IRIS Blog

Despite the many reports that Israel's previous $100 million and arms for Fatah to fight Hamas has ended up in Hamas' hands:

American President George W. Bush will press visiting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert next week to fork over to the Palestinian Authority (PA) hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money to prop up the standing of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Israel collects the money from taxes on Arabs working in Israel and other tariffs.

"We want to get back to the situation where the Palestinians can get something that they've been robbed of too many times, which is peace in their streets, democracy in their government, and the ability to move toward what everybody in the region ought to hope for, which is two nations, sovereign, living peacefully and side by side," White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Thursday....

The Hamas coup in Gaza buried the ruins of the dreams of the administration of former American President Bill Clinton for a "New Middle East"," which literally blew up with the outbreak of the Oslo War in 2000.

However, both the White House and the State Department made it clear Thursday that they are determined to use the Hamas overthrow for the benefit of Abbas. One of its arguments is that Israel has no fear of the money reaching Hamas because Abbas has dissolved the Fatah-Hamas unity government, although Hamas leader Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has rejected the move as illegal....

Criticism is beginning to mount against America's 15-year campaign to forge a PA-Israeli peace agreement. Robert Malley, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the International Crisis Group, told the Post, "The less we try to intervene and shape Palestinian politics, the better off we will be. Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters this week, "We have called on others in the region to express their support for President Abbas and those Palestinian moderate political elements who have foresworn the use of violence and who have an interest in reaching a political settlement with Israel via the negotiating table and...we're going to continue to support President Abbas."

Now that Hezbollah has used Olmert's international disarmament force as protection during rearmament, Syria appears ready for war. Olmert's response: offer the strategically vital heights of the Golan in exchange for a promise to be good boys in the future:

A Qatari newspaper, Al Watan, reported Friday that Syria is making concrete preparations for war with Israel, saying that the Syrian government has removed the Government and State Archives from the Damascus area. According to the paper, this move indicates preparations for war.

Syrian parliament member Muhammad Habash confirmed on Al-Jazeera Arabic world news satellite TV last week that Syria is indeed engaged in active preparations for a war with Israel. The conflict, said the Syrian MP, is expected to break out during the summer months.

More vignettes from a hell enabled by leftist "peace-makers":

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas unleashed his party's Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorist militia Friday, executing one person without trial and wounding and arresting dozens of others. Al Aksa said it murdered a 32-year-old Hamas loyalist from Shechem in retaliation to Hamas assassinations of Fatah terrorists in Gaza.

The bloodshed spread to Tulkarm, east of Netanya, where masked Fatah terrorists sprayed fire indiscriminately and torched a Hamas office, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency.

Abbas' terrorists also kidnapped a grocery store owner in Tulkarm, shot at two buses, set fire to a Hamas charity office and to stores and raided homes.

The US State Department said it will continue to train Abbas' elite Presidential Guard militia. American Middle East military envoy Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton said last week that reports of Hamas forces being superior to those of American-trained Fatah were incorrect. He and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently convinced American Congressmen to approve more than $60 million to help equip the Fatah militia despite the danger that Hamas might confiscate its weapons.

Hamas confiscated on Thursday and Friday a huge arsenal of rifles, grenades, ammunition and American armored personnel vehicles in Gaza. Hamas terrorists paraded in the streets of Gaza and showed off the weapons while hundreds of Fatah fighters fled to Egypt.

The State Department hurried to Abbas' side after Hamas devastated Fatah in Gaza. Secretary of State Rice said: "President Abbas has exercised his lawful authority ... We fully support him."

She telephoned Abbas to "underline the United States support for [him and] for the Palestinian moderates who have made the commitment to work with the Israeli government," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

McCormack referred to Abbas and his supporters as "advocates...with whom we are going to work.... Make no mistake about it, that the way to achieve a Palestinian state, is via the negotiating table. It is never going to be achieved via the use of violence, threats, intimidation or terrorism.... The strategy is to help build up functioning, effective, legitimate institutions of a future Palestinian state." McCormack deflected reporters' doubts about the extent of Abbas's power.

David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stated: "The people who are moderate are not effective, and the people who are effective are not moderate."

Local commentators note little difference between Fatah and Hamas with regards to their designs to perpetrate attacks against Israel. It was Fatah under Yasser Arafat which signed the Oslo Accords. In the framework of the agreement, Israel authorized the transfer of thousands of rifles to Fatah, but the Israeli government documented their use in fatal terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Both Fatah and Hamas demand the right of more than five million Arabs to immigrate to Israel as descendants of half a million Arabs who fled Israel in 1948.

One major difference between the two groups is that Fatah is a secular party. The Arabic meaning of its name is "conquest," and the word "Fatah" is also a reverse acronym for the Arabic term for the Palestinian Liberation Movement.

Another apparent difference is that Abbas outwardly accepts a two-state solution including Israel. But in practice, PA schools under his authority teach children that all of Israel is "Palestine."

The State Department has maintained that Abbas' statements are only a prelude to negotiations, but the Hamas takeover in Gaza and Hamas claims that Fatah leaders are linked with the United States will make it harder for him to live up to his "moderate" image.

Get a load of the caption to the picture above from Reuters:

Female Palestinian would-be suicide bombers attend a news conference in Gaza May 21, 2007. Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of 'good' and 'evil' and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters. (Mohammed Sale/Reuters)

It is stunning that a mainstream news source has so transparently revealed its contempt for the traditional basis of Western society, the immorality of the indiscriminate murder of civilians. Nearly all of the allied soldiers who saved the world from Hitler and Hirohito saw them as "evil," yet Reuters terms the great majority of its readers who hold this view "extremists."

One could try to write this caption off as a comical excess, but the truth is that half of mainstream politicians hold the belief that the lack of government programs (rather than ideology) is the root cause of jihadist terror. Here is one example from this week:

Peace Corps Part of Edwards Terror Plan

Senator Edwards is outlining a new national security strategy that includes the creation of a 10,000-person civilian peace corps to stem the tide of terrorism in weak and unstable countries.

Mr. Edwards's plan, which he presented in Manhattan yesterday, comes less than a week after he called President Bush's war on terror a "bumper sticker slogan" and said the current national security strategy has not made America safer....

The plan Mr. Edwards presented yesterday ? which he dubbed "A Strategy to Shut Down Terrorists and Stop Terrorism Before It Starts" ? calls for a 10,000-person "Marshall Corps" to deal with issues ranging from worldwide poverty and economic development to clean drinking water and micro-lending. He said investing in those areas would shore up weak nations and help ensure that terrorism does not take root there. That, he said, would allow the country to stop potential terrorists before they even join the ranks.

It appears that Hamas has consolidated power in Gaza, confirming repeated predictions on this blog prior to the Israeli pullout of August 2005 that Gaza would become Hamastan as a result:

Hamas Orders Rivals to Surrender as Gaza Falls Under Its Control

Hamas' most spectacular attack was the detonation of a one-ton tunnel bomb under a Fatah security headquarters in Khan Yunis. The ambush, which was apparently weeks in the planning, killed at least six and appeared to give Hamas control of the strategic southern town. In the border town of Rafah, Hamas fighters hoisted Hamas flags over the smoldering wreckage of the border security post as reports emerged of Fatah forces fleeing across the border into Egypt. In Gaza City, hundreds of Fatah loyalists from the influential Bakr clan surrendered to Hamas militants who had laid siege to their compound.

On Wednesday about 1,000 Palestinians protesting against the violence marched through Gaza City, drawing gunfire that killed two of the demonstrators and wounded four others. The prospect of Hamas taking control of Gaza has terrified its secular residents, who fear that Islamist rule will be imposed.

Palestinian protestors against violence were killed by the gunmen.

See also:

"Don't Shoot, We're Not Jews"

The Fatah security services ruled Gaza City for 15 years but are now holed up in fortified bunkers awaiting a fully-fledged assault by Hamas. "They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station. Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

Meanwhile the Israeli must culpable for the disastrous "land for peace" charade, Shimon Peres, has been promoted to President.

No mainstream news source has reported directly that the United States is now funding the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. And the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority is, in turn, funding the families of the alleged captors of Israeli hostage Gilad Schalit, along with the murderers of three American security guards in Gaza in 2003. Of course, the PA has always had thousands of openly active terrorists on its payroll while Arafat's "moderate" Fatah was in power. That should be no surprise given that recently declassified documents show that the American government was paying Arafat knowing that he had personally ordered the murder of American diplomats:

PA Paying Schalit Captors' Families

Some of the Palestinian gunmen who participated in the kidnapping of IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit last year have long been on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian sources revealed Sunday.

The sources named two of the suspected kidnappers as Muhammad Azmi Farawneh and Majdi Tayseer Hammad. The two were killed by Israel in separate attacks over the past year.

Farawneh is believed to have played a key role in the abduction of Schalit. Hammad was the commander of the Nasser Salah Eddin Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees - one of the groups that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

The two were killed a few weeks after the abduction in air strikes launched by the IAF in the Gaza Strip.

The fact that they have been on the payroll of the PA was disclosed after their families protested against the low pension that the PA has decided to allocate them....

The families have sought the assistance of a Palestinian legal group in exerting pressure on the PA to change the pension law so that they would receive larger sums of money.

The group wrote over the weekend to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas protesting against the "injustice" done to the families of Palestinian "martyrs" and pensioners....

Almost all Palestinians who are killed in clashes with the IDF are entitled to a salary from the PA to support their families.

The PA has also been paying salaries to thousands of Fatah gunmen belonging to the faction's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades. The majority of these gunmen are registered as members of various branches of the PA security forces, particularly the General Intelligence, Force 17 and the Preventive Security Service. But until now it was not common knowledge that members of the Popular Resistance Committees had also been receiving salaries from the PA.

The Popular Resistance Committees is an alliance of various armed factions in the Gaza Strip, including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The group was also behind the roadside bomb attack that killed three US security guards in the northern Gaza Strip in 2003.

This week, two of the most anti-Israel news sources have quoted Palestinians openly yearning for a return of the Israeli "occupation."

New York Times:

Recently, a few Palestinian columnists have broken a political taboo by referring to the Israeli occupation as perhaps preferable to the current chaos.

For example, Majed Azzam wrote in the Hamas-affiliated weekly Al Risala in Gaza that Palestinians ?should have the courage to acknowledge the truth,? that the only thing that ?prevents the chaos and turmoil in Gaza from spreading to the West Bank is the presence of the Israeli occupation.?

Another Palestinian writer, Bassem al-Nabris, a poet from Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, wrote in the Arabic electronic newspaper Elaph that if there was a referendum in the Gaza Strip on the question of whether people would like the Israeli occupation to return, ?half the population would vote ?yes.? But in practice,? he continued, ?I believe that the number of those in favor is at least 70 percent, if not more.?

?If the occupation returns,? Mr. Nabris added, ?at least there will be no civil war, and the occupier will have a moral and legal obligation to provide the occupied people with employment and food, which they now lack.?

Reuters:

Frequent internal fighting and lawlessness gripping the Palestinian territories have transformed the militants into no more than gangsters in the eyes of many of those who once saw them as heroes. "Many of these groups are now a burden on society," said legislator Nasser Jum'a, once a leading member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Jum'a said ordinary Palestinians were so fed up with the armed groups "they now wish the Israeli occupation would take over in Gaza or hope for the return of Jordanian rule in the West Bank" to get rid of them.

In one recent incident in the West Bank city of Nablus, gunmen told shopkeepers to close their businesses as a sign of solidarity with a Fatah leader arrested the day before in an Israeli raid. For the first time, most of the shop owners refused to close down.

IRIS reported on this phenomenon a year-and-a-half ago:

Many of my foreign colleagues have tended to ignore the voice of the man in the street, but it is not enough to interview this or that official. To understand what the Palestinians are really thinking, you need to sit in the cafes. There were days when I would go to Nablus, for example, and I would hear Palestinians telling me, "You know what? We really hope the Jews will come back and reoccupy Nablus. It's not because we love Israel, but because we're fed-up with the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian corruption."

Meanwhile, Palestinians are voting with their feet for Israel:

Palestinians in Jerusalem, by deed if not by declaration, are increasingly opting for life under Israeli sovereignty. Jerusalem is by no means happily unified, but it is becoming grudgingly unified. "It's not that the Palestinians here have become Zionists; it's not that they've fallen in love with the State of Israel," says an Arab attorney in Jerusalem. "They just want to live normal lives, with security, with a little money in their wallets. They want their kids to be able to go to school. They want what everybody wants."

Many local Arabs are coming to terms with Israeli sovereignty. They are reporting crimes to Israeli police in greater numbers. There is also a big shift in the schools away from the PA-approved curriculum to the one approved by Israel - at the insistence of Jerusalem Arab parents. Only 15% of Jerusalem's Arabs voted in last year's PA elections - compared with a 78% turnout in the territories, notes Hillel Cohen of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Except for aging members of the PLO, the locals no longer clamor publicly for al-Quds - the Arabic name for Jerusalem - to be recognized as the Palestinian capital. Notes the local attorney: "The saying you hear [from Arabs] in the city now is 'Give me hell in Jerusalem over paradise in the PA.'"

Olmert has lost his mandate to be Prime Minister for failing to defend the country during a war with Syria's proxy, Hezbollah. So what does he do? Offer the strategically commanding Golan Heights to Syria, which 84% of the public opposes. In exchange for words from a terrorist regime.

The chutzpa of this man is staggering. Israelis must continuously ratchet up their opposition to him beyond simply waiting like sheep until the next elections:

Olmert to Syria: Cut Ties With Iran, Receive Golan

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered the Golan to Syria, in exchange for full peace, including cutting ties with Iran and terrorists.

Israel's daily Yediot Acharonot reports Friday that PM Olmert has agreed to a deal with Syrian leader Bashar Assad, whereby Syria would receive control of the Golan Heights in exchange for revoking the Syrian-Iranian alliance and cutting all ties with terrorist organizations.

Olmert reportedly informed Syria, via a third party, that he is aware that a peace agreement with Syria "means returning the Golan to Syrian sovereignty." He said he is willing to do so, but wishes to know if Syria, in return, will "dismantle, in stages, its alliance with Iran, Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist organizations."

Just this past April, Olmert projected a different message, releasing a statement that "despite Israel's sincere wish for peace with Syria, Syria continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a terror-encouraging element throughout the Middle East."

Assad has not yet responded to Israel's latest offer.

See also: Nation Up in Arms at Olmert's Golan Offer

The above headline is a bit of an exaggeration. It should read Nation Complains Over Olmert's Golan Offer.

As I predicted, the international disarmament force has been a typical Middle Eastern lie.

During the short "disarmament," Israel's enemy to the north, Hezbollah, has become capable of hitting southern Israel. Fortunately Israel has wise men from Chelm as leaders. They have a sneaky strategy of not doing much about rockets fired from Gaza so that Israel's south will already be evacuated when those Hezbollah missiles hit:

Mofaz to Rice: Hezbollah Rearming with Missiles that Can Strike Deep into Israel

Mofaz told Rice on Wednesday, "Hezbollah will never leave southern Lebanon. It is arming with missiles that could hit central and even southern Israel."

Have no fear, though. Israel's leaders are promising that if Hezbollah even considers firing a missile at Israel, they will get hit really, really hard.

These achievements are largely to the credit of Bibi Netanyahu, with whom I have a love-hate relationship:

California Assembly OKs Divestment from Iran

Proposed California legislation that would require two state employee retirement systems to divest from companies with ties to the energy and defense sectors in Iran passed the state assembly on Tuesday, said Chip Englander, chief of staff for Assemblyman Joel Anderson, who wrote the bill. The bill requires the $245.3 billion California Public Employees Retirement System and the $167.2 billion California State Teachers? Retirement System to divest stocks totaling $2 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively.

Assembly OKs Bill to Drop Investments Tied to Iran

Divestment as a means of pressuring foreign governments has become increasingly popular, with proponents pointing to the example of South Africa, said David Cortright, president of the Fourth Freedom Forum in Goshen, Ind., which focuses on using economic power to resolve international conflicts. "The beginning of the end for the apartheid regime came around '86 and '87 when the big banks in New York rolled over South Africa's debt short term," he said. Soon after, some in government began to encourage negotiations with imprisoned anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. But Iran is not South Africa, said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Like UN sanctions, divestment may impact the average Iranian, he said, but may not affect the ruling elite's positions.

Ohio Divestment: Deal or No Deal?

A controversial bill forcing Ohio pension systems to pull $1.1 billion worth of investments in businesses with ties to Iran and Sudan was stopped in its tracks Tuesday on the House floor with pension fund managers in an uproar at the mandatory requirements. House Speaker Jon Husted offered to pull back the divestment bill if the pension systems agreed to a voluntary divestment of half of those funds (more than $500 million) by the end of 2007. But Rep. Josh Mandel said Wednesday that he plans to push forward for a House floor vote next Tuesday.

Iran is not just threatening war. It is actively attacking the U.S. (as documented here previously) and is allied with America's enemies. Bush's response is to initiate negotiations, as if there was any chance of Iran abiding by them:

NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces.

According to an analysis by a senior coalition official, "This is part of a considered policy" on the part of Iran, "rather than the result of low-level corruption and weapons smuggling."

The analysis says munitions recovered in two Iranian convoys, on April 11 and May 3, had "clear indications that they originated in Iran. Some were identical to Iranian-supplied goods previously discovered in Iraq."

On the other hand, there are those who believe Bush is speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Fortunately the mullahs have the Democrat party and the media to undermine any anti-Iran action.

Another renewal of the humiliating Jerusalem Embassy Act, which reminds us that what American Jews really want from American politicians is to be told "sweet little lies" like "America is not funding Hamas." The greatest presidential sweet-talker/user of all time, Bill Clinton, was the most popular with Jews while being the most destructive to Israel. He was the primary force behind setting up a terrorist regime in Israel's front yard while reneging on all manner of promises, such as releasing Jonathan Pollard. He is loved by most Jews for stunts like swaying religiously at a Reform Temple service. Some Jews were even honored by his choice of a girl with a Jewish last name for his personal use.

Israel's friends in deed, evangelical Christians and conservative Republicans, are demonized by the bulk of American Jewry.

Jerusalem Embassy Pact Passes House

The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday passed without opposition a resolution calling on President Bush to move America's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and adhere to the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act. The resolution marked the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, and passed the House just four days after the White House exercised - for the 14th time - the Jerusalem Embassy Act waiver, which allows the president to ignore Congress. Since the act's passage, Presidents Clinton and Bush have exercised the waiver every six months.

The new resolution "commends Israel for its administration of the undivided city for the past 40 years, during which Israel has respected the rights of all religious groups." It also urges Arabs and Palestinian Arabs to take steps to seek peace. The resolution is a reminder to the Arab world that even the Democratic-controlled Congress, which has endorsed timetables for America's withdrawal from Iraq, is on the Jewish state's side in the conflict in the Middle East. A similar resolution is expected to pass the Senate this week.

See also: Let's Get Moving, by James S. Robbins

It is easy to pass non-binding feel-good resolutions of this nature. But if the Congress really wanted to make a point it would revisit the Jerusalem Embassy Act and put some teeth in it. Above all, end the uncertainty. Either stop making promises our country has no intention of keeping, or have the integrity to follow through on them. Next year in Jerusalem - it has a nice ring to it.

This is not terribly surprising, but it is worth noting when the news media admit their bias openly:

A former Israel Broadcasting Authority news editor admits: ?We slanted the news towards a withdrawal from Lebanon - because we had sons there.?

Speaking at the Haifa Radio Conference on Monday, several former and current news broadcasters on Voice of Israel and Army Radio discussed the tremendous influence they nearly all agreed they had on Israel?s national agenda.

Dr. Chanan Naveh, who edited the Israel Broadcasting Authority radio?s news desk in late 1990?s and early 2000?s, was particularly bombastic about his pervasive reach: ?The morning audience, stuck in traffic jams or at work, is simply captive - they?re ours.? He also mentioned, with no regrets, two examples in which he and his colleagues made a concerted effort to change public opinion:

?Three broadcasters - Carmela Menashe, Shelly Yechimovich [now a Labor party Knesset Member - ed.], and I - pushed in every way possible the withdrawal from Lebanon towards 2000. In our newsroom, three of the editors had sons in Lebanon, and we took it upon ourselves as a mission - possibly not stated - to get the IDF out of Lebanon... I have no doubt that we promoted an agenda of withdrawal that was a matter of public dispute.?

At this point, Army Radio broadcaster Golan Yochpaz interrupted, ?In my opinion, that is just super-problematic - super-problematic.? Naveh did not miss a beat and said, ?Correct, I?m admitting it, I?m not apologizing, I?m just saying this is what happened. It came from our guts because of the boys in Lebanon, this is what we did and I?m not sorry... I am very proud that we had a part in getting of our sons out of Lebanon.?

Another important piece by Michael Oren, on the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. Ironically, it is Oren's revelation of Soviet disinformation that fueled the "Arabs didn't want war" myth somewhat:

Those who call the Six Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory are grossly mistaken, because they overlook the fact that Israel wasn't destroyed, historian Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

In an interview on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of war on June 5, 1967, Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.

Although this seems obvious to Israel sympathizers who hold to the traditional story of the Arabs' responsibility for the outbreak of war, the intervening decades have seen the promulgation of a myth that Israel was not really in danger.

"The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the crisis of 1967, and that it wasn't facing an existential threat, or facing any threat at all," said Oren, who is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at Jerusalem's Shalem Center and author of Six Days of War: June 1967. He noted that this was the premise of Tom Segev's book, 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East. "What's remarkable is that all the people alleging this - not one of them is working from Arabic sources. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it. It's almost as if Israel were living in a universe by itself. It's a deeply solipsistic approach to Middle East history."

What's behind the myth, Oren argued, is "a more pervasive, ongoing effort to show that Israel bears the bulk, if not the sole responsibility, for decades of conflict in the Arab world, and that the Arabs are the aggrieved party.

"It's an attempt to show that Israel basically planned the Six Day War in advance, knowing that it was going to expand territorially. My position is that it was just the opposite. Israel was taken aback by the crisis, unprepared for it and panicked, believing it faced a true existential threat, and did not plan to expand territory.

"It did everything it could to keep Jordan and Syria out of the war. My reading of the Arabic documents show that the Arabs had real plans to attack and destroy the State of Israel."

Oren said Israel's strategic relationship with the US began with the war.

"The United States, which previously regarded Israel as a friendly country but one that impaired its relations with the Arab world, suddenly realized that the Jewish state was in fact a regional superpower," he said. "The US subsequently forged an alliance with Israel that has remained ever since."

The first person to recognize that the war had dramatically changed the geopolitical balance in the Middle East, according to Oren, was US president Lyndon Johnson, who initiated a peace plan later embodied in UN Security Council Resolution 242.

"You can actually see 242 coming out of Johnson's head on June 5, 1967, including the notion that Israel would not have to return to the 1967 borders," Oren said. "Johnson is saying that particularly the West Bank border is not a defensible border; it's only eight miles across to the sea, and Israel should not have to go back to that border."

The war, Oren said, marked "the emergence for the first time of a US-Israel strategic relationship, as the Johnson administration wakes up on June 12, 1967, and says, 'Oh my God, we've got a regional superpower on our hands. We can't afford not to have it as an ally.'"

Here is a key left/right difference on Israel: the Right believes that Israel's strength builds the American alliance; the Left believes it is caused by moral virtue as expressed through victimhood.

Oren acknowledged that the Six Day War also led to the establishment of "controversial settlements" in the West Bank and Gaza, to the ongoing conflict over Jerusalem and the relentless debate over Palestinian statehood.

"And yet it was also the 1967 war that inaugurated the peace process," he said. "UN Resolution 242, enacted in its wake, remains the cornerstone of all negotiations and created the conditions for Palestinian self-rule. The current Arab League peace plan calls for 'full Israeli withdrawal' to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the 'road map' plan endorsed by the United States and much of the international community provides for the emergence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

"None of this would be possible if the West Bank and Gaza were still occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, as they were in 1967, and if the Arab world were still consumed with how best to make war, rather than peace, with Israel."

The war also "vastly enhanced" Israel's relationship with Jewish communities abroad, Oren said.

"Before the war, some of the leading Jewish organizations in the US were reserved, if not distant, in their relationship with Israel," he said. "But as Arab armies massed on Israel's borders, Diaspora Jews confronted the possibility of witnessing a second Holocaust within a single generation, and later reveled in the joy of Israel's success.

"Many were inspired by the reunification of the State of Israel with the biblical Land of Israel, with Bethlehem, Hebron and above all, Jerusalem.

"Contributions poured into Israel, enabling it to strengthen its economy and its ability to absorb new immigrants, and American Jewish organizations lobbied for its defense."

In the war itself, Oren said, Israel had high casualty rates, losing more than 700 soldiers, and "what is widely unknown is that we lost about 20 percent of our planes.

"It was not in any way a picnic, not a walkover, particularly not on the Jordanian-Syrian front," he said. "The territorial outcomes of the war were dramatic in the extreme; Israel almost quadrupled its territorial size."

Arab casualty rates are difficult to gauge, Oren said, but there were probably more than 15,000 dead and 10,000 captured, with about $2 billion of Soviet equipment destroyed on the field of battle.

As a quirky aside, Oren also noted that the Six Day War actually lasted seven days.

"Mount Hermon was actually taken on the seventh day of the Six Day War," he said.

Between 2001 and 2005, Iran harbored Saif al-Adel, al-Qaeda's third-ranking official and director of military operations, and he could still be operating there today, according to a report issued last month, "Al-Qaeda's (mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa," by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

The new disclosure suggests that Iran was more complicit with al-Qaeda than previously thought.

Speak for yourself, guys, about what you thought about the Axis of Evil. In intense study of the Middle East, I have discovered an esoteric Arab saying that may be relevant here: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."