What can we do about Gaza? The peace process tales are all very fine, but realistically there could be no peace there. The most benevolent Jewish policies would make 99% of Gazans content with Israel; still, fifteen thousand discontent radicals can carry out suicide operations in Israel ad nauseum.

Near absence of terrorist infiltrations from Judea suggests that Israeli police can rein in the guerrillas. Pervasive networks of police informants do the job. Checkpoints may help, but likely most interceptions there are tipped-off. Given the lax control of the passing Arab crowds at the checkpoints, bomb-carrying terrorists are mostly intercepted after the informants tipped off Israeli police. Arresting the bombers during routine checks is a convenient way to exonerate the informers.

Delivering a suicide bomber into a central Israeli town is a relatively complicated operation. Suicide bombers rarely ride buses; they need transportation, often a hiding place. Suicide operations depend on complicated logistics. Suicide bombers are usually street folks, and they pound several doors before finding proper terrorists willing to recruit them. Intercepting suicide bombers is an extremely hard job, but it is doable.

Rocket and RPG attacks are much simpler than suicide bombing, and less detectable. They are truly “fire-and-forget” operations. Rockets are being made in the safe, approving environment of Islamic fighters where Israeli infiltration is moderate at best. Rockets are launched from friendly territory; logistics is very basic and therefore interception is exceedingly hard. Doable, yes, but not always.

Then, Arabs have many other options for terrorist war, such as stabbing Jews and killing us with handguns. Those modes are not very popular now because the more efficient modes are available. Should the IDF end the Qassam rocket fire, Arab guerrillas would switch to other types of attacks.

One option is to leave the Arab-settled territories alone administratively and economically, but retain free hand there for police operations. That didn’t work for the British and won’t work for Israel. Sharon, as the military governor of Gaza, managed to rein in the terrorists by the immense police buildup. He continuously had huge police presence in Gaza. Such presence requires full administrative control over the territory. The IDF now keeps the West Bank relatively quiet because the guerrillas find Gaza more convenient for their operations. Should the order prevail in Gaza, the guerrillas can just as well step up their activity in the crowded slums and camps in the West Bank.

Hit-and-run or hit-and-retreat tactics never works for defenders. Israel cannot defend herself by occasional raids into the Arab territories.

Won’t the situation settle in, perhaps, a century or two? Israel can continue defending herself with limited raids in the Arab-populated territories, and wait for the things to eventually calm down. Many states lived in hostility until they eventually settled. It is not certain, however, that any border disputes are settled forever. Alsace and Lorraine are the famous example of recurring dispute. Still less are the chances of settlement when the entire country is disputed, and the fifth column (of Israeli Arabs) props the dispute. Border issues hold a chance of being settled when the cost of fighting them is unreasonable. Limited raids, on the contrary, limit the cost of fighting. The West Bank Arabs feel the IDF presence only at the checkpoints, and targeted raids leave the locals unaffected. Sending suicide bombers into Israel creates no inconvenience for the mainstream Arab population. Israeli-Palestinian situation is most reminiscent of the Mexican gangs’ attacks on the United States, which were only ended when the US annexed the lawless parts of Mexico.

It is important to realize that no peace process or even economic development would end the Arab terrorist attacks on Israel. It is unrealistic to imagine several successive Palestinian governments conducting Ataturk-like propaganda to make a generation of Palestinian Arabs accept Jewish state on the land they consider theirs, and even Ataturk’s reforms eventually failed, as can be seen in the Islamization of modern Turkey. The returning Palestinian refugees are so heavily indoctrinated than no amount of the contrary propaganda would make them forfeit their grievances against Jews. Unless Israel crashes any hope of return to the pre-1948 situation, Palestinians would hope to return to it.

What suffers a faster attrition: Palestinian hopes or Jewish patience? The passing time diminishes Palestinian hopes of reclaiming their entire land, but it also wears down the patience of Jews who expect terrorist attacks daily. Arabs are in the way better position: hope can be sparked while patience cannot. Any signs of Israeli weakness, whether military, ideological, or political encourage the Arabs. And a democratic country has no shortage of political swings which encourage her enemies.
This analysis bears out historically. Thirty years ago, even the left Jews rejected Palestinian statehood, but now many conservatives accept it. Polls indicate that the support for Palestinian state among the Jews increases after major terrorist acts. Palestinian Arabs, submissive in 1970s, now overwhelmingly demand statehood – and achieved it de facto.

Israel cannot bear the political attrition. Modern Jews, unlike ancient Romans, don’t accept war as a permanent state of affairs. Rome fought our Carthaginian relatives for centuries, but Jews today are unwilling to fight for our core lands for decades.
Crushing military response is not an option. No elected Israeli government would bomb the real terrorist nests: the refugee camps. Sending Jewish soldiers there without artillery cover, as in Lebanon, to control the Arab civilian death toll at the expense of Jewish corpses, is an option too immoral to advocate for even indirectly. Egypt wisely abandoned Gaza to Israel; arm every person in Harlem with automatic rifle, and you would still get a Switzerland there compared to Gaza.

Palestinian guerrillas need to take a single step to turn the tables: develop Qassam rockets with reliable ten-mile range. They already had successful launches of that type. Such technological advance would allow them to launch rockets at Ashkelon from Jabaliya refugee camps. Though Israel conducts routine raids into Jabaliya, she won’t be able politically to massively retaliate for continued attacks from the camp. Likewise, Israel cannot occupy Jabaliya because of the sniper fire. Cleansing the place of terrorists and leaving is also impossible because new terrorists are easily recruited from the jobless Arabs.

Employing all the Arabs in Gaza is impossible. The place is overcrowded, lacks resources, and Arabs are anyway unsuitable for productive activities. Four generations lived in Gaza on the UNRWA handouts. The place is a hopeless slum without a hope of rebound.

It is possible that Gaza’s population would grow hostile to the guerrillas. Such outcome, however, requires continuous Israeli retaliation against Gaza’s population centers and the hope of considerable improvement should they drive the guerrillas out. Neither proposition is true. Moreover, guerrillas are deeply entrenched in Gaza. They buy loyalty with Iranian-funded charities and threaten the population into loyalty by exemplary punishments of non-complying civilians. Though the popular mood in Gaza can change, no preconditions for it are observed.

The only way to end the Gaza’s problem is to end Gaza. Israel punishes Gazans by restricting emigration. On the contrary, let them go. The young Gazans won’t return home after attending universities in Egypt. Ban any Gazans from entering Israel, except possible in transit to the West Bank; Jews need not give jobs to Gazans. Retaliate for the terrorist attacks against civil infrastructure, preventing Gaza from developing any industries – which it is unlikely to develop, anyway – and to show the Gazans sheer hopelessness of building anything. In thirty years, Gaza could be reduced to the network of dying villages. In a generation, Gaza would be empty.

And safe for Jews.

Leftists concentrate their efforts on the Avodah party, but conservatives are dispersed among many parties. That situation reflects differences in mindset. Leftists are oriented toward immediate goals, while right-wingers look to high-flown ideals. Leftists join party lists and government coalitions based on the common current agenda; fringe conservatives refuse to join those with slightly different religious ideas. Thus, Israel sports several ultra-conservative religious parties.

Feiglin wrongly decided to subvert Likud instead of forming his own party. Feiglin’s choice was circumstantial: he needed to quickly join a party list in order to gain immunity from politically motivated prosecution. Likud offered only a dead end to Feiglin. Most of Likud voters are anti-Labor rather than right; few subscribe to Feiglin’s policy of holding on to Judea and Samaria. Likud also moderated Feiglin, particularly on the issue of transferring Israeli Arabs to Jordan; such moderation cost Feiglin a great number of right-wing votes. Feiglin has little chance to rise through Likud’s hierarchy. There are many ways to shut him up. For example, the proposed merger with Israel Beitenu pushes Feiglin’s candidates to the bottom of Likud’s list. Even if Feiglin surprisingly rises to Likud’s leadership and makes the party right-wing, he would only see Likud’s electorate switching to other centrist parties. Party’s brand is a great asset in huge mature democracies like the US; launching a new party is prohibitively expensive. Small, new democracies like Israel typically have a fluid party composition, with parties continuously entering and leaving the political scene. That trend is especially pronounced in a country of credulous, dreaming, messianically minded Jews who jump on every savior media ads proclaim to them. Hijacking Likud makes no sense for Feiglin.

Can the right wing form a winning coalition? Voter turnout is fairly high among Israel’s 19% Arabs; they vote Jewish left (which is Arab right). Slavs and Jews-by-grandfather form about 15% of Israeli population. They often stand for strong measures against Arabs, but rarely support truly conservative ideas like the annexed Judea and Samaria, expelled Arabs, and even united Jerusalem; they are decent soldiers, but it’s just not their war. They fought equally courageously in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Close to 10% of Israeli Jewish citizens reside abroad and don’t vote. Not less than a third of Jews are hard-core leftists who embrace Arabs in the Jewish state and don’t consider Judea the Jewish land. Israeli conservatives cannot hope for a majority. Even if they do form the Knesset majority, the leftist Supreme Court would quash their racist moves, and Israeli security establishment based on the MAPAI core will enforce the left’s law. Murders of Kahane family and Ze’evi showed that Israeli establishment won’t risk ideological competitors. They will be bought like Lieberman, subverted into political mainstream like Feiglin, or killed like Kahane. Government propaganda machine didn’t yet try on Feiglin a fraction of its facilities mobilized against Kahane or Sharon.

There is no alternative to revolution.

Grown people criticized adolescents throughout the ages as immoral, lazy, money-hungry, etc. The adolescents grew up and similarly criticized their children. Teenagers don’t have our values, but neither had we have those values when were young. Values are a product of extreme indoctrination or long-term personal development. Israeli children are not ardent Zionists like their parents, but what Russian or American Jew was ardent Zionist at the age of fourteen? Titans like Zhabotinsky made some teenagers Jewish zealots, but most people distilled their values later on in life. Children are even more superficial than adults, and go for shiny objects: music stars, glamorous living, etc. Life will soon break their hopes to become new Madonna or for a villa in Beverly Hills, and they will start looking for alternative goals. They will come to the Jewish idea, and do so from much better start up position than their parents. Israeli children lack the Exile mentality, fear, and excuse-me-for-being-alive attitude. They know how to hate. They hate Arabs. Later, they will look to rationalize hatred, and embrace Zionism – not ethnic-blind democracy.

"Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogs." Abdullah Azzam

In more than a century of the Zionist enterprise, Arabs made no concessions while the Jews gave way continuously. Triumphant return to the Promised Land immediately degenerated into buying land from Arabs; that’s not what Joshua ben Nun did. When the Ottomans titled unused land in the coastal plains, Arab notables rather than Jews got it through legal machinations; speak of Jewish lawyers and simpleton Arabs. Jews settled mostly the lowlands without significant Arab presence, drained marshes and cultivated sand dunes instead of claiming the land from aborigines. Jews did not significantly protest when the British stole most of the land they guaranteed us in return for our support in WWI and established Jordanian princeling in two-thirds of Palestine. Jews accepted yet another partition in 1947 which created a second Palestinian state beside Jordan. Jews won every war with Egypt but returned Sinai, a place where Hebrews received the law which molded them into a nation and a place of critical strategic importance to Israel. Jews prevailed in every conflict against Syria and now all but accepted to return the strategically indispensable Golan Heights. Palestinians – an insignificant enemy – pressed Israel for sweeping concessions even while they keep shelling Jewish towns. The Arabs did not give way on a single issue.

Arabs protested Jewish settlement of Palestine; most Jews were unsympathetic to Zionist idea. Arabs always rejected massive Jewish presence while Zionist leaders implored Arabs to stay in the Jewish state. Sadat pressed Begin to evacuate Jewish towns from Sinai; Sharon concurred then and demolished Jewish villages in Gaza years later. Arabs refuse to accept Jews in their countries, but successfully insist that swarms of Arabs be citizens of the Jewish state.

The Arabs consider the land rightfully theirs and fight for it. Smart and critical Jews rejected religion and doubt their right to the land. The balance of will favors the righteous.

Judea, the second Jewish state in the West Bank, is assured of last-resort Israeli protection. Even the Jews who dislike ultra-Orthodoxes won’t stand idle as Arabs butcher them. Israel would intervene to retain its claim of representing all Jews. Because of that claim, Israel will oppose establishing of Judea but, once she is established, extend her the protection. If Israel is not the only Jewish state, then at least a Big Jewish Brother.

Large war between Palestine or Jordan and Judea is unlikely for some years, and by that time Judea would build a sort of conventional army, possibly with nuclear bomb. Religious Jews, ruthless to Arab enemies, will efficiently counter low-level guerrilla attacks. Israeli last-resort protection is only deterrence, much like the nuclear deterrence. The world believes Jews stand for each other, and Arabs will find Israeli protection of Judea credible.

Judea won’t have major trouble with economy. Religious authority shouldn’t engage in economic regulation, though there is a danger of religious socialism. Judea can thrive as free market, zero customs duty economy. Religious government will likely misuse money supply and cause inflation; Judea will be better off using foreign currency, whether Israeli, American, or Swiss. Ultra-Orthodoxes accept extreme poverty and subsist on donations now; that state of things will continue in Judea. Most Orthodox Jews work productively. They can build a parasite economy in Judea thriving at the expense of overtaxed and over-regulated Israel like Mexico near the US. They can build solid low-end economy with agriculture and basic factories.

Theocracies historically survived longer than secular states because theological authority is closed to doubt and questioning by subjects. Secular Judea will eventually slither down into the Israeli leftism, US populist democracy, or apartheid. In public opinion, only religious state can exclude Arabs; secular states must be ethnic-blind. Secular government which imposes strict moral code will be dubbed fascist and ostracized. No doubt, great, honest rabbis won’t ascend to the helm of Judea, but even a rav like Ovadiah Yosef would rule Judea more sensibly than Olmert rules Israel.

Once upon a time, there was a good Jew. He knew the true meaning of Jewish religion and argued against the attempts to twist it. He accused the religious establishment of hypocrisy and condemned the rabbis for abrogating the religion with their fancy interpretations.
He lambasted Jewish leaders for the policies detrimental to Jewish people.
He came to Jews originally, but was forced to teach among Gentiles. Crowds followed him, but Jewish leaders grew apprehensive of his influence. They smeared him. “He was despised and we esteemed him not.” They brought false charges against him, and misused the law. Politically unable to execute him, they arranged for a hostile foreigner to murder the Jew.
After his death, his followers were dispersed and persecuted. Many were jailed, some – murdered. His words proved true.

His name was Meir Kahane.

Meir Kahane debates Alan Dershowitz - on DVD

Meir Kahane's lecture at Brandeis University - on DVD

[These are the two landmark pieces of apologia, Jewishness vs. democracy. The files are full DVD - you can watch them on your computer or burn DVDs - please distribute as many copies as you can. The files are huge, about 3Gb each, and you probably need a download manager like FlashGet. The files are .exe - run them to unpack the DVDs.]

Jewish law establishes death penalty for kidnappers of Jews. The forefathers accepted the yoke of the Law before it was given to all Jews. It is commonly believed that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery – but they were not punished. It pays to read the Torah closely.

Genesis 37:18-20: “And they [Joseph’s brothers] saw him from a distance, and before he would approach them, they crafted [a plot] for him to die. And they said, each to his brother, Here comes [the] interpreter of dreams. Now, let’s go and cause him to be jabbed into and fallen into one of the trenches, and we will say, Wild animal devoured him, and we will see what will be his dreams.”

Brothers had some reasons to hate Joseph who informed Jacob on them and related arrogant dreams. The word for “trench” possibly relates to havar, astrologist (according to Steinberg, they zone the sky, akin to trenches) akin to Joseph, thus an instance of black humor.

The brothers didn’t intend to kill Joseph, but to retreat with their flocks, leaving him to deal with wild animals. Genesis 37:17 concurs: when Joseph came to see his brothers at Schem, they have already moved to Dotan. Likewise, they intended to retreat further upon his approach.

In Genesis 37:21-22, Reuben pleads with other brothers to drop Joseph into a pit as opposed to leaving him to the animals: “Let us not cause his soul to be smitten!” The brothers followed Reuben’s advice. Now, Joseph sits in a waterless pit, and his brothers are undecided what to do about him.

Genesis 37:26: “And Judah said to his brothers, If we would cause our brother to die and hid his blood, what profit [would that be to us]?” Judah, don’t forget, is a virtuous man: he offered himself into slavery in place of his brother Binyamin who allegedly stole a silver cup (Genesis 44:33). In Genesis 37:26, Judah expresses satisfaction that they did not cause Joseph’s death.

Immediately thereafter, Reuben returns to the pit with the evident intention to remove Joseph – and doesn’t see him. The narration recalls the structure of horror movies: evil intention (to give Joseph to animals, v.20) – thinking it over while the subject is locked (Joseph in a pit, vs.23) – while the characters elaborate their plot, the threat comes close (Ishmaelite caravan passes just before their eyes) – the conspirators recant (v.26) but, unbeknownst to them, it’s already too late (Midianites find Joseph and sell him to Ishmaelites, v.28) - the conspirators come to release their victim, but he is gone (v.29).

Reuben did not come to save Joseph secretly, for upon seeing the empty pit, he returned to his brothers: “The child is not there! And I, where, pray, am I going?” The brutal practical joke on Joseph turns into tragedy.

Instead of revealing Jacob that their behavior indirectly caused Joseph’s death, the brothers imitated his death from the wild animal.
Joseph’s brothers neither tried to kill him, nor sold him into slavery.

[The text supports the understanding that Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery. In Genesis 37:27, Judah says, "Come, let [him] be sold by us to Ishmaelites…" And 37:28: "And there passed by Midianites, merchantmen; and they [the brothers] drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites…" Reading they as brothers is confirmed by 37:36, "Midianites sold him into Egypt…" So Midianites didn't previously sell Joseph to Ishmaelites; Midianites and Ishmaelites are the same people; brothers "sold Joseph to Ishmaelites."
This passage conflicts with Reuven's surprise upon seeing the empty pit. It seems here an editorial that explains Judah's "what profit is it if we slay our brother?"
Twenty shekels the brothers received for Joseph are hugely exaggerated. Only about a thousand years later slaves became that expensive (Hosea 3:2). Thirty shekels for one's ox goring a slave is a high fine, not a cost.
The brothers decided against killing Joseph much earlier, in Genesis 37:21-23 on Reuven's suggestion, so Judah's argument against killing Joseph in 37:27 is superfluous. Also, there's stylistic difference between 37:27 and the surrounding verses, suggesting an editorial.
Some editorials in the Torah do not impinge on its divinity. Even divine texts can be corrupted a bit.]

Anti-Semites note correctly the tremendous influence Jews exerted on the most negative political developments. Top Bolsheviks, as well as other socialist factions in Russia were disproportionally Jewish. Schizophrenic mixture of Jewish idealism, messianism, and contempt for Gentiles created an explosive Bolshevik substance. It is fun to shape societies. Planning a utopian society makes an atheist close to God. Assimilated, atheist Jews were truly rootless, as the derogatory Russian term had it. Rootless people are unburdened by traditions, historical experience, and morality. The ex-Jews ruthlessly enjoyed reshaping Russia.

Some of those rootless socialists spilled onto the land of Israel. Russian Jews dominated among them, but the cancer of socialism which kills Europe now like it killed Rome before, infected Jews before others. A lot of the first aliyah Jews from Western Europe had socialist leanings. Jews coming to Palestine sought to establish a new society. When Europeans colonized America, some idealists sought a new world order on the tabula rasa, but the majority wanted just a patch of land to develop. America, therefore, evolved into a capitalist society. Jewish society in Israel longed for a utopian community, and developed it in strides.
Jews were utopian to a varying degree. Some practiced the extreme form of communism, up to free sex and socializing of children at the collective farms. Some looked forward to heavily unionized socialism still with a private sphere. A few others wanted a heavily regulated capitalist society. While religious Jews isolated themselves in antiquated communities, Jewish majority renounced their roots and went on designing a perfect state.

That was the major reason for the first aliyah – building a perfect state. Jews could as well settle Uganda or Arizona, but nostalgic feelings directed them to the land of Israel. They didn’t care about the Promised Land, or they would have never agreed to the British carving Transjordan or Lebanon out of the Jewish land. They didn’t care about the religious issues, or they would have settled Hebron and Schem rather than Tel Aviv. The Jews were fed up with the ugliness of decaying anti-Semitic Europe and came to Israel to realize the socialist nightmare: a perfect society.

The actions of Zionist leadership are only explicable in this context. In 1947, they accepted a partition which left Israel with 40% fast-breeding Arab population. They gave up a major part of Israel, and almost the entire Promised Land. They instituted the most un-Jewish socialist economy. The only consistent line of their actions was designing a new society. They played God, overruling him in the process.

The new society could adopt an existing language: Americans took English, and Jews imagined German language (as did the Americans at one point) as official. Soon, Jews got a better idea: garbling the beautiful Hebrew language into the Israeli slang. In the typically sophist approach socialists are so fond of, Jews took an old and respected thing, changed its meaning, and arrived at an absurd. They filled Hebrew language mostly with Russian borrowings, unaware of the fact that Russian language has itself assimilated a lot of Hebrew concepts and structures. The Israeli language provided both a respect due to the Hebrew’ antiquity and the opportunity to design a new language.

Israeli music was the Soviet music of 1930s. Rich traditions of various Jewish communities were excised from the new society.
Israel developed new morals. It rejected Jewish values and morality, and designed new ones: sabra (Israeli redneck), Israeli (Arab-Jewish, wolf-n-sheep) nationality, and traditionalism (the Torah as antiquated saga – show some respect to it). Jewish values suddenly switched from Judaism to being nice and ethical (as if Gentiles are not).

Abrogation of Jewish values was accompanied with installing the kibbutz values of hard work, common property, and complete obedience to authorities. It is easy to destroy morality, but impossible to create a new one. Jews rejected the kibbutz values, and the resultant vacuum was quickly filled by everything from pop-culture to jingoism.

Jewish socialists, like their Russian counterpart, attacked the soft underbelly of morality: sexual relations. Israeli culture of sexual permissiveness made Jewish girls stereotyped around the world as of easy virtue. Israeli army promotes easy relations between sexes, and military insurance covers up to three abortions for nineteen-year old girls.

Socialist societies are always militaristic. They need external enemies to account for their own failures and divert citizens’ attention from them. Socialism, as any rationalism, is always expansive: it seeks to enforce the good upon others. Socialists have to control the media in order to excise common sense from public discourse, and the unchecked government-controlled media inflame militant nationalism to previously unseen level. Israeli leftists, accordingly, murderously hate the Arabs. They killed the Arabs in scores, evicted in hundreds of thousands, and oppress the others wherever they can, given the requirements of always superficial political correctness.

Israeli education emphasizes a deep split between Israelis and “old” Jews; the last bizarrely perished in Holocaust, but the former trample upon Arab armies. Jewish heroes are no longer the sages, but well-armed ignoramuses who man the socialist juggernaut.
Socialists always despised an educated person for he doesn’t buy their nonsense. They prefer dealing with ignorant masses. It is therefore important to keep the masses ignorant. Education introduces differentiation; a mass becomes lively assembly of opinionated individuals. Socialism doesn’t want such challenge to its authority. Technical education is fine, but no general education. Jewish socialists copied Stalinist policies of extremely low quality of undergraduate education. Education is semi-officially despised. Prototypical Israeli is not too smart, semi-educated tough kibbutznick with machine gun; that changes slowly under the influence of get-rich culture. Israeli school education has long hit the bottom. State of Israel uprooted twenty-three centuries of the exemplary Jewish education. One can be skeptical about international test results where Israeli students consistently score among the last, noting that the score is weighted down by very low capabilities of Israeli Arab students. Still, Israeli Jews score in the second dozen while in other countries Jews come on the top of test results. There is no solution to the Israeli school system mass-producing ignorance. School teachers are incredibly bad, the entire generation of them. They cannot be improved. Israel needs a lustration of teachers. Try bringing the best foreign teachers from low-wage countries such as India, though it is hard to find out a civilized country with wages lower than in Israel.

Socialism destroyed economy of the Jewish state. Masses of spongers from Arabs to elderly Russians who have never worked in Israel made a new yoke for taxpayers who rejected the heavenly yoke. No democratically elected government can afford to alienate those voting parasites.

The post-socialist political correctness made a sham of Israeli security in the eight-mile-wide borders and 1.5 million-strong fifth column of Arabs living here. The peace process which gives Judea to the Arabs formally ends the Jewish state project.

Israel is not the first attempt to re-create the Jewish state. We must ensure that it won’t be the last. We must save Jewish children from the Israeli socialism.

Osama doesn't deal in the irrational. There is no cognitive gap between soldiers and suicide bombers. Both are equally ready for the mission. Shahedeen would prefer to live on but undertake suicide missions out of utter tactical necessity, like kamikaze and soldiers in clearly lethal operations. Few soldiers are eager for high risk, and the number of suicide attackers is minuscule compared to Muslim population.

Osama's goals are rational. All major Islamic terrorist organizations have domestic agenda. They want to overturn the corrupt regimes in favor of a more pure revolutionary rule. Osama convinced some of them to attack America first, in order to remove the dictators' major support. That strategy is wrong: so far, the American client dictatorships invariably failed, anyway, while some dictatorial regimes persisted without the American or Russian support. Though wrong, Osama’s America-first strategy is rational and suggests collaboration between him and Mubarak and Faisal. Osama does them a great favor by channeling their own terrorists into fighting America rather than the domestic governments. No doubt, the Arab rulers pay him for the favor.

Incidentally, some of Osama's immediate demands are good for America and Israel. America, indeed, has no business fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq; demolishing their government infrastructure and terrorist training camps in retaliation raids would serve the immediate American interests as well at a lower cost in lives and money. Osama condemns Hamas and PIJ for concentrating on Palestinian statehood rather than building a worldwide Islamic caliphate; Israel, too, would like Hamas to attack elsewhere. Israel would love to see the Middle East the United States withdrew from, plunged in myriad local conflicts pitching progressive dictators against Islamic terrorists. Such the Middle East won't threaten Israel with a major war, and will even promote Israel to the role of regional power arbiter now held by America.

Some of Osama's most outrageous demands prove realistic. Back in 1997, he told a Pakistani newspaper that the price of oil should increase by $115 per barrel. Now the Muslim countries are more than half way through his admonition. Unlike Western analysts, Osama proved right about the Soviet collapse in Afghanistan and Islamic victory in Sudan. The US toppled Saddam, whom Osama hated, and pursues Osama's agenda of democratizing Egypt. It remains to be seen whether Osama's most far-fetched idea, that of Islamic caliphate, would be borne out. Cultures, like animal species, come and go. Ancient Greece with its religion and culture is irreversibly lost. Osama imagines resurgence of truly fundamentalist – protestant – Islam. Protestant Christianity gained power only because it was supported by economic boom, but Muslims lack the relevant culture of education and work ethics. More likely, Osama's war on the West will remain a glorious episode of Islam's Endspiel.

The West is blinded by political correctness and wrong ideas of minimizing the enemy's civilian casualties. Osama said, "…if the majority of American people support their dissolute president [Clinton], this means the Americans are fighting us and we have a right to target them." Osama repeatedly defended huge collateral losses among Muslim civilians during the terrorist attacks on the US embassies in Africa as unavoidable – a position the US and Israel shrunk from in Iraq and Palestine. Osama is far from an idealist, but cynically applies double standards: he claims killing enemy civilians with inherently indiscriminate weapons is permissible but lambastes the very same collateral killing by Israel. Osama disregarded the plight of Muslims on still larger scale when denounced the first US-Iraq war. He felt no gratitude to America for stopping Iraq's atrocities in Kuwait. Osama thinks in terms of "our scoundrels against them." Though at odds with secular Saddam and receiving huge assistance from sources in Kuwait, Osama decried the American invasion of Iraq.

Westerners fall into the trap of rationalism. They try to understand Muslim world and devise intellectual responses. That's an absurdity on par with centrally planned economy. Societies are too complex to be described with simple formulas. Understanding Egyptian society from Nubian waterless villages to Cairo coffeehouse intellectuals is a daunting task, probably impossible and certainly not allowing for straightforward conclusions. Add dozens of other Muslims countries with diverse societies, and academic and diplomatic generalizations about the Muslim world become demonstrable falsehoods. Some of the Muslim hatreds are similar: heinous America refuses them visas, an odd but powerful crowd called Jews whom they have never met oppresses the Palestinians whom they have never see either, and evil Russians spread communism which promises to make all people equal and satiated. History, experiences, and mentality drastically differ between Riyadh and Jakarta. The objects, too, are different. America and France are not "the West", but an anti-Muslim and pro-Arab country, respectively. Western analysts try to understand Muslims, get everything wrong, and act accordingly wrongly, exacerbating the situation. Osama, on the contrary, is not a theorist. He showed no interest in understanding his enemy, but prefers targeting it without a second thought. That policy is far more effective.

I hate lies. Lying is an art, and government lies are as ugly as modernist paintings. Professors of art can teach painting but are lame painters themselves; politicians’ proficiency in lying doesn’t make their lies good or credible. Lying is a high art.

The story of Ahmadinejad’s “promise” to wipe Israel off the map is shocking. Not because it is a lie. Political lies don’t shock me already for decades. The story showed that the king is naked; the king, here, is Western analysts on Iran. It won’t be shocking had they only missed that Ahmadinejad quoted a famous line by ayatollah Khomeini; ignorance is widely acceptable in the intelligence community. What is shocking is their complete lack of the intuitive feeling of Iranian mentality. It is extremely unnatural for an Iranian to promise to wipe a country off the map. Such ugly straightforwardness is part and parcel of Western culture, specifically of the rationalist fast food culture. Every analyst who works on Iran had to immediately jump up screaming that an Iranian just couldn’t say those words. “To wipe off the map” is an American language rather than Persian. Khomeini, years ago, promised that the Zionist state would vanish from the book of time. That statement implied no violent role for Iran whatsoever. In Western parlance, that’s an equivalent of “justice would prevail.”

Iran is the only Muslim country with large, thriving, and content Jewish community. We the Jews have never had institutional or otherwise lasting problems in Iran. It is disgusting to see Israel appealing to the chorus of Jew-haters against the country most tolerant to Jews.

Muslim rulers of Iran naturally have a problem with Zionist regime. Good Jews, too, have a problem with it. Such attitude is not peculiar to the ayatollahs. Shah of Iran, a murderous dictator and close friend of America, didn’t embrace Israel, either. In the terms of foreign relations, Iran has every right to subvert a regime it doesn’t like: Israeli regime. The United States searches for “distant monsters” around the world to destroy; CIA subverted scores of regimes abroad. Israel, too, cooperates with Kurds to subvert the ayatollahs. Iran works against the post-Zionist regime which took hold of the Jewish land: that possibly makes Iran an enemy, but not at all a demonic state it is often pictured.

Iran supports Palestinian and Lebanese independence movements. It is Iran’s right and a logical stance for an honestly Islamic regime. Short of the Arab guerrillas, Israel would still occupy South Lebanon and refuse statehood to Palestinian Arabs. Polls show that Israeli support for Palestinian statehood correlates with Palestinian terrorist campaigns. Arab suicide bombers made Israel accept Palestinian national aspirations. That’s not to say that Israel should abandon South Lebanon which is the northern part of the Promised Land, or agree to Palestinian statehood. The point is, Iran is a decent adversary not deserving the hysterical hate poured on it.

Iran shows restraint in supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. After Israeli Air Force destroyed a transport of Zelzal missiles in Lebanon, Iran didn’t try resupplying Hezbollah with mid-range missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv. The bulk of Iranian aid to Hezbollah and Hamas goes to charity; their military capabilities are largely provided for by Syria and smaller foreign donations.

Israeli rulers happily made Iran into a straw man and scarecrow. High-ranking Israeli traitors from Beilin to Lieberman united against the Iranian threat. Other problems are set aside, the urgent problems: IDF became a US Army-like bureaucratized, overly expensive monster unable of lightning (before the media strikes back) offenses, enemy armies grew huge enough to make conventional wars prohibitively dangerous for Israel, mid-range and anti-aircraft missiles of Arab countries tremendously constrain the IDF attack capabilities. The Iranian nuclear threat is inflated specifically to hide the real, existential problems Israel is incapable of dealing with: Pakistani loose nukes, nuclear proliferation by North Korea, some of the Pakistani nuclear warheads reportedly stocked in Saudi Arabia, and Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccan, and Libyan nuclear programs.

Iran would never attack Israel with nuclear weapons. A historian would be hard pressed to recall the last instance of a major aggression by Iran; the minuscule Tunbs invasion seemed an aberration until the recently opened British archives confirmed that Sharjah emirate requested the invasion as face-saving measure. True, Iran will brandish its nuclear weapons and possibly provide nuclear defensive shield for Syria – but thousands of Syrian mid-range missiles, many with chemical and biological warheads produce an equally potent shield.

It is not even clear that Iran indeed has a military nuclear program. It might insist on domestic enrichment solely to satisfy the national pride. As a member of Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to enrich uranium, and winding down its program means bowing down to the US pressure.

Shiite Persian Iran is Israel’s natural ally against Sunni Arab enemies. Iran would be a much more welcome and honest arbiter of Israeli-Arab conflicts than Egypt which currently holds the de facto office of regional arbiter. Nuclear Iran would create great unrest in Azerbaijan and other Russia’s surroundings, bankrupt Israel’s Arab enemies through the arms race, and share the status of their collective enemy alongside Israel.

There are good reasons for Israel to attack Iran, destroying its nuclear facilities. Reinstating the Jewish deterrent is an important consideration. Preventing the rush of Arab regimes toward their own nukes is another reason. Maintaining psychologically important regional monopoly on nuclear weapons is also a casus belli.

In the Christian-Islamic-Black-Asian world, Israel has no friends. Sometimes we have to attack friends to scare off our enemies.