IRIS Blog

If I were assembling a dream team administration, Moshe Yaalon would be my first pick, as Defense Minister or head of the National Security Council. (Bibi Netanyahu would be my second draft choice as Israel's Foreign Minister or Finance Minister if there was a way to prevent him from using it as a springboard to campaign for Prime Minister). He represents the quiet revolution brewing at the Shalem Center, which is developing an alternative to the systemically negligently superficial policy thinking repeatedly exposed by such commissions as Winograd and Agranat.

In this must-read, he bursts the bubble of the hypnotic trance known as the 'two-state solution' held across the board by the Israeli elite (even by 'right-wingers' such as Bibi Netanyahu):

Time to Change Course

It is not in vain that Michael Oren's book "Six Days of War'" begins with Fatah's botched terror attack under the orders of Yasser Arafat on the night of December 31st, 1964.

The attack aimed to strike at the national water carrier and to ignite the region. Its failure didn't prevent the rising Fatah leader from publishing an official victory statement that glorified the "Jihad duty" and to set January 1st 1965 as the date marking the organization's establishment.

Indeed, the Six Day War changed the face of the Middle East. From a historic perspective it can be viewed as marking the beginning of the end of national-secular Arab ideology, which in turn encouraged the emergence of Islamic-Jihadist ideologies; it can also be viewed as marking the beginning of the end (temporarily?) of conventional wars between armies and the shifting of the threat on the State of Israel.

However, I am of the opinion that more than anything the Six Day War influenced the way Israelis perceived themselves, it also impacted internal discourse pertaining to border conflicts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On the one hand, Israeli self assurance, which was naturally emboldened by the shining military victory, led to complacency until the outcome of the Yom Kippur War, while on the other hand it led to the willingness for territorial concessions aimed at achieving peace.

The cornerstone of Israeli policy since the end of the war did not advocate annexation of territories nor a return to 1967 borders.

This perception, along with failed political conduct to date, has ultimately led to significant erosion in the achievements of the Six Day War and has vastly detracted from the Israeli position, while also adversely affecting the Zionist narrative and its achievements.

Israelis who sought to reach final-status agreement with the Palestinians through "land for peace" obscured the difference between resolving the conflict with Egypt via Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those same elements went even further by obscuring the Palestinian demand for all of the Land of Israel rather then territories occupied in 1967 only, and ignored the persistent Palestinian refusal - which has been in place since the birth of Zionism - to partition the nation.

These elements vastly contributed to the erosion of Israel's positions upon recognizing the Palestinian peoples' right for self determination without insisting on mutual Palestinian recognition for the Jewish people and an independent Jewish State.

The self assurance that came in wake of the Six Day War created a sense of being "strong enough to take risks" - which is reminiscent of the time of the Oslo Accords. This self confidence led to the loss of the attitude associated with a society facing constant struggle.

Palestinian terror began before 1967

The sincere desire to achieve peace was interpreted as fatigue and led to public willingness to accept the "golden calves" presented as hope by politicians, spin doctors and the media, but which were quickly shattered.

Those striving to return to 1967 borders, from within Israel and abroad, are taking advantage of the Six Day War triumph to argue that the problem lies in the "occupation" and that Israeli relinquishment of these territories will bring the longed-for peace.

Yet the botched terror attack on December 31, 1964 reminds us that Palestinian terror began prior to the takeover of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Since then, additional proof accumulated over time attests to the Palestinian leadership's refusal to end the conflict based on such a solution.

Moreover, recent statements by leaders of the Israeli Arab community expressed their refusal to recognize the State of Israel's right to exist as an independent Jewish State.

Events of the past years, the Palestinian failure to adhere to agreements and obligations within the Oslo framework, the launching of a terror war in September 2000, and the situation in Gaza following disengagement - could have served as opportunities to "reveal the true face" of the Palestinian leadership and its intentions to undermine the irrelevant concept of a "two state solution" within the ancient Land of Israel's western borders.

Grounding the "two-state solution" discourse to a halt among the Israeli public and in the international arena is a prerequisite for encouraging a new direction of thought with regards to the conflict and possible ways of resolving it.

The key to moving away from this concept is Israel's clear understanding of the problem, forging internal agreement around this understanding, and a willingness to struggle for it.

The shining victory of the Six Day war has paradoxically turned into the starting point of the "retrenchment and withdrawal battle" over the Zionist narrative we are currently engaged in - until we make an about face.

Hat tip: Dan Friedman

The first of three shoes has dropped:

Peretz Ousted as Labor Party Leader, Barak to Face Ayalon in Runoff

In the Labor Party primary election held Monday, former prime minister Ehud Barak won 36% of the vote, former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon received 31%, and current party chairman and defense minister Amir Peretz got 22% in a five-way race.

Since no candidate passed the 40% threshold, Barak and Ayalon will face off in a June 12 runoff.

For the short to medium-term, it appears as though my prediction that only a reshuffling would occur is correct. Despite massive public outrage, no significant political change seems likely.

Aid Flows into Palestinian Account after U.S. Shift

With U.S. backing, donor funds have started flowing into an account controlled by Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad to pay partial government salaries, Palestinian and Western officials said on Monday. Fayyad was expected to receive enough money through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) account to pay government workers, including members of the security forces, at least half of their normal monthly wages. In a May 14 letter to the EU, the U.S. government said donor funds can be channeled to Palestinians through the PLO account controlled by Fayyad. Some Israeli officials decried what they saw as a shift in U.S. policy that would reduce pressure on Hamas to recognize Israel, renounce violence, and accept interim peace deals.

Salam Fayyad was offered his post in the Hamas-dominated government by Hamas itself.

There is no logical reason why Sderot will not become Ashkelon, Ashdod and then Tel Aviv, with progressively increasing casualities as Palestinian technology improves. In response, Israel's leaders have demonstrated an unwillingness to fight back. The current policy of occasional pinpoint strikes are relatively meaningless to a group that seeks death in battle.

Seventeen Palestinian rockets struck Israel's western Negev region on Monday, including three that hit Sderot, lightly injuring one resident and causing five others to suffer from shock. Another rocket sparked a fire in a wheat field near Kibbutz Miflasim.

A 35-year-old man was killed on Sunday morning when a Kassam rocket slammed into the road near his car in Sderot, as rockets continued to rain on the southern town.

The man - identified as Oshri Oz, 35, from Hod Hasharon - was hit in the neck by shrapnel when the missile landed, and the car crashed into a wall. He was evacuated to Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital in critical condition and died of his wounds shortly afterward.

According to Army Radio, Oz's wife found out about her husband's death on the Internet, where she saw the footage of the Kassam landing near his car.

Oz was a father of two and his widow is in the advanced stages of pregnancy. A friend of Oz told Army Radio that he was "amazing fellow, only good with no bad." The friend said Oz and him were part of a closely knit group of friends who have stayed together for over 25 years. "It's hard to speak of him in the past tense. He was always there for us," he said.

One other person was treated for shock. Hamas took responsibility for the attack.

The attack brought the morning's rocket tally to four, with two other rockets landing in open areas and one in a residential neighborhood. No casualties were reported in the earlier attacks.

The attack also marked the second Israeli fatality since the surge in Kassam fire that began several weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Sderot students prepared to return to classes in different cities due to the rocket threat. The Education Ministry commissioned transports to take Sderot students to classrooms out of Kassam-range, in the area between Ashdod and Beersheba.

An important article by former jihadist Tawfik Hamid:

According to a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, one out of every four American Muslims under 30 think suicide bombing in defense of Islam is justified. If, as the Pew study estimates, there are 2.35 million Muslims in America, that means there are a substantial number of people in the U.S. who think suicide bombing is justified. Similarly, if 5% of American Muslims support al-Qaeda, that's more than 100,000 people.

To bring an end to Islamophobia, it is imperative to adopt new Islamic teachings that do not allow killing apostates. Islamic authorities must provide mainstream Islamic books that forbid polygamy and beating women. Muslims should teach, everywhere and universally, that a woman's testimony in court counts as much as a man's, that women should not be punished if they marry whom they please or dress as they wish.

Long overdue, but unlikely to have any significance other than as domestic theater to pretend something is being done about the daily Kassam barrages:

IDF forces arrested 33 Hamas leaders Wednesday night, including four mayors, the PA education minister, and the head of the Waqf in Shechem. Three Kassams fired Thursday morning at the western Negev caused no damage. A fourth rocket slammed into the town of Sderot at midday, damaging a car near the home of Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal. No injuries were reported.

The broad wave of arrests was also accompanied by IDF air-strikes and closures of ten Hamas offices.

The arrests netted the Arab mayors of Shechem, Kalkilye, Al-Bireh and Bidia, as well as three PA legislature members, a senior interior ministry official, the director of the public works office, and others. Defense Minister Amir Peretz, speaking with Army Radio this morning, appeared anxious to tone down the arrest wave's harsh impression, saying it was "reversible."

Here is an important piece from Daniel Doron about a fundamental shift in Israel's thinking crucial for national revival. Two points that he misses, however:

-The main prescription of the "pioneers" of free market economics was to revive ideas of economic freedom of classical Judaism, much as their contemporaries, the Founding Fathers of the United States, did with political philosophy. Classical Judaism has deep respect for the free market and an allergy to statism. (Spare me the tortured selective "proofs" that Judaism equals liberalism.)

-The Jews have spent the last couple of millenia voting with their feet, migrating from places of diminishing freedom to high freedom. This is why most Diaspora Jews are in the historically freest economy in history. Within American Jewry, the greatest trend is from the overtaxed New York area to Florida, a zero income-tax state. The greatest movement of Jewish businesses is from Israel to Delaware, the home of America's freest corporate framework.

What a tragedy that Theodor Herzl's successors, especially Israel's first president Chaim Weizmann and his socialist allies, deserted Herzl's plan to build a Jewish national home in which a prosperous market economy would guarantee its social cohesion and political strength.

Instead they replaced Herzl's vision with socialist fantasies and programs that impoverished the Zionist enterprise demographically, economically and socially, as prominently occurred in the kibbutzim. Had the Zionist enterprise implemented Herzl's vision, it might have grown strong enough to have saved more European Jews and secured a safer transition from the yishuv to an independent state.

Unlike most other Zionist leaders who were raised in an oppressive, virulently anti-Semitic and parochial tzarist Russia, Herzl grew in Vienna, the tolerant and liberal capital of the multi-cultural Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Herzl described the younger Zionist leaders as the flower children of their time; shiftless intellectuals who scorned their parent's wealth because they accepted the anti-Semitic calumny that Jews were exploitative capitalists (when in fact most were very poor). They expressed their adolescent rebellion by embracing socialism or communism and by advocating a romantic return to agricultural labor to purify the Jewish soul. Since in Germany, as in Russia, the state was worshipped, it seemed natural for these young firebrands to accept socialism's implicit assumption that the state must totally dominate the economy, even by abolishing all private property rights.

VIENNESE INTELLECTUALS were not in such awe of the state. Rather, they were inspired by Adam Smith's market economics and by the successful model of the British Empire that thrived on minimal state intervention and on free trade.

When Professor Karl Menger promulgated what became known as the Austrian school of market economics it became an intellectual sensation and Menger was appointed personal tutor to the Crown Prince, the Archduke Rudolf Von Habsburg.

Herzl's programmatic book Altneuland, his intellectual last will and testament, charts the future development of the Jewish home. It fully embraced the basic premises of the Austrian school, including what was considered its radical support for the issuance of competitive currencies by private banks. True, in earlier stages of his ideological development Herzl also flirted with socialist inspired cooperative ideologies, just as at an early stage he thought of solving "The Jewish Problem" by the mass conversion of the Jews.

True, after contemporary Jewish capitalists like Baron de-Hirsch and the Rothschilds rejected his vision and even militated against it, Herzl bitterly accepted some of the largely anti-Semitic prejudices against (Jewish) great capital and its inordinate political clout. As a fervent humanist Herzl was also appalled by the prevalent dismal poverty and was attracted by communitarian and mutualistic ideologies.

Nevertheless, in his well considered judgment, formulated in Altneuland this is what he put in the mouth of his model new Jew, David Litvak, the moving spirit in The Company charged with building the Jewish National Home:

Money is an extraordinary thing, if it did not already exist we would have to invent it?. No, we have not [followed socialist dogma] and abolished the differences between mine and yours. We are not crazy. We have not thrown overboard the incentive to work, to try harder to invent and to develop. Remarkable talent deserves proper reward, and special effort high recompense.

Wealth stimulates the ambitious and nurtures rare abilities?. Profit encourages entrepreneurship and creates new opportunities? if free entrepreneurs accumulate great profits by honest endeavor it is absolutely Kosher? Our new society did not embrace equality. Each person is rewarded according to their work and effort; we have not abolished competition, though we insist on fair opportunity for all, as in sports?

When it came to practically implementing Zionism, Herzl entrusted the huge enterprise of the mass transfer of Jews and their resettlement in their National Home not to a state or public bureaucracy ("we have no state like the Europeans have" his David Litvak avers, "we are a community of citizens who seek satisfaction in work alone? organized in a novel way), but to a privately held corporation of shareholders and to its executive arm, an investment bank. And he did so not only for reasons of efficiency but from deep moral concern.

THE PURPOSE of this "Bank of Jewish Resettlement," Herzl explained:

"Just as we [Zionists] replaced Zionist pleading with Zionist statesmanship so we must replace in our settlement work the reliance on alms and charity by a strictly businesslike approach. Charity has impoverished both givers and takers. Charity seekers have climbed to the top [of our enterprise] and our work lost what is most essential: individual responsibility. Those who seek help from rich patrons will not build the economic status of the Jews nor improve their moral standing?. [Because] he who receives alms degenerates [and] patrons only create ingrates?"

To head the Anglo-Palestine bank, Herzl appointed a young banker Zalman David Levontin, the founder of the successful private settlement of Rishon Le-Zion. But after Herzl's death, Weizmann and his socialist allies took over Zionism and founded the charity-based Settlement Fund (Keren Hayesod). They undermined Levontin's support for private settlements and enterprises, entrusting the settlement effort to a bureaucratic Settlement Department headed by Arthur Ruppin, a communist sympathizer, and to other avowed leftists.

This group also directed all of Zionism's scarce resources to collectivist settlement and to a vicious class warfare against the successful private sector. Rather then develop Zionism through industrialization and urbanization - thereby the sole basis for a thriving agricultural sector - Zionism supported the failed experiments of collectivism that almost ruined it.

Levontin openly challenged Weizmann asking "do you believe you can develop the land through charity or through investment?"

Weizmann's choice proved tragic.

For those interested in Herzl's vision of the state, tragically distorted by socialists, see this absolute must-read by Yoram Hazony. It is a revolutionary, necessary prescription for Israel today.

The only time people were shipped out of Africa to freedom was during Israel's rescue operation from Ethiopia. Here is a story of one Bar Mitzvah boy who donated his $25,000 in Bar Mitzvah gifts to four of those immigrant families in Israel. Along with his many imitators:

Eleven playgrounds are being built in Kiryat Shmona thanks to contributions from the Jewish community abroad. However, the money did not come from wealthy adults, but from children who have reached bar and batmitzvah age and are donating the money they received as gifts.

One of the benefactors is Rachel Hibner (12) of New York. She was both proud and moved to be at the unveiling ceremony of the playground her gift money helped build in northern town.

Rachel who donated all of the $11,000 she received for her Bat mitzvah said: ?I attached a card to my batmitzvah invitation asking for money instead of a gift. I explained that the money will be donated to Israel."

Rachel is not alone. Ten playgrounds were built in the last month in Kiryat Shmona thanks to donations by Jewish American youth.

The connection was made by the Jewish Agency after having received several appeals by young Americans. The Jewish Agency proposes different projects and the kids decide which one to contribute to. One youngster who enjoys cooking donated $25,000 to build four kitchens in homes of new immigrants from Ethiopia.

The Jewish Agency's Jeff Kay said that ?there are young people in the United States, who already have everything, and (they) want to donate to a unique cause, and for the most part we choose projects that girls and boys can connect to."

Jewish teenagers and children from the New York area contributed about a million dollars to support 100 different projects.

The town's mayor, Danny Kadosh, says that when the playground is completed, the young benefactors are invited to the unveiling ceremony. He said that the kids donate most of the $20 000 it costs to build a playground and are always happy and excited to see the results on the ground.

For months, Sderot residents have been dodging falling missiles, never knowing when this would happen:

A 35-year-old woman was killed Monday when one of three Kassam rockets fired at Sderot struck a car. She was the first Israeli killed in a rocket attack since November.

A 20-year-old man was moderately wounded in the rocket attack and twelve people were suffering from shock.

Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Resistance Committee (PRC) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Streets were blocked in the area following the incident and Sderot residents ran towards the scene to try and locate loved ones. The Home Front Command was working with police to keep people away from the site.

The attack came as EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were meeting in the western Negev town....

Following the attack, Sderot residents threatened to burn the tires of the car carrying the two in protest of the lack of protection from rocket attacks, and after the press conference, residents blocked the foreign minister's path, preventing her from leaving the area.

"Tzipi Livni you're a whore! Quit! Quit!" angry Sderot residents shouted, charging at a car where they thought the foreign minister was traveling. One of the protesters was wounded in the violence.

When Livni emerged in a different car several moments later, protesters threw trash and various objects at the vehicle.

Yet another mainstream news source gets the old news about this organization "only interested in the defense of Lebanon":

On their web page, Hezbollah militants in Venezuela call their fight against the United States a "holy war" and post photographs of would-be suicide terrorists with masks and bombs.

There are also web sites for Hezbollah in Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and most other Latin American countries.

In October, homemade bombs were left in front of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, which is next to a school. Police arrested a student carrying Hezbollah propaganda in Spanish.

Hezbollah has massive support in the Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan, as well as every other Muslim immigrant population.

Here is an absolute must-read by Charles Krauthammer, the kind of article that I would include in a Middle East for Dummies class. Please take a moment to Digg it to expose it to a greater audience.

There has hardly been an Arab peace plan in the past 40 years -- including the current Saudi version -- that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred? Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

The real anniversary of the war should be now, three weeks earlier. On May 16, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser demanded the evacuation from the Sinai Peninsula of the U.N. buffer force that had kept Israel and Egypt at peace for 10 years. The U.N. complied, at which point Nasser imposed a naval blockade of Israel's only outlet to the south, the port of Eilat -- an open act of war.

How Egypt came to this reckless provocation is a complicated tale (chronicled in Michael Oren's magisterial history "Six Days of War'') of aggressive intent compounded with fateful disinformation. An urgent and false Soviet warning that Israel was preparing to attack Syria led to a cascade of intra-Arab maneuvers that in turn led Nasser, the champion of pan-Arabism, to mortally confront Israel with a remilitarized Sinai and a southern blockade.

Why is this still important? Because that three-week period between May 16 and June 5 helps explain Israel's 40-year reluctance to give up the fruits of the Six Day War -- the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza -- in return for paper guarantees of peace. Israel had similar guarantees from the 1956 Suez War, after which it evacuated the Sinai in return for that U.N. buffer force and for assurances from the Western powers of free passage through the Straits of Tiran.

All this disappeared with a wave of Nasser's hand. During those three interminable weeks, President Lyndon Johnson tried to rustle up an armada of countries to run the blockade and open Israel's south. The effort failed dismally.

It is hard to exaggerate what it was like for Israel in those three weeks. Egypt, already in an alliance with Syria, formed an emergency military pact with Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco began sending forces to join the coming fight. With troops and armor massing on Israel's every frontier, jubilant broadcasts in every Arab capital hailed the imminent final war for the extermination of Israel. "We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants,'' declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, "and as for the survivors -- if there are any -- the boats are ready to deport them.''

For Israel, the waiting was excruciating and debilitating. Israel's citizen army had to be mobilized. As its soldiers waited on the various fronts for the world to rescue the nation from peril, Israeli society ground to a halt and its economy began bleeding to death. Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, later to be hailed as a war hero and even later as a martyred man of peace, had a nervous breakdown. He was incapacitated to the point of incoherence by the unbearable tension of waiting with the life of his country in the balance.

We know the rest of the story. Rabin recovered in time to lead Israel to victory. But we forget how perilous was Israel's condition. The victory hinged on a successful attack on Egypt's air force on the morning of June 5. It was a gamble of astonishing proportions. Israel sent the bulk of its 200-plane air force on the mission, fully exposed to antiaircraft fire and missiles. Had they been detected and the force destroyed, the number of planes remaining behind to defend the Israeli homeland -- its cities and civilians -- from the Arab air forces' combined 900 planes was ... 12.

We also forget that Israel's occupation of the West Bank was entirely unsought. Israel begged Jordan's King Hussein to stay out of the conflict. Engaged in fierce combat with a numerically superior Egypt, Israel had no desire to open a new front just yards from Jewish Jerusalem and just miles from Tel Aviv. But Nasser personally told Hussein that Egypt had destroyed Israel's air force and airfields and that total victory was at hand. Hussein could not resist the temptation to join the fight. He joined. He lost.

The world will soon be awash with 40th anniversary retrospectives on the war -- and on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only return to June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that unbearable May when, with Israel possessing no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel's imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.

I have two quibbles with this excellent piece. Krauthammer does not explain that Arab attempts to eradicate Israel are part of the Global Jihad, which the majority of Muslims support. Additionally, I blanched when Krauthammer called Yitzhak Rabin "a man of peace" for agreeing to the suicidal Oslo Accords, based on the ludicrous idea of reforming history's greatest terrorist. It is like calling Neville Chamberlain a "man of peace." Both nearly sacrificed their nations for what was probably the ego-gratification of being hailed as a "peacemaker." It is possible that they had only peaceful intentions, but the results of their negligence makes applying such a moniker to either of them obscene.

Evelyn Gordon has another must-read explaining the root causes for the success of the Irish Peace Process. She misses two critical points, however:

In Ireland, neither party is religiously genocidal

There are not a billion Irish compatriots worldwide who enable that religious bloodthirst

Nine years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, the Northern Irish peace process successfully concluded last Tuesday with the formation of a power-sharing government comprised of once implacable foes, each the most hardline party in its respective camp: the Democratic Unionists for the Protestants, and Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political wing, for the Catholics.

The Israeli-Palestinian process, in contrast, is nowhere near a resolution, despite having begun five years earlier; and in many respects, the conflict has worsened markedly. Yet the starting conditions in Northern Ireland were scarcely more promising. There, too, both sides claimed the same land: The Unionists wanted it to remain part of Britain, while Sinn Fein wanted it annexed to Ireland. And there, too, religious differences - centuries of Catholic-Protestant strife - exacerbated the conflict. Why, then, did the IrishT process succeed while the Israeli-Palestinian process failed?

Two American diplomats involved in the former, Richard Haass and George Mitchell, described the reasons for its success in a column in last Thursday's International Herald Tribune. And, unsurprisingly, it turns out that the Israeli-Palestinian process violated almost every one of these rules.

First, said Haass and Mitchell, while preconditions for talks should be kept to a minimum, it "was right to make a cease-fire a prerequisite. Killing and talking do not go hand in hand." And in Northern Ireland, this happened: The IRA declared a cease-fire in 1997 and largely honored it, making the ensuing progress possible.

But while the PLO also declared a cease-fire, in 1993, this truce was never honored. In the first two and a half years after the Oslo Accord was signed, Palestinian terrorists killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding decade; in 2000-2004, they killed more Israelis than in the entire preceding 53 years. Unsurprisingly, this soured Israelis' enthusiasm for further concessions.

So why did the IRA cease-fire hold while the Palestinian cease-fire evaporated? Again, the Haass-Mitchell guidelines provide the answer: "Sanctions should be introduced when there is backsliding. In the case of Northern Ireland, it meant public criticism, stopping diplomatic contacts, the suspension of local institutions.

There must be a clear price for unacceptable actions." And in Northern Ireland, there was.

Palestinian Rocket Hits Israeli High School, Apartment Building

Shin Bet Foils Palestinian Attempt to Kill Olmert
There isn't any 'blood on his hands' so this terrorist is a good candidate for release

Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming
Yet the Leftist mantra continues that "the science is settled"