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April 16 the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
April 07 The Student Roundtable in TurkeyTuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 10:29 am It
was a leisurely 12:20 PM, just after noon in Turkey, but it was 5:20 AM
or earlier back in the United States, so many here may have missed a very interesting discussion with 100 university students in Istanbul (read the full transcript). The President laid out why he wanted to do the roundtable in his opening remarks:
I enjoyed visiting your
parliament. I've had productive discussions with your President and
your Prime Minister. But I also always like to take some time to talk
to people directly, especially young people. So in the next few minutes
I want to focus on three areas in which I think we can make some
progress: advancing dialogue between our two countries, but also
advancing dialogue between the United States and the Muslim world;
extending opportunity in education and in social welfare; and then also
reaching out to young people as our best hope for peaceful, prosperous
futures in both Turkey and in the United States.
On the first point, he talked about
listening, he talked about breaking down stereotypes on both sides, and
he talked about accepting that neither side is perfect while standing
up against unreasonable prejudice, whether that’s religious bigotry or
virulent anti-Americanism. On the second point, he said, "Here there's
great potential for the United States to work with Muslims around the
world on behalf of a more prosperous future. And I want to pursue a new
partnership on behalf of basic priorities: What can we do to help more
children get a good education? What can we do to expand health care to
regions that are on the margins of global society? What steps can we
take in terms of trade and investment to create new jobs and industries
and ultimately advance prosperity for all of us?"
The question-and-answer period
spanned several issues, from climate change, to the Kurds in Iraq, to
Turkey’s potential membership in the EU -- but one question related
directly to the President’s third point from his opening remarks:
Q What actions will you take
after you wrote your quote, peace at home and peace at the world, to --
(inaudible) -- and what do you think, as Turkish young men and women,
how can we help you at this purpose you have?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, some
people say that maybe I'm being too idealistic. I made a speech in
Prague about reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons, and
some people said, ah, that will never happen. And some people have
said, why are you discussing the Middle East when it's not going to be
possible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to come together? Or,
why are you reaching out to the Iranians, because the U.S. and Iran can
never agree on anything?
My attitude is, is that all
these things are hard. I mean, I'm not naïve. If it was easy, it would
have already been done. Somebody else would have done it. But if we
don't try, if we don't reach high, then we won't make any progress. And
I think that there's a lot of progress that can be made.
And as I said in my opening
remarks, I think the most important thing to start with is dialogue.
When you have a chance to meet people from other cultures and other
countries, and you listen to them and you find out that, even though
you may speak a different language or you may have a different
religious faith, it turns out that you care about your family, you have
your same hopes about being able to have a career that is useful to the
society, you hope that you can raise a family of your own, and that
your children will be healthy and have a good education -- that all
those things that human beings all around the world share are more
important than the things that are different.
And so that is a very important
place to start. And that's where young people can be very helpful,
because I think old people, we get into habits and we become suspicious
and we carry grudges. Right? You know, it was interesting when I met
with President Medvedev of Russia and we actually had a very good
dialogue, and we were -- we spoke about the fact that although both of
us were born during the Cold War, we came of age after the Cold War had
already begun to decline, which means we have a slightly different
attitude than somebody who was seeing Russia only as the Soviet Union
-- only as an enemy or who saw America only as an enemy.
So young people, they can get
rid of some of the old baggage and the old suspicions, and I think
that's very important. But understanding alone is not enough. Then you
-- we actually have to do the work.
And for the United States, I
think that means that we have to make sure that our actions are
responsible, so on international issues like climate change we have to
take leadership. If we're producing a lot of pollution that's causing
global warming, then we have to step forward and say, here's what we're
willing to do, and then ask countries like China to join us.
If we want to say to Iran,
don't develop nuclear weapons because if you develop them then
everybody in the region is going to want them and you'll have a nuclear
arms race in the Middle East and that will be dangerous for everybody
-- if we want to say that to Iranians, it helps if we are also saying,
"and we will reduce our own," so that we have more moral authority in
those claims.
If we want to communicate to
countries that we sincerely care about the well-being of their people,
then we have to make sure that our aid programs and our assistance
programs are meaningful.
So words are good and
understanding is good, but ultimately it has to translate into concrete
actions. And it takes time. I was just talking to my press team and
they were amused because some of my reporter friends from the States
were asking, how come you didn't solve everything on this trip? They
said, well, you know, it's only been a week. These things take time and
the idea is that you lay the groundwork and slowly, over time, if you
make small efforts, they can add up into big efforts. And that's, I
think, the approach that we want to take in promoting more peace and
prosperity around the world.
Unifying Intelligence to Protect Americans
New Awareness ProgramThe InfraGard National Members Alliance and the Center for Information Security Awareness Launch FREE Information Security Awareness Course
New Awareness Program Will Provide FREE Online Awareness Training for Individuals And Small Businesses Nationwide at www.InfraGardAwareness.com.
Fairfax, VA (PRWEB) April 2, 2009 -- The InfraGard National Members Alliance (INMA) and the Center for Information Security Awareness are pleased to announce the launch of a FREE online information security awareness training program that focuses on the workplace as the foundation for better security education and training.
A growing number of studies have identified employees and other insiders as the cause of the majority of data and security breaches and better security awareness and training is central to reducing these incidents. The web-based course, created by The Center for Information Security Awareness, is professionally narrated throughout and consists of 14 separate lessons covering key information security issues that can impact the workplace. These include cyber threats to the workplace and the nation, understanding how employee behavior is exploited, the importance of regulatory compliance, better workplace security, effective password practices, understanding social engineering, improved email practices, safer web surfing practices, protection of sensitive data, as well as laptop, PDA and mobile security.
Participants can also elect to obtain their personalized InfraGard Certificate in Information Security Awareness in the Workplace. The examination consists of 100 randomly-generated questions based upon the material covered in the course and an individual may take the exam as many times as necessary to achieve a passing score. The free course and additional information may be found at www.InfraGardAwareness.com.
"This interactive and engaging training targets issues central to Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) and dovetails seamlessly with InfraGard National Members Alliance's priorities. We're pleased to make this important training available to anyone for free and also encourage people to earn this certification. Each opportunity to gain additional professional development contributes to enhancing the capabilities and contributions of our extensive membership to homeland and national security," said Dr. Kathleen Kiernan, Chairman of the Board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance .
"We at the Center for Information Security Awareness are excited to partner with InfraGard in this important initiative. In today's economic climate, security and training budgets are shrinking while fraud schemes and data security breaches are increasing. Our goal in offering this free awareness training is to make meaningful progress in improving awareness of computer and information security best practices and, as a result, reduce the frequency of data and security breaches," said Jon McDowall, director of education and co-founder of the Center for Information Security Awareness.
Join Us on Monday, April 20th for the Official Launch of the FREE InfraGard Information Security Awareness Course at the plenary Think Security First Summit!
When: April 20th 2009, 10.00am - 12.30pm
Where: Think Security First! Summit , Marriott Hotel, Walnut Creek , CA , 94596
Contact: Visit www.thinksecurityfirst.us for more information or to register at no charge.
About the InfraGard National Members Alliance InfraGard is a collaborative effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and private sector experts in the areas of cyber and physical security. Originally initiated in the FBI's Cleveland Office, InfraGard was designed to harness private sector expertise for investigative efforts in the cyber and physical security arenas. InfraGard quickly expanded to FBI Headquarters in Washington DC with local program responsibility held within each of the FBI's 56 field offices. In 2003, the private sector members of InfraGard formed the "InfraGard National Members Alliance" (INMA), which currently has over 23,000 members. More information about the InfraGard National Members Alliance may be found at http://www.infragardmembers.org/
About the Center for Information Security Awareness The Center for Information Security Awareness (www.GetSecurityAware.com) was formed in 2007 by a group of leading security experts and academics to explore more effective ways to increase security awareness among a number of audiences including consumers, employees, small business owners and law enforcement.
The Center's Board of Advisors includes Michael Levin, retired U.S. Secret Service and former Deputy Director of the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security, Jon McDowall, CFE, CII, CEO of Fraud Resource Group, Neal O'Farrell, renowned authority on end-user security awareness and education, Andy Purdy, former Cyber Security Czar and Acting Director of the National Cyber Security Division/US-CERT of the Department of Homeland Security and Dyann Bradbury, CISSP, CSOX-FT, member, Board of Directors, INMA, and Associate Director of Compliance for DR globalDirect, Inc., a Digital River company. More information about the Center for Information Security Awareness may be found at www.InfraGardAwareness.com and www.GetSecurityAware.com # # #
Contact Information Jon McDowall Center for Information Security Awareness http://www.InfraGardAwareness.com 8663553866 Online Web 2.0 Version You can read the online version of this press release here. PRWebPodcast Available Listen to Podcast MP3 Listen to Podcast iTunes Listen to Podcast OGG The Annual Arab Summit Meeting: A Show of No Unity
INSS Insight No. 99. April 7, 2009 Brom, Shlomo On March 30, 2009, at the end of a fruitless day of discussions in Doha, Qatar, the annual Arab summit, normally attended every year by all members of the Arab League, came to a close. The summit ended earlier than planned because of the participants’ inability to close the gaps between their positions. This was the end of a show of no unity. The summit was characterized by deep differences of opinion between the two blocs that divide the Arab world: the bloc of pragmatic nations led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which works with the United States, and the bloc of nations with close ties to Iran, foremost among them Syria. The first manifestation of the split was the decision of some of the Arab leaders to decline to attend the summit. Only seventeen of the twenty-two leaders of the Arab League nations chose to participate. Prominently absent was Egyptian president Husni Mubarak, who sent a low ranking official to attend the summit in his stead. He was thus expressing his dissatisfaction with the host country, Qatar, which during Israel's recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip chose to side with the nations closely allied with Iran, and even tried to replace Egypt as the mediator between Hamas and Israel. Egypt’s displeasure on this issue joined its anger at the unabated attacks by the Qatari al-Jazeera network on the Egyptian regime. The summit did not succeed in reaching agreement on most of the main issues on the agenda, and therefore the concluding statement lacked even a single operative paragraph. The only clear agreement reached at the summit places Arab nations in outright conflict with Western public opinion. The summit defiantly expressed solidarity with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his involvement in the genocide in Darfur. The concluding statement ignored the divisions between the two streams of the Arab world, preferred not to deal with most of the issues, and satisfied itself with the general call for Arab nations to set aside their differences of opinion through dialogue and to focus on the interest of the Arab nation as a whole. In the absence of agreements, it was the conduct of Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi that drew the attention of the Arab and international media. He first initiated a confrontation with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and then publicly reconciled with him, while presenting himself as the leader of the Arab world and all of Africa. As is standard at Arab summits, the conflict with Israel occupied a central place on the agenda. The concluding statement repeated the usual Arab positions. It called for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as a just and agreed-upon solution (using the language of the Arab peace initiative) for Palestinian refugees without settling them in host countries. It also called for the return of the Golan Heights to Syria. The statement did not refer to the Lebanese demand that Shab'a Farms and the village of Rajer be returned to Lebanon, despite the intervention of the Lebanese president who sought to have these included. There was no decision on the issue that in the months leading up to the summit was presented as central – the fate of the Arab peace initiative. For some time, Syria has been trying to spearhead a move that would set a time limit on the Arab peace initiative. At the special summit held in Doha during the fighting in the Gaza Strip, Syria’s representatives contended that the Arab peace initiative had lost its validity because of Israel’s conduct. Indirect reference to the Arab peace initiative was made in the concluding statement with reference to a commitment to peace as a strategic goal, to which was added a declaration that Israel must show willingness to move towards peace. On the Palestinian issue, the summit also condemned the war in the Gaza Strip, reiterated its support for the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and called for reconciliation among Palestinians and the establishment of a Palestinian unity government. The support for Abbas is significant because Hamas claims that according to the Palestinian constitution Abbas’ term as president has expired. Furthermore, contrary to the special summit convened during the war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas was not invited to this summit and as in previous annual summits, it was attended only by state representatives and representatives of the PA. The summit conference showed the weakness of the Arab world and the deep split within it. It demonstrated that the real players affecting central processes in the Middle East are those who do not participate in Arab League summits, namely Iran, Israel, Turkey, and the non-state players in the Arab world. From Israel’s perspective, one of the major significances of this Arab summit was the weakness of regional dialogue as a means for advancing the political process. From the agreements between Netanyahu and Barak that led to the Labor Party joining the coalition, it may be possible to infer that the Israeli government wants to base the political channel vis-à-vis the Arab states on the Arab peace initiative, while attempting to forge a regional dialogue. An analysis of the current state of the Arab world implies that this approach is an unsound basis for a political process, especially if it is seen as an attempt to bypass the bilateral channels of negotiations. April 01 resolving the Arab-Israeli conflictEditor: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman December 27, 2007
Annapolis: Precedents and Transactions, But No
Transformations
Kenneth W. Stein
Last month’s Annapolis Middle East Conference was the third major
conference during the last quarter-century devoted to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, after the ones in Geneva (December 1973) and Madrid (October 1991). Like then, the US Secretary of State oversaw the diplomatic choreography. Unlike the previous two, Moscow was not a co-sponsor. As with its predecessors, no real negotiations took place Like the others, Annapolis was part of a process that included substantial pre- negotiations. The two previous gatherings led to signed agreements and additional diplomacy. The Geneva Conference prepared the way to three Arab- Israeli military disengagement agreements. They in turn set the stage for Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s negotiations and peace treaty signing with Israel. The Madrid Conference led to bilateral talks, multi-lateral negotiations, and secret Israeli-PLO diplomacy, whose outcome was the Israeli-PLO Oslo Accords, the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and a series of multilateral conferences on economic and other issues. The immediate followup to the Annapolis conference included, the establishment of a Steering Committee to oversee talks on final status issues, and a donors conference in Paris, where $7.5 billion was pledged to aid the Palestinian people, through the Palestinian Authority. The Annapolis conference confirmed the distance that the Palestinian national movement had traveled since Geneva and Madrid: from no representation at Geneva, to being limited, junior partners within the Jordanian delegation at Madrid, to full-fledged self-representation, by the Palestinian Authority. The
problem, of course, was that Palestinian unity had been fractured. Hamas, having seized exclusive control over the Gaza region, was opposed to Annapolis, thus calling the very legitimacy of the PA’s participation into question. Terms of Reference Since the June 1967 war, more than two dozen mediators have engaged in Arab-Israeli diplomacy seeking to clarify one underlying question: under what conditions and over what period of time would Israel relinquish land attained in the June 1967 War, and what kind of understanding or agreement from an Arab partner would Israel receive in return? Both the Geneva and Madrid Conferences were underpinned by UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which enshrined the principle of exchanging land for peace, through a process of direct negotiations. Annapolis, by contrast, moved Arab and Israeli leaders from the general to the specific: for the first time, they agreed on the establishment of “two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.” However, while agreeing on the common political horizon – a two-state solution – Israelis and Palestinians profoundly disagreed on the proposed nature and definition of the two states. Transactions, not Transformations Annapolis and its aftermath continued a core feature of Arab-Israeli diplomacy: the desire to conclude contractual transactions. This process began after the 1973 war, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signaled that he wanted to leave the Soviet Union’s embrace and cultivate American friendship, technology, and foreign assistance. The resulting negotiations, carried on mainly through Sadat’s anointed ‘envoys’ to Israel - US Secretary of State Kissinger and then President Jimmy Carter - were heavy on the search for contractual transactions. Sadat needed to show specific results to Egyptian and Arab public opinion, while Israel wanted tangible proof that Sadat could be trusted. Hence, the Egyptian-Israeli peace process was long on tangible specifics. These included armistice arrangements, an exchange of prisoners of war, disengagement of military forces, determining the precise number of men and equipment in a limited force zone, deciding on the terms of commercial shipping to Israel through a reopened Suez Canal , the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Sinai, and circumscribing the conditions under which Egypt could come to the military assistance of other Arab states. Similarly, when negotiations in the late 1980s haltingly shifted to the Israeli- Palestinian theater, many measurable transactional elements were on the negotiating table: the size of territorial withdrawals, the curbing of violence,
water rights, sharing Jerusalem, Palestinian elections, establishing a corridor between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the fate of Israeli settlements, etc. Hence, whether implemented or not, observable transactions have dominated the course of Arab-Israeli diplomacy. The core issue remains: recognizing Israel as a Jewish state For years it was widely held that Sadat’s November 1977 visit to Jerusalem broke the psychological barrier between the Arab and Israeli peoples. Having the leader of the most populous Arab state stand before the Israeli parliament in front of a picture of Theodore Herzl and proclaim that “the October War will be the last war” was indeed unprecedented. But neither Sadat, nor American diplomats and Arab leaders undertook to alter basic Arab attitudes toward Israel. In the peace treaties which Israel signed with both Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), there is no mention of recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. At Annapolis, by contrast, US President George W. Bush publicly emphasized that the “US would maintain its commitment to the security of Israel as a Jewish state,…[and] to Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people.” Similarly Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that the negotiations should conclude with “ two states for two peoples, a peace-seeking Palestinian state, a viable, strong, democratic and terror-free state for the Palestinian people; and the state of Israel, Jewish and democratic, living in security and free from the threat of terrorism, the national home of the Jewish people. ” By contrast, at both Annapolis and the subsequent donor’s conference, Chairman of the PLO and President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmud Abbas shied away from making a similar statement. Instead, he focused on the Palestinian core demands, achieving “ freedom, independence, getting rid of the occupation, establishing the state of independent Palestine within the 1967 borders and guaranteeing the rights of our people's refugees in accordance with resolution 194.” To be sure, he categorized Annapolis as “ a turning point in a very dangerous and old conflict.” However, saying that Annapolis was a turning point and making it so are light years apart. On November 29, 2007, exactly sixty years after the UN voted to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, the Saudi Arabian paper al-Watan noted that the “Jewishness of the state of Israel will in fact provide the fuel for an eternal conflict between the Arabs and Moslems on the one hand, and the state of Israel on the other.” For many in the Arab and Moslem world and elsewhere, when Israel is recognized as a Jewish state, then Palestinians will no longer sustain the dream of living in portions of what was Israel prior to the 1967 June war. Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state would mean surrendering a core element in Palestinian national identity; it would mean essentially ending the
Arab-Israeli conflict without a complete victory by the Arab side. It would mark an underlying and fundamental transformation, one that has obviously not yet occured. Hamas refuses unequivocally to abandon that core element. Similarly, Abbas endorses the core. Unlike Hamas but like Sadat, at least thus far, Abbas believes that he can recognize Israel’s legitimacy without accepting its Jewish essence. Professor Kenneth W. Stein teaches Middle Eastern history and Political Science at Emory University. He is the author of Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Sadat, Begin, and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (Routledge, 1999) TEL AVIV NOTES is published with the support of the V. Sorell Foundation Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities
January 18 Iranian Support of Hamas
January 15 Bloomberg: Save Gaza by destroying the heart of terrorNATAN SHARANSKYIsrael's war in Gaza has been met with cries of protest around the world. They come from two sources. First, there are those who oppose any Israeli effort to defend itself, mainly because they don't believe a Jewish state should exist at all. This is a form of anti-Semitism, and such a view should be rejected outright rather than argued with. Second, there are those who support Israel's existence, but believe it is wrong to wage so harsh an assault on the Gaza Strip. This argument also takes two forms: First, that Israel's response is disproportionate and therefore wrong; and second, that there are less violent ways to handle Hamas -- through international pressure, sanctions or negotiations. Both of these claims, as logical as they may sound, ignore the lessons of history, including Israel's recent history in fighting terror. In the 10 years I served as a minister in Israel's security cabinet, I learned just how mistaken such arguments can be. On June 1, 2001, a suicide bomber attacked the entrance to the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv. Twenty-one Israelis, mostly young people, were killed, and more than 130 injured. This was the latest in a long string of suicide bombings that had been launched since the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000. The next day, I took part in a dramatic cabinet meeting to discuss our options -- a Sabbath-day meeting, which only a true emergency could justify. Most of the ministers felt decisive action had to be taken. Military officials presented a plan for uprooting the terror infrastructure, through a complex campaign in the heart of Palestinian cities and refugee camps. Though the attack had been carried out by Hamas, it was clear that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had given them a green light. We had both the right and the ability to strike back. Throughout the meeting, though, our foreign minister kept going in and out of the room, talking to world leaders and reporting back. His message was clear: Right now Israel enjoys the sympathy of the international community. As long as we keep our military response to a minimum, the world will continue to be on our side, and increased diplomatic pressure will rein in the terror. But if we launch a full-scale attack on the terrorists, we risk losing the world's support and turning Arafat from an aggressor into a victim. Eventually the prime minister was convinced of this approach, and the decision was made to stick to a proportionate response -- pinpoint attacks on terror cells, special operations, arrests -- and to allow diplomacy to work its magic. Over the next nine months, Israel held its fire, and the world indeed condemned terrorism. But the attacks only increased. In the heart of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, suicide bombers blew up coffee shops, buses and hotels. Nightlife ground to a halt, tourism was decimated and hotels had to release most of their workers. One of my colleagues in the government, Rehavam Zeevi, was gunned down by terrorists. In the meantime, the U.S. suffered its own terror attacks on Sept. 11 and put intense pressure on us not to retaliate against the Palestinians, for fear of complicating its own war on al-Qaeda. The situation came to a head in March 2002, when more than 130 Israelis were killed in a single month alone -- most infamously on March 27, Passover Eve, at the Park Hotel in Netanya. The next day, the cabinet convened -- again, in an extraordinary meeting during a religious holiday. The meeting started at 6 p.m. and lasted the night. This time, however, the government decided to launch Operation Defensive Shield -- the same plan the Israel Defense Forces had offered the previous year. In the international arena, our worst fears were realized. The United Nations condemned us, and the U.S. dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell us to stop the assault immediately. The global media mounted a brutal campaign depicting us as war criminals, spreading false rumors of the wholesale butchering of Palestinian civilians, describing the operation as the worst atrocity of modern history. The most outrageous of these rumors was the Jenin libel, which was portrayed in a film produced largely from the fertile imagination of its director, and then shown around the world. It didn't matter that, in fact, Israel had taken unprecedented measures to minimize civilian casualties, including refraining from using either aerial or artillery bombardment, putting its own soldiers at unprecedented risk; or that the UN commission that was created to investigate Jenin was soon disbanded for lack of evidence; or that the director of the film admitted that he had misled his audience. For years to come, the "Jenin massacre" was the centerpiece of the anti-Israel propaganda machine, reverberating across Europe and on U.S. campuses as the symbol of Israeli iniquity. Our reputation was in tatters. Yet all this was a small price to pay for what Israel gained. Within a few weeks, Palestinian terror was rendered ineffective, with the number of Israelis killed falling from hundreds per month to fewer than a dozen over the next year. Life returned to Israeli streets. Tourists returned by the hundreds of thousands. The economy started moving again. No less important, though, was the effect Defensive Shield had on the Palestinians themselves. With the terror infrastructure removed, Palestinians could begin rebuilding their civic institutions and changing their attitude toward violence. Over time, Arafat's policy of promoting terror was replaced by the far more cautious approach of his successor, Mahmoud Abbas. In more than six years since the operation, the West Bank's economy has boomed. If there is hope in the West Bank today, it is because Israel abandoned the ideas of proportionality and diplomacy in handling terror. The West Bank Palestinians know this; for this reason, they have not joined in the world's rampant condemnation of Israel in the current war. While tens of thousands protest in Europe, West Bankers are mostly silent. Understanding the war in Gaza means recognizing the lessons of 2002. During the three years that passed after pulling out all troops and settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel chose to respond to Hamas's deadly, daily rocket attacks with proportionality and diplomacy. The result? More rockets, more missiles, more misery for Palestinians -- and enough breathing space for Hamas to take over the Gaza Strip, devastate its society, build a much more powerful arsenal than it had in 2005 and become the vanguard of Iranian expansionism in the region. Terrorism is a cancer that can't be cured through "proportional" treatments. It requires invasive surgery. It threatens not only democratic states that are its target, but also -- foremost -- the local civilians who are forced into its fanatical ranks, deployed as human shields, and devastated by its tyranny. The longer one waits to treat it, the worse it gets, and the harsher the treatment required to defeat it. In southern Lebanon, where Israel failed to defeat the terrorists in 2006, the disease has only spread: Hezbollah now has three times the missiles it had before, and the terrorists have gained a stranglehold on the Lebanese government. Israel is determined not to repeat this mistake in Gaza. Just as in 2002, Israel has chosen to fight the heart of terror, in the face of worldwide denunciation, mass demonstrations, UN resolutions, and talk of crimes against humanity. Now, as then, it is the right decision. The operation is painful: The number of civilians hurt and killed, while far fewer than in comparable operations around the world, is still intolerably high -- a reflection of the size and depth of the terror infrastructure that has grown there over the last three years. As in 2002, the real beneficiaries of a successful Israeli campaign will be the Palestinians themselves. Peace can be found only when Palestinians are given the freedom to build real civic institutions, and a leadership can emerge unafraid of telling its own citizens that violence, fanaticism and martyrdom aren't the Palestinian way. But this can happen only once the malignancy of terror is removed from their midst. As ugly as it sounds, it is the only source of hope for Gaza. Natan Sharansky is chairman of the Adelson
Institute for Strategic Studies in Shalem Center, a former deputy prime
minister and the author of the recently published "Defending Identity:
Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy." He wrote this column
for Bloomberg News. January 13 We Jews Love Life We Jews Love Life: A Tribute to Dvir Emanuelof Israel is a small country, but when it goes to war, the front is extraordinarily broad. On Sunday of last week, it reached “Gan Dalia,” the kindergarten my five-year-old son David attends in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. That morning, officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) came looking for veteran head teacher Dalia Emanuelof. She was off that day, so they continued searching elsewhere, ultimately waiting outside her home in the nearby suburb of Givat Ze’ev until she returned that afternoon. The news the officers brought was unbearable: Her 22-year-old son, Dvir, had been killed in Jabalya, making him the first Israeli casualty of the ground campaign in Gaza. Fighting there as a staff sergeant in his infantry unit, the elite Golani brigade, he was felled by Hamas mortar fire. Though Israel has a conscript army, Dvir did not have to be in Gaza, as he had received high marks as instructor of a squad leader course, was asked to go to officer school, and would still have been in training had he accepted; he deferred, however, saying he would not be fit to command until he had first fought alongside his comrades. In fact, Dvir did not have to be in any front-line position: His father Netanel had died of cancer at age 46, shortly before Dvir’s service began; as an only son in a single-parent family, Dvir was exempt under IDF rules from combat duty. Before accepting him to Golani, his commanding officer visited Dalia and asked if she acquiesced in her son’s opting for a dangerous path he was not obligated to choose. Her answer: “If this is how Dvir wants to serve his country, then this is what he will do.” Two days before entering Gaza, Dvir had called home and said: “Mom, I have to fight. I have to be there.” He went, and he fought—and was buried on Sunday night in the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem. A few days later, I was thinking about Dvir as I prepared to speak at an Israel solidarity rally at the Ramaz high school in Manhattan. I opened by talking about Dvir’s words to his mother, and then explained why he had to fight—that is, why Israel had no choice but to wage war to stop Hamas from firing missiles at homes and schools in Sderot and other cities in the country’s south. After describing Israel’s war aims, I addressed the issue on the minds of these morally sensitive young people: How we could be sure that, in the pursuit of moral ends, Israel was using moral means? I stressed the lengths to which the IDF goes to protect Palestinian civilians, and contrasted it with Hamas’s systematic strategy of using non-combatants—women, children, even hospital patients—as “human shields,” to prevent the Israeli army from attacking its fighters or to saddle the Jewish state with the blame for the civilians who are killed. Afterwards, I fielded questions from seniors in one of Ramaz’s honors classes, of which the most difficult was posed by an earnest young woman named Julie. She accepted that Israel was right to launch an offensive and was fighting in accordance with the dictates of morality, but was deeply concerned about the outcome: If Hamas was eager for Palestinian non-combatants to be killed, while the IDF did its best to prevent such casualties, how could Israel hope to win? Either the Israeli army would be deterred from landing the blows needed to defeat Hamas, or Israel would end up killing large numbers of civilians and be forced by international pressure to accept a cease-fire prematurely—which would be perceived as a Hamas victory, on the model of Hizbollah’s “triumph by surviving” in the Second Lebanon War. She offered a chillingly apt understanding of the statement made in 2004 by Hizbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and later echoed by many Hamas leaders: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable….We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.” Nasrallah had meant that the Jews loved their own lives while Muslim radicals embraced death in the pursuit of jihad, but in Gaza, it turned out that Jews also cared more for the lives of Arab civilians than did the leaders of Hamas. I answered, haltingly, on the level of tactics, pointing out that the IDF’s detailed intelligence and precise execution enabled it to limit the bulk of Palestinian casualties to Hamas fighters, and that international condemnation of Israel has been kept in check by widespread revulsion at the use of human shields. The question was still on my mind when I landed at Ben-Gurion Airport the next morning and headed to a shiva visit at the Emanuelofs. The first floor was overflowing with well-wishers, some sitting and most standing, centered around Dalia, her three daughters, and the general in charge of Israel’s ground forces, Avi Mizrahi, who in an extraordinary gesture of respect was making a condolence visit in the midst of war. Due to his rare combination of gentleness and determination, he became, with Dalia, the center of attention, and the two engaged in a dialogue interspersed with occasional comments from Dalia’s eldest daughter, Hadas, who got married less than a year ago and was visibly pregnant with the family’s first grandchild From this dialogue, an extraordinary portrait emerged of Dvir—a modest, idealistic young man who was a leader in the Bnei Akiva youth movement, delighted in taking his friends on hikes throughout Israel, and could never be found without his trademark smile, which radiated out from his sparkling eyes and lit up everyone around him—a point amply attested to in the photos displayed in the Emanuelofs’ home. He loved life, with a passion, but was willing to risk his own because he felt a sense of mission to protect Israelis living in the country’s south. Dalia, too, was heroic in her own, quiet way. On her face and in her voice one could discern profound sadness, but also pride in her son and the army in which he served, and resolve that Israel must continue to fight until victory. One could also detect a spirit of hope, bordering on faith, that her people would triumph—and that, as Jews traditionally say, Netzach Yisrael lo yishaker, the Eternal One of Israel will not fail us. Equally extraordinary was the picture Dalia painted of the support her family had received. She spoke of two teenage girls who came to her home, and when asked how they had known Dvir, answered that they had never met him but identified with the family’s tragedy and wanted to give whatever comfort they could; of a middle-aged man who said only, ‘I’m a citizen of Israel, and I came to be with you, as a representative of all of Israel’s citizens;’ of an elderly gentleman who walked in leaning on a cane, and declared: “I heard that a Golanchik (young Golani soldier) in your family was killed; I fought in Golani in the War of Independence in 1948, and have come to offer my condolences.” She described a phone call from a woman she didn’t know, who had just had a grandson and wanted permission to name him Dvir. Dalia assented, but urged that he be given a second name, as Jewish tradition says that in calling someone after a person who has suffered an unfortunate fate, one should make this change to symbolize the hope for better fortune. The grandmother answered that the boy’s name would be Dvir Chai—“Dvir lives.” And Dalia concluded the story: “A few days after my son had been killed, I could already say again, ‘Dvir lives.’” At one point, Dalia turned to General Mizrahi and asked why Israel could not fight in Gaza the way coalition forces have in Iraq and Afghanistan—bombing aggressively against enemy fighters in populated areas. There was no bitterness in her voice at the IDF for having endangered her son’s life by its regard for Palestinian civilians, nor any desire for revenge—only the concerned tones of an Israeli mother anxious to protect the sons of other Israeli mothers. The general answered thoughtfully, but without hesitation, that the IDF had gone to greater lengths to protect its soldiers in Gaza than in previous conflicts, citing the week-long air campaign that preceded the ground invasion. He added, however, that the IDF’s strength is integrally tied to maintaining its humanity and morality. Soldiers are united in part because they know that regardless of religious or political differences, they share a common moral code. Alluding to the widely-held view that Hamas’s military leadership is hiding under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, he said that he wouldn’t give an order to bomb the hospital from the air, because there are certain things one simply doesn’t do. This is an obligation, he stressed, that the IDF has as a Jewish army. From the reactions in the room, it was clear that while everyone identified with Dalia’s question, they accepted the answer—and were impressed that the officer used this opportunity to reinforce the Jewish values binding all of us together. As I left to return home before the start of the Sabbath, I understood the answer to the question I had been asked by a young woman 6,000 miles away. Yes, on the tactical level it can be a handicap to love life when your opponent loves death. But in the end, it is that love of life that will enable us to prevail. We will defeat those who love death, because we love life so much that we Israelis—from teenage girls to senior officers in wartime—know how to give comfort to those who have lost a loved one, and to say, “We are with you.” Our love of life enables us to confront tragedy, and emerge with the pride and resolve, the hope and the faith, that Dalia showed. We love life so much that we educate our children to love life, though surrounded by enemies who hope, pray, and work for our deaths. It is this love of life that enabled the Jews to return to our homeland and rebuild a state after 2,000 years, and it is the sense of mission stemming from this love that will sustain the Zionist dream long into the future. We love life so much that we refuse to have our sense of morality dulled by enemies who seek to force us to kill women and children in order to defend our families. Though our principles limit the IDF’s effectiveness, they provide us with intangibles that more than compensate—the confidence and the strength to pursue our aims secure in the knowledge we are acting justly, and the unity that comes from a society acting in accordance with its most cherished values. And yes, let no one err, we will win because we love life so much we are willing to brave death, if necessary, to ensure that our people can lead free lives in the country we have established against all odds. In the end, it is this love of life that will enable us to prevail—not only in the war in Gaza, but in all the challenges we face in the years and generations to come. |
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Terrorist events this past week focused on the prevention of an attempted terrorist naval attack opposite the Gaza shore. In the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem there was another hit and run terrorist attack. The western Negev was completely quiet, with no rocket or mortar shell fire.
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