Let me help you, Shimon

From CNN's God's Jewish Warriors:

President Shimon Peres: The legal advisor of the Foreign Ministry (MFA) doesn't tell us how to defend our lives.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong [in saying that the settlements post-1967 violated the Fourth Geneva Convention]?

SP: I don't know if he was right or wrong from a legal point of view; but he was wrong from a pragmatic point of view. Israel was under a steady attack all the time.

CA: So, just to help me understand this, for the Israeli leadership at the time, pragmatism triumphed over international law.

SP: What you call pragmatism was, in our eyes, —

CA: (Interrupting and pointing disrespectfully) You just said pragmatism.

SP: (Cool as a cucumber) Pragmatism in the sense of security, of defending our lives, yes.

Thankfully, Amanpour's embarrassing bias, lack of even the most basic knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and the overall worthlessness of the settler-bashing project called "God's Jewish Warriors" have been exposed by any number of watchdogs, media critics, and even fellow members of the media. The series on the whole, "God's Warriors", has been panned for the same reasons.

But this particular conversation was problematic for me, because Peres, who handled himself so well it was unclear as to whether he even knew who Amanpour was (lucky him), intimated that Meron's opinion, later proven to be incorrect, might indeed be true.

The truth is that, once upon a time, Peres — an intelligent, eminently likable, and experienced public servant — would never have answered the question this way, but he has taken the role of peacemaker and doesn't seem to want to offend the purveyors of popular opinion, whose latest fad is to blame the settlers and religious Zionists for, well, everything. (I'm anticipating the next JFK docudrama to lay out how Ariel Sharon ordered the Gaza disengagement after discovering the settlers' role in the assassination. Nevermind that Gaza wouldn't fall to Israel for another four years after the murder, facts and numbers don't bother these people.)

Here's how the conversation should have gone:

Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong?

Shimon Peres: Yes, he was. And here's why: You see, strange lady, the British Mandate states that the government "shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land." The Mandate, as your CNN anti-Zionist programmers should have loaded onto the hard drive of your android brain computer, referred to the entirety of what is now Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

Furthermore, you anti-religious interloper, the Mandate made clear that unless the nations that inherited Mandated property directly from the British Crown renounced their rights under the Mandate, the Mandated rights would continue under the new governments. Israel has not renounced its settlement rights, and, according to the Mandate, CNN "reporters" aren't permitted to do so for them.

Additionally, Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the Hague’s International Court of Justice, wrote that since "The last legal sovereignty over the territories was that of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate which encouraged Jewish settlement of the land", calling the settlements "illegal" has no basis in international law.

CA: (Pointing angrily at Peres, in a huff) But what about UN Resolution 242? Doesn't it state that the evil Zionist occupiers should withdraw from all of the territories captured?

SP: (Pinching himself to make sure he is awake and this woman is for real) Um, no, it doesn't. former US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene Rostow helped craft the resolution, and pointed out in an essay you should have read that the resolution was written the way it was for a reason.
The resolution doesn't state that Israel should withdraw from "all" territories, "the" territories, or "all the" territories. It states Israel should withdraw "from territories". It also makes clear that which territories Israel withdraws from is up to the Israeli and Palestinian governments to mutually agree upon.

CA: (Alternately jumping up and down and stomping on the floor) But doesn't the resolution explicitly state that, as occupiers, the Zionists are forbidden from wearing any head covering that conceals their horns?

SP: (Yawing — he was actually asleep this time, but was woken by all the jumping and stomping) No, it doesn't say that either.

CA: (Now eating her chair, foaming at the mouth, and screaming) But Israel is occupying the territories!

SP: (Looking around the room for Ashton Kutcher, who he is now certain is "Punking" him) Actually, no, and please keep your voice down, this is a civilized society. As former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote, the Geneva Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign."
Obviously, since there had been no "legitimate sovereign" in between British rule and Israeli rule, there could not possibly be an "occupation" — no one is being occupied.

Back to our friend Schwebel, who wrote in the American Journal of International Law:

"Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

So, since Egypt and Jordan had illegally occupied Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, prior to the 1967 war, Israel's claim over those areas is stronger than either of those countries'. Though, as we all know, Egypt and Jordan want nothing to do with those territories. One thing is for sure, according to international law, the territories are least of all Palestinian — no one involved has less of a claim to that land.

CA: (Now about two inches from Peres's nose and screaming in his face ceaselessly)...

SP: (Exiting with his bodyguards, leaving Amanpour screaming at the empty chair where Peres was sitting) This was fun.

The truth will set you free

Free, that is, if you're feeling suffocated and suppressed by those who oppose our freeing of the Iraqi people and our nation building there, or those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

This is a large and vocal part of the MSM and left-wing blogosphere, such as those who are attempting to strong-arm advertisers to pull their ads from FOX News simply because FOX has, through some of the most well-respected meteorologists in the world, questioned the wisdom of global warming alarmism, similar to the NY Times's and TIME Magazine's 20th century global cooling alarmism.

Or those who are advocating the return of the "Fairness Doctrine" to silence conservative talk radio.

And the list goes on. So if you are feeling suppressed by such attacks on freedom, the truth — thanks to Tony Snow — will set you free.

I recently had the privilege of attending a talk by Snow, and I can only hope such events occur with increasing frequency. The speech was long, so I will only deal with some of the statistics Snow gave us to offer readers some insight into what is actually going on in Iraq. (Disclaimer: if you are the type that cringes at any and every nugget of good news out of Iraq, you should probably stop reading.)

Digesting Snow's report was at times troubling, because it appears that some politicians are living so far from reality that they don't even bother with a timeshare on the beautiful shores of truth — they'll never visit.

Take, for example, Hillary Clinton's response to President George W. Bush's optimistic address about Iraq.

Duane Patterson, writing on Townhall.com, gave us Clinton's pithy quote:

"The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution to the situation. It has failed to do so."

That's interesting, because none of it's true. It's also frightening, because Clinton is running for president and she clearly has no handle on such a pivotal issue.

Democrats' lapdogs over at the Daily Kos offered a piece that claimed that Bush and co. were actually attempting to fail in Iraq, and so the war has been a rousing success, because it is a failure. Were it to be a success, it would be a failure, because only failure can ensure success; failure to fail, therefore, is the only failure that could be considered failure, because we would have not succeeded... in failing.
Such is the logic over at Kos.

In any event, the figures from Central Command in Baghdad have come in, and Snow let us in on information that would make any sane American proud — essentially, how effective the surge has been.

• High profile attacks have dropped nearly 50 percent since May, to 70 a month
  
• The number of tips from Iraqi citizens has quadrupled from 6,000 a month to 24,000
• The tips have led our forces to valuable targets including weapons caches: so far this year we’ve captured more than 3,700 weapons caches. In all of last year we only captured 2,700
• We’ve also taken down dozens of senior al-Qaeda leaders, along with Sunni insurrectionists and Shi'a militia members
• We’ve increased the pace of battalion-level operations 50 percent from last year
• Sectarian murders have declined dramatically, from 1,713 in December to 626 in June
• Coalition forces are killing or capturing an average of 1,500 al-Qaeda terrorists and other enemies per month since January.

“You call that losing? You call that failure? Is this outcome bad for the [Democratic] party? Facts are curious things, aren’t they?” Snow said.

But wait, there's more! That nation building thing we mentioned? It's happening, and it's downright inspiring.

• Since the war began, the average income of Iraqis has tripled, even accounting for inflation
  
• 15 of the nation’s provinces are largely at peace
• More than 200,000 engineers are employed at more than 240 factories around the country
• The Iraqi government is working to spend $10 billion this year — one-quarter of its budget — on capital investment
• Since the surge began, in Anbar province alone we’ve spent $5.5 million on a program that has provided jobs for 18,000 people
  

Of course, the town of Ramadi is probably the most dramatic example of what our brave men and women are accomplishing in Iraq.

Ramadi has seen such improvement over the last year that officials in Iraq are rendered almost speechless at the transformation. Ramadi's strides have really picked up since the surge began. Don't forget that this town was considered by some to be the most dangerous place in Iraq.

Consider:

• A year ago, Ramadi averaged 40 attacks a day. The average today is less than one
• A year ago, Ramadi had two police stations, with 200 officers. Today, it has 30 police stations with 7,400 officers
• In three days, more than 1,200 army recruits signed up in the town
• Our ambassador, Ryan Crocker, recently went into the Ramadi marketplace without body armor. He was greeted with flowers and candy and cheers of gratitude
• Another general reported the surge led to the killing and capture of dozens of al-Qaeda leaders, the capture of dozens of weapons caches, and the destruction of terror cells throughout the country.

“So I ask you again: Is this what it means to lose? Is this a failure? How can this possibly be bad for any political party?” Snow asked again.

He was referring, among (too many) others, to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, who told the Washington Post that he'd seen evidence of progress in Iraq, and feared that if it continues, blue dog Democrats may support the surge.
If Republicans stay more or less united on the war — the opposition to which the Democrats believe is key to their retaining a congressional majority and possibly taking back the White House — Clyburn said it would be “a real big problem for us.”

Read those words again. According to top Democrats, it is more important to the party that our forces and the Iraqi people fail; otherwise, people like Clyburn might not be famous anymore.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from a story by Der Spiegel's Ullrich Fichtner, reporting from Iraq for the German magazine.

"Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction."

"Protectors of Iraqi reconstruction" — that's the truth, and it will set you free. Just ask the Iraqi people.

UPDATE: On this subject, you absolutely must read the Protein Wisdom's blog from Karl. It may be the single most important blog post this year. Just fantastic stuff.

Silly Season, Israeli style

When I was covering local politics for a group of Central New Jersey newspapers, the publicity circus surrounding each election was playfully called "silly season." It soon became apparent, however, that Silly Season lasted for about 11 months a year.

Almost as soon as one election was over, the next began, as re-election seemed to trump actual governing way too often. After all, it was always more fun to think up clever TV ads and newspaper op-eds than it was to, say, lower taxes.

After covering local politics, most reporters are unimpressed by just about any and every story, which, hopefully, allows them to offer an impartial, emotionless account of the continuing insanity that is the project known as democratic politics.

That's certainly how I felt, until I followed the Aug. 14 primary election for the chairmanship of the Likud Party. I remarked to a friend that the whole thing couldn't have been more humorously surreal if Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and Dana Carvey had been running in an SNL sketch on Israeli politics. {"Live from Tel-Aviv, it's Motzai Shabbat!"}

If life is a journey, not a destination, then this election was all about how "Bibi" Netanyahu got his 73 percent of the vote.

And that journey has quite a highlight reel.

The Election Day madness began with Moshe Feiglin praying on the Temple Mount and Jews for Jesus and their Messianic (read: Episcopalian) Jewish brethren throwing their support behind Bibi, essentially pitting some Likudniks' "messiah" against the messi-aniacs.

But then, thankfully, the election became less holy war, more circus. Literally.

Feiglin voted at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, where a man dressed as a clown (the Likud Leitzan?) was offering to draw caricatures of voters who promised to vote for Feiglin.

Immediately after voting there, Feiglin said: "This will be remembered as an emotional day in which Israel will return to the people and will no longer be controlled by a leftist minority and politicians on the Right who do their bidding." Okay, Moshe. You, the clown, and the 8,670 citizens who voted for you have finally returned Israel to the people.

Of course, not everybody's vote counted. All the ballots cast in Nazareth Elite were declared invalid because someone left the polling station and took the ballot box with them, unsupervised.

But the election wasn't just between Feiglin and Bibi. World Likud chairman Danny Danon was also running — unless you were voting in the North, where Danon's name wasn't even on many of the ballots.

The folks over at RonMossad.com told me they were big fans of the "dueling anthems" — Netanyahu's camp blasting the traditional Likud anthem next to Feiglin's tent, where they were blasting Ariel Zilber's Likud anthem parody, written specially for the election.

Netanyahu is a fine public speaker, and this was a proud occasion to utilize that ability to launch his general election campaign with a rousing victory speech. Too bad none of the media covered it, so we don't know what he said. Apparently, he changed rooms, and the press wasn't happy with the new location, because it wasn't the old location, and they boycotted the speech. G-d only knows what really happened there, but it's almost as if this election were a dry run for a second primary.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what Sylvan Shalom, the Likudnik who was considered Bibi's only real threat in the election, wants. Shalom, you see, decided not to run because the primary was so early. He didn't even vote in the election, probably because he managed to convince himself that this whole thing wasn't really happening.

Not that Israelis, and especially Likudniks, didn't get a preview of the feel-good comedy of the summer. Last month, it became public that a Feiglin supporter "squatted" www.netanyahu.com, and turned it into a parody site, poking sarcastic fun at Bibi's outsized persona and sometimes supersized ego. The site, run by someone named Nathan Horowitz, is good for quite a few laughs, and by far its funniest page is a list of "Bibi's" campaign slogans. "Feiglin Shmeiglin", "Because it's my turn now", "Principles so strong only I can break them", and "Because I speak good English" are a few of the fake "Bibi" slogans Horowitz offers.

Danon would do well to drop his request for a new election. He has nothing new to offer, and this election did a service to the Likud by reminding the country that it is still the party of tough negotiators, fierce competitors, support for the Orthodox (Feiglin) and support for the settlers (Netanyahu), while still showing consistency in the voters' overall support for one candidate: Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is still the Likud's best chance for returning the premiership to their party. Labor's Ehud Barak, not being much of a politician, has decided his best campaign strategy would be to keep his mouth shut, so Bibi has gained ground on several foreign and domestic fronts while Barak has barely acknowledged that the public exists.

I am reminded of Bibi's March 1996 meeting with Bill Clinton, prior to elections, when Bibi was the opposition leader. At the King David Hotel, Clinton met briefly with Bibi, from whom he always wanted to keep his distance; Bibi, after all, was friendly with Conservatives like Newt Gingrich, and rose through the ranks so quickly he was almost an island of self-assurance, rarely willing to take orders from an American president.

As the two parted, Bibi said to Clinton: "We'll meet again when I am prime minister of Israel."

Clinton smiled, politely and condescendingly. Bibi smiled, too. Clinton never thought Netanyahu would win; Netanyahu was convinced it was his destiny.
It would behoove the Likudniks to put this election behind them, keep their eyes on the prize, and remember that they share both power and destiny.

There's no place like home: in praise of the pro-Zionist, pro-Torah rabbis and soldiers

Heroes. גבורים.

It isn't surprising that Ehud Barak doesn't know a hero when he sees one, or that he would take such pleasure in a group of them being imprisoned for, say, 28 days.

That's because Barak has it backwards; he suffers from a sort of historical dyslexia.

I'm talking, of course, about the 12 IDF soldiers, many of whom were sentenced to 28 days in prison and dismissed from their combat units, who refused to assist in the forced "evacuation" of two families from the Hebron marketplace.

The soldiers followed their moral compass to their rabbi, who confirmed what they had already suspected: the mission, to help force Jews — at gunpoint, if need be — from their God-given (and legal) homeland, was just plain wrong.

The fact that the soldiers consulted their rabbi set off a firestorm of anti-religious sentiment in the government that would make any atheist blush. Some said the supporting rabbis should be imprisoned, too; some said the military establishment should end its support for the Hesder program; and some said religious Jews should be scattered among the rest of the IDF units so they could not undermine its missions.

While I am certainly not condoning mass insubordination in the IDF, some of the statements made by members of the government and media show just how little they know about Israeli (and Jewish) history.

The demand made by Zehava Gal-On (Meretz Party) that Hesder yeshivot be immediately dismantled showed her complete disregard for the Torah. In the Talmud (that's Torah, too, Zehava!) we learn repeatedly that the protectors of the Land of Israel and its people are first and foremost its Torah scholars — those who have dedicated their lives to spiritual pursuits. So a yeshiva that teaches the Torah lifestyle and also enables its students to serve in the military is the best of both worlds: the physical and spiritual defense — of the highest level and merit — of the Jewish State.

Likewise, Knesset Education Committee chairman Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad), apparently with a straight face, claimed that "the soldiers, parents, and rabbis are cynically using the Torah for political aims."

Melchior, of course, was using the age-old "I'm rubber and you're glue" defense. The soldiers, parents, and rabbis involved in the incident were the only ones not performing political grandstanding. They were actually using the Torah for Torah. The government, now apparently in the business of appeasing and defending the Arabs who murdered Hebron Jews less than 80 years ago and stole their land, was willing to offer Jewish humiliation if it helped them obtain some political goodwill. Of course, it will not, but that is hardly the point.

OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni, who ordered the prison terms and dismissals, said the soldiers "undermined the basic foundations of the IDF."

This lie — along with the claim made by some in the public that just as Left-leaning soldiers cannot refuse to serve in the territories, so, too, Right-thinking soldiers may not refuse to evacuate Jews from those same territories — must be dealt with immediately and severely.

You see, this is where the tower of babble run by Barak has it backwards. Jews came to pre-state Israel to live in their biblical homeland, and risked their lives to do so. They often came with nothing, and at times had virtually no protection whatsoever from the Arabs who not only supported Hitler's game plan, but attempted to make pre-state Israel Judenrein before Hitler tried it in Germany.

At first, these idealistic, heroic Jews didn't live in Israel because they had the protection of a fierce military establishment, they lived there despite the lack of any such protection. They essentially created a state; they formed schools, built hospitals, even learned to farm the desert.

Through it all, the pioneers were routinely victimized by violent anti-Semitic pogroms, had their land taken from them (now that it was actually, thanks to them, worth something), and, through inspiring self-sacrifice, helped found the State of Israel.

Then came the brave pre-state soldiers followed by the Israel Defense Forces. To protect them. To serve them. To safeguard the Zionists.

Refusing to serve in any military operations in the territories cannot be lumped into one category; policing terrorist breeding grounds cannot — MUST not — be compared to removing fellow Jews from their homes at gunpoint.

And it is the height of stupidity and arrogance for Barak to pretend that what he ordered the soldiers to do is anything like what Ariel Sharon ordered during the disengagement from Gaza.
While Sharon's disengagement plan certainly appears to be nothing short of a complete and total disaster, just like everything Barak has ever laid his hands on, the similarities end there.

Because in Judaism, intentions count for something. Sharon's intentions were to protect the Jews of Gaza and the Negev, just like when Sharon recommended that, during peace negotiations with Egypt, the government order the removal of Jewish settlements in Sharm al Sheik. And by the way, it is now up to Barak, as defense minister, to carry out Sharon's plan and protect the Jews of Sderot and other communities within missile range of Gaza. He's really doing a hell of a job, isn't he?

But just who is Barak protecting in Hebron? Himself? Maybe. Jews? Absolutely not. Arabs living on stolen land? Indeed.

While Arik Sharon's policies may have failed, his heart was heavy with the suffering of his people. Barak can better relate to the Tin Man, since both are in need of any heart at all.

Barak is also currently holding the nation hostage; the people have no confidence in this government, and would much prefer new elections, and Barak is the only person who can bring those about, by leading Labor out of this coalition.

But Barak is afraid to do so, because he plans to run for Prime Minister and fears his likely opponent, Binyamin Netanyahu. I guess that makes him more like the Cowardly Lion.

Additionally, while Bibi is campaigning by presenting education and economic plans, leading the Western charge to divest from Iran, and meeting with Tony Blair and opposition leadership in Syria, Barak is campaigning by telling people that he is, to be sure, not Bibi. That makes Barak sound like the Scarecrow, in desperate need of a brain.

The rest of us hope to be more like Dorothy, who wakes up to the comical realization that it was all just a frightening dream.

Until then, maybe we could all benefit by listening to those darn Jew-loving rabbis more often.

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I haven't made myself crystal clear about something here, and that has led to some confusion about my point.

I absolutely support the soldiers' punishment. I don't want them receiving any special treatment from the IDF. There would be nothing heroic about what they did if such missions were voluntary. But knowing the harsh punishment that would come their way if they followed through on their threats to refuse their orders, they still consulted their rabbi and did the right thing.
For that, they deserve our praise.

It is the punishment that causes the concerns of the government — that soldiers will randomly refuse orders — to ring hollow, not least because the threats of punishment, both here in Hebron and in Gaza, were enough to prevent mass insubordination in both cases, despite the threat of such action.

{If anyone wants to know what's really hurting the IDF, they should read the Jerusalem Post's article on Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi's attempts to reform the army. It seems Ashkenazi is the right man for the job, though one of the problems he's dealing with seems to be (though clearly not the largest problem, to be fair) the deterioration of troops' morale after the disengagement from Gaza, and others like it, like Hebron.}

The soldiers should follow through on their threats to refuse to march Jews out of their homes, just as the IDF brass should follow through on their threats to punish those soldiers.

Of course, we can't expect such consistent honesty from government officials like Barak, but we can and should expect it from the IDF, the world's most moral army.