Kislev: The Month of Dreams

Our perspective of a situation can actually change our reality.

By Yehoshua Leib Ha Kohen


It is empowering to recognize that it is up to us to determine our experiences. We may not be able to change facts or situations, but we can absolutely change how we view them. We determine if we want to see something as a punishment or a challenge, an annoyance or an opportunity.


We are in the month of Kislev, the month of dreams. All the dreams in the Torah are read in the Torah portions during this month. There is a lot of discussion in Jewish thought as to the meaning of our dreams and how much weight we should give to them. And one of the interpretations is that it is up to us to interpret our dreams and spin them in a positive way.


We are taught that hakol holech acharei hapeh, that everything follows the mouth. This means that what we say creates reality. This is one of the important ways in which we “…are created in His Image.” We can create something by calling forth. If you think positively, you will speak positively and if you speak positively you are more likely to act positively and through these actions, bring HaShem’s Light into the world. This is our job as all points’ maintainers and ‘tikkunists’ (cosmic repairmen) of the ‘Olam’ world (all worlds.)


So let’s ensure especially in this month of dreams, that we have an outlook that creates the positive actions toward the life we all want to be living. And let’s start taking our positive dreams, the ones we have when are asleep and those when we are awake, and make them come true!


Yehoshua Leib ha Kohen is a Religious Zionist whose vision is to speak to all peoples, as the Torah commands - 'To be a Lamp unto Their Feet.' He is a Ph.D. psychologist and brings messages to guide and inspire the understanding of the wisdom of G-d's Light and the Way to Him and a joyous faith-based life.

Two Is One

The Torah tells us that Adam was created as a unibeing. One side of his head had a male face and the other side a female face. When G-d saw Adam alone in the garden it was the first time he uttered the words “Lo tov” “Not good.” It is not good for man to be alone. And He took one ‘side’ of Adam out of him and separated Chava. He called her an ‘ezer-kenegdo’ which means a ‘help-mate-over-against-you’ which our Sages, of Blessed memory, have explained thus: If the man is doing what he should in following G-d’s ways, his wife will be a help-mate. Meaning she will support him, help him and stand by his side.

But if, on the other hand, he is not following the ways that G-d has shown him, not living a life based upon the three pillars of Torah; That is - Charity =Giving of one’s Self, one’s Money, and one’s compassion. Service =Prayer, Mitzvot and Study of Torah, and bringing this into his life and his community, and practicing these actions for his wife and children, then she shall be ‘over-against’ him to bring him back on track. We see good women doing just this in and outside of the religious community. This is the way G-d created women to be.

We learn from this many things. First that it is the duty of a man to provide for his wife as it says in the Jewish marriage contract (Ketuba.) This consists of two kinds of provision: The first is material provision, food, clothing and shelter. The second is spiritual provision. He must go out and seek knowledge of Torah and especially the parts of Torah that he can bring to his wife, to inspire her, and in turn that she can teach them to, and inspire her children. The duty of a woman is to join with and receive from the man and perform the necessary actions with the intentions to transform what he has brought. These are the functions that are natural to a woman.

What do I mean that are natural to a woman? There are functions that are hard-wired biologically, hormonally and chemically in a man and in a woman. They are different, corresponding and complimentary. The simplest and analogical (meaning it obtains on all levels) example is the function of each during the act of physical union.

During this act the man is erect and thrusting. The woman is receptive and accommodating. At the culmination of the act, the man deposits a substance inside of the woman. She then, in receiving this substance, has all the necessary functions and apparatus for this substance to find its way to her particular receptor cell and join with it, in much the same way as how Adam and Chava were joined at their creation. We start as a unibeing too.

In the ‘Image-of-G-d’ they begin the process of co-creation with Him, of another human being. But it is not just this joining function that the woman provides, but the entire magically-mystical and biologically perfect environment needed for this new life to grow and develop. She spends nine very important months nurturing and tending this being in her belly.

During this precious time it is the function of the man to protect her from any outside threats or stresses, so that her process of creation may thrive. He must also provide even more at this time. He needs to provide for her nourishment physically, emotionally and spiritually. She feeds the child inside and he feeds her.

This creational process, in its functions is replicated as a man and wife create their home and family. The Torah says that the only times a man may leave his wife is to go in search of parnassah (livelihood) or in search of spiritual knowledge (Torah.) His function is to acquire these, bring both of these and to deposit them unto his wife. The raw materials of food he brings and she transforms this into a meal. The spiritual substance he brings, she transforms into stories and education for their children. And thus they each perform their functions.

Look deeply and you will see that the Torah does not know of man and woman as separate beings. Each act is performed once through a single body—a body that in our world appears as two, but which the Torah sees as one. On the contrary, for both to do the same mitzvah would be redundant, for why should one half of the body do what the other has already done?

They are a single whole, whether they know of and have found one another yet or not. Where does a woman put on tefillin or wear tzitzit? On the body of her male counterpart.


Yehoshua Leib ha Kohen is a Religious Zionist whose vision is to speak to all peoples, as the Torah commands - 'To be a Lamp unto Their Feet.' He is a Ph.D. psychologist and brings messages to guide and inspire the understanding of the wisdom of G-d's Light and the Way to Him and a joyous faith-based life.

The Sanctity of Human Life

By Yehoshua Leib ha Kohen October 18, 2009

One of the great teachings of Judaism is that human life is sacred. The biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve "in the Divine image" (Genesis 1:26-27) introduces the idea that human life is special.

It is true that from this perspective all existence is special. Light, sea, dry land; sun, moon, and stars; vegetation, fish, birds, animals, insects — all is the amazing handiwork of the Creator. Yet there is still something extra about a human being.
One difference we see in the account of creation is that while all other living creatures were created in large numbers, the first human being, Adam, was created alone. Adam combined within himself Eve. G-d divided them and they produced offspring who eventually filled the whole world. It is further stated in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a) that the fact that Adam was created alone is to teach us the significance of each individual: "Anyone who destroys a human life is considered as if he had destroyed an entire world, and anyone who preserves a human life is considered to have preserved an entire world."

The unique aspect of human beings is of course our power of free will. Everything else that G-d created is simply subject to His built-in program, what we call “nature.” The flower grows in the sunlight; the bird of prey swoops on a field-mouse. The human being too has an inner “nature” which in some ways is not very different from that of an animal, desiring the same kinds of things: food, territory, satisfaction of instinctive passion. But a human being is also confronted with Divine commands, a higher teaching and free will which impel and command him toward ‘good’ and transform his or her animal nature. The choice that each person has, whether to follow his higher aspirations or one’s simple animal nature, gives us our identity as human beings.

As such, our actions have an immense effect. Maimonides the tenth century philosopher and sage presents the idea(Laws of Repentance 3:4) that we should consider the entire world to be equally balanced between good and bad, and that each of us as an individual is equally balanced between good and bad. Then, it is clear that if one does one good action, one tips the balance for oneself and for the entire world to the side of good, “bringing salvation to the world.”
These mysterious creations, human men and women, are important. Because man was created alone the message is that every single individual existentially stands alone and at the same time, acts as a representative of all mankind. Each life is precious and cannot be thrown away. Murder is forbidden for both Jew and non-Jew.

However, if a person tragically is trying to destroy others, and if despotic leaders persuade their people to engage in and to support acts of destruction, one must defend oneself, even preemptively. “If someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first,” says the Talmud (Sanhedrin 72a). The Lubavitcher Rebbe adds that your clear readiness to defend yourself could save your enemy’s life as well as your own.

Today, in Israel and elsewhere, we, the Jewish people, are under threat. So too is the concept of the sanctity of life, and indeed civilization as we know it. For the sake of humanity, we must defend ourselves. If we at least recognize this truth, then hopefully others will too. Recognizing the sanctity of life and being ready to do something to preserve it is an important step towards living up to our role as Jews and as human beings, with the power to tip the balance for a world of good.


Yehoshua Leib ha Kohen is a Religious Zionist whose vision is to speak to all peoples, as the Torah commands - 'To be a Lamp unto Their Feet.' He is a Ph.D. psychologist and brings messages to guide and inspire the understanding of the wisdom of G-d's Light and the Way to Him and a joyous faith-based life.

Jewish Justice or no Justice

By Moshe Feiglin27 Elul, 5769 (Sept. 16, '09)

"Today the world is being born, today all the creations of all the worlds stand in judgment." "And it will be determined for the countries, which for the sword and which for peace."
(Rosh Hashanah liturgy)

As we enter the gates of our synagogues this Rosh Hashanah, it looks like we will also be entering the gates of the International Court in The Hague. This is the inevitable destination of a nation that insists on detaching its Judaism from its national life. If we are not interested in Jewish justice in Jerusalem, we will be treated to Western, Christian justice in Spain, England or The Hague.

When a Swedish newspaper reported that Israel's soldiers slaughtered "Palestinians" so that they could sell their organs, we didn't believe that anybody would take the bizarre story seriously. But it is actually making quite a few waves. Soon an international investigative committee will be established to reveal "the truth." After all, such serious charges must be investigated thoroughly. And who, if not the judges of enlightened Europe, are more worthy to reveal the truth with clarity and complete objectivity?

Blood libels are nothing new. There is nothing more logical about selling "Palestinian" organs than about slaughtering Christian children to use their blood to bake matzahs. So how do these absurd claims become legitimate? It is not really a matter of legal fact. It is a matter of the location of the judicial body.

When a Jew is in exile and the Christians are the judicial authority, the blood libel becomes a possibility. The question is not if the Jews slaughtered Christian children to use their blood to bake matzahs. The question is if the issue is justiciable. In the Christian courts of the Middle Ages the answer was affirmative. Likewise, in the current organ harvest story, there is no question of revealing the truth. The only question is if the judicial tribunal that we have accepted upon ourselves will decide to judge these ludicrous accusations. Then – in the days of the blood libels, the Jews did not have the option to choose which judicial authority they would accept. They lived under the dominion of the judicial authority that considered these libels fact. But today, the Jews willingly surrendered their own judicial authority. They chose, of their own free will, to forgo their ethical sovereignty and to deposit it in the hands of the Western world and the International Court in The Hauge.

"What is the problem in Azoun?" my frustrated neighbor asked me the other day, after a steady stream of rocks and firebombs has continued to emanate from this 'peaceful' Arab village. "They bring in an entire IDF division and they still can't stop the violence? Wouldn't it just be easier to cut off their electricity?" Technically, my neighbor is right. We could easily leave the reserve soldiers at home and enjoy quiet nonetheless. But the State of Israel and the IDF are fettered to the Christian judicial dominion that we have brought upon ourselves.

As the Beijing Olympics approached, I wrote that the State of Israel, as the representative of the Jewish Nation, should boycott the games. The Chinese have established concentration camps for opponents of the radically leftist regime there. Next to the concentration camps there are "medical centers" that specialize in supplying human organs by order. No lines, no problems finding the proper match, any organ can be supplied; kidneys, corneas, hearts – the organs are always fresh and plentiful. They belong to "criminals" who have been executed but who, at the last minute repented and donated their organs as an act of atonement. How noble. In reality, the organs are harvested while the victims are still alive. That is probably the best way to keep them fresh.

I claimed that Israel - the representative of the Jewish Nation, the People of the Book who herald the ethics of the prophets – must see itself as a lighthouse of morality for the world and should not lend legitimacy to the regime of horrors in China by attending the Olympic Games. The reactions that I received were more or less: "America, England and France are not boycotting the Olympics, and you expect Israel to boycott them?" In other words, it cannot be that we bear a more fundamentally ethical insight than the Western world. Furthermore, we are so small, so who are we to boycott the Chinese giant if the US and Europe are not doing so? In other words, morality is measured in square kilometers and the size of a country's population and army.

When charges of organ harvesting by Israel's soldiers began to emerge, I thought that it was quite "measure for measure." We rejected our universal role and refused to take a stand on the Chinese organ harvesting issue, and got it right back in our own collective face.

We are the children of the King. We do not have the privilege to stand passively at the sidelines and to be "just another country." We have only two options: One is to judge the world according to Jewish justice – the ethical justice of the prophets that must be restored to Jerusalem. The second option is, right after Rosh Hashanah, to re-lock our universal responsibility safely in our synagogues and to leave Judaism strictly in the domain of religion. If that is the option we choose, we will not be judging the world according to the ethics of the prophets. The world will judge us – in the International Court in The Hague.

Obama prepares to throw Israel under the bus

Jewish World Review May 7, 2009 / 13 Iyar 5769
By Melanie Phillips

A sobering view by one of Britain's most respected columnists

Read and forward via our "e-mail a friend feature"
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

Barak Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, and he’s getting American Jews to do his dirty work for him. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly told the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday that efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. General James Jones, National Security Adviser to Obama, reportedly told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel. Ha’aretz reports:
Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine ‘a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.

Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-coordinating the crime. As I said here months ago, the appointment of Jones and the elevation of his post of National Security Adviser at the expense of the Secretary of State was all part of the strategy to centralize power in the hands of those who want to do Israel harm.

On Tuesday, Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear program stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.

The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.

It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that America is behaving as if it is Israel which is holding up a peace settlement when Israel has made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90 per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year -- only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all and is not being pressured to do so.

It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that America is now choosing to beat up. In any sane world, one might think the Americans would be piling the pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their genocidal ambitions against Israel, to stop teaching and training their children to hate and kill Jews, to adhere to the primary requirement in the Road Map that they must dismantle their infrastructure of violence as the first step in the peace process; one might think, indeed, that they would view Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state to be the main impediment to peace.
But no. The repeated professions that America will never jeopardize Israel’s security are stomach churning when Obama is actually blaming Israel for measures it has taken to safeguard its security – the settlements were always first and foremost a security measure, and the travel restrictions are there solely to prevent more Israelis being murdered – and trying to force it to abandon them. Now comes further news that Obama will also try to force Israel to give up its nuclear weapons – which it only has as a last ditch insurance against the attempt to annihilate it to which several billion Arabs remain pledged.

Of course Obama doesn’t care that Hamas would run any Palestinian state. Of course he doesn’t care that Israel would be unable to defend itself against such a terrorist state. Because he regards Israel as at best totally expendable, and at worst as a running sore on the world's body politic that has to be purged altogether. His administration is proceeding on the entirely false analysis that a state of Palestine is the solution to the Middle East impasse and the route to peace in the region. What that state will look like or do is something to which at best the administration's collective mind is shut and at worst makes it a potential cynical accomplice to the unconscionable. So Israel is to be forced out of the West Bank. Far from building a coalition against Iran, Obama is thus doing Iran’s work for it.

None of this, however, should come as the slightest surprise to anyone who paid any attention to Obama’s background, associations and friendships before he became President and to the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.

American Jews, meanwhile, are reacting as predicted – with a total absence of spine. As IsraelMatzav reports, AIPAC was sending delegates to visit Congress to 'convince' Representatives and Senators to sign a petition calling for a two-state solution. Inspired! Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardize their standing with America’s elite.

But the ordinary American people are a different matter. They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.

This is shaping up to be the biggest crisis in relations between Israel and America since the foundation of Israel six decades ago. Those who hate Israel and the Jews will be gloating. This after all is precisely what they hoped Obama would do. To any decent person looking on aghast, this is where the moral sickness of the west reaches the critical care ward.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here. [of course please feel free to leave comments on my blogsite also!]

JWR contributor Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author of, most recently, Londonistan. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. She was awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996

1922 Congressional Stand on the Establishment of a Jewish State

The U.S. 2009: "Two-state solution is the only solution"
Eli E. Hertz - Apr 20, 2009

The current U.S. administration that is so persistent on the need to honor `past agreements` seems to ignore unwavering support for reconstructing the Jewish national home in Palestine by our past presidents and both Houses of Congress:

U.S. Resolution 322: A joint resolution of both Houses of Congress unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine - anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. June 30, 1922.

President Woodrow Wilson: "I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth." March 3, 1919.

President Warren G. Harding: Signed the Lodge-Fish joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. September 21, 1922.

President Calvin Coolidge: Signed the Convention between the United States and Great Britain in respect to British rights in Palestine. The convention was ratified by the Senate on February 20, 1925, and by the president on March 2, 1925. The Convention was proclaimed on December 5, 1925­. The convention`s text incorporated the "Mandate for Palestine " text, including the preamble. By doing so, the U.S. government recognized and confirmed the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine - anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – as is spelled out in the Mandate document.

The following text was selected from the U.S. Congressional Record (1922) and exhibits the powerful sense of the Member of Congress in favor of reestablishing the Jewish national home in Palestine:

"Palestine of to-day, the land we now know as Pales­tine, was peopled by the Jews from the dawn of history until the Roman era. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They were driven from it by force by the relentless Roman military machine and for centuries prevented from re­turning.

"At different periods various alien people succeeded them, but the Jewish race had left an indelible impress upon the land. To-day it is a Jewish country. Every name, every landmark, every monument, and every trace of whatever civili­zation remaining there is still Jewish. And it has ever since remained a hope, a longing, as expressed in their prayers for these nearly 2,000 years. No other people has ever claimed Palestine as their national home. No other people has ever shown an aptitude or indicated a genuine desire to make it their homeland. The land has been ruled by foreigners. Only since the beginning of the modern Zionist effort may it be said that a creative, cultural, and economic force has entered Pales­tine . The Jewish Nation was forced from its natural home. It did not go because it wanted to. A perusal of Jewish history, a reading of Josephus, will convince the most skeptical that the grandest fight that was ever put up against an enemy was put up by the Jew. He never thought of leaving Palestine.

"But he was driven out. But did he, when driven out, give up his hope of getting back? Jewish history and Jewish literature give the answer to that question. The Jew even has a fast day devoted to the day of destruction of the Jewish homeland. Never throughout history did they give up hope of returning there. I am told that 90 per cent of the Jews to-day are praying for the return of the Jewish people to its own home. The best minds among them believe in the necessity of reestablishing the Jewish land. To my mind there is something prophetic in the fact that during the ages no other nation has taken over Pales­tine and held it in the sense of a homeland; and there is some­thing providential in the fact that for 1,800 years it has remained in desolation as if waiting for the return of its people."

U.S. Congressional Records 9801 (1922)

Eli Hertz is a recognized pioneer in the personal computer industry, Founder, CEO and President of Hertz Technology Group.
Hertz has authored and published many industry-related articles and books. Most notably Now That I Have OS/2 2.0 On My Computer, What Do I Do Next? (Co-authored 1994, Van Reinhold(70,000 copies sold). In 1982 he started Hertz Computer Corporation, which has won numerous awards for design excellence, outstanding performance and exceptional support from such prestigious industry publications as BYTE Magazine, PC Magazine, PC World and Computer Buyer’s Guide.
Hertz received an MBA and BS in Management Science and Economics from Long Island University, and an advanced degree in Manpower Management from the Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology.
Prior to his arrival in the U.S. in 1974, Hertz served nearly seven years in the Israeli Defense Force as a paratrooper and was honorably discharged at the rank of Captain.

Cut off Relief Agency

By Ileana Ros-Lehtinen et al.

COMMENTARY: Cut Off Relief Agency UNRWA
Thursday, March 26, 2009
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/26/cut-off-relief-agency/

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida is the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. John A. Boehner of Ohio is the House Republican leader. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia is the House Republican whip. Mike Pence of Indiana is chairman of the House Republican Conference. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan is chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee

For six decades, the United States has voluntarily contributed billions of dollars to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which was created strictly to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees.

In return for our generous investment, UNRWA subverts our laws, aids violent Islamist extremists, propagandizes against our ally Israel and in favor of Hamas, and works with banks targeted by the United States for money laundering and terrorist financing.

As our nation faces growing economic challenges, Congress must cut off funding to UNRWA and use our foreign aid to advance, rather than undermine, American interests and values.

Existing U.S. law already restricts funding for UNRWA, requiring it to “take all possible measures” to ensure that our contributions do not aid those who have received training by militant groups or have “engaged in any act of terrorism.” But though the United States remains the largest single contributor to UNRWA, the agency has cavalierly disregarded our standards, and we have not held it accountable.

As a recent report by UNRWA`s former general counsel concluded, the agency has continually failed to properly vet staff members and humanitarian aid recipients for ties to foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). UNRWA does not ask personnel or aid recipients if they are members of FTOs, and it screens staff names through a U.N. list that does not include members of Hamas, Fatah`s al-Aqsa Brigades or other groups Palestinian extremists would be most likely to join.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd has stated that the agency does not consider those groups to be of concern. Her predecessor, Peter Hansen, proclaimed in 2004, “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don`t see that as a crime.” A number of UNRWA staffers were discovered to be members of FTOs - Awad al-Qiq, a now-deceased rocket-builder, even served as headmaster of a UNRWA school.

UNRWA officials also have compromised their agency`s purely humanitarian mission by publicly agitating against Israel and for Hamas. On Dec. 30, Ms. AbuZayd said only that Israel was responsible for the most recent conflict in Gaza, and in mid-January, a UNRWA spokesman called for an investigation on whether Israel had committed a “war crime.”

UNRWA has found even more ways to undermine the integrity of U.S. contributions. Its home page provides a donation portal listing UNRWA accounts at several financial institutions, including the Arab Bank and the Commercial Bank of Syria (CBS), both targeted by the United States for their roles in financing violent extremists.

The Arab Bank reportedly is at the center of U.S. investigations into how tens of millions of dollars have reached Palestinian militant groups that used some of those funds to pay off suicide bombers who have killed Americans in Israel. In 2005, the Arab Bank reportedly agreed to pay the United States $24 million in fines for violating American laws combating terrorist financing.

Worse yet is the CBS. The Treasury Department has designated the bank as an institution “of primary money laundering concern.” Treasury stated in a 2004 press release that “CBS had been used by terrorists and their sympathizers” and that “numerous transactions that may be indicative of terrorist financing and money laundering have been transferred through CBS, including two accounts at CBS that reference a reputed financier for [Osama] bin Laden.”

Despite UNRWA`s appalling record, U.S. taxpayer funds continued to flow freely to that agency, including about $185 million for 2008 and almost $100 million authorized so far for 2009. On March 2, the administration announced a further pledge of $900 million in assistance for Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, including $160 million to UNRWA and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This spending spree must not continue. The United States must withhold all contributions through and to UNRWA until that agency meets a number of conditions to comply with U.S. law and its humanitarian mandate.

We have had enough. American taxpayers deserve better.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida is the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. John A. Boehner of Ohio is the House Republican leader. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia is the House Republican whip. Mike Pence of Indiana is chairman of the House Republican Conference. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan is chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee.

I encourage everyone to support this bill!!!!
If you would like to write to your U.S. House Represntative and your Senators to support this effort you can access the appropriate information at this link (it is an interacive link & will do most of the work for you):
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

For America's Sake, President Barack Obama Should Oppose A Palestinian State

Louis René Beres - Feb 11, 2009 The Jewish Press

The George W. Bush years are now behind us. But Barack Obama, while still waging an American war on terror, will almost certainly remain committed to a so-called "Two-State Solution" in the Middle East. Here, he should be reminded that any state of Palestine would quickly become a primary launching point for mega-terrorism against the United States as well as Israel. Moreover, the entire Arab/Islamic world sees only a one-state solution. For Israel, of course, this would mean a patently "Final Solution."

What is now going on in the so-called "Palestinian Territories"? Gaza is already the site of close and growing tactical and strategic cooperation between Hamas and al-Qaeda. Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Lebanon are also witnessing a determined al-Qaeda push to establish more core terror bases.

For some time, al-Qaeda has been asserting its unswerving commitment to wage jihad against Israel (the individual Jew writ large), and against Jews in general. Only recently, however, has this genocidal commitment begun to elicit Western attention. In a relatively recent Jihadiwebsite posting, bin Laden had clearly warned: "We will not recognize a state for the Jews, not even one inch of the land of Palestine."

The destruction of Israel has always been Hamas' top objective, but al-Qaeda, which has proven adept at inserting itself into local conflicts around the world, and then incorporating them into the broader Wahhabi-Salafi war against the West, has now also fixed its sights on "Palestine." This sinister focus should not be lost on the new administration in Washington. It should not be lost in all the "feel good" rhetoric and posturing of newly installed American leaders who believe naively in the equally good intentions of all parties.

A "Two-State Solution"? The Palestinian Territories are not about to metamorphose into a decent and democratic national society. After all, they have already become the newest front in a well-organized international jihad movement. With Gaza now an active forward base for global terrorism, Shi'a Iran, long a close partner of Hamas as well as an al-Qaeda ally has been intensifying the existential threat to Israel.

Now, finally, and upon careful examination of political reality rather than just theoretical ideology, it is fully understood within principal intelligence circles that operational collaboration between various Shia and Sunni groups will not be prevented, only because of profound religious differences.

Even recently, while Israel was reluctantly but unavoidably engaged in Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian civil warfare revealed expanding concentric circles of jihadi alignment. In a February 2008 interview with the al-Hayat Arab language newspaper, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had repeated claims that al-Qaeda's growing presence in both Gaza and the West Bank could destabilize the entire region. Abbas, who recently became an object of ridicule and vilification in Gaza, had earlier warned that Hamas was enhancing al-Qaeda's power.

The January 2008 breach in the Gaza border with Egypt along the Philadelphi Corridor represented a pivotal development. This well-coordinated attack had permitted not only large quantities of Iranian-made weapons to enter Gaza (we can see the dreadful consequences of this allowance today), but it had also admitted scores of al-Qaeda operatives.

Israel's Military Intelligence Chief, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, told a February 2008 meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Knesset that this breach had "enabled Hamas to bring back those who had left for training in Syria and Iran, including snipers, explosives experts, rocket experts and engineers."

Ely Karmon, at The Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel, raised an alarm about al-Qaeda members linked to the Sharm El Sheikh attacks of July 2005. These terrorists subsequently moved to the West Bank and Gaza from bases in the Sinai. Backed by Iran, al-Qaeda is steadily moving in on Israel from the north, first by establishing its secure presence in Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Shia terror group Hizbullah, has tacitly acknowledged al-Qaeda's growing involvement in Lebanon, but disingenuously termed it a "dangerous and unacceptable" situation.

Despite their religious differences, Sunni al-Qaeda and Shia Hizbullah now form a true partnership, led by Iran, whose common goal is the destruction of Israel, the toppling of less radical Arab-Muslim regimes (such as that of the Palestinian Authority's Abu Mazen), and the establishment of a core territory around which a new Islamist Caliphate might be formed.

Let Barack Obama take note. Radical Islamist behavior is now de rigeur in Gaza. Several al-Qaeda-linked groups have emerged openly, such as the Army of Islam and the Swords of Islamic Righteousness. Several are clan-based, and affiliated with Fatah and/or Hamas. They are also reliably reported to be operational offshoots of al-Qaeda.

All things considered, our new president should understand that a Palestinian state would be altogether contrary to the security interests of the United States. Sobering here would be the inevitable competition for control of such a fragile and anarchic state by the various Sunni Arab regimes, now being armed by Washington, and by Shiite Iran; now being armed by Russia. Naturally, a Palestinian state would most clearly endanger Israel, creating irresistible new opportunities for both conventional and unconventional acts of aggression.

New wars could be launched by enemy states directly, or by their proxies from Gaza. The attackers might assume the posture of suicide bombers, thus immobilizing the normal security bases of rationality and deterrence. Under even the most optimistic assumptions, a Palestinian state - any Palestinian state - could spawn a grievously unstable balance of power in the region.

President Barack Obama should already recognize that any Islamist Palestinian state would be contrary to our national security interests. Such a state would embolden and strengthen al-Qaeda and other terrorist enemies of the United States. What had once been a basically secular nationalist territorial dispute between Israel and its Arab neighbors has now become a primary battlefront in a no-holds-barred international jihad.

Supported by Iran and by that country's terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, al-Qaeda threatens Israel on several fronts. But the group's growing presence in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon represents a danger not only to Israel, but also to the United States. With all this in mind, President Barack Obama should therefore resist the clichéd political "wisdom" of past American administrations, and strenuously oppose any creation of a Palestinian state. This will be difficult, to be sure, but the dreadful alternative would soon render moot all current counter-terrorist operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated atPrinceton (Ph.D., 1971) and is a long-time expert on international relations and international law. He is the author of many major books and articles in the field, and is known professionally to certain Israeli military, academic and intelligence communities. Dr. Beres is the Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press.

[emphasis such as boldface & Italics are the author's own]

Defending Freedom's Defenders

Defending Freedom's Defenders By Caroline Glick

Last week, the IDF issued an unprecedented directive. All Israeli media outlets must obscure the faces of soldiers and commanders who fought in Operation Cast Lead. Henceforth, the identities of all IDF soldiers and officers who participated in the operation against the Hamas terror regime in Gaza are classified information.

The IDF acted as it did in an effort to protect Israeli soldiers and officers from possible prosecutions for alleged war crimes in Europe. The army's chief concern is England. In England, private citizens are allowed to file complaints against foreigners whom they claim committed war crimes. Based on these complaints, British courts can issue arrest warrants against such foreigners if they are found on British territory and force them to stand trial. Over the past few years, a number of active duty and retired IDF senior officers were forced to cancel visits to Britain after such complaints were filed against them in sympathetic local courts.
Following the IDF's move, on Sunday the government announced that Israel will provide legal assistance to any IDF veteran prosecuted abroad for actions he performed during his service in Gaza. The legal assistance will include representation, investigation of the allegations made against veterans, attempts to have the charges against them dismissed and defense at trials.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who brought the decision before the full cabinet, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and their colleagues all asserted that by committing the state to defending its warriors, they were fulfilling their sacred duty to protect Israel's protectors. Unfortunately, both the cabinet decision itself and our leaders' statements missed the point.

Last Wednesday, an appellate court in Amsterdam ruled that the Dutch lawmaker and leader of the anti-jihadist Dutch Freedom Party Geert Wilders must stand trial for the alleged "crime" of inciting hatred against Muslims with his short film "Fitna," released last year.
In "Fitna," Wilders juxtaposes verses from the Koran with Islamic terror attacks, mosque sermons inciting believers to murder non-Muslims, and proclamations by Islamic clerics that Muslims must kill all the Jews, conquer the world and subjugate non-believers.
The second half of the 15-minute film is devoted to Holland. It highlights the massive immigration of Muslims to the country over the past 15 years, and calls by Islamic leaders in Holland to kill homosexuals, subjugate women, stone adulteresses, and take over the country. "Fitna" ends with a call for Muslims to expunge Koranic verses commanding them to conduct jihad from their belief system, and with a call for Dutchmen to defend their country, their culture and their civilization from the rising current of Islam in Europe.

All the material presented in "Fitna" is accurate. And it is also explosive. But it is hard to see how it could be illegal. By presenting the material in the way that he does, Wilders is not demonizing Muslims, he is challenging - indeed he is practically begging - his countrymen to engage in a debate about whether or not his dim assessment of Islam is correct. Wilders has been living under 24-hour police protection since a Dutch jihadist murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in 2004. Van Gogh was murdered after he released his short film "Submission," which described the misogyny of the Islamic world and the systematic terrorization of women in Islamic societies. Since then numerous Muslim clerics have issued religious judgments, or fatwas, calling for Wilders to be murdered.

Last month Wilders visited Israel and was the keynote speaker at a counter-jihad conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem sponsored by MK Dr. Aryeh Eldad. Speaking to a standing-room only crowd, and under heavy guard, Wilders argued that Israel is a frontline state in the global jihad. The war against Israel, he claimed has nothing to do with territory, and everything to do with ideology. Israel, as the forward outpost of Western civilization in the Islamic world, stands in the way of Islamic expansion. Consequently, he claimed, when Israel defends itself by fighting its enemies, it is also protecting Europe and the rest of the free world.

As he put it, "Thanks to Israeli parents who see their children go off to join the army and lie awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and have pleasant dreams, unaware of the dangers looming."

Unfortunately, the Dutch court's decision to prosecute Wilders for calling attention to the threat of jihad in Europe demonstrates that the Europeans aren't particularly grateful to their defenders. Indeed, they despise them. Films like "Fitna," and Israel's use of its military to defend its citizens from Islamic supremacists, serve to remind them of the growing threat they desperately seek to ignore. Consequently, Europeans embrace every opportunity to blame any messenger.

The ripple effects of Wilders' indictment were immediately evident. In England, the British Muslim community mobilized to prevent his film from being screened in public. "Fitna" was scheduled to be shown at the House of Lords on January 29. But last Friday, with the threat of mass Muslim riots hanging thickly in the air, the House of Lords announced that it was cancelling the event.

British Lord Nazir Ahmed called the decision to prevent the thought-provoking, factually accurate film from being shown, "a victory for the Muslim community."
Wilders' indictment is a textbook example of blaming the victim. Wilders has been forced to live a miserable life for the past four years. He has no home. Security forces move him from place to place every single day. Since Van Gogh`s murder, Wilders' entire life has become one long attempt to dodge the bullet permanently pointed at his head by radicalized Muslims in Holland and throughout the world. These would-be killers wish to see him dead not to avenge any violence Wilders committed, but rather, they believe he must die for doing nothing more than talking about Islam and how he interprets its message and meaning.

Needless to say, the Dutch Muslims Wilders caught on tape in Fitna calling for an overthrow of the Dutch constitutional order and threatening homosexuals have not been arrested for inciting hatred. Likewise, Lord Ahmed, who blocked "Fitna`s" screening in the British Parliament was made a British peer after supporting the late Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 death sentence against British novelist Salman Rushdie.

AND THAT'S the thing of it. Increasingly, throughout Europe, those who point out the dangers of radical Islam are hounded - first by Muslims - and then by legal authorities. In contrast, those who seek to intimidate and physically silence them are embraced by the states of Europe as legitimate leaders of their Muslim communities.

This dismal state of affairs, where jihadists are supported and their victims are oppressed, is true not only of people like Wilders who actively fight radical Islam's encroachment on European freedom. It is also the case for people who are victimized solely on the basis of their ethnic identity. At the same time Wilders and people like him are forced into hiding, Jews throughout Europe find themselves assaulted and under siege not because of anything they have done, but because they are Jews.

Incidents of anti-Semitic violence in Europe reached post-Holocaust record highs over the past month. Jewish children have been violently attacked in France, barred from schools in Denmark, and harassed in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Germany just for being Jews.
In Britain, Muslims have now taken to entering into Jewish-owned businesses and kosher restaurants to threaten the owners and patrons - just because they are Jewish. Synagogues have been firebombed and defaced. Calls have been issued in the US Muslim community on the Internet for Muslims in America to similarly intimidate Jews by entering into synagogues during prayer services and condemn worshippers for supporting Israel.

Jewish men have been brutalized by Muslim gangs in Britain and viciously stabbed in France, just because they are Jewish. In Sweden, pro-Israel demonstrators were attacked with stones by Muslims this week. Even in the US, anti-Semitic violence and intimidation has reached levels never seen before. And in almost all cases of anti-Semitic violence throughout what is commonly referred to as the free world, the perpetrators of the violence and intimidation are Muslims. They attack with the full backing of non-Muslim multiculturalists as well as neo-Nazis. The two groups, which are usually assumed to be at loggerheads, apparently have no problem converging on the issue of hating Jews.

And in almost all cases of anti-Semitic violence, the Islamic identity of the attackers has been de-emphasized or obscured by the media and by politicians, or used as justification for their crimes. In France, for instance, from the way government officials talk it, would be reasonable to assume that a dozen Muslim teenagers were provoked to viciously beat a ten-year-old Jewish girl by the IDF's operation against Hamas in Gaza. Here then, we arrive at the point that the cabinet missed on Sunday when it passed its decision to commit the government to providing legal assistance to any IDF veteran who runs afoul of European legal authorities during vacations in London and Brussels and Oslo and Stockholm. The point that was missed is that in the event that IDF veterans are charged with war crimes, even the best attorneys will be of little use. These veterans will not be defendants at legitimate trials. They will be the victims of politically motivated show-trials.

In an interview with Ha'aretz on Friday, Wilders claimed rightly that the Dutch court's decision to prosecute him was not a legal decision but a political one. And if he is convicted, his conviction won't be based on evidence. It will be based on the desire of the Dutch multiculturalists to make an example of him to appease the radical Muslims who seek his death, and intimidate any would-be disciples into keeping their mouths shut.

So too, if IDF veterans are indicted for war crimes, they won't be prosecuted based on facts. They will be persecuted to advance the prosecutors' and judges' goal of appeasing their homegrown radical Muslims who seek the destruction of Israel and who violently attack anyone perceived as supporting Israel.

Given this bleak reality, the steps that Israel must take to defend its citizens are not legal but diplomatic. Israel should announce travel advisories against all states that enable the conduct of show trials against its citizens. And it should threaten to cut off diplomatic ties with any country that seeks to persecute Israeli soldiers. Only by recognizing and pointing out what is really going on will Israel have any chance of protecting those who defend our freedom from Europeans who have decided to surrender to Islamic intimidation rather than protect their own liberty.

This article was published in the Jerusalem Post on Jan 26, 2009

Caroline Glick has been published in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Journal of International Secrutiy Affairs, The Boston Globe, The Washington Times, The Jewish Press, Frontpage Magazine and Moment Magazine.
Personal information is available at
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/about.asp

Israel’s Fight For Survival by Bruce Thornton

Israel’s Fight For Survival

Bruce Thornton - Jan 14, 2009 FrontPageMagazine.com

Israel’s fight for survival is not only against Hamas, Hezbollah, and their state sponsors Syria and Iran. Equally formidable, if more insidious, are those in the West whose virulent hatred of Israel imperils her existence. This antipathy among Western academics, commentators, and reporters is itself a reflection of the larger moral and intellectual corruption that endangers not just Israel but Western civilization. The media coverage of the current Israeli offensive against Hamas and its rockets in Gaza bears all the signs of this irrational and incoherent hatred of the only country in the Middle East in which the rule of law, human rights, and political freedom––all the boons we Westerners take for granted––are respected in ways impossible to duplicate in any Muslim Arab country.

Just as with the Lebanon offensive of 2006, the Western media report events in terms of a prefabricated narrative shorn of historical fact and context. In this mythic paradigm, Israel is the neo-colonial, neo-imperialist minion of late capitalism, an outpost of Western aggression and exploitation of the dark-skinned Third-World “other” whose land has been stolen and whose people have been displaced. All the dysfunctions of the West, so this tale goes, such as racism and xenophobia, are expressed in Israel’s treatment of her victims. Hence the mechanisms of Zionist “apartheid” such as checkpoints, walls, restrictions on movement, “refugee” camps, “displaced” persons, and the brutal indifference and “disproportionate” response of Israel’s U.S.-financed military machine. Muslim “terrorism” is explained away as the understandable response on the part of those subjected to this oppression and lacking the resources to fight back. Thus they can be forgiven for being caught up in the “cycle of violence” whose prime mover is Israel.

This narrative is gratifying to those Westerners who think that a hatred of one’s own civilization is a sign of intellectual sophistication. But it’s possible only by dint of massive historical ignorance. Take, for example, the very term “Palestinian,” used as though it referred to a distinct people. Yet the majority of so-called Palestinians are indistinguishable from the Arab Muslims in Syria, Jordan, or Lebanon. The very word itself is from the Latin word for “Philistine,” and was the Orwellian name the Romans gave the region after it destroyed what was left of the Jewish nation that had existed in the region for a thousand years. Later the term was an Ottoman name for an administrative district, and as such was used to describe the Jews who lived there as well as the Arabs.

The current usage of “Palestinian,” then, does not reflect historical reality but rather political propaganda whose purpose is to obscure historical fact, just as the Romans had attempted to erase the Jewish nation. Once the Arab world painfully realized that it could not defeat Israel militarily, it cast the war against Israel in terms that would appeal to Western ideals––as a struggle of national self-determination, an ideal, by the way, alien to Islamic history and ideology. Now those wretched “Palestinian refugees,” who are in fact a creation of the Arab states that refused to integrate their brother Arabs into their own nations, became photogenic icons of suffering used to undermine Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of Westerners addled by noble-savage multiculturalism and trite Marxist critiques of capitalism and “imperialism.”

Such historical ignorance crops up everywhere in the thinking of Israel’s enemies. Israel is an “illegitimate” state, even though it was created by the same process that created Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia––the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire that followed World War I, and that was ratified by the League of Nations and then the U.N. The 600,000 Palestinian refugees are an intolerable injustice, yet we never hear a word about the 800,000 Jews expelled by Egypt, Iraq, and other Muslim nations after 1948. Nor are we told why the Palestinian refugees deserve such international concern and outrage as compared, say, to the 1.2 million Greeks whom the Turks expelled from lands that Greeks had inhabited for 2000 years, or to the 12 million Germans kicked out of Eastern Europe after World War II.

“Occupation” of a “homeland” is another of Israel’s crimes, yet no one talks about the Arab occupation of Spain for seven centuries, the occupation of Greece and the Balkans for five centuries, and the continuing Muslim occupation of Asia Minor, Egypt, North Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean littoral, regions that were Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian for centuries before they were conquered and occupied by Muslims. And of course, no mention will be made of the historical fact that what today is called the West Bank, the presumed Palestinian “homeland,” is ancient Judea and Samaria, the heart of the Jewish homeland for a 1000 years. Likewise, “occupation” of the holy Muslim city of Jerusalem is another outrage, even though Jerusalem is extensively documented as a Jewish city and holy site dating back to 1300 B.C., and only became Muslim in the 7th Century by violent conquest. And while Israel, after retaking Jerusalem in a defensive war, has allowed Muslims to occupy the Temple Mount and keep the mosque there, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, once the second-most important church in Christendom, is in the hands of Muslim Turks whose ancestors defaced its once-glorious mosaics after the brutal sack of Constantinople.

In other words, historically Muslims have violated, and continue to violate, every principle by which Israel is deemed an international pariah, yet rarely do we hear anything other than perfunctory denunciation of Islamic bigotry and violence. This double standard, whereby the West and Israel are held accountable to principles that are not applied to Muslims, partly accounts for the moral incoherence of Israel’s Western critics. Hence to Israel’s critics, the inadvertent deaths of non-combatants resulting from Israel’s attempts to defend its citizens are condemned more vehemently and obsessively than the deliberate murder of women and children by the Arab jihadists. These terrorists, moreover, use their own people as expendable propaganda assets precisely because they have taken the measure of the Western media, which can be depended upon to provide inflammatory coverage of Palestinian suffering without providing the moral context that identifies who is responsible for that suffering.

This failure of Western moral and historical intelligence represents the greatest danger to Israel’s survival, and it exposes the fatal weakness of the West––a loss of confidence in the very values and beliefs that have created the ideals, such as freedom and human rights, without which life is intolerable.

Bruce Thornton is the author of Decline and Fall: Europe's Slow-Motion Suicide
(Encounter Books).

In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran by Yossi Klein Halevi & Michael B. Oren

In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran
Yossi Klein Halevi & Michael B. Oren - Jan 04, 2009 Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Jerusalem -- The images from the fighting in Gaza are harrowing but ultimately deceptive. They portray a mighty invading army, one equipped with F-16 jets that have bombed a civilian population defended by a few thousand fighters armed with primitive rockets. But widen the lens and the true nature of this conflict emerges. Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the real enemy Israel is confronting: Iran. And Israel's current operation against Hamas represents a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism. Until now, the Iranian revolution has appeared unstoppable. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s ended with Iranian troops occupying Iraqi territory. Iranian influence then spread to Saudi Arabia's heavily Shiite and oil-rich Eastern province, and to Lebanon through Hezbollah. Since the fall of their long-standing enemy, Saddam Hussein, Iranians have deeply infiltrated Iraq. Syria has been drawn into Iran's sphere, and even the Sunni sheikdoms of the gulf now defer to Iran, dispatching foreign ministers to Tehran and defying international sanctions against it. Iran has co-opted Hamas, a Sunni organization closely linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a jihad against the Jewish state. But Iran's boldest achievement has been to thwart world pressure and approach the nuclear threshold. Once fortified with nuclear weapons, Iranian hegemony in the Middle East would be complete. All of which helps explain the public statements from moderate Arab leaders, such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who have blamed the end of the tenuous Israel-Hamas cease-fire on Hamas. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit has even called on the Arab world to stop using the U.N. as a forum for blaming Israel alone for the fighting, surely a first. Those leaders understand what many in the West have yet to grasp: The Middle East conflict is no longer just about creating a Palestinian state but about preventing the region's takeover by radical Islam. Indeed, Palestinian statehood is impossible without neutralizing the extremists who oppose any negotiated solution.If Israel successfully overthrows Hamas in Gaza, it would strengthen anti-Iranian forces throughout the Mideast and signal the region that Iranian momentum can be reversed. The Israeli military operation could begin the process that topples a terrorist regime that seized power in the Gaza Stripin 2007 and has fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli neighborhoods. And whether or not Hamas is ultimately overthrown, Israel can achieve substantial goals. The first is an absolute cease-fire. Previous cease-fires allowed Hamas to launch two or three rockets a week into Israel and to smuggle weapons into Gaza through tunnels. To obtain a cease-fire now, the international community should recognize Israel's right to respond to any aggression over its international border and monitor the closure of Hamas' weapons-smuggling tunnels. Above all, the goal is to ensure that Hamas is unable to proclaim victory and thereby enhance Iranian prestige in the Arab world. Yet even those limited goals are far from guaranteed. An earlier opportunity to check Iran -- during Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006 -- was squandered through a combination of Israeli incompetence and international pressure. Hezbollah manipulated the Western media by grossly inflating the number of civilian casualties and even "recycling" corpses from one bombed site to another. The international community responded by imposing a cease-fire before Israel could achieve its goals and installing a peacekeeping force that has since allowed Hezbollah to more than double its prewar arsenal. Though the Israeli army killed a quarter of Hezbollah's troops and destroyed its headquarters, Israel was widely perceived as the loser. The winner was Iran.Israel learned the bitter lesson of Lebanon. For the last two years, the Israeli army has gone back to basics, rigorously training and restoring its fighting spirit. Israeli leaders drew on that spirit to attack Hamas bases in one of the most impressive airstrikes since the 1967 Six-Day War. Yet the question remains whether the international community has learned its Lebanon lesson, or will once again allow the jihadists to win. Hamas is attempting to portray the Israeli invasion as a war against the Palestinian people. Television viewers are being presented with heartbreaking images of dead and injured children and supposedly indiscriminate devastation. Palestinian doctors claim that Israel has blocked the supply of vital medicines, and humanitarian organizations warn of imminent starvation. In fact, many of those claims are exaggerated.Though civilians have, tragically, been hurt, about three-quarters of the 400 Palestinians killed so far have been gunmen -- an impressive achievement given that Hamas fires rockets from apartments, mosques and schools and uses hospitals as hide-outs.Israel has recently allowed nearly 200 truckloads of food and medicine to enter Gaza, even under shellfire. It is in Israel's urgent interest to minimize civilian suffering and forestall international criticism. For that same reason, Hamas welcomes the suffering of Palestinian civilians. According to a BBC report on Dec. 30, dozens of ambulances were dispatched by Egypt to its border with Gaza, only to remain empty because, according to Egyptian authorities, Hamas wasn't allowing wounded Palestinians to leave. The international community must not be duped again. If Hamas is successful in manipulating world opinion into the imposition of a premature cease-fire, it will proclaim victory and continue to stockpile long-range missiles for the next round of fighting. That would mean another triumph for Iran. No less crucially, the international community must not allow the Gaza crisis to divert its attention from the imminent -- and ultimate -- threat of a nuclear Iran. Intelligence sources now measure that threat in months rather than years. President-elect Barack Obama has declared his intention to confront Iran through diplomacy. Ideally, that process should begin in the aftermath of an Iranian defeat. If Israel is allowed to achieve its goals in Gaza, the Obama administration will be better poised to achieve its goals in Iran. Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Michael B. Oren is a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center and a professor at the foreign service school of Georgetown University.