RUTHFULLY YOURS

Elite opinion believes Israel will lose “long-term” whatever happens in the next weeks. Not necessarily.

In postmodern wars, we are told, there is no victory, no defeat, no aggressors, no defenders, just a tragedy of conflicting agendas. But in such a mindless and amoral landscape, Israel in fact is on its way to emerging in a far better position after the Gaza war than before.

Analysts of the current fighting in Gaza have assured us that even if Israel weakens Hamas, such a short-term victory will hardly lead to long-term strategic success — but they don’t define “long-term.” In this line of thinking, supposedly in a few weeks Israel will only find itself more isolated than ever. It will grow even more unpopular in Europe and will perhaps, for the first time, lose its patron, America — while gaining an enraged host of Arab and Islamic enemies. Meanwhile, Hamas will gain stature, rebuild, and slowly wear Israel down.

But if we compare the Gaza war with Israel’s past wars, that pessimistic scenario hardly rings true. Unlike in the existential wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, Israel faces no coalition of powerful conventional enemies. Syria’s military is wrecked. Iraq is devouring itself. Egypt is bankrupt and in no mood for war. Its military government is more worried about Hamas than about Israel. Jordan has no wish to attack Israel. The Gulf States are likewise more afraid of the axis of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood than of Israel — a change of mentality that has no historical precedent. In short, never since the birth of the Jewish state have the traditional enemies surrounding Israel been in such military and political disarray. Never have powerful Arab states quietly hoped that Israel would destroy an Islamist terrorist organization that they fear more than they fear the Jewish state.

But is not asymmetrical warfare the true threat to Israel? The West, after all, has had little success in achieving long-term victories over terrorist groups and insurgents — remember Afghanistan and Iraq. How can tiny Israel find security against enemies who seem to gain political clout and legitimacy as they incur ever greater losses, especially when there is only a set number of casualties that an affluent, Western Israel can afford, before public support for the war collapses? How can the Israelis fight a war that the world media portray as genocide against the innocents?

In fact, most of these suppositions are simplistic. The U.S., for example, defeated assorted Islamic insurgents in what was largely an optional war in Iraq; a small token peacekeeping force might have kept Nouri al-Maliki from hounding Sunni politicians, and otherwise kept the peace. Israel’s recent counterinsurgency wars have rendered both the Palestinians on the West Bank and pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants in Lebanon less, not more, dangerous. Hamas, not Israel, would not wish to repeat the last three weeks.

Two wars – one in Gaza the other in eastern Ukraine – are unfolding simultaneously. They have nothing in common except this: both should be being seen as unambiguous in terms of which side is right and which wrong. And second, both are likely to end in a strategic (i.e. long-term) defeat for the right side because of the attitudes that shape the approach of Western leaders to both wars.

The facts are not in dispute. In Ukraine, the legitimate government in Kiev is trying to restore Ukrainian sovereignty over its territory, in practical terms seized by Russia in a proxy war using professional special troops, intelligence officers and mercenaries (kontraktniki) to train assorted thugs known collectively as “rebels” or “separatists” who are being armed and supplied by Russia.

In Gaza, Israel is battling a fundamentalist terrorist organization dedicated to killing Jews, Christians and gays and oppressing women. As in Ukraine, they attacked first, by firing hundreds missiles at Israeli cities and towns.

Yet in neither case has the justness of the causes led the “West” to wish for a victory by the “right” side, rather than a “truce” or “ceasefire,” which, as everyone knows, the “wrongs” are going to violate as soon as they recover, regroup, and resupply.

Why?

Two reasons in the post-modern canon could provide an explanation. First, while someone’s victory implies someone’s defeat, “peace” – no matter how fraudulent or short-lived – superficially has no losers, and for that reason is vastly preferable. Second, the “right” and “wrong,” the “just” and “unjust,” the “good and evil” are inherently suspect because values themselves are suspect. Western opinion makers appear to have learned from elite universities that “values” are “individual” and “subjective.” As a result, they must be taken out of political discourse and decision-making. Hence, too, the coverage by the elite media of the West of both wars as “conflicts” in which the word “just” or its synonyms never once appear, both sides are somehow equally at fault, and therefore a victory by one side is not more morally agreeable than by the other.

So strong are these ideological imperatives that not even a tragedy can influence them. Neither the downing of the MH17, almost certainly by a Russia-supplied surface-to-air missile, nor the murder of three Israeli teenagers nor repugnancy over the deliberate sacrifice of civilians by Hamas can introduce morality into these wars and make victory over evil preferred to peace.

Israel Has a Natural and Internationally Recognized Right to Defensible Borders

Israel’s fundamental right to defensible borders is grounded in the strategic and legal circumstances that emerged immediately after the Six-Day War, in which Israel captured the West Bank of the Jordan, Sinai, and the Golan Heights. The “Green Line” that was established in the 1949 Armistice Agreements was defined as a military border between the Israeli and Jordanian armies, not as a permanent political border. That situation provided the background for United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967, which did not call on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to withdraw completely to the armistice line, instead affirming that Israel required “secure and recognized boundaries” that were not identical to the indefensible prewar lines.

Today it is often forgotten how vulnerable Israel was in the past. Before 1967 Israel’s “narrow waist” – that is, the distance between the coastal cities of its central region and the West Bank under Jordanian occupation – was only about 8 miles (12 km.), not enough for minimal defensive depth in case of an invasion. Israel is a country about the size of New Jersey with a territory of only 16,100 square miles (25,900 sq. km.). Israel’s small size alone is not the basis for its claim to defensible borders, but rather the fact that it has been a repeated victim of aggression caused the international community to recognize that right in the aftermath of the Six-Day War.

Israel’s vulnerability is made all the more acute by the fact that 70 percent of the country’s population, 80 percent of its industrial capacity, and crucial infrastructure targets (Ben-Gurion Airport, the Trans-Israel Highway [Route 6], the National Water Carrier, and high-voltage electrical power lines) are squeezed into that narrow coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the West Bank. Moreover, the adjacent hills of the West Bank topographically dominate the low-lying and exposed coastal plain, affording an attacker clear advantages in terms of observation, fire, and defensive capability against an Israeli counterattack.

Map 3 – Israel’s Strategic Vulnerability from the West Bank

Israel’s Strategic Vulnerability from the West Bank

Thus the 1949 armistice lines were indefensible, leading the architects of Israel’s national security doctrine, from Yigal Allon to Moshe Dayan to Yitzhak Rabin, to adamantly oppose a return to those lines, which they believed would invite aggression and endanger Israel’s future instead of paving a path to peace.

Historically, every peace accord the State of Israel has reached with its neighbors has been challenged by other Middle Eastern states across the region or by international terrorist organizations. Given that experience, the only peace that will last over time is a peace that Israel can defend.

While there has been significant public discussion about Palestinian demands in the peace process, there has been little in-depth analysis of Israel’s rights and requirements.

This study is intended to fill that vacuum, presenting a comprehensive assessment of Israel’s critical security requirements, particularly the need for defensible borders that was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242 and endorsed by past U.S. administrations. The study also details the key elements of a demilitarized Palestinian state, as was proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after taking office in 2009.

The vital importance of Israel’s control over West Bank airspace is also carefully considered, as are the risks to Israel of deploying international forces there.

Historically, every peace accord the State of Israel has reached with its neighbors has been challenged by other Middle Eastern states across the region or by international terrorist organizations. Given that experience, the only peace that will last over time is a peace that Israel can defend.

Top IDF Generals Outline Israel’s Security Needs

In the study, a number of retired IDF generals explain the philosophy behind the concept of defensible borders.

Maj.-Gen. Moshe Ya’alon (ret.), a former IDF chief of staff who currently serves as Israeli minister of defense, has emphasized the importance of a security-first approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – an approach, he said, that is “firmly rooted in Israel’s longstanding commitment to defend itself by itself.”

Israel’s vital security requirements, Ya’alon wrote, include “defensible borders, a demilitarized Palestinian entity, control of a unified airspace within Judea and Samaria, electromagnetic communications frequency security and other guarantees.”

The Importance of the Jordan Valley

Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Uzi Dayan, former IDF deputy chief of staff, has written a detailed analysis of Israel’s security requirements. He focused on the importance of Israel retaining the Jordan Valley, a natural physical barrier that can be defended with relative ease.

A funny thing happened on the way to the demolition of 32 terror tunnels in Hamastan: ‎Israeli society experienced nearly a solid month of internal unity. This would not be worth ‎mentioning if it weren’t so extraordinary. Indeed, in the 37 years that I have lived in the ‎Jewish state, I have never witnessed anything like it, even during wartime.‎

One could argue that the reason public support for Operation Protective Edge reached a ‎whopping 95 percent was the utter justice of its cause; that the incessant rocket-‎fire from Gaza, now hitting the center of country, was too much even for the peace ‎utopians to bear. ‎

One could assume that no matter what an Israeli’s personal political leanings, he would ‎see the virtue in defeating an enemy that glorifies death; uses children as canon fodder; ‎abuses women; tortures homosexuals and the disabled; and vows to annihilate the world’s ‎Jews while converting or slaughtering its Christians. ‎

Nevertheless, it is usually impossible to get even those Israelis with similar outlooks to ‎agree on anything, including where to hang a communal clothesline, for more than five ‎minutes. Hence the quip, “Two Jews, three opinions.”‎

As a result, when almost everyone across the ideological spectrum began to defend the ‎government, it felt as though we were witnessing a miracle. ‎

True, the far Left held demonstrations in which they waved placards calling Israeli Air ‎Force pilots murderers, while the riffraff Right got violent and screamed for “death to ‎the Arabs.” But neither of these expressions of extremism was representative of the ‎general population. On the contrary, the overall sanity, rhetorical restraint and accord of ‎the populace were as palpable as the international community’s condemnations of Israel ‎were predictable.‎

To add wonderment to the mix, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were practically begging ‎Israel to finish off Hamas. And since none of those regimes would give a hoot about ‎civilian casualties in Gaza, it’s too bad they didn’t do the job themselves. In such an ‎event, as is apparent from every conflict in the Middle East that involves Arabs killing ‎Arabs, the United States, Europe and the United Nations would have looked the other ‎way, at best, and assisted the wrong side at worst.‎

Here’s what happened after Israel pulled out of Gaza, courtesy of a UN report.

Since 2005, there has been a marked increase in the number of Palestinian deaths resulting from internal violence. In 2005, only 4% of the total Palestinian deaths for that year were the result of internal conflict. In 2006, the figures rose to 17% and in 2007, deaths from internal violence accounted for 65% of the total Palestinian death toll.

More than twice as many Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians (415) in 2007 as were killed by Israelis (185).

The cause of deaths from internal violence has changed. From the beginning of the intifada until the end of 2004, 72% of internal deaths were for alleged collaboration. The remaining deaths were detainees, accidents with firearms or gunfire incidents between the police and individuals.

Since January 2005, a different trend has emerged with 74 % of the deaths occurring as a result of factional fighting, 13% from family and clan feuds, 3% from so called “immoral behaviour” and 10% for other reasons or reasons that were unclear. Only eleven of the 573 internally related deaths, during that period, were for alleged collaboration.

Since January 2005, a different trend has emerged with 74 % of the deaths occurring as a result of factional fighting, 13% from family and clan feuds, 3% from so called “immoral behaviour” and 10% for other reasons or reasons that were unclear. Only eleven of the 573 internally related deaths, during that period, were for alleged collaboration.

Since 2005 a total of 39 Palestinian children have died from internal fighting. In 2007, approximately the same number of Palestinian children was killed as a result of internal violence (26) as were killed by Israeli security forces (25).

The changing patterns of internally related deaths reveal fundamental changes in the nature of Palestinian society particularly in the Gaza Strip.

There has also been an increase in the number of deaths for so called “immoral behaviour” including alleged drug dealing and honour killings, suggesting the increasing influence of Islamic groups.

Post-script. Anyone care to guess how many of the bodies being paraded in front of the cameras were really honor killings or clan feuds?

Attorney General Eric Holder argues in a new interview that activism is the proper role of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer — and it is precisely this radical conceit that by itself ought to disqualify him from holding the office.

“If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label,” he told left-wing journalist Juan Williams.

“Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job,” Holder pontificated, skating over the long-recognized fact that an attorney general is supposed to enforce the law, not fundamentally transform the nation. (For a full profile of Holder, see DiscoverTheNetworks.)

“The responsibility of the attorney general is to change things [and] bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents,” he said, again deliberately misrepresenting the purpose of his high office.

It is especially galling that Holder invokes the nation’s founding documents, which to him are mere pieces of parchment to be ignored or overcome depending on the political exigencies of the moment.

When critics decry his Department of Justice for containing an “activist civil rights division and this is an activist attorney general — I’d say I agree with you 1,000 percent and [I am] proud of it,” Holder said.

This is not mere hubris.

Holder is the legal ringleader for today’s Democrats and their culture of corruption. After being held in criminal contempt of Congress in June 2012 –the first such citation against a sitting attorney general in American history– he is just a few steps away from being impeached in the House of Representatives and tried in the Senate for the high crimes and misdemeanors his detractors say he has committed against the American people.

Twenty House members have introduced a formal impeachment resolution, H.Res. 411. The resolution’s four articles of impeachment accuse Holder of wrongdoing in connection with his involvement in the Fast and Furious scandal, refusing to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, refusing to prosecute IRS officials who leaked confidential GOP donor tax information, and providing misleading testimony to Congress about whether he approved invasive investigative tactics against reporters like James Rosen of Fox News.

First and foremost, Holder is a whiner. When in trouble, he cowers under a tarpaulin-sized race card. It is all so tedious.

He bristled when lawmakers dared to question him in various congressional hearings. When he got into hot water for withholding documents on the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, his arrogance burned brightly.

“What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?” he asked disingenuously.

Holder hates conservatives with a passion.

I have often referred to this foreign policy failure of the Clinton Administration- Here is the entire column detailing the failures of Madeleine Halfbright and Bill Clinton in averting 9/11 and getting Osama Bin Laden in his lair in Khartoum…..I have posted it before it gets “airbrushed” by the Clintons or their enforcers…rsk

“September 11 might have been prevented if the U.S. had accepted Sudan’s offers to share its intelligence files on Osama bin Laden and the growing al-Qaeda threat. Recently unearthed documents reveal that the Clinton administration repeatedly rejected the help of a country it unwisely perceived as an enemy. by David Rose”

In a squat, red-brick building next to Khartoum’s presidential palace, the agents who serve the Mukhabarat, Sudan’s intelligence division, keep their secrets in pale manila files. “Those guys know what they’re doing,” says a retired longtime C.I.A. Africa specialist. “They tend to be thorough. Their stuff is pretty reliable.”

And sometimes very important. Sudan’s Mukhabarat spent the early to mid-1990s amassing copious intelligence on Osama bin Laden and his leading cohorts at the heart of the al-Qaeda terrorist network—when they were still little known, and their activities were relatively limited. Some of the files at Mukhabarat headquarters identify individuals who played central roles in the suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998; others chart the backgrounds and movements of al-Qaeda operatives who are said to be linked directly to the atrocities of September 11. In the wake of those attacks, President Bush and the F.B.I. issued a list of the world’s 22 most wanted terrorists. Sudan has kept files on many of them for years.

From the autumn of 1996 until just weeks before the 2001 attacks, the Sudanese government made numerous efforts to share this information with the United States—all of which were rebuffed. On several occasions, senior agents at the F.B.I. wished to accept these offers, but were apparently overruled by President Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and her assistant secretary for Africa, Susan Rice, both of whom would not comment for this story after repeated requests for interviews. Vanity Fair has obtained letters and secret memorandums that document these approaches. They were made directly to the State Department and the F.B.I., and also via a series of well-connected U.S. citizens who tried to warn America that the Sudanese offers were serious and significant.

By definition, September 11 was an intelligence failure. As the C.I.A. man puts it, “We didn’t know it was going to happen.” Some of the reasons for that failure were structural, systemic: the shortage of Arabic-speaking agents, the inability of C.I.A. officers to go underground in Afghanistan.

Can you imagine a serious medical discussion on brain ailments, where a distinguished, well respected, and world famous physician would suggest beheading as a cure?

Why is it then that people continue to flog the “two state solution” as if it had any merit at all? For Israel’s enemies it would be great. They could then control the elevations of the West Bank for target practice against Israel’s airport, Israel’s

densely populated corridor along the Mediterranean and continue their jihad until there would be only one state- a sharia, militant state run by thugs and terrorists who would turn the area into Syria- or something like it.

Joan Rivers’ analogy is perfect. Would New Yorkers tolerate such a state in New Jersey? Or, more apposite- in Central Park?

It is time to can that whole concept. Arabs who seek nothing more than a peaceful life should welcome Israeli control of the West Bank where they should have all the freedoms compatible with Israeli security- something they could not have in any Arab country.

And by the way, the crown of Jordan’s King Abdullah would rest far more easily on his head if Israel removed a potential irredentist claim on Western Palestine, now known as Jordan…..rsk

THERE IS A LENGTHY COLUMN IN VANITY FAIR: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2002/01/osama200201

“The Osama Files” September 11 might have been prevented if the U.S. had accepted Sudan’s offers to share its intelligence files on Osama bin Laden and the growing al-Qaeda threat. Recently unearthed documents reveal that the Clinton administration repeatedly rejected the help of a country it unwisely perceived as an enemy. By David Rose”

In a memorably explosive 2006 interview with Chris Wallace, former President Bill Clinton went off on a finger-wagging “tear,” as Wallace put it, when questioned about whether he had done enough during his terms in office to get Osama bin Laden. “I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since,” growled a furious Clinton. Now a recently-released audiotape confirms that Clinton did indeed have at least one clear opportunity to kill the world’s most wanted man in 1998 – and passed on it, allowing bin Laden to live to mastermind the 9/11 attacks.

Last week Australian Michael Kroger, the former head of the Liberal Party in the state of Victoria, unveiled on Australia’s Sky News a never-before-released audio of Clinton speaking to a group of businessmen in Melbourne on September 10, 2001, recorded a mere ten hours before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. In that recording, made with the former president’s knowledge according to Kroger, Clinton responded thusly in response to a question about international terrorism:

And I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden — he’s a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once. I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.

Questioned by Fox News about the Clinton recording, Michael Scheuer, chief of the bin Laden unit from 1995 to 1999, replied that Clinton was a “disgrace” and a “monumental liar” for claiming that he didn’t kill bin Laden because of the collateral damage. He asserted that only Taliban and bin Laden and his crew would’ve died if Clinton had given the go-ahead for a missile strike on the region in December of 1998. But Clinton didn’t act, said Scheuer, because he’s a “coward morally” and because he’s “more concerned, like Obama, with what the world thinks about him.”