace deal between Jews and Arabs. They don't speak Arabic, because they only deal with communist powers. And they don't speak Hebrew, although they have memorized the expression they use almost constantly during their trips to the Mideast, "oy vey."

Current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is book-smart brilliant. Unfortunately, the only kind of "settlement" she's aware of is part of a plea bargain. Albright knew her stuff - when it came to solving the age-old puzzle, "Why a basketball makes a great gift for someone who can barely dunk it in his kitchen sink?"

There was James Baker, whose stated philosophy concerning Israel was the clear, but clumsy, "F--- the Jews." (Hey, sometimes that kind of honesty is all we ask.) And of course we had Warren Christopher, last seen pushing Rice to force Israel into a cease-fire with Hezbollah in 2006 before Israel had the chance to get the Lebanese terrorists out of range of northern Israeli population centers. "Every day America gives the green light to further Israeli violence, our already tattered reputation sinks even lower," Christopher opined in the pages of the Washington Post.

Let's be honest. It's a low bar, but it's one that, say, John Kerry couldn't clear.

Will Clinton be tougher on our enemies than the dim bulbs of administrations past? Probably, and here's why: Clinton has an understanding of the Mideast negotiation process that is nearly unparalleled outside Israel. In an interview with the New Yorker magazine in January 2007, Clinton said this about getting those mythical concessions from Arab negotiators: "You do not get people into a process or to the table to make any kind of tough decisions, including compromises, unless the other side knows that your commitment to Israel is unshakable."

The phrase "unshakable commitment to Israel" may be common enough to be meaningless at this point, but Clinton wasn't declaring her unshakable commitment to Israel. She was making it clear that in order for negotiations to be successful, the Arabs must understand that they will not, under any circumstances, succeed in driving a wedge in between Israel and America. President George W. Bush knows this and has expressed the same sentiment - that while America will try to arbitrate Arab-Israeli negotiations, it is not on equal terms with the two parties.

Israel is one of America's closest and most important allies in the world. The Arab leaders want all Americans dead. Having clarity on that issue is what gave Bush his high approval ratings among Israelis. It wasn't simply saying he likes Israel; it was that he knows that support for Israel is absolutely necessary for successful negotiations. Clinton seems to know that too.

And as former New York Sun reporter Eli Lake notes, "Clinton has described the teaching of anti-Israel views in Palestinian textbooks as 'child abuse,' and held hearings on the topic in an effort to get the Bush administration to do more on the issue." No moral equivalency there. In fact, Lake reminds us, since becoming a senator, Clinton has criticized the Palestinians' anti-Semitic education and media, often loud enough for even the State Department - who were holding their hands over their ears like the "hear no evil" monkey - to hear.

Bill Clinton spent most of his Mideast-related energy attempting to drive Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's career into the ground. Surprise! Guess who might be the next Israeli prime minister. That may seem to be a conflict, but Hillary isn't Bill. And she's isn't Barack Obama, who said this: "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel." The Jerusalem Post's Shmuel Rosner correctly noted the outrage that would follow if Bibi had said something similarly disparaging about supporters and policies of the Democratic Party.

The other reason to cheer Clinton's appointment is Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed (threatened?) to be in on every foreign policy-related decision Obama makes as president.

Biden has spent 35 years in the U.S. Senate, and in that time has accumulated an almost perfect record on foreign affairs: he has, by any honest account, never been right. He opposed helping anti-communist and anti-Soviet groups during the Cold War. He called the surge in Iraq a "tragic mistake," and advocated splitting Iraq into three states, thus offering the state on a silver platter to Iran. And during his vice presidential debate against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, he said this: "When we kicked - along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said… 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know - if you don't, Hezbollah will control it.' Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel."

It took days to figure out what he meant to say, because he couldn't have meant what he said. It's preposterously wrong - and embarrassing, for the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's possible Biden just uses the word "Hezbollah" whenever he refers to "the bad guys." For example, while Biden was at law school at Syracuse, he may have cheered, "Go Syracuse! Beat the Georgetown Hezbollahs!" Who knows?

Biden also famously, three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, offered this at his committee meeting: "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran." The New Republic's Michael Crowley recalled the immediate reaction of the room to this idea.

"He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face," Crowley described. Then, according to Crowley, one by one staffers begin to point out the obvious flaws in that idea: it's a transparent publicity stunt; the Iranians would send it back, embarrassing us; that day the Iranians were in Moscow negotiating an arms deal to which the U.S. was strongly opposed. "But Joe Biden is barely listening anymore. He's already moved on to something else."

A State Department career diplomat would defer to Biden. So would Obama, in some cases. So would most pushover bureaucratic underlings.

Clinton's confirmation can't come soon enough.

This originally appeared in the Dec. 5, 2008 issue of The Jewish State.

Mumbai tragedy will not stop Chabad

If there were a bright spot to the horrific terror attack carried out in Mumbai, it was the stark contrast between the perpetrators and the victims, illustrated so poignantly at Nariman House, the local Chabad's headquarters.

The testimonials at events held by our New Jersey Chabad-Lubavitch chapters go something like this: "I am not observant, but the rabbi and his wife treated us as if we were royalty"; "My kids were never happy in preschool until we enrolled them in the Chabad's preschool, where they are cared for as if they are the rabbi and rebbetzin's own children"; "This is my first time lighting Shabbat candles in 40 years"; "The Chabad center is the only place I don't feel judged"; etc.

The praise for Chabad is always effusive and proud, and it's not uncommon to see an audience at a Chabad event devoid of dry eyes, the participants having suddenly experienced a rush of emotion as their love of Judaism and its traditions is remembered and unearthed.

On Nov. 26, the siege of Mumbai by Islamic terrorists began, ending with the news that Mumbai's Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, were among the victims. And in this, the world should learn a very important lesson about us and our enemies.

According to the Chabad Web site, the Lubavitch mission is described thus: "Appropriately, the word Lubavitch in Russian means the 'city of brotherly love.' The name Lubavitch conveys the essence of the responsibility and love engendered by the Chabad philosophy toward every single Jew."

Of course, Chabad goes beyond "every single Jew": when I was a student at Rutgers, my roommate, the son of Cuban immigrants, and our friend, the son of Indian immigrants - neither of whom is Jewish - both spent time at the Rutgers Chabad House. The atmosphere of inclusiveness at Chabad must be experienced first-hand to be believed.

This, of course, is the polar opposite of the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre: Jihad-obsessed Muslims. The Islamists' motto is not "convert or die." It's simply, "die." Their brand of Islamic outreach is to annihilate all nonbelievers, starting with Jews. Chabad's Jewish outreach is quite the reverse: everyone is welcome; every human being has intrinsic value and accordingly deserves the utmost respect.

I remember listening to a lecture by the late Rabbi Avigdor Miller, after which he took questions, as he always did, on any subject from the audience. One questioner asked Miller if it was permissible to be nice to Jews, but not be so friendly or considerate to non-Jews.

Miller answered that not only was this not permissible, the question was moot: there is no such animal, he said. You are either a nice person, or you aren't.

Chabad lives by the same motto: you can't pick and choose when to be nice person. Because of this, there is nothing but warmth around Chabad.

When I was a reporter for Greater Media Newspapers, in Freehold, I often drove to the Chabad House in Manalapan for afternoon prayers. One year, before Hanukkah, the yeshiva students there gave me a bunch of menorahs to hand out to my Jewish co-workers. I doubted there would any takers, since I was sure that anyone who wanted to light a menorah would already own one. Of course, I was wrong. The woman who worked at our front desk was practically giddy when I walked in with a bag of menorahs. She was Jewish, and immediately began calling the extensions of all the company's advertising executives she knew to be Jewish, asking them if they would like a menorah.

I took the editorial side of the office, and sheepishly asked the reporters I thought were Jewish if they needed a menorah. When I had originally expressed my doubts about the menorahs to the Chabad students, they smiled and told me it was no problem - I should feel free to return any unused menorahs to them. They enjoyed seeing me walk into the Chabad House the following week with no menorahs to return.

Chabad takes to heart the Jewish directive to be a light among the nations. And here's the lesson to our enemies: Chabad will continue to shine.

Violence and tragedy will never defeat the Jewish spirit. Radical Islam's adherents can learn this lesson one of two ways. They can learn it the hard way, by continuing to try to destroy Israel and attempting to wrest a devoted people from our beloved God. They will fail.

Or they can learn this lesson the easy way, by watching as Chabad's work continues, undaunted and resolute, to spread love in the face of hate.

This originally appeared in the Dec. 5, 2008 issue of The Jewish State.

The making of a freedom fighter: How Shoaib Choudhury became Bangladesh's pro-democracy Muslim Zionist

For most of his allies and advocates, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury's story began on Nov. 29, 2003.

That was the day that Choudhury, preparing to board a plane from his native Bangladesh to Tel-Aviv to address a writer's conference, was arrested, beaten, starved, and tortured by the Bangladeshi authorities, who didn't take kindly to Choudhury's brand of peaceful Islam and support for Israel and the Zionist movement.

Choudhury is currently on trial for his life, though the intervention of his friend, Illinois native Dr. Richard Benkin, as well as Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), helped put a stop to the yearlong episode of imprisonment and torture, and in all likelihood kept Choudhury alive.

But Choudhury's life in Bangladesh, before he became a symbol for the struggle against Islamism from within the Muslim world, shaped his views on religion and politics, giving him a unique worldview that led to his status as a hero to the West and a nemesis to his neighbors.

Choudhury was born Jan. 12, 1965 in Sylhet District, in eastern Bangladesh near the Indian border. His father, Ghulam Ather Choudhury, worked for the American Life Insurance Company in Bangladesh (ALICO) until Bangladesh gained its independence in 1971, when he went into business. His mother, Sharifa Choudhury, was a housewife. Both his parents are deceased, his mother having died during Shoaib's imprisonment.

Choudhury has three siblings: brother Sohail Choudhury, and sisters Ahktari Choudhury and Seema Choudhury. The family had an upper middle class upbringing.

Choudhury attended St. Joseph's School in Dhaka until college, when he studied at the University of London. He later received his master's degree in journalism from London as well.

Choudhury's father was a voracious reader, and his curiosity set an example for his family.

"My father was always a person who taught us to be respectful to other religions," Choudhury told The Jewish State, "and not to believe in hate speeches in the mosques during Friday prayers, [which included] provocations saying 'Jews and Christians are your enemies, kill them and remain a good Muslim.' My father was a great reader and has built a moderate private library at our residence, which was always the initial source of information and inspiration for us."

Choudhury's mother was from a well-to-do family, which stressed art and music over politics. Choudhury combined the influence of his father and mother, and founded a film club in Dhaka.

In fact, religious tolerance was a pillar of the Choudhurys' household, despite the xenophobic tendencies of hard-line Islamist teachings.

"In our family, in particular, there was no anti-Semitic notion," Choudhury said. He added that his parents were vigilant in their rejection of the negative stereotypes on non-Muslims. "Friends of my father were Hindus, Buddists, Christians etc., [some were from India], who were quite frequently visiting our residence and they became almost part of our family."

As a student, Choudhury contributed articles and poems regularly to the local press, which paved the way for his entrance into the news industry. He began his professional journalism career in 1989 as a correspondent for TASS, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. That same year, Choudhury married his girlfriend of several months, Shahnaj, to whom he is still married, and with whom he has two children: daughter Priyanka, and son Hanzalah.

In 1996, TASS (which had by then been absorbed by the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia, Itar-Tass) closed its Bangladesh bureau. Choudhury then joined the newsroom at Dhaka's leading English language daily, The New Nation.

Choudhury's political opinions clashed with his next employers, the Daily Inquilab, an Islamist-run newspaper. Choudhury soon discovered that the Inquilab's owners were wrapped up in dishonest business practices, as well as provoking anti-West attitudes among its readers.

"My difference with them took final shape when, in 2002, they asked me to attend an anti-U.S. rally in Dhaka in favor of Saddam Hussein," Choudhury said. "I refused to attend the rally and, subsequently, the owners forced me to leave Daily Inquilab."

It was this last incident that convinced Choudhury to start his own newspaper to counter the "hate speech" that was flowing daily from the other Bangladeshi news outlets, who Choudhury called wolves in sheep's clothing. Choudhury was a partner in the Inquilab's television station, and began a protracted legal struggle to sell his share back to the other partners.

"I made [up] my mind to tell the truth to the people and present unmolested and untwisted information on Israel, Jews, and the Western world to the readers," Choudhury said.

Choudhury's work had an immediate effect, he noticed. Some of his friends began echoing Choudhury's perspective on issues of religion and politics. The Weekly Blitz, the paper Choudhury founded and runs to this day, has not changed its mission or its presentation since its founding, Choudhury is proud to point out.

And prior to Choudhury's arrest in 2003, he maintained good relationships with his colleagues.

"But, when they came to know about my arrest and subsequently my role against Islamist militancy and radical Islam, they try to maintain a kind of distance with me, although many keep personal-level relationships with me," he said.

But his arrest, and the common attempts on his life, have turned Choudhury into a pariah. His newspaper has struggled because local businesses are afraid to advertise in it, lest they be considered Zionist collaborators.

"Free expression in Bangladesh," Choudhury said, is therefore still very much a work in progress. His trial continues, and currently Choudhury's attorneys are in the process of cross-examining the plaintiff's witnesses. Canadian attorney Irwin Cotler is Choudhury's attorney abroad, and the Bangladesh Minority Lawyers Association is working with him in Dhaka.

Though day-to-day life has improved somewhat for Choudhury, he still retains scars from his earlier treatment -- such as the ill effects from an eye infection that went untreated while he was in solitary confinement -- and his life is never safe, considering the innumerable incidents of violence directed against him and his family since 2003. (In late March, as this paper reported, Choudhury was kidnapped by a particularly vicious Bangladeshi paramilitary group called the Rapid Action Battalion. While Choudhury was being abused and interrogated, Benkin contacted American officials, such as Kirk and N.J. Rep. Steve Rothman, who secured Choudhury's release.)

Choudhury's pro-democracy agenda was developed watching Bangladesh's struggle for independence and then democracy. Bangladesh began as a parliamentary democracy, but its founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in 1975. The struggle for the country's leadership played out with a series of military coups, and Bangladesh was then subject to military rule, its hopes of democracy dashed until 1990, when General Hossain Mohammad Ershad was ousted.

"From all these political ups and downs, I learned a lot about the risk of dictatorial rule, as well how politicians play with the people, taking the advantage of people's mandate in democracy," Choudhury said. He remains committed to the cause, and expects the same of the country's political leadership. For the nation to prosper, he said, instead of corrupt leaders, "we need dedicated and committed people."

Why the election was a win for Conservatism... and hopefully Mitt Romney

The single most common interpretation of the results of Barack Obama's victory over John McCain was that Conservatism will now get some much-deserved time in the political wilderness, after voters overwhelmingly chose a center-Left platform over Conservative ideas.

Nothing could be further from the truth. And here's why.

Virtually every single time Conservative ideas were offered to voters, they responded with votes of confidence in them. For example, McCain -- who loves to poke Conservatives in the eye and kick their shins -- was behind by double digits in the polls in late August. He then picked a sharp Conservative who appealed especially to social Conservatives in Gov. Sarah Palin, and guess what? He got a double-digit swing in the polls in two weeks.

Late in the campaign, when Obama invaded Joe the Plumber's neighborhood, prompting the famous conversation on redistribution, McCain got some serious traction in the polls. Why? Because he had finally -- finally -- articulated a Conservative position on something. He talked plainly and powerfully about the relationship between taxes and economic growth, and how the Conservative way to address the economic crisis -- for example, incentivizing reinvestment, or protecting the growth potential of small businesses -- was what the moment called for. And he was rewarded by the voters, at least temporarily.

Then there was Prop 8 in California, and its clones in Arizona and Florida. Two of those were states that Obama won with high voter turnout, and that high turnout actually helped the passage of amendments that protect traditional marriage (minorities voted for the amendments in higher numbers than whites, at least in California).

Then there was New Jersey, where the governor/czar had two chances to further rape his loyal subjects and pillage their freedom of choice, and he lost both. Conservatives won on judge accountability and on public bond issues. In New Jersey.

In the days after the election, it became clear that McCain's lack of Conservative ideas contributed greatly to his loss, since Mitt Romney would quite obviously have handled the crisis better, as he has governed and managed successfully as a Conservative throughout his career in the public and private sectors (and the Olympics; I'm not sure if that's the public or private sector, maybe a little of both). Rudy Giuliani had better Conservative experience with, and plans for, entitlements than McCain, and Fred Thompson was light years ahead of McCain on Conservative legal issues.

Don't forget, most of the "moderate" Republicans, who told the Conservatives to shut up and back McCain once he won the nomination, were the ones who abandoned him and endorsed Obama.

In the last couple days, some of the McCain campaign staffers have complained about Palin, though much of what they've said has been demonstrably false (like the Africa issue). It has been petty, but it's a good example of the contempt the McCain campaign has had for Conservatives. No surprise that George W. Bush outperformed McCain in pretty much every demographic. For those looking to jettison Bush (like McCain), the people have spoken: We like coherent messages, loyalty, and a strong dose of Conservative wisdom. Even if Bush hasn't been Mr. Conservative in his second term, it's nice for Conservatives to see that a Republican turning on Bush wasn't a winning strategy.

In other words, neither party, and none of the major movements in this country, will shed a tear for McCain's loss. (Many individuals will shed a tear, and understandably so. But McCain wasn't part of any mainstream movement.) I admire John McCain more than I can say, for many reasons. But the McCain campaign should be wished a solid "good riddance" from this campaign. He won the Republican nomination on the backs of Democrats and Independents, and then returned the favor by shoving Conservatives under the Straight Talk Express. And now his former campaign staffers are trying to ruin the career of his Conservative veep.

So Conservatives shouldn't be saying: "What went wrong?" They should be saying: "We told you so."

Anyway, don't blame me, I voted for Romney.

NATO now

Earlier this month, one could almost hear the wind faintly whispering a disapproving refrain from the ghost of Clarence K. Streit: "I told you so." He would have been looking at us, and pointing to Georgia.

In 1938, Streit published "Union Now," his call for a union of democracies, which would act as one nation under the principles of federalism. The point, he wrote in "Union Now," was this: "The best way to prevent war is to make attack hopeless."

A simple alliance wasn't up to the task, he warned, because the nationalist desire to avoid commitments and confrontations would also prevent allied nations from coming to each other's aid in time to stop a war. An alliance could help a nation win a war that has already begun, he wrote. "But it cannot promise, as Union can, to prevent the war -- and that is the main thing."

Georgia is an ally of the powerful West, and as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's nation was invaded by the Russian army, the West powerfully wagged its collective finger at Vladimir Putin.

While Streit's proposal for a federal union of democracies is unrealistic, especially when one takes a gander at the European Union, there is one example of a league of democracies that could prevent war against its member nations that has come once again to the forefront of the foreign policy debate: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO.

Earlier this year, President George W. Bush's continued and consistent pursuit of multilateralism took the form of pushing for NATO membership (or at least provisional membership, known as a membership action plan -- MAP) of Georgia, making the argument that we should stand by our allies, especially those that take the Soviet-sized risks that Georgia took to join our side.

Our European friends found Bush's sense of loyalty charming, but chose instead to continue the always game-changing policy of paying lip service to these democratic ideals and morals they're always hearing so much about.

So, Georgia (along with Ukraine) was denied even a MAP, and as Streit predicted, the alliance would come stomping in -- well after war was declared and much of the damage done.

I asked Karla Beth Jones, the Europe director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), based in Washington, D.C., if this has presented a defining moment for NATO.

She said it has, and she pointed to the Cold War as an example, echoing Streit's thesis.

"I think NATO's greatest value is as a deterrent organization," Jones told me. "Basically, we managed to win the Cold War without ever going to war, because NATO acted as a deterrence. And I believe Russia may not have provoked the Georgian attack if we had offered a MAP to both Georgia and Ukraine at Bucharest. And that's why this is a defining moment for NATO, and for other coalitions."

Her point, essentially, is this: NATO works. Fredo Arias-King, the founder of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, told me that if there's one reason why Putin's aggression was a mistake, it's NATO.

"The sight of [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel by Saakashvili pledging to support Georgia's NATO bid is telling," Arias-King said.

He continued, "Probably Putin thought that he could conquer Tbilisi and carry out to the fullest the invasion, since then it would have made geostrategic sense. Regime change and installation of a quisling that would have forfeited Georgia's NATO aspirations, good government, and, most importantly, that Baku-Tbilisi-Çeyhan pipeline, which prevents Russia from monopolizing all the hydrocarbons from the area, was his semi-rational goal. However, this did not happen."

Arias-King said it reminded him of the failed August 1991 coup in Russia by the State Emergency Committee (GKChP). Invading a country without regime change, he said, was worse for Russia than if it had never intervened.

The conflict, Arias-King said, was "good for NATO."

"Several NATO countries had been echoing Moscow's argument that the alliance is out of date, anachronistic, and unnecessary in today's world," Arias-King explained. "But Russia's Soviet-like 19th-century tactics against a small neighbor have revived images of 1945, 1948, 1953, 1956, 1968, 1979, and 1980. It will be harder for Moscow's apologists inside NATO -- mainly Germany and France -- to make that case now."

Arias-King believes Moscow will fill any power vacuum in its neighborhood, and that Russia's actions hastened a standoff between Russia and the West that favors the West.

Why, I then asked Jones, would Russia lose such a standoff? Mainly economic factors, she said -- especially if Russia is expelled from the G8.

"Russia will have lost its standing in the world community," Jones said. "And it actually was building it back up again. People who weren't watching what Putin was doing internally were seeing Russia in a more positive light. But I think Russia is going to disintegrate internally and, just when it needs international help, it's not going to have it, because it will be an international pariah."

What's NATO's role in that scenario?

"NATO can protect Russia's near-abroad states until Russia disintegrates," Jones believes.

In other words, while the Bear starves, NATO will keep it from going fishing in Georgia and Ukraine.

Pardon my surprise, but this NATO stuff all sounds so... functional.

I was wondering why I seemed reflexively dubious of the efficacy of international coalitions, when the Jerusalem Post helped me out. "UNIFIL commander: Israel violating 1701" was the headline, with a story detailing how the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, via its commander Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano, was claiming that Israel had been unlawfully flying over southern Lebanon in violation of the resolution that ended the Second Lebanon War two years ago.

What Graziano was doing is called protecting your own interests. The U.N., as we have previously reported, has been assisting the terrorist organization Hezbollah in the latter's quest to embed its fighters and smuggle its weapons into south Lebanon. Israeli flyovers run the risk of exposing the fact that UNIFIL troops are merely Shiite militants in blue helmets.

I particularly liked this line from the Post story: "In contrast, [Graziano] said that the U.N. enjoyed excellent cooperation with Hezbollah and with the local Lebanese people."

I'll bet. In any event, Graziano tipped his hand eventually. "He conceded," the Post reported, "that his soldiers were not trying to prevent weapons smuggling from Syria as demanded by the U.N. [Security Council] because the Lebanese government had not requested such action." The Lebanese government, by the way, includes Hezbollah.

So, if the United Nations is a model for how not to behave unless you're on the payroll of the world's most dangerous and ruthless terrorist organization, is NATO the polar opposite?

"I believe it's the optimal model," Jones told me. "I believe that NATO is the most functional of all the multilateral organizations. And I would welcome more multilateral organizations like NATO."

I asked Jones how likely it is that Georgia and Ukraine will now be admitted to NATO, Ukraine being scheduled for such a vote in December.

"I am cautiously optimistic," she said.

Arias-King, whose journal predicted Putin's invasion of Georgia, agrees.

"At the December summit, there is a bigger chance that they will be offered either a MAP or some new invention that falls just short of a MAP," Arias-King said. "However, that process will take a while. But it's a better chance now than was the case before the invasion of Georgia."

Perhaps it's helpful to look at this through the prism so eloquently described by historian and political science professor David C. Hendrickson. In the winter 1997 issue of The National Interest, Hendrickson criticized the limited scope of the debate on interventionism. It is not, he said, a choice between isolationism and universalism; instead, the idea behind the federal union inhabits a middle ground.

"It enables us to distinguish between the construction of a security community in Europe -- part of the civic union to which we belong -- and the commitment to a universalistic doctrine of collective security that would oblige us to intervene anywhere and everywhere," Hendrickson wrote. "It lights up a path equidistant from the isolationist and the imperial temptations, rejecting the simple-minded notion that we must choose between these equally disagreeable alternatives."

But aren't we so different from the ethnic South Ossetians with which we claim to sympathize? So what, Hendrickson says.

"If we recall that one of the purposes associated with federative systems is not to submerge everything in a bland homogeneity but rather to affirm both individuality and commonality -- to come together in order to stay apart -- the civilizational differences that separate a Turkey or Japan from the West should not constitute insuperable obstacles to effective cooperation," he wrote.

Hendrickson's point about belonging to a "civic union" with the democratic European states is just as true and possibly more significant today than when he wrote those words 11 years ago. With our membership to that civic union comes civic responsibilities, and we owe Georgia and Ukraine their reward for turning their backs on totalitarian communism and joining our league of democracies.

In fact, just ask the Georgian people. Journalist Michael Totten, working on a piece for City Journal, interviewed a woman in Tbilisi named Lia, who said that her husband had recently arrived to join them in a school classroom -- their new temporary home, along with six other families. As her husband passed the Russian soldiers outside the city and headed toward Georgian territory, the Russians asked him, "Are you going to the American side?"

Totten's Georgian translator credited the U.S. with the fact that the Georgian capital was kept out of Russian hands. "The night they came close to Tbilisi," she told Totten, "Bush and McCain made their strongest speeches yet. The Russians seemed to back down. Bush and McCain have been very good for us."

As for the Bear, Arias-King says it's good for Russia to know her limits. Is it good for Russians, I asked him, or just good for Russia?

He clarified that it sends a much-needed (and hopefully heeded) signal to Putin and his buddies.

"The Russian people, as usual, are passive objects in this game of his," he said. "They suffer the consequences of the faux grandeur emanating from their elites."

Let's make sure the Georgian people don't suffer anymore from Putin's adventures. They belong in NATO, now.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State, where this column first appeared.

They are Jews and they are Israelis, period

The Israeli deputy consul general could not, for all his humble sagacity, see the future.

Yet Benjamin Krasna’s heart was heavy. It was June 28, 2006 — two weeks before Israel and the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah would fight a bitter, monthlong war in which Hezbollah would succeed in causing the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians in addition to the Israeli casualties of the war. But as he spoke that night to the Jewish Federation of Ocean County, there was still some hope that 18-year-old Itamar resident Eliyahu Asheri was alive. Asheri had been kidnapped by Palestinians earlier that week, and his body would be found only hours after Krasna’s speech.

When asked about Asheri, Krasna said he wanted to make one thing clear: “He is an Israeli,” Krasna said. We don’t, he continued, perform the crass act of pretending to better understand Asheri’s kidnapping in light of the fact that Itamar is a Jewish village near Shechem — a “settlement.”

Krasna was clearly irritated by the media’s portrayal of Asheri as a “settler” — as if that made his kidnapping OK.

Two years later, on July 3, 2008, a Palestinian terrorist would drive a bulldozer over Jewish pedestrians and motorists in Jerusalem, killing three and wounding more than 60. Haaretz, the Israeli daily, via its columnist Bradley Burston, was in utter disbelief at the savagery of “the man behind the wheel of a bulldozer, who has taken it upon himself to kill Jews. Not Israeli security force personnel, not occupation troops, not the Shin Bet. Jews. Women and children and the elderly and the infirm. Jews who may be in favor of an independent Palestinian state. Jews who have nothing against Arabs. Jews who may work to end the occupation. Jews.”

The ideologues behind Haaretz, who have admitted to covering up corruption and last year told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel has to be “raped” into making concessions for peace, were aghast. Where, they wanted to know, have all the good terrorists gone? You know, the ones with the decency to target settlers and occupiers and soldiers. Why target Jews unaffiliated with Israel’s settlements?

On July 7, almost 100 Israel Defense Forces reservists from the Rabbinate Corps were called up to active duty for the purpose of exhuming bodies of foreign fighters that are to be returned to Hezbollah as part of a prisoner swap. Hezbollah will receive hundreds of prisoners and bodies, as well as Samir Kuntar, who is currently serving consecutive life sentences in Israel for his murder of Einat Haran. Einat was 4 years old when Kuntar smashed her head repeatedly against a rock with the butt of his rifle until he crushed her skull, next to the lifeless body of the girl’s father, Danny Haran, who Kuntar had executed moments before in order that Einat’s last sight would be the murder of her father.

It is doubtful that there is any air on this planet more wasted than that which circles Kuntar’s lungs, giving life to someone who exists only for death.

Yet he will be free, and he will kill again. And in return, Israel will receive the bodies of two of the IDF’s fallen heroes, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose kidnapping by Kuntar’s masters touched off the war.

Goldwasser and Regev were taken from within Israel’s borders. But to the purveyors of self-hating collaboration such as Haaretz, are they still tools of the “occupation”? Upon their return, as the worldwide Jewish community cries for its sons of Israel, mourns for its two faithful servants of God and country, sees the tragic end of a story that compelled it to say Tehillim every day for two years, feels the weight of failed hope and fights the onset of hope’s loss: what will we think?

To those of us who watched Goldwasser’s wife and mother plead for his return last year in New York, standing across the street from that nest of corruption, that cathedral of depravity known as the United Nations building, we will think simply that we have lost two of our own. There are no categories; there is no caveat — regardless of on which part of biblical Israel they stood when they were taken from us.

After all, international law unequivocally sides with us on this one. Ex iniuria non oritur ius. An illegal act cannot produce a legal result, roughly translated. That’s the principle of international law that removes any recognition of Jordanian sovereignty over the West Bank. An illegal act (Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank from 1948-67) cannot produce a legal result (accepted claim of sovereignty over that land by Jordan and the Jordanians now living there as a result, known as West Bank Palestinians).

Additionally, it is not disputed that Jordan shelled Israel before any Israeli guns were aimed at Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967, so the West Bank was land that Israel won in a defensive conflict. International law, as scholar Julius Stone wrote, considers Israel’s actions perfectly lawful — an obvious but important edict.

International law, he wrote in International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, “does not so forbid [taking land], in particular, when the force is used to stop an aggressor, for the effect of such prohibition would be to guarantee to all potential aggressors that, even if their aggression failed, all territory lost in the attempt would be automatically returned to them. Such a rule would be absurd to the point of lunacy. There is no such rule.”

Which means Haaretz, the New York Times, et al. are wrong about Asheri and his fellow Itamar residents. They’re Israelis. And so are the Jews in the oldest Jewish community in the world, Hebron. And the tumultuous modern history of Jews in and around Shechem (now home mostly to a large Palestinian settlement called Nablus) makes them no less Israeli. Same goes for the flourishing Jewish community in Ariel, which is separated from Jerusalem by random Palestinian settlements along the way but is of great value to the state and the Jewish people.

And what about Jerusalemites? They’re Israeli, too! Despite this, in January, just before President George W. Bush was to visit Israel, Condoleezza Rice admonished Israel over a planned housing complex in Jerusalem called Har Homa. “Har Homa,” Rice carped, “is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning.” The very beginning of what? On July 16, 1997, the U.N. voted to criticize the housing project. The United States voted against that resolution.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) offers the reasons why then-U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson voted with the Israelis, instead of voting against them or even simply abstaining. First, the land is 1,850 dunams, about 460 acres, which the Israeli government acquired via eminent domain, and 1,400 of the 1,850 dunams were owned by Jews. Much of that land was owned by Jews prior to 1948. Every single dunam of the entire planned housing project is currently vacant — not a single home would have to be knocked down nor anyone displaced.

Additionally, in the Oslo Accords, Jerusalem is specifically separated from settlements: “1. ... the jurisdiction of the Council will cover West Bank and Gaza Strip territory as a single territorial unit, except for: a. issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status
negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, ... (Interim Agreement, Article XVII).” Building in Jerusalem is not only a feature of the final status agreements (not the interim agreements or Declaration of Principles), but it is also a distinct feature from settlements.

Fortunately Rice, whose strange ruling on Har Homa contradicts Bush’s opinion on the matter, managed to defuse the situation when she couldn’t even answer questions about building in Jerusalem. For example, reporters asked her, do you consider other Jewish neighborhoods outside the Green Line, such as Gilo and Ramot, to be “settlements?”

“The important point here is that one reason that we need to have an agreement is so that we can stop having this discussion about what belongs to Israel and what doesn’t,” she responded.

In other words, she has no idea.

But the answer is that while Jerusalem has the greatest significance for Jews and the Jewish state, Jews have every right, as Israelis, to live in the West Bank, and the brave men and women of the IDF have every right to defend them. Terrorism against Jews in the West Bank is murder, and it cannot be justified or explained away any more than the Mercaz Harav massacre in Jerusalem in March. The Palestinians want Tel Aviv as much as they want Ariel or Hebron or Beersheba, and they want West Jerusalem cleared of Jews, too. That, Mr. Burston, is what Husam Taysir Dwayat, the 30-year-old driver of the bulldozer and resident of a southeast Jerusalem neighborhood, was doing.

Walid Shoebat, the former PLO terrorist turned Israeli advocate once said: “There are only two choices when it comes to terrorism. The first is to make excuses for it. The second is to say there is absolutely no excuse for it. There is no third choice.”

Settler, soldier, secular, or scholar, the second choice should always be our first response.

{This column first appeared in the July 18, 2008 issue of The Jewish State.}