By Scott Italiaander

Dear Senator Chambliss:

I first met you in early 2002 at an event at your friend Clyde Rodbell’s home in Atlanta as you were beginning your campaign for U.S. Senate to replace Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia. I remember you gave a short but powerful talk about the issues facing our country in light of the events of “9-11” a few months earlier. You emphasized the threat posed by our Islamist enemies and the states that sponsor or harbor them, mainly Iraq, Iran and Syria. And even though you were speaking to a Jewish group, it was clear that your concern for the state of Israel and your recognition that its citizens were on the front lines of the war against our mutual enemies was sincere and genuine, as attested to by your experience and record as a U.S. Congressman. I came over and thanked you for your support of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

From that moment until this one I have voted for you, supported you financially, spoken well of you to my friends and held you in high regard. I have been impressed with your bearing, your manner of speaking, your positions and your character. I have always assumed you would become a leader of your caucus, your party and your country.

Senator, I believe that now your state, your party and your country needs your voice and your leadership more than ever. The U.S. Senate is about to enter into a debate on a series of non-binding resolutions and amendments that may very well turn the tide of the war in Iraq—against the U.S. Under the primary resolution, sponsored by Sens. Biden and Warner, the Senate would, incredibly, criticize and condemn the Commander-and-Chief for embarking on a course of action intended to achieve military victory in Iraq, after having just overwhelmingly confirmed as top commander the general who helped design that course. Sadly, the resolution is sponsored by your Republican colleague Sen. Warner, and as many as ten other members of your caucus may support it, giving the Democrats the margin of victory needed to humiliate our President.

I need not tell you, Senator, that the passage of this or any similar resolution would be disastrous for the war effort, and would forever be a black mark on the body in which you serve. On the one hand, because it would be “non-binding,” the resolution can have no effect on the policy charted by President Bush. As commander-in-chief and by virtue of prior congressional action the President has the power, authority and (for now) the funds to prosecute the war as he chooses. On the other hand, since nothing the U.S. Senate does is irrelevant or insignificant, even a toothless resolution will send an unmistakable message to all who hear it--our friends and allies, our enemies and antagonists, our citizens and most crucially our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. And the message they will hear loudly and clearly will be one of exhaustion, exasperation, despair and defeat. As my mother would ask, “what good can come from this?”

Sir, I have been waiting these past few weeks since the new Congress convened for men or women of the congressional Republican Party, my party, to grab the mantle of leadership, find a microphone and articulate repeatedly and passionately the words that our countrymen and women need to hear, even if they don’t know it: “We are for victory. The President is for victory. He is our commander-in-chief. We stand with the President.” Because I have met you, I respect you and I admire you I have hoped one of those voices would be yours. And now, with leaders like Rick Santorum and others like him gone from power the time is ripe for leaders like you to fill the gap. Together with precious few others in your party, you have the experience, the judgment, and the standing to pick up the standard of the “victory party” and carry it forward.

I note from your website that you have endorsed the President’s State of the Union message as it relates to the War on Terror. Unfortunately I did not see an endorsement of the President’s words on Iraq, which of course is a crucial front in the Terror War. Perhaps you, like some of your Republican colleagues and almost all of your Democrat ones, have reservations about the President’s strategy and plan for victory. All well and good—every citizen has the right to his or her concerns and perhaps as an elected official you have the obligation to express yours. But the Senate has its job to do and the President has his. He is doing his job. It seems to me the Senate’s job is either to support the President or pass legislation to stop him by de-funding the war.

With your re-election approaching it is only natural for you to consider calibrating your statements and positions so as to avoid harming your chances at the ballot box. However, at this historic tipping point in the War and in our national life I would urge you to abandon political considerations and stand for the only course open to us—total and unconditional victory in Iraq and in the War on Terror. This would admittedly be a somewhat formidable task if you were a GOP Senator with a blue-state electorate. It seems to me, though, that for a Senator from the great (red) state of Georgia, such a stance would be well received by the folks back home.

“We are for victory. The President is for victory. He is our commander-in-chief. We stand with the President.” Senator, these are the words that your constituents want to hear, that your countrymen need to hear. Someone besides Sens. Kyl and McCain in the U.S. Senate must be an unapologetic spokesperson for the “victory party” and support our President and our troops with words as well as deeds. Someone must stand up, come forward, speak up and turn back the defeatists in your caucus and in the Senate as a whole before it is too late.

Senator Chambliss, I believe that someone is you.

 By Scott Italiaander

I kept a daily journal of my trip to Israel last month, and a few days after my return I summarized my “final impressions” of the visit. First on the list was this:

The degree to which the Israelis that I talked to, including a Christian man born and raised in the Old City, are uniformly disgusted with the present government is striking. This is as true for those who voted in the elections last year for Kadima’s Ehud Olmert as it is for those who voted against him. And the revulsion doesn’t end with the PM’s office. A number of people believe the level of corruption and even criminal activity among members of the Knesset (MKs), the military high echelon, law enforcement, charitable organization officials, and civil service bureaucrats is endemic and as a result these people are completely turned off by politics.

A series of two recent columns in The Jerusalem Post entitled The Blight of Corrosive Corruption shed light on the problem and illustrate the demoralizing effect corruption has on the Israeli body politic, the Israeli citizen and even on Israel’s credibility and moral standing in the world.

Isi Liebler, the veteran Jewish internationalist and chair of the Diaspora-Israel Relations Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, believes that the level of corruption in Israeli life poses a greater threat to the survival of the State than even its Arab enemies, and if left unchecked will destroy the Zionist dream. Rabbi Emmanuel Feldman, for nearly 50 years the de facto leader of Atlanta’s Orthodox Jews, and now a full-time resident of Jerusalem, writes that the sheer amount of sleaze in Israeli officialdom—“moral flabbiness” as he calls it—threatens not just Israel’s physical well-being but her soul as well.

Liebler argues that level of corruption stems from leaders “willing to forego ethical norms and decency in the selfish pursuit of personal agendas,” and presents as Exhibit “A” the stunning news of last week that senior bureaucrats of the Taxation Authority were charged with accepting bribes and other fraudulent conduct, and that Olmert’s bureau chief was put under house arrest in the matter. Exhibits “B” through “E” are the criminal accusations of sexual misconduct against Israeli President Katsav, the alleged criminal activity of Ariel Sharon and his sons, the numerous investigations and convictions of MKs and other officials, and even the stench coming from the PM’s office smelling like bribes and political patronage concerning Olmert himself.

According to Liebler, while public corruption has been with the State since before its founding, it seems to have hit a nadir in the Oslo and post-Oslo Accord era, as both Likud and Labor officials (and now Kadima officials) have used patronage and feather-bedding in order to achieve not just their political objectives but for personal gain. The result is that political parties once guided by ideology and moral vision are now in the business of how best to divide or re-divide the spoils of power.

Rabbi Feldman takes a decidedly more theological approach, as one might expect from a rabbi. He begins his column with a quote from the Book of Isaiah that could have been written with today’s headlines in mind: “Your leaders have become plunderers, associates of thieves, lovers of bribery, pursuers of payoffs (1:23).” The only consolation the Bible gives us, in this case at least, is “the knowledge that we today did not invent corruption.” Feldman laments that if the mission of the Jewish people is to strive to transcend our natural inclination towards greed and selfishness, the endless reports of official misdeeds and dysfunction suggest that in this struggle we have a long way to go.

Far from viewing this merely as a matter of “good governance,” Rabbi Feldman emphasizes the toll this conduct takes on the personal ethics of every Israeli citizen: “If everyone is cutting ethical corners, why should I be a sucker.” The result is a society in which every interest group—religious, non-religious and ultra-religious alike-- has its hand out without regard to the welfare of other communities, other citizens or the nation at large.

Liebler and Feldman each have their villains. To Liebler, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got the trend rolling by using bribes and political patronage to convince the opposition party to approve the Oslo Accords in the 90s, and it accelerated when the Likud Central Committee was expanded to include hundreds of new members, many of whom were cynical at best and criminal at worst. To Feldman, the fault lies in the secular underpinnings of the State in which the desire to be a “normal country” trumps the moral and ethical imperatives of Jewish history for the citizens of the Jewish state to strive to be a light unto the nations. By imitating all the worst attributes of the West, secular Israel has embraced a culture of instant gratification, pleasure-seeking and nihilism instead of spiritual values and a connection to Jewish history.

Both writers imagine a solution in which the citizens of Israel come to their senses and rise up in a demonstration of collective dismay. Liebler believes that popular outrage will embolden law enforcement to take their jobs seriously, confront corruption aggressively and pursue officials suspected of breaking the law (without leaking overmuch to the press about this or that investigation). This will pave the way for a new government to make the elimination of public corruption job one. Wishful thinking perhaps, but appropriately hopeful nonetheless.

Rabbi Feldman urges people who yearn for truth and meaning to speak out and let their public officials know how disgusted they are with the status quo, thereby giving hope that some other words of the prophet Isaiah will ring true: “Your judges will I reestablish as of old and your counselors as at the beginning. Zion will be redeemed with justice and her returnees with righteousness.”

* * *

While Liebler’s and Feldman’s approaches to the problem of corruption in Israeli society differ, they both reflect a clear-eyed sense that something is rotten at the core of Israeli and Jewish life, and they each offer a hopeful vision of an Israel that confronts this cancerous sickness head on before the House of Israel collapses from within. Let us hope that their wishes come true.

 By Scott Italiaander

It was a thrill for me to take my 12-year old twins on their first trip to Israel, and my third, in the spring of 2005. A few years earlier, when I had traveled to Israel as part of a Jewish community mission, tourism was still off sharply, the economy was just coming up off the mat and the terror bombing campaign that had devastated Jerusalem’s buses, cafes and pizza parlors was still fresh in the collective consciousness of visitor and resident alike. This time around, you could feel the difference. Hotels were full, restaurants were busy and the mood of the country was decidedly more upbeat.

When traveling with one’s children to Israel, a place that we Jews consider our national homeland, it is impossible not to want to make the experience a meaningful one. We want so much for them to absorb the historical, geographical, cultural and religious significance of the place in such a short period of time that we are prone to conduct the trip like a forced march, and about as much fun. Add to that the immutable law of nature to the effect that adolescents are simply not predisposed to sharing their dad’s interest in, well, anything, and you have a potential disaster on your hands.

Fortunately, by luck or design, we struck just the right balance between education and experience, and in the process created what I hope will be lifelong memories for each of us.

But the last trip to Israel that I am thinking about just now is the next one. For tonight I leave for Tel Aviv again, this time with my oldest son, who is 15.  I know from experience now that with the right tour guide in place and with the various friends and loved ones that we plan to visit, we will find the right formula for making this trip memorable for Joseph and me.

That is not what worries me.

What worries me is the faint though persistent feeling that this could be my last trip to Eretz Avoseinu, the Land of our Fathers. This doesn’t rise to the level of a premonition, and has nothing to do with fears concerning my own ability or fitness to travel in the future. But the nature and frequency of recent events beginning with the unilateral disengagement from Gush Kativ and other Gaza communities two summers ago right through the publication of the Baker-Hamilton ISG Report a few weeks ago at least raises the question of Israel’s survival.

The Gaza disengagement in August of last year was a bitter experience, and not just because it pitted Jew against Jew. For many of us it represented the end of the period of idealism mixed with hard-headed pragmatism during which the generation of the founders of the State of Israel led the country since its founding.  What replaced it is an era of self-delusion, self-doubt and self-dealing epitomized by the Kadima governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.  Even many among those who didn’t support the unilateral decision to withdraw from Gaza engaged in the fantasy that doing so might remove an impediment to peace with the Palestinians.

Such self-delusion on the part of ordinary citizens of a society is understandable, and even admirable.  Jews especially are a peace-loving people, and the tendency to indulge in the fantasy that our enemies love peace also is natural.  But we expected more than fantasy from Sharon, the great defender of the Israeli people, a hero of the War of Independence in 1948, the maverick general who cut off the Egyptian Third Army to win the Sinai campaign in 1973, the political force behind the Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful) settlement movement, the warrior who survived political disgrace and worldwide ostracism to become Israel’s prime minister at a critical time in its history, the man who said:

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Judean) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

Worse still, it became apparent that Sharon may have undertaken the Gaza plan not out of a genuine desire for peace, but as a means of appeasing the media and political elements whose investigations into alleged Sharon family corruption threatened to destroy him.  In any event, Israeli's left Gaza, and soon the Palestinian's showed their gratitude by turning it into a training ground for terrorists and a launching pad for attacks against Israel.

In the wake of the stroke that sidelined Sharon soon after Gaza, Ehud Olmert strode onto the scene pledging to carry the Kadima banner of unilateral withdrawal into Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). That policy was rendered fatuous within months by the terror rocket campaign waged by Hezbollah and its patrons from territory once controlled, then voluntarily ceded, by Israel, and yet Olmert clings to it still.  Putting aside for a moment Olmert’s disengenousness at the start of the Lebanon War (re-read his “National Moment of Truth” speech of July 17^th) and his incompetence in conducting it, it is his evident detachment from reality that quickens the pulse. How else to explain his continued devotion to the notion of territorial give-aways while our enemies in Lebanon and in Gaza use already relinquished lands as a staging ground for terror campaigns against Israelis in Israel “proper”?

Despite the success on the part of the U.S. in holding the wolves of the U.N. and the E.U. at bay long enough for Israel to finish off Hezbollah last summer, Olmert and his crew dithered, replacing action with bluster. And as a result Israel has a new enemy across the northern border, UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force which, as Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post points out, has “done everything in its power to defend Hezbollah and undermine Israel’s national security.” According to Ms. Glick UNIFIL has bullied and badgered the weak Olmert government into removing the Israeli navy from the Lebanese coast and the IAF from Lebanese airspace while allowing Hezbollah to reassert control over border towns in southern Lebanon.

These actions by the European-dominated UNIFIL are of a piece with the wilfull failure of the European force in Gaza to stop the flow of weapons smuggled from Egypt into Gaza through the border terminal at Rafah. These events and many others reveal a European community openly hostile to Israel’s presence in the Middle East, and for Olmert to rely on these countries to fight Israel’s enemies is not just delusional, but a disgrace.

Well, so what if the Europeans won’t or can’t protect Israel? (Hell, they won’t even protect themselves). At least its not “Israel Alone,” to paraphrase the title of Mark Steyn’s new book. Or so it seemed until the Baker-Hamilton fiasco came out a few weeks ago. The core recommendation, and almost the only “thou shalt” of the report of the Iraq Study Group, is to pressure Israel into accomodating its Islamist enemies by giving up more land in return for empty promises.  If the ISG report represents elite thinking among the American political and diplomatic class (as we know it does among the elite media), the U.S. commitment to Israel’s securty is hardly rock solid. At least not solid as Iraq (is concerned). Even if the Bush administration doen’t subscribe to the Baker-Hamilton view that Jewish lives are trade-able if American interests warrant, it is not inconceivable that some future administration will.

In short, with its old external enemies emboldened and, according to Daniel Pipes, with new, internal enemies rising among its Muslim Arab citizens, Israel finds itself increasingly isolated by Europe and shaken by the embrace by many in Washington of the Baker-Hamilton Final Solution.

Even under these dire conditions I would worry little about Israel’s future if it were led by men and women of courage who see as their primary duty safeguarding the security of their state and defense of their citizens, whose words of national purpose are genuine and whose perception of events are grounded in reality, who are confident in their role as leaders of the Jewish people, who believe in the destiny of the Jewish nation and who grasp the nature of our enemies and the danger they pose.

But Israel is led by weaklings and cowards. And even though I believe in G-d’s promise to redeem the Jewish people and that our ultimate survival in the Land is assured, because Israel is led by such weaklings and cowards, I can’t help but wonder whether this next visit to Israel will be my last.

 By Scott Italiaander

“Democrats should know that they can count on European Socialists for support.”

So stated Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates at the European Socialist Party conference held in Oporto, Portugal this week, which was attended by Democrat Party Chair Howard Dean and Europe’s leading socialist politicians and several leaders of leftist governments. According to Reuters, former Danish Prime Minister Poul Rasmussen, now president of the European Socialist Party, told Dean, "We are not anti-American, we want the real America, your America.”

If by the “real America,” the European leftists mean the America that values consensus over self-defense; deference to its enemies over loyalty to its friends; and the outsourcing of its foreign policy to bipartisan commissions, the E.U. and the U.N., it appears they didn’t have to wait until Dean’s Democrats take power next month to get their wish. The James Baker-Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group report issued last week is as accurate a blueprint for returning to the “real America” as it gets.

I have read the report's executive summary and enough of its assessments and recommendations to get a sense of the priority it places on negotiation, diplomacy and deal-making over principal, national security and military victory. This is not to say that one cannot cherry-pick suggestions and recommendations here and there that are reasonable and appropriate. But overall, the document seems quaint at best, dangerous at worst and cynical at its core.

The report is quaint in that it completely ignores the realities and imperatives of the post-9/11 world. Its orientation is captured by one sentence in the executive summary that, most likely inadvertently, contains the central buzzwords associated with ‘‘realpolitick” as practiced by the Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft crowd in the old days: “The United States should immediately launch a diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region.” (emphasis mine). Never mind that the much-vaunted “stability” that was the mainstay of Middle-East policy for decades masked, or worse, created, the very pathologies that led to the Islamist threat we now face over there and elsewhere. The Baker commission doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of that threat, much less recognize that it warrants a fresh look at the way we have done business in that part of the world.

(At least I agree with the word “offensive” in the above-referenced sentence, inasmuch as that sums up my feelings about the report as a whole.)

In calling for a regional “support group” of Iraq’s neighbors (which would not include Israel, and not because it doesn’t share a border with Iraq) and for “constructive engagement” with Iran and Syria, the authors either ignore the Bush Doctrine or pretend that it has been suspended. Whether or not the report’s authors agree with it, and regardless of whether it has been followed faithfully by the administration that invented it, the Bush Doctrine (you know, the one that says “you’re either with us or against us”) is still the conceptual framework in which our foreign policy operates. As properly understood, the doctrine clearly precludes negotiations of the sort the ISG report advocates with the sort the report advocates negotiating with.

If “quaint” means anything, it means “old-fashioned,” and there can be little doubt that with its emphasis on accommodation with our enemies, the ISG report qualifies.

(Dictionary.com also defines “quaint” as “skillfull and clever.” The report is certainly that, at least in its packaging and marketing, which one would expect from “wise men” of the caliber and vintage of the ISG panel (whose average age I gather is about 75—talk about quaint). Its pronouncements seem purposeful and precise, except they are mostly qualified by conditional words like “could” and “should” and “if”, as in “if [these recommendations] are effectively implemented” and “if the Iraqi government moves forward…” This leaves its authors plenty of room to blame those responsible for following (or ignoring) their recommendations when things don’t work out as hoped. After all, the Smartest Lawyers in the America gotta have wiggle room.)

And here is where the cynical part comes in. The report is suggestive in almost all areas concerning what ‘s expected of Iraq and its Arab neighbors. Iran and Syria “should” be engaged by the U.S. (we’ll come back to that in a second). Iran “should” stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq. Syria “should” control its borders with Iraq. The Iraqis “should” accelerate responsibility for its own security, etc. But to prove beyond serious doubt that the report’s central thesis is that the Jews are the root cause of regional chaos in the Levant, the report turns mandatory: “There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts…which must include direct talks with, by and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians (those who accept Israel’s right to exist) and Syria.” 

As everyone should know by now, the term "comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace" is diplo-speak for "Israel must retreat behind indefensible borders in exchange for pledges not to destroy it by its enemies whose words have proven to mean nothing anyway."  The Baker-Hamilton group is eager to elicit from Islamic fanatics words of peace that they (the fanatics) have no intention of honoring while ignoring pledges to annihilate Israel (and the West) that the fanatics have every intention to uphold. Let us know when you locate those Israel-accepting Palestinians, Secretary Baker. 

That Baker and his cohorts would offer up Israel as a sacrifice for the sake of their beloved “stability” and “international consensus” is not terribly surprising, given Baker’s role in leaning on Israel to accept the Madrid talks in 1992 that led to the Oslo accords in 1994 that led to…well, you get the point. But what’s surprising and alarming is the degree to which these folks have not just wedded themselves to the policies of the early 90s, but appear to have slept through history during the 15 years since:

Although U.S.-Syrian relations are at a low point, both countries have important interests that could be enhanced if they were to establish some common ground on how to move forward. This approach worked effectively in the early 1990s. In this context, Syria’s national interests in the Arab-Israeli dispute are important and can be brought in to play.

Hey, fellas. Let me give you some possible reasons that relations with Syria are at a “low point”: (1) Syria’s repression of its majority Sunni and minority Christian populations (2) Syria’s funding, training and supplying of Hezbollah (3) Syria’s continued hegemony in Lebanon, including its assassinations of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and politicians like Pierrre Gemayel, (4) Syria’s unwillingness to close off its borders with Iraq and stop cross-border shipments of arms, material and personnel (5) Syria’s alliance with Iran, which is clearly supporting the Shia terrorists in Iraq and providing money and arms with which to kill our Iraqi allies and our own servicemen (6) Syria’s bellicose threats to eliminate Israel if it doesn’t unconditionally surrender the Golan heights, and (7) Syria’s thumbing its nose at not just the U.S. but the U.N. and its patron France in refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the murders of the aforementioned Lebanese politicians.

Of course all this happened in the interregnum since Baker was in charge, so he may have missed them. And so the report continues:

Recommendation 12. The United States and the Support Group should encourage and persuade Syria of the merit of [contributing to the stability of Iraq] as follows….Syria can control its border with Iraq…Syria can establish hotlines to exchange information with the Iraqis…Syria can increase its political and economic cooperation with Iraq…

Of course, Syria can. And I can double my alimony payments to my ex-wife. But I won’t, because it’s not in my interests to do so. And neither is it in Syria’s interests to stabilize Iraq, a point the report itself makes only a few pages earlier, in its “assessment:”

Syria is also playing a counterproductive role. Iraqis are upset about what they perceive as Syrian support for efforts to undermine the Iraqi government …like Iran, Syria is content to see the United States tied down in Iraq.

This is the same Syria that the report says thinks will help us stabilize Iraq? And these folks are the “realists.” Jeez.

And so it goes throughout the report. There are glimpses of clear-eyed analysis (“Iran is content to see the United States tied down in Iraq” and “engaging with Iran is problematic”) followed by nonsensical and goofy conclusions (“Iran’s interest would not be served by a failure of U.S. policy in Iraq…”). And that’s what makes the report dangerous.

Dangerous because it is likely that a majority of the foreign policy establishment, almost all the Democrats, more than a few Republicans and virtually 100% of the mainstream media in Washington and New York will hail the ISG report as though it were the tablets brought down by Moses, and will insist (as Baker reportedly has) that the recommendations be adopted as a whole. While it is anyone’s guess what the President will do (my guess is he will give it lip service and not much more), the very fact that a report as shallow, cynical and fanciful as this one is given so much credence by our policy makers and opinion makers 5 years after 9/11 is frightening.

The report is not a prescription for victory against our enemies, or even for “success” in the Middle East. It is a romance novel that in its unrelenting nostalgia for the good old days of stability and diplomatic niceties engages in the fiction that if only we are nice to our adversaries they will keep the oil flowing and leave us alone.

If serving up Israel to our enemies as Baker and company seem to recommend would accomplish the desired result, one could pass the report's authors off merely as craven. That such an act of appeasement would not only be bad for the Jews but would also hasten our enemies’ victory over the U.S. and the West makes the authors of the ISG report delusional as well.

But, hey, at least the European Socialists and Howard Dean would be pleased.

 By Scott Italiaander

What a difference a fortnight makes.

Remember all the way back to the weekend before the election, when the main topic of conversation on cable news, talk radio and the “blogosphere” was John Kerry’s “botched joke” about President Bush? Kerry had said to a group of college students that without hard work and a good education, “you get stuck in Iraq,” implying that military service is the last refuge of the uneducated, disadvantaged and vulnerable among us. This set off a firestorm of protest in the New Media which only grew when instead of apologizing, Kerry lashed out at his right-wing enemies for kicking up so much dust over what they surely knew was a screwed up punch line about Bush’s brain.

Many claimed, myself included, that Kerry’s comments had laid bare not only his contempt for the military, but that of the party whose standard he bore in the 2004 Presidential campaign. You could almost feel the tide turning against the Democrats as the incident headed into its second full news cycle. By the Friday before Election Day, a certain giddiness prevailed at the thought of millions of Republicans and even independents running to the voting booth to vote Republican, so provoked were they by Kerry’s comments.

Polls that came out in the days before Election Day seemed to show the race tightening and Republican enthusiasm building, which only reinforced the conviction that Kerry’s slip had doomed not only his 2008 presidential aspirations but the Dems 2006 bid as well. Predictions of G.O.P. victory seemed, well, plausible.

And now, barely two weeks later, as the dust continues to settle from the wreckage of Election Day 2006, Kerry is not the only Senator whose presidential ambitions have been dented or destroyed in this election cycle, though perhaps the only Democratic one.   Senators (but not for long) George Allen and Bill Frist, both rising stars of the GOP as recently as 2004, are finished, one by incompetence in managing his campaign, the other by mis-managing the Senate.   Rick Santorum, conservative purist and a leader of his party in the Senate, was sidelined by a 17-point whupping in Pennsylvania by a nobody with a revered name.  And John McCain, for all of his fundraising prowess and fidelity to the war on terror, may see his presidential hopes dashed by Republican primary voters,  a significant portion of which mistrusts (and even reviles) him.

And this is the least of the GOP's problems.  Now they find themselves short of the 50-yard line in the Senate and, for the first time in a dozen years, in the minority in the House as well.  Some say that being in the minority will enhance the GOP's presidential prospects, but that is true only if and to the extent the Democrats let out their inner wild-child and manage to remind voters why they (the Democrats) can't be trusted with power.   In any event, whatever benefits loss of Congress may bring Republicans in the next two years, power and influence are not among them.

This is what happens when you depend on John Kerry!  He can't even be trusted to botch a joke well enough to save Republicans from themselves.

* * *

In the wake of November 7, there are a few heartening observations for conservatives. First and foremost, the sun (or at least the light) continues to appear most mornings, dollars still spend like money, and the Republic didn’t collapse.

Second, conservatives blamed themselves, not their enemies (at least not their enemies outside of the GOP) for Republican losses. While self-blame can lead to endless recrimination, it seems a lot healthier than scapegoating the media, corrupt local election officials, rigged voting machines and the other party in general. This didn’t work very well for the Democrats in 2000 and 2002.  (Although it might be said to have worked in 2004, given that now they have their power back).

Third, conservatives didn’t lecture the American voters for their stupidity, or claim that they have been misinformed or misled. In fact, a hallmark of conservatism is, or at least ought to be, a recognition that the voters are always right—even if they break our hearts. And since so many conservatives now admit that the Republican majority had this coming, it’s hard to be terribly broken hearted about the election results. (Except of course for the loss of the above-mentioned Rick Santorum, who I highlighted in these pages before the election).

While pundits continue to analyze the exit polls and other aliquot data for clues as to what really happened on Election Day, there is at least one thing we know for sure—the electorate does not reward Republicans for acting like Democrats. Spending like Democrats. Earmarking like Democrats. Flirting with women like Democrats. Propositioning men like Democrats.  Consorting with crooks like Democrats. And pandering like Democrats.
 
Only Democrats can do that and get away with it.

Sure, America's inability to win the war, and Bush’s failure to explain why, was likely the largest single factor in the GOP losses. But come on. The GOP lost Montana.  Does anyone think Republicans would have lost Montana on the war issue alone? No, the party lost Montana, and Ohio and Virginia for the Senate, and a whole bunch of House districts, because Republicans tried to do what the voters normally elect Democrats to do. 

The world isn't fair.  Democrats can get elected pretending to be right-wingers and then govern like centrists.  Republicans have to govern like conservatives in order to be credible when they campaign like centrists.  Thats just the way it is, and there is nothing we can do about it.
 
So we may as well learn this lesson, lick our wounds, and sit back and watch what the Democrats do now that they are in control.  And what the Republicans do now that they’re not.

The next two years are going to be interesting.

By Scott Italiaander

Wow. The internet and talk radio are alive with election fever.  There is polling that apparently shows a late "surge" by the G.O.P., analysis that suggests "Republicans Coming Home," anecdotal evidence that Democrat strategists are in panic mode, breathless reporting by the MSM that the election is tightening, etc. 
 
Movie critic and radio talk show host Michael Medved predicts that Tuesday will be a "good day for the G.O.P."  Quin Hillyer of The American Spectator and John Gizzi of Human Events are supremely--and surreally--confident that the Republicans will hang on to both the Senate and the House.  Richard Baer of The American Thinker--who is not given to partisan flights of fancy-- believes the G.O.P. will retain the Senate and lose the House--but finds it plausible that with high G.O.P. turnout the House can be saved for the Republicans. 

On the other hand, long-time political analysts Stu Rothenberg and Charlie Cook predict a mini-wave in favor of the Democrats that could result in as many as 40 Republican seats flipping to the Dems (a 15-seat switch is all that is needed for the Dems to control the House).  It is not clear whether they believe that any Democrat House seats are vulnerable to G.O.P. challengers.  Dick Morris predicts a "GOP Massacre," yet seems to leave the door open for the G.O.P. Senate majority holding.  With Morris, one never knows whether his analysis serves the public interest or merely his own.

It seems to me that the professionals with the best reputations for integrity and accuracy are the ones to give credence to.  Hillyer of The Spectator has a long record of accurately predicting the outcome of congressional races, at least according to his own bio.  RealClearPolitics (RCP), my own "home base" for all things political on the web, shows the Senate races in Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, Montana and Rhode Island as toss-ups, but its "RCP Average" of all the big name polls shows the Democrats getting a net six (6) seats on election day, just enough to make it the majority in the Senate.  On the House side, RCP Averages shows that 13 G.O.P. seats "lean" Democratic, and another 14 are toss-ups, with only 2 Dem seats that lean Republican (both in Georgia by the way).

The one pro that both Dems and Republicans admire perhaps more than any other for his intellect, analysis and accuracy is Michael Barone of U.S. News.  Barone is known to any who watched the McLaughlin Group over the years, and is one of the hardest-working political reporters in the business.  You will probably see him on FOXNews tomorrow night during their wall-to-wall election coverage, poring over his charts and tables.  Here is his latest post:

"Republicans are plainly on the defensive in Senate and House races, and if they lose all or almost all the close Senate races and if they forfeit as many House seats as they seem likely to, Democrats could end up with majorities in both the House and Senate. On the House side, Republicans, even while holding most of their seats that have long been recognized as seriously contested, could lose overwhelmingly Bush '04 seats where Democrats are running attractive candidates and Republicans nominated by plurality candidates with serious liabilities (Idaho District One, Nebraska District Three) or where Republicans who have never had to campaign much have been caught unawares (New York 25). Many outcomes are possible."

So there you have it...a brilliant statement of the obvious, which is that "if" the close races fall to the Dems as they seem "likely" to, the Dems will control both the House and the Senate.

Who am I to argue with Barone, or any of these guys.  My own prediction is that the House falls and the Senate doesn't.  But two things will thrill me if they come to pass, no matter what else happens.  One is if Michael Steele wins the Senate race in Maryland and becomes the first black Republican Senator since...I don't know when.  The other is if, in a miracle, the voters of Pennsylvania come to their senses and reject Bob Casey's bid to unseat Rick Santorum

Now, GOAV.  Go Out and Vote.  Thats all we can do.

By Scott Italiaander

Whatever happens on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning), control of the Senate is not likely to turn on whether Rick Santorum is returned by the voters of Pennsylvania for a third term as that state’s junior U.S. Senator. If you believe the polls, Santorum will have to pull a Truman-esque upset in order to prevail over his lackluster Democrat challenger, State Treasurer and political scion Bob Casey.

So it’s a good thing for Republicans that Rick’s seat is not likely to be the knife-edge on which their hopes for keeping the Senate are balanced. Not that they will necessarily keep the Senate…but if they don’t it’ll be because they lost races a lot closer than the one in Pennsylvania.

But a Santorum loss is decidedly not a good thing for the Senate, for Republicans or for Americans in general.  Rick has been vilified mercilessly by the mainstream press for 12 years, and is the Democrat poster child for all that is extreme about “right-wing zealots.”  And because he is part of the Senate leadership, Rick is Public Enemy #1 as far as the Democratic Senate campaign committee led by Chuck Schumer-- who is determined to take back the Senate for the Dems--is concerned.

Rick is famously anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage, two of the holiest sacraments in the progressive religion. He has made some sharp statements over the years about both subjects, such as the one he made in July 2005 declaring abortion to be crueler than slavery: “…in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave."

And the comments he made after the U.S. Supreme Court in effect overturned Texas’ sodomy laws did little to endear him to the Barbara Boxer Left. Santorum argued that under the Court’s reasoning in Lawrence v. Texas, all manner of behavior, from polygamy to bestiality to parent-child and man-boy sex, could arguably be protected as “privacy matters.”

But Rick is adored by conservatives, precisely because is so hated by liberals and even moderates.  If Rick manages to defy the pundits and eke out a win it’ll be because “values voters” in Pennsylvania understand what a loss of Santorum would be to the state and country, and thus turnout in droves. Even that may not be enough, since Rick’s approval ratings are in the 40s--bad news for an incumbent.

If you are Jewish and love Israel, or non-Jewish and love Israel, or you just plain fear the rise of Islamofascism in Iran, the Levant and most specifically in the countries and territories surrounding the Jewish State, then you will miss Santorum if he is gone. Santorum has been a major sponsor of the Syria Accountability Act.  Rick sponsored legislation that would make it more difficult for the Iranian government to use foreign investments to support Islamic terrorism.  He advocates funding for pro-democracy groups who oppose a totalitarian regime and support the advancement of democratic ideals and principles in Iran.

In addition to his sponsorship of legislation that would hold Syria and Iran accountable for their actions, Rick introduced legislation declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization.  And he has worked hard to force the U.S. intelligence agencies to release documents captured in Iraq so we can all see evidence of Saddam’s ties to Islamic terrorism.

Rick’s first act as Senator in 1995 was to support legislation that would move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Rick is a great friend of Israel and Jewish Americans, and is also a leader in the fight for religious freedom abroad and religious tolerance at home.

Although Senator Santorum's willingness to speak out about the grave issues confronting Israel, the U.S. and the West may be costing him votes, and may even cost him the election, Rick is willing to pay the ultimate political price for speaking the truth as he sees it.  As Peggy Noonan said in her OpinionJournal piece the other day, entitled “We Need His Kind:”

Mr. Santorum has been at odds with the modernist impulse, or liberalism, or whatever it now and fairly should be called. Most of his own impulses--protect the unprotected, help the helpless, respect the common man--have not been conservative in the way conservative is roughly understood, or portrayed, in the national imagination. If this were the JFK era, his politics would not be called "right wing" but "progressive." He is, at heart, a Catholic social reformer. Bobby Kennedy would have loved him.

Well, I don’t know about Bobby Kennedy, but I love Rick Santorum. (Not in the Lawrence v. Texas sense, of course).  I love the fact that he is passionate, gutsy, hardworking, principled, and dare I say, heroic.

He is everything people say they want in a politician, and yet Rick may well lose his place in American politics to an empty suit named Casey who has campaigned by hiding.

Then again, he may win, which would be a huge vindication of his style of politics, not to mention a sweet defeat of the MSM and the Democrats.

Columnist Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, an admirer of Santorum's doggedness in articulating the dangers facing the nation, would like to see Santorum "seek a more difficult job" if he loses to the empty suit on Tuesday. 

Kelly reminds us that two years after Abraham Lincoln lost his Senate bid, he was elected President of the United States.  This should give us all a reason to hope that no matter the outcome on Tuesday night, the country will be seeing more of Rick Santorum.

By Scott Italiaander

In the pressure-cooker of the final days of a contested election sometimes events conspire to concentrate the mind on what is at stake in that election. Despite all the carefully drafted talking points, the poll-tested commercials and the scripted appearances on the Sunday shows, something unplanned and unintended happens that peels back the artifice and reveals the true nature of a person or party. The John Kerry “you get stuck in Iraq” comments at Pasadena City College Monday is just such a thing.

Not that many of us didn’t think Kerry was contemptuous of the military and a contemptible human being, even for a politician. Sometime later I will post an unpublished piece I wrote following Kerry’s despicable Mary Cheney remarks in the 2004 debates that proves, at least, that I knew he was a creep. But most of us didn’t think he was stupid and arrogant enough to insult the members of our military directly. (I should note that I am inclined to believe that he did “botch” a bad joke about Bush. But even if that’s what he intended, the fact that he would make a joke about Bush and Iraq while 140,000 troops are over there is telling enough).

The spinmeisters on cable TV tried to minimize the incident by noting that “John Kerry isn’t on the ballot.” Well, last time I checked neither is George Bush, but that hasn’t stopped Democrat operatives from desperately trying to make this election a referendum on Bush. Anyway, the unfortunate fact for Democrats is that just 2 years ago Kerry was their nominee for President, and as such is still the standard bearer for the party. So Kerry’s comments do not reflect only on his character, but also on the character of the party that elevated him to Commander-in-Chief-in-waiting. And that reflection does not diminish in the face of Kerry’s latest “apology.”

And what a reflection it is. The party that gave us John Kerry now wants to re-take Congress and, at the very least, assume control of the purse-strings that would surely be used as a bludgeon to wreck Bush’s foreign policy. What are the chances that a party so contemptuous of the men and women who serve in the military will pass legislation that is designed to strengthen their hand in battle, to give them the tools they need to win the war in Iraq? When the new chairmen and leaders of Cngress make their speeches for C-Span or prime-time what is the likelihood that they will be sending a signal to the enemy that they stand firmly behind their president that the only exit strategy is victory? When the committees hold their hearings on the conduct of the Iraq war and Bush’s foreign policy, what are the odds that they will be conducted in such a manner as to show the highest regard for our fighting men and women and for their mission abroad?

Before the Kerry episode broke, I had asked some friends and acquaintances who share my political views whether they plan to vote next Tuesday. No one has said he or she doesn’t plan to vote, other than those who never vote anyway. I suspect that more than a few of them are not happy with Congress or for that matter President Bush on a variety of issues, but so what? Most voters know that politics, like human nature, is complex and given to ugly excesses. They know that like most people, politicians are a mixed bag, and do things that are sometimes noble, sometimes dastardly, often stupid and never without calculation. But until we replace our two-party system, elections will never just be a referendum on the s.o.b.s in power, but a choice between those s.o.b.s and the other s.o.b.s.

Its worthwhile then to peer into the abyss, if you will, and ask what the “other s.o.b.s” offer. What can we expect from the party of Dick Durbin, who compared our solders to Pol Pot, the Nazis and Soviet prison guards? Of John Murtha, who during an investigation by the Pentagon of the Haditha incident accused U.S. Marines of killing innocent Iraqis in cold blood? Of John Kerry himself, who last year accused American G.I.s of “breaking into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women?”

I think most conservatives, no matter how unhappy they may be with the pace of the war, its difficulty or its civilian or military leadership, recognize that the price of leaving Iraq before the job is done would be much higher than the price of staying. They would expect the party of Durbin, Murtha and Kerry to do everything it can to undermine the administration, its mission and the troops performing that mission. And because elections are primarily about choices, I do not expect the Republican “base” to sit around next Tuesday and let that happen.

Last week I would have guessed that conservatives would have held their collective noses and voted to keep the current majority party in power. After the Kerry incident, though, apologies or not, the “base” may instead feel the urge to wake up and run to the voting booth on election day.

By Scott Italiaander

Let me see if I have this straight. The position of the Democrat party is that we should be engaged in bi-lateral talks with North Korea, and it is the failure of the Bush administration to so engage the NoKos that led to that country’s enrichment of uranium/plutonium and its “nucular” test of last week (a little Bush lingo). Now, if I was a respected professional journalist rather than a mere amateur blogger, I might have engaged in a few seconds of internet googling to find this item:

In the days before the [last round of Six-Party] talks formally began, several bilateral sessions were held among the parties, a meeting format that would dominate this round where large and unwieldy plenary sessions had been the norm in the past. On July 25, 2006 U.S. delegation chief Christopher Hill met with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan in the first of what would be as many as nine hours of direct U.S.-North Korea face time. These bilateral sessions represent something of a middle ground between the two countries' previously opposed positions on the appropriate format for the talks. (PINR, Oct 2006)

Now, what’s really interesting is that the NoKos have been insisting on bi-lateral (that means 2-party) talks since the 1970s—that’s right, for 30-odd years. It seems that what the regime has wanted is to formalize a peace treaty that would replace the 1953 armistice agreement, and has sought for decades to engage the U.S. directly in order to enhance its own prestige.

Last time I checked we have had two Democratic administrations and several Republican ones since the 1970s and yet not once have I heard any political party or media pundit call for bi-lateral negotiations with the North Koreans before President Bush took office. It seems that refusal to confer the prestige on North Korea it so dearly desires has been a bi-partisan affair for many, many years, but nobody thought to make it an issue until it became politically expedient to do so.

So I guess if I were a paid journalist writing for a newspaper or a TV news guy interviewing a Democrat who insists on bi-lateral negotiations with NoKo, I might ask him or her why, if this is such a good idea, it wasn’t tried by Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, or Bill Clinton.

Oh, I forgot. Two-party talks were tried by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. And that resulted in the 1994 A Greed Frame-Up in which we gave North Korea fuel, technology for nuclear reactors, aid, and a promise to normalize relations.

And all we got in return was a nuclear enrichment program, missile tests, and a North Korea well on its way to nuclear status, and perhaps nuclear proliferation.

Love those bi-lateral talks. Lets try it with Tehran, and see what happens.

By Scott Italiaander

In a previous post (scroll down), I linked to Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe’s speech “Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming” delivered on the floor of the Senate in September. As the title suggests, this speech focused on the extent to which the media has been carrying the water of the global warming alarmists:

It is an inconvenient truth that so far, 2006 has been a year in which major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The global warming alarmists and their friends in the media have attempted to smear scientists who dare question the premise of man-made catastrophic global warming, and as a result some scientists have seen their reputations and research funding dry up.

Sen. Inhofe notes that a British public policy group referred to this media intimidation, alarmism and propagandizing as “climate porn,” designed to attract public attention. Inhofe finds it interesting that while much attention is given to the horrors of “global warming,” rarely are the positive effects that such warming would have on plant and animal life and food production mentioned.

Inhofe, who as chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has spent more time on this issue than just about any elected official in Washington, reports on the attempts made by “mainstream” pro-warming scientists to expunge from the public record any evidence it finds inconvenient to support it claims:

The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of [a] Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and [a] Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth’s climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland.

Climate alarmists have been attempting to erase the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period from the Earth’s climate history for at least a decade. David Deming, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Geosciences, can testify first hand about this effort. Dr. Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming says he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”

It seems that scientists who dare to defy the alarmist conventional wisdom are not the only ones to come under attack. Senator Inhofe himself was the subject of a New York Times editorial last week in which his very credibility is questioned merely because of his effrontery in challenging climate change orthodoxy. Rather than refute Inhofe’s assertions from a scientific perspective, the editorial attacked his refusal to go along with “the consensus” among “mainstream” scientists and the industrialized nations of the world that climate change is man-made.

The columnist Debra Saunders writes that “global warming is a religion, not science. That’s why acolytes in the media attack global warming critics not with scientific arguments, but for apostasy.” The sin, apparently, is not in the weakness of scientific arguments on the part of those who criticize the global warming alarmists, but in the very act of criticizing them at all.

Senator Inhofe apparently finds all this amusing. “I see a sense of desperation that I haven’t seen before, and frankly I am enjoying it,” Inhofe told Saunders. He was referring to the degree to which the media shamelessly lauds any public figure who merely “believes” in the coming catastrophe of global warming, without regard to whether these public figures take any personal actions to prevent it. Saunders notes that the media allows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to “get into global-warming heaven just for believing, despite his four Hummers and use of a private jet.”

As for the science itself, I am not in a position to judge the existence or severity of the threat of climate change. I am pretty sure however that, whenever the New York Times uses terms like “consensus” and “mainstream,” the paper is relying on its unique definitions of those words. In my world “consensus” means general agreement. Apparently not in the world of the Times, for it ignores the works of well-known MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, Oklahoma geology professor David Deming, and at least 60 scientists in Canada who do not agree on the existence or nature of the climate change threat.

I suppose these scientists are not “mainstream” enough for the editors of the Times, who seem to exclude from the mainstream any who don’t agree with them.

* * *

Ms. Saunders states that global warming alarmism is a religion, but I believe it is merely a sacrament in a greater religious system, Secular Humanism, which posits that life is purely a natural phenomenon, and exists and “evolves” according to natural laws. Since there is no supernatural being, at least not one that is still active in the world, man must exercise his judgment, reason and intelligence in adopting an ethical code suitable to the times. By putting Man, not God, at the center of the universe, adherents to Secular Humanism tend to believe that man has the capacity to alter the natural world (i.e., cause climate change or for that matter, reverse it).

Another sacrament of this religion is the establishment of the theory of evolution as revealed truth. We know how scornful the “mainstream” elites are towards those who would challenge the efficacy of evolution. So we should not be surprised at the extent to which the media disdains those who don’t follow global warming orthodoxy.

by Scott Italiaander

I have a problem with Caroline Glick, columnist and deputy managing editor at The Jerusalem Post. It seems that whenever I get a brilliant insight into foreign affairs and set about to share it with the world, she beats me to the punch. Her style is direct, and utterly lacking in sarcasm or gratuitous emotion; by comparison my prose can be flowery and pretentious. Often when Caroline has written about something she has done it so directly and clearly that that there is nothing left to be said on the subject. Darn her.

Caroline's focus, of course, is Israel, and she is now the senior Middle East fellow at Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C. (I believe she lives and works in Jerusalem, though). The great thing about Caroline is that she is focused almost entirely on the well being and security of the Jews of Israel, and her views are not colored by partisan allegiance or political sympathies. She is facile of intellect and determined in spirit, and is willing to gore whomever's ox needs to be gored.

Perhaps these traits were developed during the 1990s, during and after her work in the Ministry of Defense as coordinator of negotiations with the PLO.   Here is her account of what happened in the days following the murder of two teenage Israeli boys by Palestinian terrorist in 1995, as the Oslo process took on a life of its own:

They were each shot in the head and then, after they were dead, their throats were slit. They were killed on a Friday morning. I was sitting at a hotel in Zikhron Yaacov with the heads of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams as they laid out the schedule for the next week of talks when we got word of the killings.

On Sunday morning while I was driving up the coastal highway to Zikhron Yaacov, opponents of the Oslo process staged a creative demonstration.
A convoy of cars, buses and trucks drove up the highway at 20 miles an hour with signs reading, “Rabin, Peres, go slow.”

I was deeply moved by the demonstration. I cried the whole way to Zikhron. I was grateful to the protesters - who made me arrive an hour late at the talks. I was grateful to them for taking the time to show their loyalty to the memory of the young men – for maintaining the honor of our dead.

But when I got to the hotel, my tears were replaced by shock. Here, the heads of our delegation were livid at what they considered the chutzpa of the demonstrators for making us start our negotiations late. Uri Savir, then director general of the Foreign Ministry and head of our delegation, like the politicized IDF generals, apologized to the Palestinians for the inconvenience caused them by the demonstrators.

(speech by Caroline Glick delivered at the annual dinner of the Zionist Organization of America at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City December 11, 2005)

Since that time until today she has taken on leaders and apparatchiks of Labor, Likud and Kadima alike as well as the politicized IDF brass when she has believed that they are serving their own narrow interests rather than those of the of their citizens. Caroline did this to great effect in excoriating Ariel Sharon and the IDF politicized bureaucracy in their push to unilaterally “disengage” from Gaza last year. I imagine no one is less surprised than she is that the arrogance, corruption and cynicism of the political class and military establishment so apparent in the Gaza episode would lead to the Lebanon crisis less than a year later.

This week Caroline takes on the North Korea nuclear situation, and seamlessly weaves U.S. policy failures relative to the Hermit Kingdom into our missteps regarding Iran and the Palestinian Authority. While her most withering fire is reserved for Clinton’s shameless appeasement of both Kim Jong-Il and Yasser Arafat, the Bush administration comes under attack as well, particularly its relations with the Palestinian Authority. Here is how she describes the problem:

And as is the case with Iran and North Korea, the stubborn and ill-considered continuation of the Clinton administration's appeasement policy toward the PA during the Bush years has only exacerbated and escalated the threat posed by the PA to US national security interests and to the national security of US allies - first and foremost, of Israel http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CarolineBGlick/2006/10/10/historys_dangerous_repetition

Ms. Glick proceeds to describe how the Administration and in particular the State Department have a blind spot when it comes to PA prime minister Abbas, treating him as a moderate to be strengthened rather than the terrorist leader that he is.

The North Korea nuclear test is just the kind of event that can serve to remove the scales from our eyes, and show us the consequences of pursuing failed polices like negotiating with and appeasing leaders of criminal regimes or terrorist entities. The kind of event whose lessons, if properly learned, just might save 6,000,000 Jews, give or take.

Caroline Glick should be required reading for anyone who cares about Israel and the Jewish people. Someone once said that whatever happens in the world, “its all about the Jews.” Reading Caroline Glick, it is not hard to imagine that she thinks so, too.

I just wish she’d let me write what she’s thinking instead of the other way around.

By Scott Italiaander

A constant theme of Rabbi Beryl Wein’s writings and lectures is that the Torah is about people, not events. The Torah was never intended to sit on a shelf somewhere as so many books do. In fact, its laws and traditions were intended to be transmitted orally, evidence of the fact that it is people to whom and for whom the Torah was given. So while great importance is given to the events of the Tanach (the collection of canonical works which include the 5 books of Moses; the Prophets; and the Writings), it is really impossible to understand the story of the "people" of the books without learning about the character and personalities of the people themselves. And it is the oral tradition that gives us this understanding.

While the Tanach provides us with a thumbnail sketch of many of the great men and women of Jewish history, it is in the Talmud, Midrashim and other rabbinic writings where their personalities are developed. The Talmud—written in the period between the second and sixth centuries C.E.—is certainly the written repository of the oral law and tradition given at Mt. Sinai to Moses. But it is also a window into the hearts and souls of our biblical heroes and villains and an archive of people, events, traditions, customs, disputes, and relationships from biblical times onward.

It seems to me that those who would dismiss these writings as merely antiquated, outdated and irrelevant discussions among apparently pious old men are missing the central human element which has enabled the Jewish people to survive. Imagine the excruciating choice faced by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the 2d century “great redactor” of the Mishna. Painfully aware of the Biblical prohibition against codifying the oral law, Rebbe was nevertheless convinced that unless preserved in writing the oral tradition would not survive the cataclysm of Israel's imminent dispersion. And yet, by miracle or design (or both), the rabbinic writings authored over the next several hundred years as well as the pedagogic approach to learning them have preserved the “people-to-people” focus of the oral transmission.

Perhaps no one understood the importance of oral law as the basis for religious authority in Israel more than Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the leader of the Jews during the most tumultuous period in Jewish history. During the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 66 C.E., which led to the destruction of the Temple, Ben Zakkai arranged to be spirited out of the walled city, disguised as a corpse, and found his way to Vespasian, the Roman commander. He was nearly executed for greeting Vespasian as “Emperor” (Vespasian was a mere general), but, according to Rabbi Yonason Goldson:

As he finished speaking, messengers arrived informing Vespasian that the emperor had died and that the Roman senate had proclaimed him Caesar. Vespasian was so impressed by Rabban Yochanan's insight that he offered to fulfill three requests.

"Give me Yavneh and its sages," asked Rabban Yochanan. He also requested special protection for the family of the sage Rabban Gamliel, and a doctor for Rabbi Tzaddok, who had been fasting daily for the sins of his generation and had grown dangerously weak and frail.

And so Rabban Yochanan asked for Yavneh, a yeshiva in an obscure village to be sure, but one sufficiently distant from the centers of Roman authority for the sages to seek refuge and rebuild Torah for the next generations.

It was Rabban Yochanan's foresight that preserved the oral Torah, established the academies that served as a foundation of rabbinic authority, and ensured that Torah could become great once again.

The stories of Rabban Yochanan and Rebbe exemplify the centrality of people with great character and personality in the transmission of Torah. This is not to deny that Heavenly forces are at work, for surely divine inspiration and divine intervention played a central role in these events. Nevertheless, man is not just a created being, but a creative one as well, and it is men and women of great intellect, personality, character and commitment that have spelled success for the Jewish people. 

* * *

The Tanach and the great Rabbinic works tell us of the great figures in Jewish history without whom it would be hard to imagine our survival. But the story of the Jews and Torah is also the story of Jewish men and women we don’t know, even in our generation, who quietly and tirelessly work on behalf of the Jewish people, saving lives, feeding children or sheltering families.

Like the Friends of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) in Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem, who in their free time raise money and collect clothes, toothpaste and other sundries, then drive to the North to distribute them to soldiers and reservists (it seems like such a small thing, but try going without toothpaste and toilet paper for a day). Or like the volunteers of Yad L’Achim, who dedicate themselves to rescuing from the West Bank Jewish women married to abusive Arab men, as well as their sons and daughters. Or like members of Operation Dignity, providing financial and other assistance to refugees of Gush Gatif (Gaza) and to families displaced during the recent unpleasantness with Lebanon/Hezbollah.

All of those organizations have American chapters and supporters. And in community after commuity in North America are volunteers upon whose shoulders rests the fate of Jews and non-Jews alike. Hatzolah EMS, the organization of paramedic first responders best known for rushing to the scene of terrorist bombings in Israel, has almost 20 branches here and in Canada. The group has received accolades and awards from mayors, governors and senators for their work. Here is what a Hatzolah volunteer is made of:

Four years ago, on the night Chartered Accountant David Rosenzweig was killed, a twenty-six year old volunteer from Hatzolah - Toronto's Jewish Emergency Response Service - was among the first responders to that terrible scene at Bathurst Street and Lawrence Avenue.

From the moment he arrived, Hatzolah paramedic Eli Horowitz went to work on David Rosenzweig. He remained at David's side throughout the night, accompanied him by ambulance to hospital and then stayed on with David's family, paying particular attention to his children. Hours later, Eli returned to the scene to retrieve David's blood from the pavement. Such was the dedication of Eli Horowitz.

Eli Horowitz, 30, father of three, husband, friend and tireless volunteer, died last month in a freak boating accident, together with his father-in-law. And because he had no life insurance, friends across Toronto have set up a fund to help his family. According to the fund’s website:

Every member of every Shul in Toronto is being asked to help in whatever way he or she can. Tax-deductible donations of One Thousand Dollars or more would be much appreciated, but any contribution, large or small, will help the fund reach its ambitious goal and will be graciously accepted.

(Contributions to The Eli Horowitz Fund can be made on line by credit card at: www.ehfund.com. Checks payable to “Beth Jacob V'Anshei Drilz” can also be sent and tax-deductible receipts will be issued for all donations.)

* * *
As we conclude this season of rejoicing, it is good to recall the stories of our gedolim described in Tanach and Talmud. The remind us how critical personality and character are to the survival of the Jewish people. It is also necessary to celebrate and extol the katanim as well--the volunteers of Friends of the IDF and Yad L’Achim, individuals like Eli Horowitz and countless, mainly nameless other Jews who have elevated their spirits and souls on behalf of G-d and in so doing have elevated the Jewish people. Each in his or her own way is an indispensable link in the chain of Torah transmission and in the ultimate triumph of the Jewish people. And each stands as irrefutable evidence that it is the People of the Book that the Book is all about.

by Scott Italiaander

The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci passed away a few weeks ago at age 77.  It is worth mentioning it not because she was a terrific writer and prodigious author for many decades, or even because she was an unrepentant leftist supporter and apologist for most of her career before undergoing an astonshing about face.  It is because in completely disavowing the leftist causes she championed for so long, most particularly the "Palestinian" efforts against the Israeli "occupation," she showed the kind of moral courage and open-mindedness that many of us, left or right, rarely display.  In other words, her mind was facile enough to allow new facts in, even if those facts contradicted a lifelong worldview that found expression in a lifetime of work.

Her repudiation of the Palestinian cause in particlular came in 2002 in a "scorching essay on antisemitism," according to Jason Maoz of The Jewish Press.  It seems that post-9/11, Fallaci came to believe that the left-wing, especially on the Continent, was the fount of a new anti-semitism and anti-Israel propaganda that used the "occupation" as a prop.  According to Maoz, Fallaci found all this "shameful" and "disgusting" and a blight on her countrymen and fellow Europeans.

In her recent book "The Force of Reason" Fallaci took up the Islam question and lamented the degree to which Islam "sows hatred in place of love and slavery in place of freedom."  For this she received harsh condemnation by the left, for any attempts to reveal the Islamist idelology is seen by them as an attack on Muslims worldwide.

Much more could be said, but the bottom line is it could not have been easy for a journalist so identified with the political and mulit-cultural left to abandon her friends and colleagues merely for the sake of truth.  But she did it, and accordingly she should be remembered as courageous and brave.