Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Morality, Zionism and "illegal" outposts (Haaretz)

Hat tip to Israpundit.

By Nadav Shragai

"Unauthorized settlement outposts" have existed here for many years, ever since Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel resumed in the early 20th century.
"A small Jewish settlement among large Arab villages to the east, north and south," wrote Moshe Smilansky about the first settlement, Petah Tikva, in its early years. "Its houses are in one place, in Yehud. Its fields are elsewhere, and Arab fields are in between, and the ownership of the land is complicated."

Morally, there is no difference between the settlement of parts of the Land of Israel inhabited by Arabs in the early 20th century and settlements and outposts in parts of the Land of Israel inhabited by Arabs in the early 21st century. Either both are moral, or both are immoral. The real debate over the Model 2005 outposts is also unrelated to law and order. It is taking place between those who think there is nothing more moral, and those who think there is nothing more immoral.

Both settlement movements were the product of normative political Zionism. Settlements in the Negev and the Galilee were political, just as settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are political. And who knows this better than Ariel Sharon, who, before his opinions changed, urged his colleagues to "seize the hilltops"?

Carmiel and the hilltop communities in the north were established to Judaize the Galilee. Ariel and the outposts were established to Judaize the northern West Bank. Both were established as part of the great battle over the Land of Israel. The outposts were meant to fill in the empty spaces between established settlements, to prevent the Arabs from seizing control of them. Some of the lands on which the outposts were built were purchased, as in Migron and Givat Assaf. Once upon a time, this was called redeeming the land. Today, with the confusion characteristic of the spirit of the times, this is called "seizure."

It turns out that the World Zionist Organization's settlement division, a government agency, took its organizational and ideological affiliation with the WZO too seriously. Ron Shechner, the defense minister's advisor on settlements - an honest man, the salt of the earth, who was criticized in the Sasson report - also played a role. The ministers and the prime minister knew; some encouraged the process. The prime minister himself gave a detailed explanation of how to turn a barren outpost into a settlement. And he asked Einat Ehrlich of the outpost of Amona: "Why aren't you people building?"

That is how Israel was built. Even some of the "major settlement blocs" that Sharon (still?) wants to keep began their lives as unauthorized outposts. Even Ma'aleh Adumim, a large city, the largest settlement in the territories, began as an outpost with temporary housing. It is all a matter of definition - and who is doing the defining. If the outposts are neighborhoods of existing settlements, as they have been over the last 12 years, they are legal. But if they are "new settlements," which are not "adjacent," as determined by Sasson, they are "illegal."

The Sasson report is political and problematic, not only because it ignores Sharon and the rest of the political echelon, which approved and gave orders and knew, and not only because it ignores the legal system's responsibility for what happened, but also because it was born of a discriminatory approach.

Less well-publicized investigatory committees have in the past investigated illegal building in East Jerusalem and Israel's Arab sector. Their conclusions were unequivocal. When Haim Ramon served as minister for Jerusalem affairs under Ehud Barak, he informed the Knesset that more than 20,000 buildings had been built without a permit in East Jerusalem. Documents were seized at Orient House a few years ago that proved that this construction was not merely a response to the population's distress; it was also a political move. But nobody proposed destroying these buildings. On the contrary: Israel under Barak and Shimon Peres and Ramon negotiated with the Palestinian Authority over their retroactive legalization.

Nor did anyone suggest indicting successive mayors of Jerusalem or interior ministers for having deliberately turned a blind eye to this construction, sometimes for political reasons. There is also widespread illegal building in the Arab and Bedouin areas of Israel. The state accepts this, because reality - which includes the battle over this disputed land - is stronger.

The story of the outposts, just like the story of the construction in East Jerusalem, is a story about seeking to alter the status quo. But the outposts are an action of the old Zionist variety, which is now gradually being made illegal - first by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, then by Talia Sasson, and the High Court of Justice will doubtless follow in their footsteps.

In essence, the state is currently redefining Zionism as a movement that retreats under pressure, terrorism and threats, as a movement that gives up its dreams. The naive residents of the outposts are out of step. Nevertheless, they understand quite well what many others, perhaps even in the erring and confused Likud Party, will understand later: Gush Katif, the northern West Bank and the outposts are only the beginning. Sharon and his advisor Dov Weisglass - who, together with their new partners, Yossi Beilin and the Arab parties, are tearing the land and the nation apart - are already planning to uproot tens of thousands of additional Jews from the West Bank. And in secret, they are even talking about Jerusalem.

Another good-will gesture gone bad

But we thought that the Palestinians would be so thankful to Israel for freeing prisoners!

A Palestinian resident of Kalkilya, Naim Hable, who was freed in the release of 500 Palestinian security prisoners on February 21, was caught along with two others with 102 M-16 assault rifle bullets, a knife and stolen property at a checkpoint outside Kalkilya on Monday.

Abbas planning to release another murderer

More evidence that wearing a suit does not make you a partner for peace.

A Palestinian militant accused of ordering the killing of an Israeli minister will be freed from jail in Jericho when Israel pulls back from the city this week, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday.

But Israel said it had not agreed with the Palestinians that Ahmed Saadat or any of the other three it accuses in the 2001 assassination could be released after the redeployment around the West Bank city set for Wednesday.

Abbas told Reuters by telephone that Saadat and Fuad al-Shobaki, an aide to the late Yasser Arafat accused of arms smuggling, would be released after Israeli troops left.

'Saadat and Shobaki will be released from prison in Jericho when Jericho is handed over to the Palestinians,' Abbas said.

'The two men were placed by Israel on the wanted list and the agreement we have with Israel is that once it leaves our cities, the fugitives will have immunity. Therefore, they will be freed, and the Israelis are aware of this.'

But Israel's Defense Ministry said Israel and the Palestinians agreed at a meeting on Monday where they discussed the pullback from Jericho 'that the murderers of (Tourism Minister) Rehavam Zeevi will remain in prison.'

Report: PA will call off "collaborator" executions

There has been some muted criticism of these executions, I'm glad to see that they may have had an effect.

Knesset Member Michael Eitan (Likud) said this evening that sources in the Palestinian Authority (PA) have informed him that the PA will cancel the scheduled executions of 15 Arabs charged with helping Israel prevent terror or track down terrorists.

A complaint to police charging incitement recently was filed following a Moslem cleric's religious ruling that anyone who helps Israel to prevent terror attacks must be killed. Human rights and left-wing organizations recently have declared their opposition to the death sentences.

For what has been described as 'the first time in living memory,' a Jewish house of worship in Switzerland has been set afire. Less than a kilometer away, a Jewish-owned shop was also set alight.

Both attacks, which local police said were connected, occurred last night in the southern Swiss city of Lugano. Elio Bollag, the president of Lugano's Jewish community, described the incidents as 'anti-Semitic.' No one was hurt in either attack, but the synagogue's library was almost totally destroyed in the firebombing.

It was reported in the name of Jewish leaders in Switzerland that this was the first time in living memory that a Swiss synagogue has been attacked in this manner.
Previous anti-Semitic vandalism has included only graffiti daubed on walls.

Lugano apparently has a strong Arab population. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported just yesterday that tourism officials in the city have published a brochure in Arabic omitting references to aspects of European life that could offend Muslims. A comparison of the Italian, French or German versions of the Lugano tourist board's brochure with the Arabic-language text reveals that in the latter, pictures of churches are missing. In addition, references to the local variety of pork-based salami have been replaced with cheeses from the Italian-speaking region.

In June 2001, Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, 71, of Bnei Brak was murdered in Zurich. The murderer, who rendered 11 children orphans, was never caught.

Switzerland's Jewish population has remained steady at approximately 20,000 for several decades.

Hat tip to Jewlicious.

Hezbollah has a history of killing Americans.

We are now approaching the 20th anniversaries of the murders of Robert Dean Stethem and William Buckley. The CIA station chief in Beirut, Buckley was beheaded by the Hezbollah on June 3, 1985. Stethem, a Navy diver, was murdered by Hezbollah the same month aboard hijacked TWA Flight 847. An eyewitness described Stethem's killing:

"They singled him out because he was American and a soldier. . . . They dragged him out of his seat, tied his hands and then beat him up. . . . They kicked him in the face and knee caps and kept kicking him until they had broken all his ribs. Then they tried to knock him out with the butt of a pistol--they kept hitting him over the head but he was very strong and they couldn't knock him out. . . . Later they dragged him away and I believe shot him."

So this is hezb Allah, the Party of God, the spear of Iranian influence in the Levant and chief local enforcer of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Last week, it organized a counter-demonstration in Beirut on Syria's behalf, following weeks of anti-Syrian protests that had led to the resignation of puppet Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami. Now Mr. Karami has been renamed to his post by puppet Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a move the Lebanese opposition wasted no time in denouncing. The dividing line in Lebanon, separating a pro-independence coalition of Druze, Christians and Sunnis from the pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah, has now become clear.

As have the stakes. The size of Tuesday's rally has been exaggerated: Our Lebanese sources tell us there were around 350,000 protestors, not 500,000 as commonly cited, and that many of them were bused in direct from Damascus. Also notable was that while the demonstrators waved Lebanese flags, they mounted Syrian President Bashar Assad's portrait. But all this only underscores how much rides on the question of Lebanon's independence--and how far Syria, Hezbollah and Iran may go to preserve the status quo.

For Syria the stakes are economic and political. An estimated one million Syrian guest workers reside in Lebanon and remit their wages to relatives back home, and Syrian officials have plundered much of the international aid Lebanon received over the past decade. The Bekaa Valley also serves as a lucrative transit point for narcotics and other contraband. Without Lebanon, Syria's economy might collapse.

So, too, might the Assad dynasty: Bashar's grip on power is far less sure than his father's, and the loss of prestige that a withdrawal from Lebanon would entail might well be politically fatal to him and the minority Allawite clique through which he rules.

For Iran the stakes are strategic. Its elite Revolutionary Guards operate terrorist training camps in the Bekaa. Iran has also placed upward of 10,000 missiles in Lebanon, including the medium-range Fajr-5 rocket, bringing half of Israel within their reach. It thus maintains the option of igniting a new Mideast war at any moment, as well as a hedge against the possibility of a pre-emptive Israeli strike on its nuclear installations. Yet if Syria withdraws, no pro-independence Lebanese government will indulge Iran's military presence. The Lebanese have had enough of allowing their territory to serve, Belgium-like, as the battleground of choice for foreign powers.

For Hezbollah, the stakes are greater still. During the years when Israel maintained a security zone in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah could present himself as a patriot fighting occupation. But Israel removed its forces from Lebanon in 2000, and now Nasrallah's support for Syrian occupation exposes a different set of motives: not patriotic, but Jihadist. And the last thing the Jihadists want is for Lebanon to again become a flourishing, pluralist, cosmopolitan Arab state.

Syria's withdrawal would likely precipitate a Lebanese decision to enforce U.N. Resolution 520, which requires the Lebanese Army to patrol its border with Israel, a function now performed by Hezbollah. At length, it could lead to the disbanding of Hezbollah as an independent militia, though its terrorist wings would likely continue to operate.

How does the Bush Administration manage the crisis? There are reports that it is considering a softer line toward Hezbollah in the hopes of encouraging its acquiescence to a Syrian withdrawal. But we are confident President Bush would not lightly betray the memory of Stethem, Buckley or the hundreds of other Americans killed by Hezbollah over the years.

The latest news is that the young Assad promised U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen on Saturday that Syria will withdraw completely. This is promising. But given the stakes all around, skepticism is in order and world pressure will have to continue. The help of the French here has been welcome, due in part to Jacques Chirac's personal ties to the murdered Lebanese patriot Rafik Hariri. However, France still declines to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

The Cedar Revolution began as an outburst of rage against Hariri's killers. It has been sustained by what former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross calls "the absence of fear"--the belief that the Syrian government will not do in Beirut's Martyrs' Square what the Chinese did in Beijing's Tiananmen. A joint Franco-American declaration that a crackdown in Lebanon would have serious consequences for Damascus would help give all Lebanese patriots the courage to move forward.

Rainbow over Har Homa

Rainbow over Har Homa
Hat tip to Callie

The forgotten Middle East refugees

I'm mildly surprised that this was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

by Semha Alwaya

In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.

Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.

I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.

There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.

What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?

When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.

The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."

In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.

Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."

Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.

Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.

In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.

All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.

Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.

Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.

Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.

Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (www.jimena-justice.org).

Saudi spokeperson condemns terror - except against Israel

No surprise here, but the idea of the Saudi official running away from a press conference rather than show himself to be a hypocrite and liar is priceless.

Adel al-Jubeir is the national spokesperson of Saudi Arabia, the face that the kingdom likes to show in the West. In contrast with most Saudi Arabians, he is clean-shaven, and his English is polished and almost unaccented. If he has any traditional Arab clothes, he hides them in the closet in his house in Saudi Arabia. In Western countries, he is careful to appear only in expensive, quietly fashionable, and conservative suits, which, together with his receding hairline, lend him the appearance of a senior accountant.

He speaks softly, but in tones of authority, backed by his senior status in Saudi Arabia foreign affairs adviser to Prince Abdullah, the acting ruler of the kingdom. His voice is the voice of his masters, dubbed for Western ears, and that is the source of his power. He is said to be the best Arab spokesperson today.

On Tuesday, at a press conference at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, al-Jubeir launched a campaign to improve Saudi Arabia’s image in the US, under the slogan, “We’re fighting terrorism.” The fact that someone of his stature has been assigned to orchestrate the campaign shows how Saudi Arabia’s image has deteriorated in US public opinion.

Now, however, al-Jubeir wants Americans to believe that Saudia Arabia is remaking itself that what it has been is not what it will be. As he puts it, "The bottom line is that no Saudi citizen will be able to escape the clear message that intolerance, violence and extremism are not part of our Islamic faith, or of Saudi culture or traditions.”

Asked how Saudi Arabia defines terrorism, al-Jubeir said that the kingdom had adopted the UN’s formula, which defines terrorism as an act that causes victims among civilians, “anywhere.”

"Globes’" reporter, who identified himself as an Israeli journalist, wanted to hear how Saudi Arabia defines Palestinian organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other like them. Are these terrorist organizations? Does Saudi Arabia support them, and will it continue to do so? The reporter also asked whether the Saudi Arabian royal family would agree to diplomatic relations with Israel after implementation of the disengagement plan.

Without blinking, al-Jubeir answered, “Let’s wait a minute with that. Let’s finish with the subject of terrorism.” He turned to two other reporters, unexpectedly stopped the press conference, and quickly left the room. Several people, apparently employees of the Saudi Arabian embassy, physically blocked access to the retreating spokesperson. A group of Arab journalists began to shout, “What about the briefing in Arabic that you promised us?”, but al-Jubeir was already out of hearing.

FrontPage magazine - Sharansky's Straight Talk

I've said it before - Democracy and freedom are two different things, and freedom is a prerequisite for true democracy. Rewarding those who pretend to have a democracy when in fact they have no real freedoms is counterproductive.

JERUSALEM -- Last week Israel's minister for Diaspora affairs, Natan Sharansky, sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon requesting that he demand that the Palestinian Authority stop executions of suspected "collaborators" with Israel. Such "collaborators" are generally Palestinians who were "convicted" by the PA's controversial "state security" courts of tipping off Israel about impending terror attacks, or about the whereabouts of terrorists who were planning them. In other words, their "crime" is to assist Israel in preventing the mass murder of civilians.

Sharansky's letter to Sharon pointed to a contradiction in Palestinian behavior: "It is unacceptable that the PA demands the release of terrorists from our jails, and we respond affirmatively because of the hope for an opening to peace, while at the very same time the PA is about to commit state executions of people accused of helping Israel thwart terror.... It is impossible to build a peace process based on blood."

Last February 16, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas already ratified death sentences against three "collaborators." And last week, the PA's chief mufti Sheikh Akrima Sabri announced that he was reviewing fifteen more death sentences at Abbas's request -- about half of the cases involving alleged "collaborators." Reports say the mufti has already recommended that five of the prisoners be executed, though whether they were "collaborators" is not yet clear.

These days Sharansky's name is associated with an exuberant optimism about the Middle East, and about all peoples' ability to create well-functioning democracies if given a chance. President Bush has sung the praises of his book The Case for Democracy and declared it to be part of his "presidential DNA." Events like the Iraqi people's insistence on voting despite a threat of terror, and the Lebanese people's agitation against the Syrian occupation of their country, are dramatic and hope-inspiring and seem to bear out Sharansky's -- and Bush's -- message.

What can get lost in the excitement, though, is that Sharansky is not an uncritical optimist -- far from it. If his overall message has not had much resonance in Israel itself, it's because Israelis have lived in the Middle East a long time and are harder to persuade that it's changing for the better. And Sharansky himself, despite his own optimism on the philosophical level, is actually -- a side of him much less known in America and the West -- among the more cautious and realistic Israelis when it comes to the facts on the ground.

INDEED, WHILE ABBAS'S election as PA chairman last January is commonly mentioned in the same breath with the Iraqi elections and, now, the Lebanese struggle (as well as President Mubarak's -- as yet untested -- promise of genuine multicandidate elections next September), the party over Abbas's "election" was one Sharansky did not join. Telling the Jerusalem Post last January 10 that this election was not "truly free," he explained: "Free elections can only take place in societies in which people are free to express their opinions without fear. This is not the case in the Palestinian Authority....there was no other candidate [than Abbas]..."

He went on to say it was a "shame" that, as Post reporter Herb Keinon paraphrased him, "the world uses the same words for completely different types of processes in different governmental systems, thereby making moral equivalencies that don't exist." Sharansky added in his own words: "This election can be the beginning of the democratic process only if we don't have illusions that democracy is already there, and that all we have to do now is give them independence. If that is what we do, then we will find that we have given independence not to a democratic state, but to a terrorist state."

Sharansky's unflinching scrutiny of the Palestinian Authority continued on January 25 when he drew attention to a detailed report on its promotion of anti-Semitism and genocide in its official media. Compiled by Palestinian Media Watch and called "Kill a Jew -- Go to Heaven," Sharansky summarized the study to reporters: "As in Nazi Germany, there is an entire 'culture of hatred' in Palestinian society today, from textbooks to crossword puzzles, from day camps to music videos. Calling for the murder of Jews, as Jews, is the end result."

(As shown by the Palestinian media's lionization of the recent suicide bomber at a Tel Aviv club, any improvement since then is still very partial. See also a report by Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.)

ANOTHER ISSUE WHERE Sharansky dissents from the prevalent -- including the Bush administration's -- perception is Israel's disengagement plan. Last February 20 when the Israeli cabinet (over one-third of which is now members of the dovish Labor Party) voted 17-5 in favor of the plan, Sharansky was one of those five nays. Indeed, if President Bush wanted to learn Sharansky's view on this subject, he didn't need to look far; on page 262 of The Case for Democracy, Sharansky writes:

"I...opposed...Sharon's disengagement plan because I did not accept the premise that there was no potential Palestinian partner and no hope for peace.... In my view, one-sided Israeli concessions would only strengthen the forces of terror and fear within Palestinian society, making it even more difficult to promote positive change and decreasing the chances of a viable partner for peace emerging in the future."

And just a few pages earlier, Bush presumably read criticisms by Sharansky that would have hit still closer to home, since they concerned Bush's own Road Map:

"The Road Map was the voice of Bush but the hands of Oslo.... The Road Map was effectively calling for a quick game of musical chairs among the Palestinian leadership, turning reform efforts into a farce.... In hindsight, the Bush administration's support for the Road Map seems even more shocking.... when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rhetoric and the policy of his administration diverged.... the Road Map will not bring to fruition the ideas the present articulated on June 24 [2002]. It will not bring genuine freedom to the Palestinians, and therefore will not bring genuine peace."

There is a disconnect, it seems, between the Sharansky whom President Bush and many of his fervent supporters have adopted as a sort of standard-bearer, and the Sharansky who is much more reserved and cautious when it comes to the details of reaching democracy and peace, but who seems to be a victim of neglect. Some would say Sharansky himself is partially to blame for this in promoting an overly sanguine message in places far from the harsh sands of the Middle East. If genuine elections in Iraq and genuine popular agitation in Lebanon justify a measured optimism, phony elections in the PA followed by continued incitement and terrorism do not, and are reason to rethink political plans rather than accelerate them.

Perhaps the "other Sharansky" needs to make himself better seen and heard, even if it means detracting from the more cheerful image.

Credit where credit is due: Kofi Annan speaks against real terrorism

His definition of terror is accurate, the reaction from the Arab League was muted.

And the chances that the UN would actually do anything to truly fight terror is next to nothing. But nevertheless, this is a welcome speech from an otherwise corrupt and counterproductive shill for an irrelevant institution.

In a bid to reinvigorate the U.N.'s role in international security, Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday proposed a global treaty against terrorism at a summit in Madrid.

In a keynote speech, Annan called terrorism an attack on the U.N.'s "core values" and said the world body must be at the forefront of the battle against it.

At the top of the U.N.'s agenda is an international treaty outlawing terrorism, Annan said, and the world must stop wrangling over the definition of the term and start fighting the threat. A comprehensive convention against terrorism has been stalled by governments' disagreement on who should be considered a terrorist. Some states want to exempt so-called freedom fighters and people resisting occupation, for example.

Annan attempted to cut through the debate by endorsing the view that terrorism is any action intended to cause death or serious harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidation.

"I believe this proposal has clear moral force, and I strongly urge world leaders to unite behind it," he said.

During a discussion, Amr Moussa, leader of the Arab League and a member of the U.N. panel commissioned by Annan, did not reject the definition but argued for a greater focus on the root causes of extremist violence, such as poverty, injustice and occupation.

Annan offered "five Ds" in the campaign against terrorism: Dissuade disaffected groups from using terrorism to achieve their goals, deny terrorists the means to carry out their attacks, deter states from supporting terrorists, develop prevention strategies and defend human rights in the struggle against terrorism.

He warned that the U.N. would be tough on terrorists and those who harbored them.

"All states must know that if they give any kind of support to terrorists, the [Security] Council will not hesitate to use coercive measures against them," Annan said.