PA Minister: "Nobody Has the Right to Declare the End of Jihad" (MEMRI)

PA Minister of Religious Endowments Mahmoud Al-Habbash said in a sermon broadcast on PA TV on Jan. 7: "Nobody - whoever he may be - can ever abolish Jihad or say that it has come to an end. Jihad continues to Judgment Day." "There is not a single one of us who does not participate in the resistance. We all participate in resistance. Even a woman who sits at home, raising her children, is conducting resistance because she is preparing the ammunition of the future." "It is inevitable that the day will come when we will fly the flag of our independent Palestinian state over every inch of our soil and over the minarets and the domes of Jerusalem."

Click . . . PA Minister: "Nobody Has the Right to Declare the End of Jihad" (MEMRI)

Is "Jew!" an expletive? an insult!

In English, it is a short word that can be spat out at one: Jew! Likewise in French: Juif! In Russian: Zhid! In German "Jud!" In Spanish, the impossible to spit out "Judio!" the Italian equally un-spit-out-able "Giudeo" And, of course, the Arabic yahood! The last-named definitely not a term of endearment.

In any language, it can be used to modify a noun such as -bastard or -boy.

It can be an equivalent of the forbidden n----- word, although that word when used among themselves, and even used when addressing a Caucasian, can be nothing worse than the equivalent of "man" or "human being."

But back to the word "Jew" or "Jew!"

Its origin was of course "Yehuda," the name (in Hebrew) of one of the twelve sons of Jacob. In English this was translated into "Judah."

"Yehuda" pronounced fast--swallowing the "e" ends up as Yudah and is easily transformed into the German Jude or Jud (the "J" in German is pronounced as is the English "Y."

The Romans called the area apportioned to Yehuda's descendents, the tribe of Yehuda or Judah (the remnant Southern part of the divided Israel-Judah kingdoms) as "Judea." As a matter of fact, all of the area inhabited by the descendants of the ancient Hebrews and the "Children of Israel" was the Roman province of Judea.

So, if you like a Romanized name, you could call yourself a "Judean." As the Romans were far from friends to the inhabitants of Judea, that appellation does not sit well with us. The Spanish "Judeo" (khudeo) derived thus from the Latin.

"I am a Judean." may sound better--more patrician--to the Anglicized ear than "I am a Jew," but it is not only pretentious but also Romanized and abhorrent to the memory of those valiant Jews who died or suffered in the revolts against the Roman occupiers.

Referred to as Yehudim, those whose ancestry hailed from Roman Judea from whence they were exiled by the Romans, ended up as "Juden" in German. In the singular the German"Jude" or "Jud" (German "J" is pronounced as English "Y"). If "Jud" is pronounced by an English speaker, the transformation to "Jew" is apparent.

In German-origin Yiddish, the descendants of the inhabitants of Yehuda referred to themselves as Yid--singular (plural Yidden)--hence the Russian Zhid.

The question posed still remains: is being called "Jew" an insult or the proper name for Jewish ethnicity?

This question is the subject of What does it mean to say 'Jew'?

By Cara Hogan Advocate Staff

[quote]

What do you think of when someone says "Jew"?

Does it echo of anti-Semitic epithets or conjure a sense of pride associated, say, with the state of Israel?

The National Endowment of the Humanities has awarded a $50,400 grant to [Cynthia Baker] a professor at Bates College in Maine to research the word - from its first appearance thousands of years ago through its usage today.

***

[Professor Baker] said ancient Jews did not seem to adopt the term. "In the Talmudic literature, the rabbis almost never refer to Jews," said Baker. "We have thousands of pages of manuscripts of these people who we would call Jews, and they never use the word."

***

She said that during a fiveweek research program in what had been the Jewish ghetto in Venice, she was struck by the words for Jew in Italian, either ebreo or giudeo. That got her thinking how in English, three words - each with a different connotation - apply to Jews.

"Why Hebrew, why Israelite, why Jew?" said Baker. "Who gets to decide in what context and circumstances lead to the different choices of terms from different periods?"

She observed that, while in the past gentiles have used the word Jew in a pejorative fashion, Jewish people today are claiming the word with pride.

***
"In early Zionist usage, sometimes Jew was a term of pride," said Baker. "But there was a dichotomy between the muscular Hebrew and the effete, neurotic anti-Semitic character of the Jew. It was the Hebrew in his land with his muscles and his gun that was going to finally vanquish that Jew of the anti-Semitic stereotype."
More there, read the whole thing at
http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/news/2010-02-05/top_news/002.html


Would you rather be called "a Hebrew?"

From The Jewish Daily Forward:

Hebrew vs. Jewish

By Philologos

Not only, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, was "Hebrew" vigorously promoted as a substitute for "Jew" in a number of countries, but in some of them it actually carried the day, as well. This was the case in Russia and Italy, where yevrei and ebreo became the standard words for "Jew." The same thing wasn’t that far from happening in English, either. One only has to think of such American Jewish institutions as Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Hebrew Free Loan Society, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and so on to be reminded of how many Jews 100 years ago preferred being called "Hebrews" by Christian America.

Strictly speaking, the distinction these Jews wished to make was different from Horwitz’s. "Hebrew" vs. "Jew" seemed to them a question not of a religious vs. a secular identity but of a genteel and respectable nativeness vs. a scruffily suspicious foreignness. A "Hebrew" was for them an American Jew who spoke or aspired to speak a proper English, to adopt American ways and to be outwardly no different from his Christian neighbors; since these neighbors went to church Sunday, there was nothing "un-Hebrew" about going to synagogue Saturday. The same held true of such countries as Russia and Italy. A yevrei or ebreo was a Russian or Italian in good standing, fully accepted in liberal Russian or Italian society; a zhid or a giudeo was a looked down-upon outsider. And yet inasmuch as the Hebrew, yevrei or ebreo was definitely a non-Orthodox Jew who did not make too much of his religion, there was a decided element of "secularity" in the term, after all.

http://www.forward.com/articles/11238/


Want to be called a "Hebrew" instead of a "Jew?"

Think that then they can't call you a "dirty" or a "f---ing" Jew? How about when they shorten the aristocratic Hebrew into "Hebe?" Easy to modify with the derogatory adjectives.

See? Makes no difference. Call me what you will--Jew or Hebrew (fogeddabout "Hebe"), but you f--k with me and you might be looking at (or feeling ) your newly torn other a---ole.

(The foregoing last phrase applies to antisemites.)
_________________________________________
END NOTES FOR "JEW" and "Hebrew"

Jew

Originally from Yehuda (Judah), which in Latin became Iudea (Judea). In Hebrew, a person from Yehuda was a Yehudi, which today is the Hebrew word for a Jewish person.The Latin Iudea was altered in the languages of Europe. In France, it is Juif, in Germany, Jud, in English, Jew.
--Bill
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080303075834AAB9yaD
　
Y becomes J in Germanic languages as old English is basically a German dialect y i and J were interchangable then the frankified Normans invaded and brought the zh sound for J from French which became the English J.
--upyr1
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080303075834AAB9yaD
　
It's from "Yehudi" = Hebrew. Yehudi->Jehudi->Judean->Jew.Meaning, from the tribe of Judah, son of Jacob.
--Maurog
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080303075834AAB9yaD

　
From Hebrew vs. Jewish http://www.forward.com/articles/11238/

By Philologos
　
ivri, "Hebrew," in the Bible refers to an ethnic group rather than to a religion; but yehudi, "Jew," whose original meaning is "Judean," occurs in the Bible only once, in the Book of Esther, and was hardly ever used in later rabbinical literature, where the accepted term for "Jew" was yisra’el, "Israelite."
http://www.forward.com/articles/11238/

From Judaism 101
Origins of the Words "Jew" and "Judaism"
http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm

The original name for the people we now call Jews was Hebrews. The word "Hebrew" (in Hebrew, "Ivri") is first used in the Torah to describe Abraham (Gen. 14:13). The word is apparently derived from the name Eber, one of Abraham's ancestors. Another tradition teaches that the word comes from the word "eyver," which means "the other side," referring to the fact that Abraham came from the other side of the Euphrates, or referring to the fact Abraham was separated from the other nations morally and spiritually.

Another name used for the people is Children of Israel or Israelites, which refers to the fact that the people are descendants of Jacob, who was also called Israel.

The word "Jew" (in Hebrew, "Yehudi") is derived from the name Judah, which was the name of one of Jacob's twelve sons. Judah was the ancestor of one of the tribes of Israel, which was named after him. Likewise, the word Judaism literally means "Judah-ism," that is, the religion of the Yehudim.

***

Originally, the term Yehudi referred specifically to members of the tribe of Judah, as distinguished from the other tribes of Israel. However, after the death of King Solomon, the nation of Israel was split into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel (I Kings 12; II Chronicles 10). After that time, the word Yehudi could properly be used to describe anyone from the kingdom of Judah, which included the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi, as well as scattered settlements from other tribes. The most obvious biblical example of this usage is in Esther 2:5, where Mordecai is referred to as both a Yehudi and a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm

Nonie Darwish, Infidels, Moslems, and Islamization

.
Nonie Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

A. Introduction

Nonie Darwish was born in Cairo. Before immigrating to America in 1978, she worked as a journalist in Egypt. She left Islam and became a Christian. She now leads a group called “Arabs for Israel” and lectures around the country. She pointedly remarked, “I chose the culture of life and not the culture of death. I chose the culture of freedom and not the culture of tyranny. I chose America.”

Nonie Darwish is a brave and insightful woman. She is familiar with the classic techniques of tyranny, and she tells us Islam poses the greatest danger to the United States—indeed to civilization. Hence I want to convey some of the most salient points of her book, Now They Call Me Infidel, which was published in 2003. And I wonder why Israeli prime ministers lack her courage and wisdom?

B. Islamic Culture in Egypt

1. “Throughout my childhood,” she writes, “we were bombarded with calls to war and songs praising President Nasser. Arab leaders were treated as gods and they acted as gods. Fear of Allah was transferred to fear of the dictator” (33).
2. “Everyone around me was so fatalistic… Social classes in Egypt were very stratified. We never mingled as equals. Furthermore, it was very hard if not impossible to move from the class you were born in” (35).
3. “…when Elizabeth Taylor converted from Christianity to Judaism, her films were prohibited in the Arab world. So Egyptians never saw her film Cleopatra. Few Westerners can comprehend the degree to which hatred of Jews permeates every aspect of Arab culture” (p. 39).

Here let me interject an observation of Bernard Lewis. Lewis observed that hated of Jews increased after the March 1979 signing of the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty. If so, there is a great deal of nonsense broadcast by Israeli and American opinion-makers and policy-makers about promoting peace in the Middle East. It seems to me they simply lack the courage to tell the truth about the murderous ethos of Arab-Islamic culture.

4. Returning to Darwish, she boldly declares: “I could not accept a culture that was willing to orphan its own children in its obsessive hatred of Jews, that was ready to sacrifice lives and the health of the family structure over a few miles of land. Egyptians acted as though the West Bank and Gaza were taken from them, even though they were never Egyptian land” (41).

5. Hatred of Israel, she says, was “fueled by that arrogance of power and petrol dollars of the Arabs. [Israel] could do nothing to please this culture, other than cease to exist” (42).


6. Darwish asks: “What was wrong in allowing a few million Jews to live among us in peace? Arab land was plenty. They had only a small sliver of land, in some places only thirty kilometers wide…. But the hatred of Jews and anti-Semitism was frighteningly prevalent in our society. At the same time I did not know—and no one in the Arab world did—that Israel had a history on that small strip of land going back thousands of years. Nor did we know that Jerusalem was the point of origin for two great religions, Judaism and Christianity, religions that existed before Islam even began. … We were taught that ‘Zionists’ were foreign infidel invaders bent on taking Muslim land and our destruction, and that they must be destroyed” (49).

7. At this point Darwish makes a profound remark about Muslim culture that should be taught in Israeli schools. She notes that Egyptians have been indoctrinated with the belief that Egypt’s problems are “a result of the evil of the outside world. Egyptians [are] never told that it was their responsibility to solve their own problems. The villain was always an outside force. The scapegoating [especially of Jews] was true on the national front and it was true on the personal level as well. The concept of taking responsibility for oneself [is] completely foreign… in Muslim culture …” (50).

8. Darwish then draws an important conclusion worthy of political scientists that have studied Aristotle. She says: “An outside enemy was necessary to foster Arab cohesion and keep the Arab public preoccupied with news of dangers and threats. Thus, the press kept up a constant bombardment of stories that blames Israel for all the troubles within the Arab world. The effect was to decrease the pressure and deflect criticism of Arab governments” (95).

9. Especially significant is her point that “In Arab culture, being truthful is not only considered to be naïve and stupid, but is also considered—believe it or not—rude” (119). Of course, this “was very different from American culture, where people talk freely about their shortcomings and pain without shame” (121).

10. “Western-style soul searching or examination of beliefs is almost unheard of in Arab culture. And no subject is more sacred and protected from analysis or criticism than the Koran or Islam. Muslims can get violently angry if that is done. To a lesser extent, if a family member, tribe, nation, or culture is perceived to be under attack, then excuses … misrepresentations, and outright lies are the only honorable thing to do. Remember, this is a culture based on pride and shame” (122). Now let’s consider some of Darwish’s observations about Islam in America.

B. Islam in America

1. She writes: “My escape from radical Islam to the open arms of America did not last long. As we moved deeper into the 1980s …, I began to see gradual change among the Muslims around me. To my surprise, the radical aspects of Islamic culture from which I had escaped were starting to grow in power right here in America” (131). “Most Muslims,” she says, “have little education in Islam. Why? Such education would end Muslim leadership’s total control over the minds and behavior of the masses…. Muslims are safe as long as they are loyal followers and obedient to the national goal of jihad against the non-Muslim infidels, especially the Jews next door.” (135).

2. Darwish then points out that “In the Muslim world there are no real distinctions between moderate or radical Muslims. Some practice, some don’t, and the ones who don’t may have views as radical as those who do practice” (135).

3. She contends that “The values of Muslim society as it is constituted at the present, cannot survive in a democracy where individuals would have right to question, debate, change religions, or choose to have no religion at all” (136).

4. However, she adds a word of caution. She cites a Muslim leader who said, “Thanks to your democratic laws we shall invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you” (144).

This Islamization is happening in England and in Europe. Darwish fears that this could happen in America. She said this some five years before Barak Obama entered the Oval Office. Darwish surely knows that Obama is a Muslim by Islamic law. Perhaps former UN Ambassador John Bolton had this in mind when he spoke of Obama as having the first post-American foreign policy. It seems that the Obama administration is the first post-America government.

C. Israel’s Ruling Elites

1. Now let me shift to Israel. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin became Israel’s first Israeli-born prime minister, Israel has drifted into a post-Zionist dispensation. With Rabin’s Oslo Accords, Israel drifted into a post-Jewish dispensation. I see this in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s endorsement of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. I am not at all impressed by his qualification that the new state be demilitarized and it recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The mere fact that he would give Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people, to the Arabs, marks him, in my eyes, as a post-Jewish prime minister.

2. But inasmuch his predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert were also committed to this truncation of Israel, they too may be deemed post-Jewish prime ministers. Indeed, I dare say that Israel’s government has always been post-Jewish by the mere fact that, like Herzl, its founding father, Israel’s ruling elites relegated the Torah to the home and the synagogue and thus separated the Torah from public law and statecraft—following the footsteps of Christianity.

3. Now recall Darwish’s Muslim leader who said “thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you.” Israel’s leaders could say: “Thanks to our secular laws we will dominate you.” This is why the Jewish philosopher Yitzhak Breuer said that secular Zionism poses the greatest threat to Judaism in history.

4. But Israel’s secular elites will not succeed, because it is not in their power to achieve the hidden goal of Israel’s government—to relegate the Torah to the dust heap of history.

Iraq wants to turn ancient Jewish tomb into mosque

from y net news.com "jewish world"

Israeli professor informed Iraqi authorities engaged in erasing Jewish characteristics off Prophet Ezekiel's tomb located south of Baghdad

by Smadar Peri

Some 2,500 years ago the prophet Ezekiel presented his Prophecy of Dry Bones, which according to various interpretations hailed the salvation of the Jewish people. According to recent reports, Iraq is currently trying to remove the Jewish traces from the prophet's tomb and turn it into a mosque.
_________________________________________________
No Compensation
Iraq refuses to compensate Jews / Doron Peskin
Organization claiming to represent Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel says property worth $100 billion confiscated by authorities. Government says Jews were not forced to leave, sold their property before departing
Full story
__________________________________________________
Ezekiel the Prophet, whose prophesy was recorded in the Book of Ezekiel, lived in Babylon at the time of Solomon's temple. Tradition has it that he is buried in the village of Al Kilf, south of Baghdad, and followers of the three monotheistic religions continue to visit his tomb to this day.

"I received information from a senior Iraqi scholar pertaining to the local authorities' intention of turning the tomb into a mosque under the guise of 'preservation' of the holy site," says Professor Shmuel Morre, former head of the Arabic Language and Literature Department in the Hebrew University.

"The man who provided me with the information stressed that the Iraqi antiquities department has been under heavy pressure to erase any proof of the Jews' connection to Iraq," he notes.

Iraq also contains the tombs of the Ezra the Scribe, the Prophet Jonah and King Zedekiah. According to Prof. Morre, who himself was born in Iraq, his colleague informed him that local authorities have already began erasing Hebrew inscriptions off Ezekiel's tomb in order to turn the site into a mosque.

'Stop Islamization'

For hundreds of years the tomb has been under the care of leaders of the Jewish community in Iraq.

Currently the country contains only eight Jews. The rest have become Muslim or are in hiding for fear of being murdered by terrorists upon embarking on a Jewish pilgrimage.

Manager of the "Justice for Jews" organization Shlomo Alfassa has approached US government authorities in Washington following the reports and demanded to "stop the Islamization of the Jewish prophet's tomb."

[COMMENT: What with the Islamic-friendly Obama Administration, good luck with that! Leslie White]

An application has also been made to the UNESCO headquarters, which is responsible for maintaining the religious character of holy sites.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3832780,00.html

Berbers and Jews of North Africa

IMAZIGHEN (BERBERS) AND JEWS AND THE FORGOTTEN JEWISH REFUGEES FROM THE HATRED OF ARAB-ISLAMIC LANDS
TV debate on Berber-Israel friendship association

http://islamicdangerhistory.blogspot.com/2010/01/imazighen-berbers-and-jews-and.html

Obama's Lies and Islamic Dissimulation (Lies and More Lies)

Prof. Paul Eidelberg writes from Israel:

In view of Obama’s many distortions of history, please read this essay on Taqiyya—dissimulation—and ponder whether the occupant of the White House is a practitioner of this insidious doctrine, the key to understanding Islam’s war on Western civilization in general, and on the United States and Israel in particular.

How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of WarDefeating Jihadist Terrorism
by Raymond Ibrahim
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2010
http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war

















Muslim deception can be viewed as a slightly less than noble means to the glorious end of Islamic hegemony under Shari'a, which is seen as good for both Muslims and non-Muslims. In this sense, lying in the service of altruism is permissible. In a recent example, Muslim cleric Mahmoud al-Masri publicly recounted a story where a Muslim lied and misled a Jew into converting to Islam, calling it a "beautiful trick."

Prof. Paul Eidelberg,
President, Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
Jerusalem


Deception and Dissimulation









The Liar (shown above with his so-beguiling smile) promised that would be "transparent" and "open" about everything that he would later foist off on us--e.g. The Obamacare boondoggle.

He never openly disavowed Islam, the opposite as a matter of fact (in Cairo). His "Christianity" that he now professes was that of the antisemitic, racist, Black Liberation Theology type, as espoused by the antisemite and white-American-hater "Rev." Jeremiah Wright.

A Low And Dishonest Decade

By Caroline Glick

Upon returning from Cairo on Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proclaimed, "It’s time to move the peace process forward."

The most sympathetic interpretation of Netanyahu’s proclamation is that he was engaging in political theater. It was a low and dishonest statement uttered at the end of what has been, in the immortal words of W.H. Auden, "a low and dishonest decade."

Everyone with eyes in their heads knows that there is no chance of making peace with the Palestinians. First of all, the most Israel is willing to give is less than what the Palestinians are willing to accept. But beyond that, Gaza is controlled by Hamas, and Hamas is controlled by Iran.

For its part, Fatah is not in a position to make peace even if its leaders wished to. Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies know that just as Hamas won the 2006 elections in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Hamas would win elections today. To maintain even a smudge of domestic legitimacy, Fatah’s leaders have no choice but to adopt Hamas’s rejection of peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. Clearly, now is not the time "to move the peace process forward."

No less than what it tells us about Netanyahu, his statement is notable for what it tells us about Israel. Our continued willingness to ensnare ourselves in the rhetoric of peace processes demonstrates how little we have progressed in the past decade.

In 1999, Netanyahu was ejected from office by an electorate convinced that he was squandering an historic opportunity for peace between Israel and its neighbors. A majority of Israelis believed that Netanyahu’s signature policies of demanding that the Palestinians abide by their commitments to Israel, and maintaining the IDF’s security zone in south Lebanon were dooming all hope for peace.

His successor, Ehud Barak, promised to remove IDF troops from Lebanon and forge a final peace with the Palestinians and with Syria within a year. After winning the election, Barak famously promised a swooning crowd at Rabin Square that the "dawn of a new day has arrived."

Barak lost no time fulfilling his campaign promises. He withdrew the IDF from south Lebanon in May 2000.

He launched talks with Syria in December 1999. For four months he begged Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to accept the Golan Heights, stopping only after Assad harshly rebuffed him in March 2000.

And in July 2000 at Camp David, Barak offered Yasser Arafat Gaza, 90 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem in exchange for peace. After Arafat rejected his offer, Barak sweetened it at Taba in September 2000, adding another 5% of Judea and Samaria, the Temple Mount, and extra lands in the Negev, only to be rejected, again.

Barak made these offers as the wisdom of appeasement exploded before his eyes. Hizbullah seized the withdrawal from Lebanon as a strategic victory. Far from disappearing as Barak and his deputy Yossi Beilin had promised it would, Hizbullah took over south Lebanon and used the area as a springboard for its eventual takeover of the Lebanese government. So, too, with its forces perched on the border, Hizbullah built up its Iranian-commanded forces, preparing for the next round of war.

Similarly, Barak’s desperate entreaties to Assad enhanced the dictator’s standing in the Arab world, to the detriment of Egypt and Jordan.

To the extent he required encouragement, the ascendance of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran made it politically advantageous for Arafat to reject peace. Buoyed by their rise, Arafat diverted billions of dollars in Western aid from development projects to the swelling ranks of his terror armies. Instead of preparing his people for peace, he trained them for war.

Arafat responded to Barak’s beggary at Camp David and Taba by launching the largest terror offensive Israel experienced since the 1950s. The Palestinians’ orgiastic celebration of the mass murder of Israelis was the final nail in Barak’s premiership, and it seemed at the time, the death-knell of his policies of appeasement.

A year and a half after he took office, the public threw Barak from power. Likud leader Ariel Sharon - who just a decade earlier had been taken for dead - was swept into power with an electoral landslide. To the extent the public vote was for Sharon, rather than against Barak, the expectation was that Sharon would end Barak’s appeasement policies and defeat Arafat and the terror state he had built in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. But this was not to be.

Rather than abandon Barak’s policies, Sharon embraced them. He formed a unity government with Labor and refused to fight. He didn’t fight after 22 teenagers were massacred outside the Dolphinarium nightclub in June 2001. He did not fight after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Palestinian celebrations of the slaughter in New York and Washington.

Sharon did not order the IDF to fight until the carnage of March 2002 that culminated in the Seder massacre at Netanya’s Park Hotel forced his hand. Had he not ordered the IDF to dismantle the Palestinian terror infrastructures in Judea and Samaria at that time, he faced the sure prospect of being routed in the Likud leadership race scheduled for November of that year.

Operation Defensive Shield was a textbook example of what you get when you mix weak politicians with a strong society. On the one hand, during Defensive Shield, the IDF took control of all the major towns and cities in Judea and Samaria and so enabled Israel to dismantle Palestinian terror networks by remaining in place in the years that followed.

On the other hand, Sharon refused to allow the IDF to launch a parallel operation in Gaza, despite repeated entreaties by the army and residents of the South. Most important, Sharon barred the IDF from toppling the PA or even acknowledging that it was an enemy government. And he maintained that the Palestinian jihad began and ended with Arafat, thus absolving all of Arafat’s deputies - who were then and today remain deeply involved in the terror machine - of all responsibility.

In acting as he did, Sharon’s signaled that he was not abandoning appeasement. Indeed, he made clear that his aim was to re-embrace appeasement as his national strategy as soon as it was politically feasible.

Most Israelis explained away Sharon’s behavior in his first term as the price he was forced to pay for his coalition government with Labor. So when in 2003 Sharon, Likud and the political Right won an overwhelming mandate from the public to lead the country without the Left, the expectation was that he would finally let loose. He would finally fight for victory.

Instead, Sharon spat on his party, his coalition partners and his voters and adopted as his own the policies of the Left that he had condemned in his campaign.

To implement those policies, Sharon dismantled his government and his party and formed a coalition with the same Left the nation had just overwhelmingly rejected.

The past decade’s major policies: the withdrawal from Gaza, the construction of the security fence, the acceptance of the road map peace plan, the Annapolis Conference, Operation Defensive Shield, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead all shared one central feature. They were all predicated on ignoring the lessons of the failure of appeasement in 2000.

Whereas Defensive Shield’s strategic success was owed to Israel’s decision to maintain control over the territory the IDF seized in the fighting, in launching the wars with Hizbullah and Hamas, Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, ignored that success and chose instead to emulate the operation’s failures.

To further his government’s appeasement policies, Olmert refused to order the IDF to seize south Lebanon or Gaza. By the same token, like Sharon in Defensive Shield, Olmert announced at the outset that he had no interest in defeating Israel’s enemies. He limited the goals of the campaigns to "teaching them a lesson." And of course by not seeking victory for Israel, Olmert enabled both Hizbullah and Hamas to claim victory for themselves.

By opting not to defeat Hizbullah or Hamas, Olmert communicated the message that like Sharon before him, his ultimate strategic aim was to maintain the political viability of appeasement as a national strategy. He was fighting to protect appeasement, not Israel.

As we move into the second decade of this century, we need to understand how the last decade was so squandered. How is it possible that in 2010 Israel continues to embrace policies that have failed it - violently and continuously for so many years? Why, in 2010 are we still ignoring the lessons of 2000 and all that we have learned since then?

There are two main causes for this failure: The local media and Sharon. Throughout the 1990s, the Israeli media - print, radio and television - were the chief propagandists for appeasement. When appeasement failed in 2000, Israel’s media elites circled the wagons. They refused to admit they had been wrong.

Misleading phrases like "cycle of violence" were introduced into our newspeak. The absence of a security fence - rather than the presence of an enemy society on the outskirts of Israel’s population centers - was blamed for the terror that claimed the lives of over a thousand Israelis. Palestinian propagandists and terrorists such as Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti were treated like legitimate politicians. Palestinian ties to Iran, Syria, Iraq and the nexus of global jihad went unmentioned or uncommented upon.

At the same time, opponents of appeasement - those who had warned of the dangers of the Oslo process and had spoken out against the withdrawal from Lebanon and a potential withdrawal from the Golan Heights and Gaza - were not congratulated for their wisdom. They remained marginalized and demonized.

This situation prevails still today. The same media that brought us these catastrophes now derides Likud ministers and Knesset members who speak out against delusion-based policies, while suddenly embracing Netanyahu who - with Barak at his side - has belatedly embraced their pipe dreams of appeasement-based peace.

Then there is Sharon. The man who built the settlements, who removed the PLO from Lebanon, who opposed Oslo, Camp David and the withdrawal from Lebanon; the man who opposed the security fence and pledged to remain forever in Gush Katif. As Israel’s leader for most of the past decade, more than anyone else Sharon is responsible for Israel’s continued adherence to the dishonest, discredited and dishonorable dictates of appeasement.

Whether due to his alleged corruption, his physical enfeeblement, his fear of the State Department, or his long-held and ardent desire to be accepted by the Left, Sharon betrayed his voters and his party and he undermined Israel’s ability to move beyond failure.

Auden’s "low and dishonest decade" was the 1930s. It was the West’s obsession then with appeasement that set the world on course for the cataclysm of World War II.

As Israel enters the new decade, we must redouble our efforts to forestall a repeat of the cataclysm of the 1940s. Disturbingly, Netanyahu’s call for a fraudulent peace process shows that we are off to an ignoble, untruthful start.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Muslim World Today