The Death of Israel

[Warph]

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann 

From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news. An expert on Arab-Israeli relations with excellent sources deep inside Netanyahu's government, she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta, who recently took time out from his day job (feuding with Nancy Pelosi) to travel to Israel "read the riot act" to the government warning against an attack on Iran.

More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, "...we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran's nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy."

She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that "as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran's nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself." She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel's doing, not Iran's.

In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.

Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks aimed at stopping its progress toward nuclear weapons is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments." By warning only of possible strengthening of economic sanctions if the talks do not progress, Obama is making an empty threat. The sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act as it must if it is to deter Iranian nuclear weapons.

All this means is that Israel's life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone.

Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that we, as Jews, are witnessing the possible end of Israel. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.

Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton.

Obama may have held the first White House seder, but he's not planning to spend next year in Jerusalem.

As I have said before... Obama is the most dangerous enemy the United States is faced with!  ...Warph

[Warph]

Commentary: Does Obama want to change Israeli government?

By Aaron David Miller
Special to CNN
   
(Editor's note: Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington since 2006, served in the State Department as senior adviser for Arab-Israeli negotiations and in other roles under six secretaries of state. He is working on a book about presidential greatness.)

* Aaron David Miller: U.S. has shied away from confronting Israeli prime ministers
* He says Barack Obama has shown signs of confronting Netanyahu
* Miller: The tough stance on settlements is a risky move
* He says U.S. may have decided there's no chance of peace with Netanyahu in office


WASHINGTON (CNN - June 2, 2009) -- President Obama has embarked on what could represent a radical departure in America's Mideast policy, at least on settlements.

Having worked for Republican and Democratic administrations, I took it for granted that the current president and secretary of state would first try to invest in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before publicly confronting him.

After all, even the toughest secretary of state, James Baker, who initially had no confidence in the hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, found common ground with him in an effort to pull off the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991.

Unlike his two immediate predecessors (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush), the president has decided to draw the line with Israel and push for a comprehensive freeze on settlements on the West Bank. The president seems unwilling to yield ground and to allow the Israelis any of the traditional loopholes that would have permitted some settlement construction. If the U.S.-Israeli brouhaha leads to a real confrontation, even the fall of the Netanyahu government, President Obama may not feel too bad about it.

Fighting with Israel is a normal occupational hazard if you want to be an effective mediator. Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter and James Baker knew this. But tension with Israel was designed with a purpose under prior administrations. You didn't pick fights with an Israeli prime minister because you were frustrated or to make nice with the Arabs, but to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations that made you, America and the peace process look good.

As President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week, his strategy is not altogether clear. The logic appears to be to get Israel to freeze settlements, the Arab states to offer up partial normalization and together this will somehow get Israel and the Palestinians into a successful negotiation on the toughest issues -- Jerusalem, borders and refugees. The president would presumably be prepared to lay out his own peace plan if necessary.

To make this work, the sun, moon and the stars would need to align almost perfectly. Netanyahu has already rejected an airtight freeze on settlements; the prospect of the Arabs, already scared of Iran, giving visas to Israeli entrepreneurs is unlikely. And the idea that a conflict-ending agreement can be reached between a Palestinian national movement so broken that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas share control over the guns, people and legitimacy of Palestine, and a right-wing Israeli government almost seems fantastical.

I can only conclude that the administration -- filled with talented and experienced people -- understands the long odds, too. In fact, both White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have seen the Netanyahu movie before (he was prime minister from 1996-1999) and may well have advised the president that getting an agreement with him will be almost impossible.

If the prime minister gave in on a freeze, he would be too weakened in his own country (without stunning concessions from the Arabs) that he couldn't go on to do an accord that divides Jerusalem and has Israel returning to borders very close to those of June 4, 1967.

So what's the administration's real objective? Certainly, to improve American credibility and demonstrate its commitment to peace. But there is a backstory here that points strongly in the direction of pressing Netanyahu either to change his behavior or his government. The president and secretary of state have come out early and tough on settlements, and they're denying Israel any wiggle room.

President Obama may be banking on the fact that no Israeli prime minister can afford a confrontation with America, particularly with a popular president at a time when Israel needs America to deal with Iran. And the president may also have concluded that if the prime minister decides to hang tough, well, we'll let the chips and his government fall where they may. The problem is the next Israeli government may be no more willing or able to do what the president and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would demand.

It's a risky play so early in his administration. I hope the president has thought through the consequences, because what's left of the peace process depends on it.


The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Aaron David Miller.

[Anmar]

There will be no peace in the near term future.  Isreali government and people are moving away from the mindset that allowed the Oslo accords to happen and towards the racist radicalism of Lieberman.  They are shooting themselves in the foot, they have lost most of their international favor in the last 10 years because of their failure to follow through with Oslo, their wars in lebanon and gaza, the expansion of illegal settlements, the illegal annexing of occupied territory,  the building of their so called "security wall".

They don't want peace, they want pieces of land.  It doesn't really matter who is President of the USA if the Isreali's and the Palestinians aren't willing to talk.  The only thing the US can do is stop giving the Isreali's so much money and technology.

[Varmit]

Good post Warph. 

It really doesn't surprise me though, that obama isn't supporting Isreal. 

Other than the United States, Isreal is the only other country that I would be willing to fight for.

[Teresa]

"He says U.S. may have decided there's no chance of peace with Netanyahu in office"

They would be correct if they DID make that decision, Netanyahu is a hardliner and along with Sharon was one of the sponsors of the West bank settlements.
This of course is beside the fact that there will be no peace with out him either because the Palestinian leadership has no other way to distract their over population than by blaming everything on the evil Zionists, even though it's their own leaders who have been screwing them and mismanaging the area for centuries.
The numbers don't lie and there are no prospects for mass immigration of any more Jews coming into Israel as happened after the Soviet Union "collapsed."
And you know..........maybe the death of Israel is coming no matter what.........
but.........
( I always seem to have a but in there......... )

Israel is a socialist country and has a huge anti-war and pro-peace movement. One can only hope that there are no atheists in foxholes...........Because Israel won't go down quietly.....*or I pray that they don't*... In fact, the country that has the mountain named for Armageddon, will just flat out make powdered glass out of most of the region, if threatened and pushed far enough.

They have held back, been more "politically correct" in fighting Hamas, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, and Muslim mercenaries.... and one day the line in the sand will be crossed and  BHO and the UN are going to get a big middle finger from Israel, and they will do like they always have, kick ass by themselves.

If Israel gets hit like that it will unleash hell. Syria will get a couple nukes Iran will get the rest, Lebanon will be over run and the Palestinians will be massacred while the Egyptians and Jordanians try to remain invisible.

Hamas fired rockets into Israel everyday. So Israel responds with an ass whoopin'. What do the terrorists and the world (UN) do?

Make em' stop (say it like a 5 year old), make 'em stop.....

I say......Let em' rip!

Oh and another thing... the Middle Eastern Apology Tour continues this week with BHO going over there to spread apologies for American Arrogance..

(  Decorum prohibits my response to this on this forum)

[Warph]

Other than the United States, Isreal is the only other country that I would be willing to fight for.

Good choice, Billy.  I'll be right beside you!!

[Warph]

"He says U.S. may have decided there's no chance of peace with Netanyahu in office"

They would be correct if they DID make that decision, Netanyahu is a hardliner and along with Sharon was one of the sponsors of the West bank settlements.
This of course is beside the fact that there will be no peace with out him either because the Palestinian leadership has no other way to distract their over population than by blaming everything on the evil Zionists, even though it's their own leaders who have been screwing them and mismanaging the area for centuries.
The numbers don't lie and there are no prospects for mass immigration of any more Jews coming into Israel as happened after the Soviet Union "collapsed."
And you know..........maybe the death of Israel is coming no matter what.........
but.........
( I always seem to have a but in there......... )

Israel is a socialist country and has a huge anti-war and pro-peace movement. One can only hope that there are no atheists in foxholes...........Because Israel won't go down quietly.....*or I pray that they don't*... In fact, the country that has the mountain named for Armageddon, will just flat out make powdered glass out of most of the region, if threatened and pushed far enough.

They have held back, been more "politically correct" in fighting Hamas, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, and Muslim mercenaries.... and one day the line in the sand will be crossed and  BHO and the UN are going to get a big middle finger from Israel, and they will do like they always have, kick ass by themselves.

If Israel gets hit like that it will unleash hell. Syria will get a couple nukes Iran will get the rest, Lebanon will be over run and the Palestinians will be massacred while the Egyptians and Jordanians try to remain invisible.

Hamas fired rockets into Israel everyday. So Israel responds with an ass whoopin'. What do the terrorists and the world (UN) do?

Make em' stop (say it like a 5 year old), make 'em stop.....

I say......Let em' rip!

Oh and another thing... the Middle Eastern Apology Tour continues this week with BHO going over there to spread apologies for American Arrogance..

(  Decorum prohibits my response to this on this forum)

".... and they will do like they always have, kick ass by themselves."


I like that.  Go get 'um, Tiger.... Billy and I got your back!

[Warph]

Patton Updated

Filed under: Gaza Incursion • Military Strategy — http://www.foundation1.org/eidelberg

To Israel's General Staff: Lessons From A Master of War

Israel's General Staff would do well to emulate George S. Patton, the general most feared by Nazi Germany.

On the eve of battle, Patton would admonish his soldiers: "The object of war is not to die for your country. It is to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his." This requires confronting and killing the enemy on the battlefield.

"Never let the enemy rest." No cease fires or hudnas. Unconditional surrender should be Israel's proclaimed war aim!

"We want the enemy to know that they are fighting the toughest fighting men in the world!" This precludes benevolence (which Arabs despise). Just as Hamas terrorists would show no mercy to you, so you should show no mercy to them. These terrorists must be killed even if this results in civilian casualties.

"Forget about army regulations ... [which] are written by those who have never been in battle...Our only mission in combat is to win." Hence general officers may sometimes have to disobey orders of the political echelon!

Israel must devastate the Arabs from top to bottom so as to erase the Islamic arrogance that prompts them to wage war against the Jewish State.

Prime Minister and Defense Minister must not shy from these war principles, which would require them to order the IDF to confront and kill the enemy primarily on the battlefield. Bombing the enemy's infrastructure should not obscure the importance of destroying the enemy's ground forces. The defeat of these Arab terrorists must be so thorough that it will eradicate their desire to wage war for a hundred years—the policy of the Allies powers that made militant Germany and Japan lovers of peace.

Israel's political echelon will be reluctant to pursue this policy not for humanitarian reasons—recall its brutality ay Amona—but it fears world opinion, UN condemnation, and possible sanctions. This fear cannot but undermine the General Staff and the fighting spirit of Israeli soldiers. This fear is baseless.

It is of capital importance that Israel's ruling elites pursue the war in Gaza as a war between good and evil. They must shun the moral relativism that tainted Ariel Sharon who said, while Jews were being reduced to body parts, that he does not think in terms of "black and white."

Israel's victory in Gaza will ultimately depend on whether its General Staff is animated by the profound sense of good and evil that inspired America's greatest generals—suffice to mention, along with Patten, William Tecumseh Sherman of Civil War fame. Both generals inspired their armies with complete confidence in the justice of their cause. Yet both pursued a war strategy that actually minimized casualties on all sides. They imbued their soldiers with the will to win and in the shortest possible time. This requires the use of overwhelming force and the uninterrupted attack.

The general who believes in the justice of his country's cause will not shy from cruelty against Hamas because it is by means of cruelty that he can shorten the war and thus minimize bloodshed. Thus, in this war between good and evil, those Israeli generals who implement the principles of war will be our greatest humanists.

[Warph]

This is a very interesting piece from Prof. Eidelberg:


A METAPOLITICAL VIEW OF USEFUL IDIOTS
by Professor Paul Eidelberg
   
http://www.foundation1.org/

Vladimir Lenin is credited with having coined the term "useful idiots." He had in mind capitalists who would sell the Soviet Union the rope with which to hang them.
Israel's useful idiots have gone much further. They have released, armed, and even paid Arab terrorists whose prestige soars by killing Jews. Alas, I must be frank and say that Israel's useful idiots have also yielded Jewish land to Arabs dedicated to Israel's annihilation.
Ever since 1993, one Israeli prime minister after another — beginning with Yitzhak Rabin — has pursued the inane policy of "land for peace." These prime ministers have not only sacrificed their intellects to this suicidal policy; in the process, they have also sacrificed the lives and well-being of countless Jews.

Driving their stupidity is timidity. Thus, back in June 2005, when Ariel Sharon was at the helm, Jerusalem Post analyst Caroline Glick wrote an article entitled "A Coward For A Prime Minister."

Israel's ruling elites simply lack the moral and intellectual probity to pursue a Jewish — or let us merely say a more independent — foreign policy. Israel has the strategic means of doing so. Bear in mind that U.S. military aid amounts to less than 1.5 percent of Israel's Gross Domestic Product. It cost Israel more than that to erect security fences, redeploy IDF forces, and compensate Jews expelled from their homes.

It should be obvious to the people of Israel that, regardless of their political and religious convictions, the Netanyahu government will pave the road to an Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria, Israel's heartland. This retreat or treachery will be facilitated by Netanyahu's Defense Minister, Labor leader Ehud Barak, who, as we shall now see, is unsurpassed as a useful idiot.

When Barak was Israel's Prime Minister, he concocted, without cabinet approval, the Sharm e-Sheikh Memorandum of September 4, 1999, in which he offered Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state consisting of 96% of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (including the Jordan Valley), eastern Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, 4% of the Negev, and the entry of perhaps 150,000 Arab refugees! Yet Arafat said "No."

Arafat's rejection of Barak's offer is amazing! It utterly contradicts the PLO's strategy of phases whose goal is Israel's destruction. Arafat himself admitted that the Palestinians are fighting for a "political objective, namely, the liberation of the Palestinian soil and the establishment of a Palestinian state over every part of it" (March 6, 1989, Qatar News Agency).

George Habash was equally unambiguous when he vowed: "The Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza will be the beginning of the downfall of the Zionist enterprise. We will be able to rely on this defeat in order to complete the struggle to realize our entire goal, which is the complete liberation of the national Palestinian soil" (June 9, 1989, "Voice of the Mountain" Radio, Lebanon).

But Arafat was only following the phased peace-and-war strategy of Anwar Sadat, who, in an interview with al-Anwar on June 22, 1975, said that "The effort of our generation is to return to the 1967 borders. Afterward the next generation will carry the responsibility." (Emphasis added)

Weighed against this strategy, there is no commensurate political explanation for Arafat's rejection of Barak's offer. The PLO would have had control of the Judean-Samarian hills overlooking most of Israel's population. Add Arab control of the Jordan valley and Israel would have been indefensible — the conclusion reached by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff after the Six-Day War. Arafat knew this. Perhaps Arafat's rejection of Barak's offer can only be explained in metapolitical terms. 

The mantra of "two states for two peoples" is a manifestation of the atheistic doctrine of moral relativism or indifference widespread in the democratic world. Any sensible Jew or Christian would admit that the people of Sodom and Gomorra were evil, which can be said of any people whose beliefs and behavior contradict the Torah's conception of man's creation in the image of God. Alas, it is incontrovertible, that Islam's attitude and behavior toward non-Muslims contradicts the idea that man is created in the image of God — and that is why peace is impossible between Israel and the so-called Palestinians.

This simple and palpable truth is too much for Benjamin Netanyahu, who, in a speech before a joint session of the American Congress, gratuitously denied the obvious clash of civilizations between Israel and her Arab-Islamic neighbors. Mr. Netanyahu is too modest to think he can overcome a clash of civilizations by diplomacy. But this does not prevent him from proposing an economic development plan that will transform the Palestinians into peace-loving bourgeois democrats.

Leaving aside the question of whether the Palestinians constitute a people rather than a assortment of Arab clans and tribes, Daniel Pipes said it would take one or two generations for these Arabs to overcome their savage hatred of Jews and Israel and become worthy of independent statehood. Between 1918 and 1933, four American administrations refused to recognize the Soviet Union for moral and legal reasons: its aggressive intentions and failure to abide by international law

Israel's annihilation remains the goal of the PLO, stipulated in its Constitution. This goal has not been rescinded by the Palestinian Authority under Fatah leader of Mahmoud Abbas. The same goal is proclaimed in the Hamas Covenant, to which Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is committed. Abbas and Haniyeh seems to be playing the "soft-cop/hard-cop" routine vis-à-vis Israel and the West. This enables Abbas to obtain enormous sums of money from the useful idiots in Washington and Europe, money shared with Hamas.

The Obama administration is flooded with useful idiots. Suffice to mention George Mitchell, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski who want the U.S. to deal with, hence finance Hamas. These "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil" bent-Americans are oblivious of the territorial and demographic absurdity of the "two-state solution."

More than two million Arabs restricted to 2,323 square miles of the West Bank, and another million Arabs squeezed into 141 square miles in Gaza, is a formula for economic stagnation and murderous discontent. The projected Arab state will be a cauldron of envious hatred of Israel fueled by the leaders of one or another Arab clan or group of thugs parading under the banner of Allah.

The Netanyahu-Barak or Likud-Labor alliance will not only fail to establish peace with Israel's mortal enemies. The failure and its grievous consequences will lead to widespread disgust among the people of Israel. They will be utterly fed up with parties that talk peace when it will be obvious to all but imbeciles that peace is not possible with Israel's enemies.

The people will be more disgusted than ever with a political system that entrenches fools and scoundrels in office — those who make a "politics of peace," that is, of lies, to perpetuate their power.

The people will be utterly disgusted with any party that advocates the mindless policy of "territory for peace." They will see that the Likud, contrary to its reputation, is not a rightwing party, that the Likud and Labor are two peas in pod to which one may add Kadima. Another debacle with the Palestinians may very well lead to a major transformation of Israel's dysfunctional system of coalition cabinet government. Indeed, Israel may soon undergo "regime change."

Regime change would require fundamental reconstruction of Israel's political and judicial institutions in ways consistent with Jewish ideas and values. Post-Zionists will then be seen to have unwittingly served a positive purpose: to facilitate, through blood and tears, the ascendancy of an authentic Jewish commonwealth!

This ascendancy may be hastened by the regime in Washington! Its anti-Israel policy will put an end to the illusion that Israel's survival depends on the United States. This illusion has hindered Israel from gaining control of its own destiny. For as we learn in the Torah — and contrary to Netanyahu's book A Place Among the Nations, Israel must stand alone and not reckon itself among the nations!

[Warph]

Just the other day, my attention was grabbed by Yelena Bonner, the widow of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.

I applaud the former Mrs. Sakharov.  In a speech delivered in Norway, she pointed out that the Palestinians are still being referred to as refugees even though only a tiny percentage of them have ever even set foot in Israel.  According to my dictionary, and I assume Ms. Bonner's, a refugee is someone who has fled from violence and wars.  How on earth can the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel in order to avoid being killed or injured by the invading Arab forces in 1948, 61 long years ago, be regarded as refugees?

It reminds me of American blacks who, 45 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, continue to benefit from various programs such as Affirmative Action and Operation Head Start.  Is there no such thing as a statute of limitations, no point at which commonsense kicks in and people are permitted to say, "Enough is enough," without being branded a villain?

Ms. Bonner pointed out that while every do-gooder group in the world seems to be concerned about the comfort level of Islamic terrorists at Gitmo, armed combatants who aren't even covered by the Geneva Conventions because they don't wear uniforms, carry a flag or even fight for a specific nation, nobody outside of Israel seems the least bit concerned about Gilad Schalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted three years ago by Hamas.  She's right, of course.  Our politicians don't care, the U.N. doesn't care, and God knows all those left-wing ACLU lawyers who are lined up eager to defend Islamic terrorists, up to and including Osama bin Laden, should he ever be captured, sure don't give a damn.... Warph



http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131510

Sakharov Widow: World Ignores Shalit Due to Anti-Semitism

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) The widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, delivered a particularly strong pro-Israel speech in Oslo this week. She blasted the Quartet's peace-making efforts, particularly those of Russia, spoke against the 2-state solution and so-called 'right of return,' and took the international community to task for not taking up Gilad Shalit's cause.

Bonner spoke at the three-day Oslo Freedom Forum, a gathering billed as the "human rights" response to Durban II. Over 200 participants from more than 30 countries attended the conference, bringing together some of the world's leading minds to honor survivors of political oppression and persecution.

Bonner was born to a Jewish Communist activist mother in 1923, and saw her parents arrested in 1937 during Stalin's Great Purge; her stepfather was executed, and her mother was imprisoned and exiled. She became active in the Soviet human rights movement in the late 1960s, and in 1972, married nuclear physicist and non-Jewish human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. When her husband was awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, but was barred from travel by the Soviets, she represented him at the ceremony in Oslo.



Excerpts from her speech:

...At the age of 14, I was left without my parents. My father was executed, my mother spent 18 years in prison and exile. My grandmother raised me and my younger brother. The poet Vladimir Kornilov, who suffered the same fate, wrote: 'And it felt that in those years we had no mothers. We had grandmothers.' There were hundreds of thousands of such children...

...Read Sakharov's Memoirs. It's a pity his Diaries haven't been translated; they were published in Russia in 2006. Apparently, the West isn't interested now in Sakharov.

The West isn't very interested in Russia either, a country that no longer has real elections, independent courts, or freedom of the press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists, and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss mainly? Gas and oil -- of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure and blackmail... Russia will remain the way it is now for decades, unless there is some violent upheaval.

...They say people are coming together -- but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn't because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.

Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews -- that is, Israel... So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak... At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven't always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates.

In many of Sakharov's publications... [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: ...

"All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders." "With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries."

...Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it's an old one): 'Two states for two peoples.' It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peace-making Quartet, made up of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia (some great peace-maker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed.

According to the UN's official definition, refugees are considered those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number -- about 700-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by the UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third, and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency's report, , the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.

The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another five million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus, created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians – while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew already.

The result is both strange and terrifying, not only because Israel will essentially be destroyed... Because the plan "two states for two peoples" is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same thing. A Judenrein Holy Land - the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?

And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It's a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn't the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?

You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners' everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House...

But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit's rights.

The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?

And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release - and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.

Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism.

Thirty-four years have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee).

Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders, and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov's ethical credo: "In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice."