Even venerable Yitzhak Shamir, the former leader of LEHI, finally succumbed to the Left’s and foreign pressure and accepted Palestinian autonomy, a first step toward their independence. Menahem Begin, a no less distinguished former leader of ETZEL, was brought down by the Carter’s pressure, and gave away Sinai. No wonder Rabin the empty man was manipulated into the Oslo agreements, Netanyahu the business consultant abandoned the holy city of Hebron to Muslims, and Sharon with the brains of a bulldozer traded Gaza for the safety net against criminal prosecution of his family. Not even to mention Barak, another fake “Mr. Security” who made Hezbollah rather than Haifa secure.

On their background, Olmert stands very well. Starting with his principled opposition to Begin-Sharon’s giveaway of Sinai decades ago to the cat-and-mouse game with Abbas, Olmert gives nothing to the enemy. Everything seems to be agreed upon with Fatah, but Palestinian statehood is not advancing. Those who blame the 2006 Lebanon war on Olmert would do well to advance an alternative. Should we expect Olmert to improve the army during his two months as prime minister? Should he have invaded Lebanon again after the 18-year-long occupation proved strategically futile? Should he have scorched Lebanon with napalm to get rid of all bearded Arabs? Olmert had the courage to strike at Lebanon upon the first provocation.

Olmert, he is very brainy. Everyone wants him to invade Gaza, but what’s the next step? If the IDF kills even a couple of thousand Arab militants and withdraws, many more would volunteer immediately, because the IDF withdrawal would be seen as Hamas victory. If the IDF stays in Gaza, the international law kicks in, and Israel would have to take care of the occupied territory’s population. There are two dead in Sderot, but hundreds of Israeli soldiers might die in the urban combat in Gaza. As the Palestinian guerrillas acquire Grad-types weapons able of hitting Ashkelon, Olmert might have no chance but to order a punitive expedition and pacify Gaza for a year or two, like the IDF pacified Lebanon. There is just no clear-cut solution to guerrilla warfare, short of the measures which would look unacceptably cruel on CNN.

The left are greatly dissatisfied with Olmert and seek to topple him. So far, he had not succumbed to Rice-the-Black-Plague’s pressure or the threats of criminal indictment on fake charges. Conducting an honest, straightforward policy requires otherworldly moral strength; real politics is an art of maneuvering. Olmert is not a political bulldozer, but a master politician. His ways are not straight, but they do not lead to capitulation. This is as good as it gets with Israel’s politicians.

There are many gaps in the story of Rabin's assassination. But we can reliably fill them from the context. Israeli ruling establishment has a history of political assassinations, including Arlozoroff, the Season, and most likely the Kahanes and Zeevi. Assassinating Rabin won't be outrageous. The establishment also has a documented history of blatant disregard for the law, such as Beilin-Peres negotiations with the PLO in Cairo before Rabin's elections. Beilin and Peres are heavily invested in the peace process, and one more "victim of the peace process" was not a high price for them to pay. Both hated Rabin and numbered many grievances against him.

The two conspiracies were running concurrently. One was a normal Shin-Bet's provocation against the right wing, in line with the subsequent framing of Goldstein, the purported Kahane Chai's planning of the attack on Arab school, etc. Shin-Bet's agent Champagne worked in Hebron for years, and Yigal Amir was just one of his targets. Shin-Bet aimed at framing the right, not killing Rabin. So Amir, unknown to himself, was shooting blanks at Rabin. Shin-Bet infiltrated Amir into the sterile area of the highest security and warned the guards to stay away from Rabin to give Amir clear shot. That much we see on the video: Rabin's guards step when Amir draws his gun. Subsequently, the shouts are heard, "It's blanks!" The shooting was theatrically staged after the immense peace show. It was planned in the sterile area rather than in the square so that no one stops Amir. Shin Bet, accordingly, placed video operators near the scene to have evidence against Amir, thus the Kempler's video. To retain credibility, the video has to be amateurish. Rabin was likely aware of the plot because on the video he looks at Amir seemingly quietly, without gesticulation. The Shin-Bet's plot was going on for years. Champagne spent much time with Amir and conservatives.

A big change came about shortly before the peace rally. Rabin publicly refused the concessions to Arabs and called for annexing the West Bank. It seems that he entered one of his hysterical mood swings. It became paramount for the Peres-Beilin group to get rid of Rabin. Planning the removal of Rabin - at that stage, not necessarily by murder - they came to know of Shin-Bet's provocation plot, an insignificant operation among many similar ones. At that point, Peres or Beilin instructed Shin-Bet to move fast forward with the fake assassination, but also planned a follow-up: the real assassination of Rabin in his car. Although Shin-Bet was profoundly leftist and both Peres and Beilin had many appointees there, the security service undoubtedly knew nothing of the planned real assassination. Rabin was probably killed by a guard who worked for Peres. Rabin's own guard was killed in the ensuing skirmish, and honorably buried a few days later after "committing suicide."

Now Shin-Bet realized that the Peres-Beilin group framed it. The secret of Champagne could not be kept for long and as soon as it came out, Shin-Bet was implicated in Rabin's murder. That's no small thing: a Shin-Bet agent convinced a right-winger to shoot Rabin. That smacks of a putsch. So Shin-Bet released the Kempler video to prove that Amir didn't kill Rabin. Shin-Bet didn't want to take a crash course with Peres and Beilin, and didn't dispute the official version of Amir assassinating Rabin, but secured its own back by proving that Amir didn't kill Rabin.

Israel will unlikely end up in nuclear mushroom. Muslims don’t need to go for such trouble. Syria will employ Hezbollah’s tactics, shelling the Golan Heights while protected itself with Russian anti-air and –tank missiles. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will take revenge on Israel by aiding Hamas. Muslims tried to prevail over Israel military, failed, and pragmatically switched to wearing her out. They will force arms race on Israel and bankrupt her through continuous military preparedness; their own infantry is cheap. Saudi Arabia will keep buying real estate in Israel. Iran will set up charities in Israel, as in Gaza and Lebanon. Muslims will help their brethren in Israel to breed and expand territorially.

Popular resentment among Jews about political fiasco of Jewish state will prompt the left to cement their coalition with Arabs. They will form consistent Knesset majority. After Muslims breed to about a third of Israeli population – twenty years from now – they will dominate Arab-leftist coalition and claim important ministerial portfolios. With no war in sight, Israelis will lack resolve to oppose Muslim encroachment in all branches of power on security grounds. Brainwashed from kindergarten and up, many Israelis will accept Arab dominance of ethnic-blind Israel as normal or at least unavoidable.

Economically efficient Jews will emigrate, leaving Israel with oligarchs, paupers, and pensioners.

Once numerous enough, Israeli Arabs will riot and substantially end Jewish presence in the Middle East.

Totalitarian states rarely lack legal systems. More often, they employ ad hoc law, bending rules to suit the fleeting needs of the rulers. Ad hoc laws break societies, for they make society’s functioning unpredictable. Imagine if a stone sometimes falls to the ground and other times floats in the air, sometimes bread is given free and other times a sky-high price is charged, electrocuting kills some times and heals at others. Law-abiding societies sentence criminals even if they admire or respect them. Robin Hood and Bonnie and Clyde were duly hunted down even though the populations admired them.

Consider the case of Palestinian terrorists whom Israel releases from her jails. Are the inmates enemy fighters, criminals, or victims of Israeli injustice? Israel rejects the last possibility and indeed most of the Palestinian inmates were sentenced for murder, complicity or attempted murder. Foreign relations do not influence criminals’ fate. The only possible legal reason for a prisoners’ release is treating them as enemy fighters.

If the Arab inmates are fighters, then they automatically become war criminals who deliberately targeted civilians. International case law stipulates executing them rather than keeping them in jail or releasing them. No country released convicted war criminals simply upon signing peace with its former enemy, let alone as a gesture of goodwill in preparation for peace talks. The criterion of releasing Palestinian terrorists – “without blood on their hands” – is legally absurd. Failure to commit a crime through arrest is not an extenuating circumstance.

The few Arab inmates who targeted Israeli troops rather than civilians are not war criminals, but prisoners of war. They, however, are not detained as enemy fighters, but sentenced by Israeli courts. Criminal courts have no jurisdiction over POWs – as indeed the Supreme Court recognized when it allowed the government to release Arab prisoners for “political reasons” without judicial consent. If Arab inmates are POWs, then Israeli courts grossly overstepped their jurisdiction by sentencing them, and Israel acted unreasonably by detaining POWs often for decades. Also, jail conditions are way harsher than the international conventions stipulate for POWs.

If the released Arabs are enemy fighters, then Israel is fully at war with the Fatah to which they belong. Absent of a formal cease-fire, Israel must bomb the Fatah-land instead of subsidizing it with tax transfers.

The Israeli government and the leftist Supreme Court blatantly violate the law by releasing Arab terrorists because the ruling establishment does not fear the public or media control, and has positioned itself above the law. As if there is any law in Israel.

It is a truism that leaders shape history. It is also true that mood swings shape leaders.

Sharon was a perfect right-winger. He totally disregarded Arab human rights when he took Jordanian hostages to exchange them for Israeli POWs, as Unit 101’s commander, or as Gaza’s military governor. He accused Shamir, a former leader of Lehi, of an insufficiently tough stance against the terrorists. Sharon disregarded orders and crossed the Suez Canal in 1973, sealing the defeat of a millions-strong Egyptian army. He strongly supported the settlement policy right into 2005. But…

Sharon exhibited possibly unwarranted violence in places from Qibya to Mitla. In Qibya, he killed Arabs. Storming the Mitla pass, he exhibited little concern for Jewish soldiers. A violent nature is great for a soldier but dangerous for a politician. The untimely death of Sharon’s wife and later his son accentuated Sharon’s urge for violence. In Camp David, Carter and Sadat pushed Menachem Begin to destroy Jewish towns in Sinai. Begin asked Sharon, who agreed immediately. Meir Kahane had long warned the Jews that Sharon is the most dangerous kind of Israeli politician: one ruthless and bereft of Jewish values.

How could Sharon, who crushed the Arabs and urged the Jews to settle every hilltop in the West Bank, be possibly bereft of Jewish values? That’s very typical of leftists. Recall how Rabin had ordered the IDF to break the hands of Intifada participants. The leftists hate Arabs and – recall the communists – love violence. Sharon was a leftist until his 45th year, when he established Likud. An opportunist in politics, Sharon looked for opportunities for violence. Israelis who treated him as a messiah did not learn the lesson of Yamit, destroyed on Sharon’s order. For Sharon, Gaza was a large-scale Yamit. For Sharon, to refuse demolishing Gush Katif was to convict himself of the crime of demolishing Yamit.

Asked why he was betraying his electoral promises, Sharon replied that “what is seen from here [the prime minister’s office], is not seen from there [the street].” Upon settling in the PMO, Sharon recognized that he cannot exercise unrestrained violence against the Palestinians; the foreign leaders and media won’t like that. Sharon, accordingly, satisfied his longing for violence by expelling the Jews from Gaza.

Sharon was the leftists’ ideal: a right-winger who forcibly did the Left’s bidding. The Left’s blackmail, however, wasn’t decisive: Mazuz indicted Sharon’s son Omri just days after the last Jewish village in Gaza was demolished.

Israelis knew Sharon’s vile nature before they elected him. Every Israeli with even a rudimentary brain must have realized that withdrawal from Gaza will provoke the Arabs to more attacks. Yet Israelis supported Sharon’s Kadima.

Sharon died the death of Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin. Dayan suffered a heart stroke shortly after he started promulgating abandoning the Jewish lands of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to Arabs in the unilateral disengagement. Rabin was executed for trying to give away Jewish lands. The withdrawal from Gaza sent Sharon into a coma. Hamas exists in order to fight Israel so that the Jews will re-occupy Gaza.

No one knows for sure whether Sharon intended the disengagement to further the creation of a Palestinian state or as a means to release the steam of international pressure on Israel and postpone the Palestinian state for years. At best, he miscalculated tremendously. History will remember him as a great statesman. An evil one, too.

The ghetto is not about weakness or isolation; Jews don’t seek physical strength or intermingling. The ghetto is about fear: the fear of staying in and the fear of moving out. Witness the life in Israel.

The settlements offer much higher quality of life than crowded, expensive Israeli cities. Most Jews, however, are afraid to live there. The excuses are irrational. Uncertainty? Israeli government will certainly reimburse the price of houses if evacuating the settlements. Insecurity? Suicide attacks are more common in Israel than in the settlements. Road conditions? Stoning incidents are less common than car accidents in Israel proper. Most Israelis have never been to the settlements but only listen to frightening media reports and rumors.

Forget the settlements, it’s frightful enough inside Israel. Jews at the north wait for Hezbollah to resume the attacks. Jews at the south wait for Hamas to improve the Kassam missiles to reliably target Ashkelon. Jews everywhere in Israel live under the threat of Syrian missiles. One man, Assad could order the Syrian army to attack Israel just because he woke up in a bad mood. This time, it won’t be even a matter of Syrian tanks rushing against a 40-mile-wide Israel. Syria can launch hundreds of SCUD missiles simultaneously, rendering Israeli defenses useless. Russian anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles will drastically limit Israeli reprisal. A year or two from now, Syria will count on the nuclear Iran’s protection.

Life in ghettos notoriously twisted Jewish mentality. Israelis are similarly suicidal. The facts are well known: Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria accumulate missiles; Iran develops nuclear weapons; Netanyahu had abandoned Hebron. Syria did not recognize Israel, and Netanyahu did not renounce the Wye River Memorandum. Ghetto Jews ignored the facts during the Holocaust. Israeli Jews ignore the facts now.

The Winograd commission report accuses Olmert of following the army’s recommendations and invading Lebanon instead of seeking a political solution. What solution? A year after the war, the entire international community still fails to find a political solution to the problem of Hezbollah. Curiously, Livni – who called on Olmert to resign following the Winograd report – now accuses the government of ignoring the army’s recommendations to invade Gaza. Leftist members of the Winograd commission might not like that, but quite often war is the only option, and the army is the best expert on war, one well worth listening to.
The Winograd report criticizes Olmert for the pitiful preparedness of Israeli army. What did Olmert have to do with that? He became prime minister two months before the war. Olmert did not choose the pathetic peacenik Peretz for Defense Minister – he is the Labor party’s man; Olmert had to accept him. Even Shimon Peres, who’d lost Labor’s primaries to Peretz, didn’t want him as Defense Minister. The responsibility for Peretz the windbag leading the Israeli military effort lies with the Israelis who gave the Labor socialists their 19 seats in the Knesset.

It was Ariel Sharon who dealt severe blows to Israeli army. The supply-side deficiencies were easy to overcome; the real problem in the Lebanese war was the absence of experienced, top-level commanders. Sharon purged the army of all the respected leaders who opposed the evacuation of Gaza. Sharon deliberately let the army fall into disarray so that a strong militant spirit wouldn’t impede the disengagement. The anti-settler brainwashing was incompatible with rigorous military training.

The Winograd commission gave many dead-end recommendations like a stronger voice for the Foreign Minister in the government’s decision-making. If Israeli Foreign Ministers had been deciding military matters, the Arabs would have drowned us in the sea long ago; “our” Foreign Ministers work to please their European colleagues.

Not incidentally, the Winograd report deals with the opening days of the war only. The leftists don’t care to learn about the war’s results or tactics, but only want to blame Olmert for any political failures. An enquiry which spans the entire period through the war’s end would have had to justify Olmert’s decision to fight: Hezbollah was dealt a blow as crushing as politically possible. The Winograd commission ominously skipped the pre-war events: Labor’s demands for withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 amid the clear evidence of a mounting Hezbollah presence there, Barak’s withdrawal and security arrangements that amounted to high treason, and the very unsettling fact that every Israeli administration, left or right, ignored Hezbollah’s training camps, supply depots, and bunkers.

Instead of proclaiming the corpse of Israeli politics rotten, the Winograd commission accuses Olmert of being a bad doctor.

People used to repression obey all the way to death. diaspora Jews and long-suffering Russians obediently lined up for Nazi massacres. Students of the Holocaust are shocked by images of people lined up single file so several could be shot with one bullet. What made them do that? We’re not used to repression and cannot comprehend why the people of Babi Yar waited three days while the Nazis took them by tens to shoot them - and did not rebel and at least die decently without being raped and mutilated by the Germans and their Ukrainian coadjutors. Because we’re not used to repression. Or are we?

Israel is a totalitarian state by every measure. Specifically, it is a smart totalitarian state. Not like the stupid Soviets who prohibited all but one party but closer to the German Democratic Republic which retained the façade of pluralism. Major Israeli parties, whether masquerading left or right, seek to create an atheist, ethnic-blind, ghetto-sized state. In fact, the so-called rightist governments ceded most of Israel: Sinai and then Gaza. The Left and the Right accept huge numbers of Arabs into the Israeli core, certain to become the majority. All major parties accept a second Palestinian state (beside Jordan) in the Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria. Alternative views are thoroughly suppressed: the legislature bans discussion of non-violent (at any rate, not murderous) transfer of Arabs; the government ostracizes entrepreneurs who sponsor honest grassroots movements; the government-controlled media and the police all cooperate.

Israel is the only civilized country that censors political opinions of her citizens, including any discussion of the ethnic roots of terrorism, the demographic problem of Arabs in Israel, and removing Arabs to a Palestinian state. In the USSR, newspapers were fairly free: they could express opinions about books or theater; so can the Israeli press. The test is media freedom to express political views, which in Israel is practically prohibited. No major media outlet can run an article on whether a Jewish state can include an Arab majority.

Israel has developed an immensely powerful police apparatus. Its original goal was to fight terror, and it did very well. No one cared about the hordes of informants, detention without charge, or torture in jails to fight terror. The Israeli police have long operated outside that mandate to infiltrate and disrupt Jewish political organizations. Terrorists work by violence; political parties may advocate violent goals but they work through democratic process. Kahane and Feiglin created political parties not to kill Arabs but to win elections. They posed no immediate danger which is a usual prerequisite for abrogating political freedoms. Yet the police devastated those and many other purely political movements.

Back in 2001, Arabs killed two Jewish teenagers near the Tekoa settlement. Stoned them. The settlers, a tough crowd, planned revenge. The Israeli police, however, asked them to restrain themselves and promised to bring the Palestinians to justice. Besides the usual saber rattling mass arrests, the Israeli government did nothing. Subsequently, the Arab murderers fled to Jordan.

A few days ago, Arab rocket killed a Jewish woman in Sderot. The Israeli response was painfully familiar: a house destroyed in Gaza. To maintain the appearance of retaliation, the Israeli army chose a house of known high-ranking Hamas member (why wasn’t it destroyed already?). To avoid escalation, the army apparently warned the inhabitants to flee. Or so say the Palestinians. No Arab was killed.

The Israeli army explained the silly endeavor by claiming the house was used to hide Hamas’ cash. Why wasn’t it seized then? Who warned the Hamas and allowed them to flee with the cash?

The Israeli army and police have developed a do-nothing attitude toward Arabs murdering Jews. That sharply contrasts with the sentencing of Jews who kill Arabs in self-defense to long jail terms. Adding insult to injury, Israeli government agencies mislead the victims’ relatives and neighbors with promises of justice.

During the Lebanese war, Olmert declared that a Hezbollah rocket attack against Tel Aviv would cross the red line. The shelling of Haifa, a city of Russian immigrants and blue-collar workers, the Israeli government found tolerable. Neither was the shelling of Sderot, a city of religious and lower-class Jews, a casus belli. Police raids and chaotic incursions in Gaza do not substitute for total war against our Palestinian enemy.

Along with the murdered woman, a young man guarding the house of the treacherous and incompetent Defense Minister Amir Perez lost two legs in Sderot. It possibly makes sense to guard Israeli officials, though exposing them to terrorism like the Israelis they pretend to protect is more just. To guard a house is wrong. Israeli bureaucrats live like pashas. Army officials routinely use recruits for private affairs. Perez is responsible for the two torn out legs of a young Jew.

Olmert cowardly adheres to double standards. He runs from Lebanon under foreign pressure but refuses to leave Gaza whose inhabitants so far enjoy less international support. Israel had a real problem with Lebanon, while Kassams from Gaza are little more than fireworks made of fertilizer. The Israeli response should be very harsh in either case, but Olmert pounds only defenseless people.
The Israeli government has no antiterrorist strategy and hysterically kills civilians instead of answering the fundamental question, why terrorists fight and what it will take to stop them. They fight because we Jews took land they consider theirs, and they will not stop unless driven far away, dispersed, and forced to assimilate.