IRIS Blog

A Zionist hero passed from this earth today, who forcefully articulated the need for Israel to make its case to the world, and who was its best practitioner in writing in this generation. Here is a tribute to him written several years ago:

Shmuel Katz, who celebrates his 90th birthday in December, was the inspiration for the establishment of Americans for a Safe Israel thirty-three years ago.

Underground leader, member of the first Knesset, publisher, historian, biographer, essayist, Shmuel Katz is above all the most trenchant political thinker modern Israel has produced. His career has also been marked by a selfless political integrity. Indifferent to personal advantage, Katz has sought only the good of Israel and the Jewish people.

In 1936, at the age of 22, Katz came to Palestine from South Africa, and retains to this day the accent of his native land. A disciple (as he would remain throughout his life) of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky, at his request Katz went to London in 1940 to start and edit a Zionist weekly. After the war he returned to Palestine where he rejoined the underground Irgun Zvai Leumi, becoming a member of its high command under Menachem Begin. With Israel's independence, Katz became a Knesset member for Begin's Herut Party, but left after a single term, unhappy with Begin's failure, as he saw it, to reach out beyond his narrow constituency. Katz abandoned party politics to run a publishing house for many years.

In 1977 when Begin finally upset the Labor Party's long monopoly on power, Katz returned briefly to public life, initially as Begin's personal representative to the United States. When Begin disavowed his commitment to put Katz in charge of Israeli information abroad (Katz had seized on the opportunity to transform Israel's miserable efforts in this area) and threw aside his ideological principles to achieve a paper peace with Anwar Sadat, Katz resigned. To the astonishment of Begin, who tried to buy him off with an offer he was convinced could not be refused -- the high prestige post of UN ambassador -- Katz refused.

Katz is best known as a writer and almost all his books are landmarks in their own way. Days of Fire remains the best book about the Irgun. Battleground is the best single history of the Arab-Israel conflict over Palestine. Less well known but equally trenchant, The Hollow Peace is a devastating account of how Begin, beginning with his unaccountable decision to install Labor leader Moshe Dayan (whose failures in 1973 had discredited him with the Israeli public) as his Foreign Minister, squandered the opportunity to implement Jabotinsky's vision. Lone Wolf is the definitive biography of Jabotinsky.

But above all Shmuel Katz is a prophet in his own time. When Katz was only 22, Jabotinsky said of his articles: "I must very earnestly congratulate you on the perfect clarity, the forcible simplicity, the sachlichkeit [matter of fact, to the point] with which you present the most complicated situations." To this day, Katz in his essays has continued to lay out, with that same perfect clarity, the situation confronting Israel, the consequences of the actions her leaders take, and the alternative path that should be taken. Katz saw the opportunities her victory in the Six Day War opened for Israel. He became a leader of the Land of Israel Movement which recognized that Israel could be a geopolitical factor in the region, with the historic heartland of Judea and Samaria restored to the Jewish people, strategic depth and oil from the Sinai, the high ground on the Golan Heights a deterrent to Syria.

Like prophets generally, Katz has been ignored, sidelined, heard by many, hearkened to by few. History will pay tribute to his prescience. We, his disciples in Americans for a Safe Israel, are proud to pay tribute to him now.

Things are looking very grim for Ehud Olmert in the latest investigation of his corruption. If Olmert is convicted, I predict that he will be pardoned by Shimon Peres as a quid pro quo for Olmert's championing of Peres' pet project--the ceding of Israeli territory to its jihadist enemies.

A few bloggers have picked up on Shimon Peres' "stupid" quote:

I did not imagine that we would leave Gaza and they would fire Qassams from there; I did not imagine that Hamas would show so strongly in the elections.

I haven't seen anyone comment on how this is far deeper than a personal lack of intelligence. This goes to the heart of what it means to be on the Left vs. the Right. To do so, it would be helpful to review what I wrote prior to the 2005 disengagement from Gaza:

According to the left, terrorism is fueled by grievance. Eliminate the "occupation" and terrorism will lose its appeal. According to the right, terrorism is a tactic in an overall strategy of winning a war. Show that terrorism pays and the tactic will be used more. If anything, it is in the Palestinians' interest to temporarily minimize attacks until the retreat from Gaza is complete. Terror could cause a swing in public opinion and therefore possibly derail the withdrawal.

Mark my words and check back in a year. If Palestinian terror subsides now that Israel has given up Gaza (and Sinai a couple of times, and Taba, and Lebanon) I'll admit I was wrong and change my opinion. That's what makes me a conservative and that's what makes conservative predictions so much more reliable. Leftists just fight harder to impose their vision on the world.

The purpose of this blog is to help our society succeed through policy driven by an accurate understanding of the world. The Gaza disengagement was an excellent scientific test of a clear hypothesis--do concessions to eliminate the articulated grievances of the enemies of Israel (and the West) obviate or accelerate their aggression?

Unfortunately, the Left, as I predicted, would not change their wrong-headed belief in the face of incontrovertible evidence. (Here is one notable exception, a must-read.) Leftism is as reliably wrong as George Costanza.

If we would only let the outcome of these experiments drive our policies we would be able to defeat our enemies with ease.

It doesn't appear that the international "disarmament force" has done much to slow down the Lebanese jihad, fueled by Ehud Barak's retreat. Hezbollah has apparently just conquered West Beirut:

Gunmen from the Shiite Hezbollah movement seized control of several downtown Beirut neighborhoods Friday as the number of people killed in three days of fighting rose to at least 11.

Hezbollah militants, some carrying assault rifles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers, patrolled outside Starbucks and other shops in the mostly deserted commercial strips of neighborhoods normally controlled by Sunnis loyal to the U.S.-backed Lebanese government. Masked armed men in civilian clothes set up checkpoints and asked passersby for their identity cards, and Hezbollah forces briefly surrounded the homes of Saad Hariri, Lebanon's top Sunnni lawmaker, and Walid Jumblatt, his Druse ally.

Although government troops soon arrived to guard the politicians' residences, and the Hezbollah gunmen stood down, the Associated Press reported that a satellite television station affiliated with Hariri was forced off the air, and the office of his party's newspaper was set on fire.

We wish all of our readers a happy 60th! Here is some excellent perspective:

A few weeks after the birth of the State of Israel 60 years ago, journalist Robert St. John interviewed Israel's first foreign minister, Moshe Sharett. The conversation took place as Egyptian planes were bombing Tel Aviv. Mr. Sharett told Mr. St. John about plans to absorb 1 million immigrants over the coming 10 years (Israel's Jewish population at that was 800,000 people). The minister's projection was on the low side and Israel's population now stands at more than 7 million, 80 percent of it Jewish.

What is even more significant in both historical and moral terms is that the rebirth of the Jewish state, against extreme odds, was perhaps the greatest victory of the human spirit over adversity. After being driven out of their country, Palestine, Jews almost everywhere suffered persecution, discrimination and physical threats — culminating in history's greatest crime, the Holocaust — in which 6 million Jews, one-third of the Jewish nation, including 1 million children, were murdered. Objectively, Israel's chances of surviving even the first year of its existence were low. On the very day it declared independence, Israel was invaded by seven Arab armies while it had no regular army, air force or navy — with all the major powers — sadly including the United States, clamping an arms embargo on a people fighting for its life.

In spite of it all, Israel did survive, though it had to fight five more wars; indeed it is still fighting, as its enemies (presently led by a genocidal Iran that is quickly going nuclear) still dream that maybe "next time" they will be successful in exterminating the Jewish state.

No less troubling is that anti-Israel incitement in Arab and Muslim communities is often abetted by anti-Semitic, and leftist, circles in Europe and in parts of American academia which question Israel's very right to exist. The hatred towards Israel is exacerbated by the fact that it is viewed as America's close ally — embodying all those values and principles which are anathema to many Arabs and Muslims: democracy and human rights (and especially women's rights) as well as freedom of speech and respect for the rule of law.

Israel's triumph should not be seen primarily in terms of victories over its enemies. Instead, it should be considered in light of its achievements. Without natural resources, without any substantial foreign aid during the first 20 years of its existence, and in spite of its ongoing security concerns it has created a thriving economy. Israel is a leader in high technology, medicine and related fields, and is a major cultural center.

As Israeli academic Dan Ben-David recently reminded his readers, "the Jews in Palestine, even before the founding of the State, had a vision — on the top of Jerusalem's Mount Scopus, on the slopes of Mount Carmel and between the orchards of Rehovot, it created the foundations of Israel's higher education system. Within two decades of the country's birth, there were already seven research universities."

Meanwhile, Zionist pioneers turned the land (which, as a result of Arab and Ottoman neglect and deforestation, had become desert and swamps) into the flourishing garden it once was. Israel also successfully absorbed and integrated millions of often-destitute newcomers, including 1 million people from the former Soviet Union and hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries (in contrast to the much smaller number of Arab refugees who left Israel and are still languishing in ramshackle camps in Arab countries).

Read the whole thing...

Here is an absolute must-read about how the Arabs really came to leave Israel during the formation of the state. It's a rare article that is worthwhile no matter how extensive your background.

In this case the adage that "there are two sides to every story and the truth is somewhere in the middle" is dead wrong:

Sixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively condemned by the international community; and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the West.

During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of the Jewish state has become a cause célèbre among many of these educated Westerners. The “one-state solution,” as it is called, is a euphemistic formula proposing the replacement of Israel by a state, theoretically comprising the whole of historic Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the status of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can expiate the “original sin” of Israel’s founding, an act built (in the words of one critic) “on the ruins of Arab Palestine” and achieved through the deliberate and aggressive dispossession of its native population.

This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian “refugee problem” forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars pressed by Israel’s alleged victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-1950’s, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation, and his findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most influential of Israel’s revisionist “new historians,” and one who went out of his way to establish the case for Israel’s “original sin,” grudgingly stipulated that there was no “design” to displace the Palestinian Arabs.

The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record. They reveal that the claim of dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What follows is based on fresh research into these documents, which contain many facts and data hitherto unreported.

Read the whole thing...

Here is a list of incidents of bad guys using the burqa as the ultimate disguise. In today's news, a police officer was killed in a bank robbery involving a burqa:

Philadelphia police said a veteran police officer was shot and killed in the Port Richmond section of the city on Saturday. Steven Liczbinski, 40, a 12-year veteran who had just been promoted to sergeant, was shot by at least two men shortly before 11:30 a.m. Saturday, authorities said.

He was responding to a robbery at a Bank of America branch inside the ShopRite at Castor and Aramingo. The men fled, and Liczbinski confronted them at Almond and Schiller streets about 15 minutes later. was shot multiple times with a high-powered rifle, police said. ....

Police originally described a man and a woman in Muslim-type garb and a man wearing a white hospital mask. The masked man had shoulder-length dreadlocks, but Officer Tanya Little said that could be wig. Ramsey said one of those suspects had been killed, but he did not know which one.

Here is an pessimistic analysis on Ehud Olmert's future in light of recent revelations about the latest police investigation. On the other hand, as Aaron Lerner comments, there is the possible "etrog" effect. Given that the "branja" that controls Israel is so fixated on land concessions to the Arabs, Olmert can protect himself like an etrog on the holiday of Sukkot by making sweeping offers in the "peace process."

When a supporter of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Saturday "That's it, it's over," it was not clear whether he was asking a question or stating a fact. This was a statement repeated in different words over and over during the weekend - by ministers, MKs and political allies. Like everyone else, they were all in the dark, driven by rumors, hints, innuendos, flying through the cellular telephony at tremendous speeds.

Even the more experienced among them, the veterans of past affairs and the two Winograd Committee reports, are sounding defeated. They did not know how to defend themselves against this enormous tidal wave. On the one hand, the law enforcement and the prosecution were leaking that it was a most serious affair that would bring an end to Olmert's tenure as PM; on the other hand, the court is preventing the man under investigation to talk and present his version of the story.

Those on the right who wish for Olmert's fall also found it difficult to come to terms with this upsetting decision. Would an American court prevent president Clinton from responding to the allegations against him in the Lewinsky case? Or president Nixon on Watergate? Olmert had been waiting eagerly for May 2008, a month that would be filled with positive headlines, pomp and ceremony: Independence Day festivities, and then the visit of President George W. Bush, followed by the visits of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and other leaders. Since the Second Lebanon War he did not have it so good. He believed that the worst was behind him: that nothing would come of the probes against him, and that he would make progress in talks with the Palestinians, or would have some surprising result on the Syrian track.

He was already feeling as though "he had emerged from the grave," a source close to him said. And then the skies fell and the earth split open. All over again. This is the fifth investigation in two years. This could be the critical mass that will break even an experienced survivor like Olmert.

The worst-case scenario for Olmert is this: when the gag order is lifted, the details of the case will be revealed, and there will be a public and media outcry that will soon be taken up by the politicians. He will lose his support in Kadima and Ehud Barak will announce that Labor cannot remain in a coalition headed by a man with such terrible stigma. From that point to Olmert's fall or resignation, the path will be short, painful and embarrassing.

Consider this story in the light of the Democratic drive for due process for terrorists or the closing of the Guantanamo Bay camp. The Saudis et al finance these interminable trials of little consequence:

In the most recent disappointment for federal prosecutors in a domestic terrorism case, a jury last week did not reach a verdict in the Miami case for the second time. The case involved a bizarre plot to blow up the FBI Miami office and Chicago's Sears Tower.

In the Holy Land case, involving a Dallas charity which was said to have provided "blood money" to finance overseas suicide bombings, one defendant was cleared of the charges and jurors deadlocked on charges against the others.

Jurors in a 2003 case against a Tampa-area man and his associates, who allegedly supported a reign of terror by a violent Palestinian group, acquitted two men and could not agree on the charges against the main defendant.

The Justice Department's domestic terrorism record to date has provoked criticism of its early strategy of going after homegrown terrorist cells and the people who fund plots well before deadly events occur.

Yet independent commissions have urged the FBI to become more aggressive at detecting threats and neutralizing them before they explode.

How do respectable liberals like Jimmy Carter, Avram Burg and Ramsey Clark morph into radical Leftists after leaving office? They were that way all along, and the Leftist-dominated media covered up the evidence. In 20 debates, for example, Barack Obama faced not a single question about his anti-Semitic pastor Wright, or his close ties to unrepentent Weatherman terrorists. Here are some charming vignettes about the Weathermen courtesy of Ann Coulter:

....Asked why he would be friends with the likes of Weatherman Bill Ayers, Obama said: "The notion that ... me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

That's a slick answer -- even "Clintonian"! -- but the problem is, Ayers and his Weatherman wife, Bernadine Dohrn, won't stop boasting about their days as Weathermen.

It's not simply that they haven't repented. To the contrary, those were their glory days! And Ayers isn't just someone who lives in the neighborhood: He and Dohrn were there at the inception of Obama's political career, hosting a fundraiser for Obama at their home back in 1995.

Besides wanton violence, including a dozen bombings of buildings such as the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, historic statues and various police stations, the Weathermen's "revolutionary" activity consisted primarily of using the word "motherf-----" a lot, dropping LSD, coming up with cutesy phrases -- like "the Weather Underground" -- and competing over who could make the most offensive statements in public. (I also believe Dohrn may have set the North American record for longest stretch without bathing.)

At one rally, Dohrn famously praised the Manson family for murdering Sharon Tate and others, shouting: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"

In a better country, just saying "Dig it!" in public would get you 20 years in the slammer.

Dohrn has recently tried to clarify her Manson remarks by saying it was some sort of "statement" about violence in society and, furthermore, that she said it while under sniper fire in Bosnia. Also recently, the members of the Manson family have distanced themselves from Ayers and Dohrn.

At other rallies, Dohrn said, "Bring the revolution home, kill your parents -- that's where it's at."

After a Chicago Democratic official, Richard Elrod, became paralyzed while fighting with a privileged looter during the Weathermen's "Days of Rage," Dohrn led the Weathermen in a song sung to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay":

Lay, Elrod, lay,
Lay in the street for a while
Stay, Elrod, stay
Stay in your bed for a while
You thought you could stop the Weatherman
But up-front people put you on your can,
Stay, Elrod, stay
Stay in your iron lung,
Play, Elrod, play
Play with your toes for a while

Only because of a merciful God is the author of that ditty, Ted Gold, not teaching at Northwestern or the University of Illinois now, alongside Dohrn or Ayers. That's because Gold is no longer with us, having accidentally blown himself up with a bomb intended for a dance at Fort Dix for new recruits and their dates.

While trying to assemble the bomb at an elegant Greenwich Village townhouse that belonged to one of the revolutionaries' fathers, the bungling Weathermen blew up the entire townhouse, killing Gold and two other butterfingered revolutionaries. Leave it to these nincompoops to turn their glorious Marxist revolution into an "I Love Lucy" sketch.

So in addition to being stupid and violent, the Weathermen were also incompetent terrorists. Would that Timothy McVeigh had been so inept!

If he had only said he bombed the building in Oklahoma City to protest American "imperialism," McVeigh, too, could be teaching at Northwestern University, sitting on a board with and holding fundraisers for presidential candidate B. Hussein Obama.

The chickens have come home to roost. The New York Times has been blithely unconcerned with the way it loses readers because of its Leftist propaganda. They really do intend to go down with the ship.

The stories keep coming showing that Global Warming (i.e. the man-made catastrophic kind) still remains very much a theory:

The world's oldest tree has been found in Sweden, a tenacious spruce that first took root just after the end of the last ice age, more than 9,500 years ago.

The tree has rewritten the history of the climate in the region, revealing that it was much warmer at that time and the ice had disappeared earlier than thought....

It had been thought that this region was still in the grip of the ice age but the tree shows it was much warmer, even than today, [Prof Leif Kullman at Umeå University] says.

“Spruces are the species that can best give us insight about climate change,” he says.

The summers 9,500 years ago were warmer than today, though there has been a rapid recent rise as a result of climate change that means modern climate is rapidly catching up.

Today it was also reported that the founder of Greenpeace has stated that there is no proof of human involvement in Global Warming.

(Hat tip: Alan Hoffman)

And again:

Two Israeli security guards were found shot to death at a factory in a small city east of the Mediterranean coastline city of Netanya Friday morning.

The community of Nitzanei Oz is also almost adjacent to the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Tulkarm, to where security forces speculate the murderer(s) escaped following the shooting.

The two victims were identified as Shimon Mizrachi, 53, of Bat Hefer, and Eli Muserman, 51, of Alfei Menashe.

Around 7 AM Friday morning, the local Magen David Adom emergency services dispatcher received a report of gunshot injuries in the northern area of the town's industrial zone, the area closest to Tulkarm. When its crew arrived on the scene, the paramedics discovered that the two victims were already dead.

Security forces immediately threw a dragnet around the area in an attempt to capture the murderer. IDF forces entered Tulkarm to search for the terrorists as well. Islamic Jihad later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israel Radio reported today that two 'previously unknown groups' claimed credit for the attacks. One of those is a branch of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which recently secured amnesty deals (including another yesterday) with Israel for its members in exchange for a promise of good behavior.

Sources said the terrorists planned a mass murder at the factory, located in the city’s Nitzanei Shalom [Buds of Peace] industrial zone. After murdering the two men, however - one of whose guns was found in his car, instead of on his person - the terrorist entered the building only to discover that he was alone, as all the workers were on vacation for the Passover holiday.

The Yesha Council (Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria) stated, "It is no coincidence that the attack occurred just a day after Israel announces it willingness to pardon more terrorists... These concessions and gestures tell our enemies that terrorism pays off... Palestinian terrorism must be defeated, not negotiated with."

Security sources said it is believed the terrorists came from Tulkarm, which the Israeli government transferred to PA control within the framework of the Oslo Accords.

On August 1, 2002, Shani Ladni, a truck driver who frequented the same industrial zone, was murdered there by terrorists. The attack was enabled by the Defense Ministry's removal of a curfew around Tulkarm as a confidence-building gesture to the PA shortly beforehand.

The Nitzanei Shalom Industrial Park was one of nine industrial zones established in 1995 to help provide work for Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

This last sentence doesn't make sense, because economics are supposed to be the root cause of terror.

Here is an interesting point about Israel's controversial security fence from another account:

The gunmen had initially intended to infiltrate Israel but returned to the industrial complex after they were unable to penetrate the security barrier, Army Radio reported.

The UNIFIL "disarmament force" discovered an actual Hizbullah weapons shipment during a disarmament patrol. So they ran away, returned to their base, hid the incident from the media, and covered up the event in the middle of a larger report delivered weeks later. IRIS told readers from the moment the idea was announced that the disarmament force was a fraud:

Armed Hizbullah militants warded off members of UNIFIL last month when the peacekeepers discovered a truck carrying weapons and ammunition.

On March 30, UNIFIL troops on patrol discovered the truck, chased it down and pulled it over. When the troops approached the vehicle, armed Hizbullah men exited the truck and threatened the troops at gunpoint. The UNIFIL patrol then returned to their base.

The incident, referred to in a semi-yearly report submitted to the UN Security Council by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, was not reported in the media at the time.

This reminds me of a song:

Brave Sir Robin ran away.
("No!")

Bravely ran away away.
("I didn't!")

When danger reared it's ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
("I never!")

Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
("You're lying!")

Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the braaaave, Sir Robin!

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail