The Stealth Jihad
By Sarah N. Stern      

     A stealth jihad for winning the hearts and minds of American school children is taking place, right here in America. The financial foundation for this jihad comes from Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud, a member of the Saudi Royal family, who has been implicated in the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

   The original planning site for this jihad is Mecca, Saudi Arabia. However, unbeknownst to him, the American taxpayer is also contributing to this jihad.

The American epicenter of this intellectual jihad is a quiet, rural campus set among 1,375 peaceful acres in Abiquiui, New Mexico. At the heart of this tranquil compound, set among the serene, arid hills and colorful junipers and poplar trees of the mesa, lie a mosque and a madrassa, (school). The school and the mosque, along with the beautiful property they sit on, are all funded by the Saudi Royal family.

   Also among this serene setting is a publishing house. It is within this publishing house that some of the most radical, Wahhabaist English translations of the Koran are printed.

    It is also here that the teaching materials that are now being used in teaching training workshops and classrooms throughout the country are printed.

   According to their website, “Dar al Islam” is a not-for profit conclave founded in 1979, by an American born Moslem, and an American-educated industrialist, which came about after a meeting at the Ka’aba in Mecca., Saudi Arabia .Their stated purpose is “The presentation of Islam through the Primary Sources, (i.e. the Koran and the Sharia) as understood through God fearing scholars of Islam throughout the ages.”   Offered there are a variety of programs on how to present Islam to the outside world, how to live a life, according to the law of Islam and teacher training workshops for American teachers of secondary school.

         “Dar al Islam” is part of a stealth campaign, financed by the Saudi royal family to infiltrate the hearts and minds of our American children, not only within the university setting, but from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

   Teacher training and curriculum materials are issued out of this quiet compound, with which to conduct outreach programs to train teachers and librarians. A sample workshop for teachers after September 11th has as its first chapter: “Why do they hate us?” The number one reason that is given is invariably “Because of America’s support for Israel.”
America, itself, is described, as the incarnate of evil, who destroys native cultures and civilizations in its quest for capitalistic expansionism and imperialistic hegemony.

    The back of  he materials distributed is imprinted with an insignia bearing the words “Aramco”,  the Saudi oil company, with a dazzling bright star set amidst a tranquil field of green and blue.

 
     What is deeply disturbing is that a little known American law that has quietly been  re-authorized, again and again, and is about to be re-authorized once more, has made this all possible.       

   It is no longer shocking to the well-informed American that Saudi petro dollars have been used to “bridge gaps in understanding” between American university students and the Moslem world. In December of 2005, the Harvard University Gazette proudly announced that they have accepted the gift of twenty million dollars from Saudi business man Prince Alaweed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud to create a university wide program on Islamic studies. An identical display of generosity has been bequeathed by Prince Alaweed Bin Talal to the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University to support and expand its Center for Muslim Christian Understanding.

   These are just two of the more illustrious names in the American Academy that have profited generously by Saudi magnificence. The Middle Eastern Studies Department of  the University of Californian at Santa Barbara , has a chair named after the Saudi King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz.  One would do well to wonder how much of this money is intended to “bridge the gaps in understanding” and how much is intended to steadily infiltrate the American educational system as a way to affect American policy in the Middle East, and ultimately assist a Wahhabaist agenda.

   The Saudis have stated in their English language newspaper “Ain Al Yaqueen”, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, under the custodian of the two Holy Mosques, King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aqziz has positively shouldered responsibility and played a promising role in order to raise the banner of Islam all over the globe and raise the Islamic call either insider or outside the kingdom.”

    As Lee Kaplan explains:

                                      Over the last 30 years, the Saudi royal family
                                      has contributed upwards of 70 billion US dollars to infiltrate
                                      worldwide institutions  with propaganda against the West and
                                      Israel. This sum, it has been observed, makes the one billion               
                                      Dollars per annum spent by the Soviet Union during the Cold
                                      War for Communist propaganda pale by comparison.
                                      
 
    What should be most alarming  to  Americans is that these Saudi funds have also been used to develop curricula for the average American elementary to high school student, who  are still in their impressionable, vulnerable years and have yet to posses the sufficient critical intellects to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction. (It is quite an assumption to presume that the average college student does posses these critical thinking skills, but we will put that aside, for the time being).

  What should also be quite troubling is the fact that this program has been developed at the behest and the largess of the American taxpayer, who unwittingly has created the vehicle for the Saudis to embed themselves widely into the American classroom, and undermine American foreign policy.

      And finally: What should be profoundly disturbing to the average American reader is the instructional content, itself, of these curricula, which is replete with both highly  anti-American and ant-Israeli agendas that has been underwritten by the United States taxpayer under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

     The original legislative intent of this public funding was in order to ensure that we had “a pool of international experts to meet national security and defense needs.”

   Title VI of the Higher Education Act came about at a time when America and the West were combating the last great ideological struggle of its time, the Cold War against the former Soviet Union.  At this time, policymakers in Washington rightfully recognized the fact that our nation’s youngsters were woefully ill-equipped in their knowledge of foreign languages and cultures to be able to withstand the Soviet threat.

   In 1958, the nation, therefore, passed the National Defense Education Act. Title VI of the Higher Education Act is the successor. Its main purpose was to provide knowledgeable specialists to the fields of government, education, the military, and industry to be able to enhance the national security of this country.

   What Title VI of the Higher Education Act did, in reality, was to give birth to a robust Regional Studies industry within our nation’s campuses. Because of this act, hundreds of academic centers have sprung up around the country to study various regions of the world, including Asian Studies, African Studies, Post Soviet Studies,  European Studies ,Latin Studies  and seventeen Middle Eastern Studies Centers, all at the public trough.

    In I978 the late professor of comparative literature at Columbia, Edward Said wrote a slim, facile but powerful book that profoundly transformed the field of regional studies, in general, and Middle Eastern studies, in particular, Orientalism .  In it, he argued that the study of the Middle East has been saturated by a European and Western bias, that is permeated with colonialism and imperialism.

     As is the time-honored tradition in the academy, this facile, single factor, and profoundly “blame America first” analyses quickly caught traction. It has, up until the very present, remained the predominant paradigm within which the world is viewed in most of the regional studies programs on the American college campus, and is found in equal abundance in all regional studies departments throughout our nation, including departments of Middle Eastern Studies.

  What has resulted from the Title VI legislation is a very substantial annual endowment to the university, creating a vigorous regional studies industry.  What has happened in the years that have ensued since the original legislation has been passed, (thanks, in great measure, to the canonized post-colonial biases established by Edward Said), is that many professors have used their desks as a platform for one-sided, anti-American political polemic as a paltry substitute for  a good, solid education. So entrenched is the academic politicalization of the field, that most professors in these departments in fact, feel that imparting their left wing biases is  a part of a good education.  The bias has become so calcified into the scholarship of the regional studies industry,  that statements that would be regarded as overtly and vulgarly political in normal discourse are taught as though they are a priori truths.

    This would be one thing if we were not being confronted with a ruthless enemy, and we were studying a quaint, extinct civilization. However, it is quite perilous to educate our children with a feeling of moral ambiguity of the rightness of America’s global role when we are confronted with enemies whose people have been  taught to detest us and  who have brutal hegemonic ambitions.

     The universities has taken this money and have run with it, as an entitlement, without the slightest degree of oversight or  even the remotest memory of why a share of our national treasure  had been appropriated to them in the first place. As the president of the American Council of Education  had said, “The Federal Government has provided its share of the financing  of language and area centers without impairing the autonomy of the institutions receiving the funds; in short, Federal funds have been given without Federal control.” As the preeminent expert in the field, Martin Kramer, says in his seminal book on the subject, Ivory Towers on Sand, “From its inception, Title VI  was administered as a no-strings-attached benefit. Later the “defense designation” was dropped altogether.”

         Even more pernicious, however, is the fact that in order to qualify for the funding, the university is obligated to conduct community outreach seminars to teachers of public and private schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade. And where do the materials for these outreach centers in the universities come from?

    Simply attend any one of the many Teacher-Training Outreach Centers in  Middle Eastern Studies Departments at Harvard, Georgetown, Princeton, UCLA, NYU or Yale, and you will see the familiar icon of Aramco, the Saudi based oil conglomerate.

    In the immediate aftermath of  September 11, 2001, the academy and its several powerful lobbyists,  petitioned the US congress for an additional 20 million dollar per year increase, from 100 million dollars a year to 120 million. The ostensible reason given to congress was that we need more expertise in understanding why we were attacked on September 11th, and more speakers of Arabic.

    If one were to look for the results of our taxpayers’ magnificence, he would simply have to scratch his head in utter bewilderment.

    According to an article in the New York Times, there are still 120, 000 hours of pre-September 11th chatter that have yet to be analyzed by our nation’s intelligence services. This is due to one simple reason: There is a dearth of Arabic translators in our nation. One might do well to question whether or not these tax dollars are being well spent, being that the original intent of the Title VI funding was to prepare our students to confront growing threats to our national security interests.

      In order to obtain the funding, the university simply has to write a grant application to the Department of Education, and it is routinely rubber-stamped. An excerpt from the application for federal funding for the fiscal year of 2003 to 2005 from Georgetown University reads, “Through its publications, public affairs, and k-12 outreach programs, CCAS, (The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies) sponsors a variety of public activities, enabling it to reach a wide audience beyond the University.”

   Needless to say, no mention is made as to the source of the curriculum materials for the teacher training workshop programs.

      In the 109th Congress, we came so close to passing legislation to reform the way these funds have been administered, one could almost taste it. (As it now stands. The  Title VI provisions are set to be re-authorized later this year, without any changes to the way in which this whole system is administered.)

    In the last session, a bill in the House sponsored by John Boehner, (Republican Ohio), had actually passed through the appropriate committee, (Labor and the Work Force), and through the floor,  which would have created an oversight board to oversee how the funding was administered. In addition, the bill would have enhanced academic freedom by ensuring that the Title VI outreach programs  would “reflect diverse perspectives and represent a full range of views.”

   The Senate Version, which passed through the committee of jurisdiction, (Health Education, Labor and Pensions), and which Senator Mike Enzi, (Republican, Wyoming), had promised he would attach to the Higher Education Authorization Bill, went even further. This bill asked for a survey of what our departments of national security and defense needs from the university, (i.e. Arabic language instruction); an independent grievance procedure if a student felt that he was being penalized for his political views, without fear of confronting the professor, and an accounting by the university as to how many of their graduates actually went on to careers in service of our nation.

   Thinking the Advisory Board was the great boogeyman, Senator Kennedy, the then-minority chair of the committee had actually signed off on this legislation. However, in the last minute, he attached so many controversial bells and whistles on to the Higher Education Authorization Act, that there was simply not enough time on the senate calendar to debate it.

 
  Opponents of the  proposed changes had claimed that  would inhibit academic freedom. However, the way the programs are administered today, and the narrow ideological lens through which the regional studies programs are taught, today, constitute a far graver assault on intellectual freedom.

  Academic freedom is not a one way street. It is not the freedom to inhibit the heady exhilaration of the student of delving into marketplace of ideas because of the restrictions and biases of the professor. The bill’s requirement to foster a diversity of perspectives would actually encourage intellectual freedom. As it stands now, there are professors who make such statements with total impunity, as “No one is permitted into my class who does not acknowledge Israeli atrocities.”

  In reference to the House bill, it should be noted that most other university-directed federal grant programs already have advisory boards, including include the Fulbright Program, the National Science Foundation, the National Security Education Program and the U.S Institute of Peace. The scope of this Title VI Board would have been limited to
making recommendations to the Secretary of Education and to the Congress concerning the overall program.

     The government has a responsibility to its taxpayers that when money is appropriated toward a certain objective that there is oversight. As taxpayers, we are entitled to demand accountability to assure that our money is being well spent.

   Beyond that, however, whether or not people frequenting the serene ivy covered towers of the academy are willing to acknowledge it, America is facing grave threats from the world of radical Islam. They are not going away soon. We need to prepare our students, and our nation for the challenges that will be confronting us for many years to come. We cannot imbue them with a sense of moral relativism, ambiguity and guilt towards America’s or Israel’s deserved place in the world.

    Critics of the proposed amendments to the Title VI legislation argued, (with a great deal of exaggeration), that “We have to keep the government out of the classroom, while most were unaware that the government is already in the classroom.

   However, it is not our own government. It is that of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia    

Sarah N. Stern is President of EMET, the Endowment for Middle East Truth. She writes frequently about the Middle East. 

What You Can Do about Iran

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

This week brought unusual news from Russia, which until now has been a major supplier of Iran’s nuclear programs.

The Russians said they were pulling engineers and technicians out of Busheir, the Persian Gulf site where since 1995 they have been building a nuclear power plant for Iran. They cited as pretext Iran’s failure to make timely payments on the $800 million contract.
 
Should this turn out to be more than just a tactical maneuver, Russia’s pullback from Iran signals a real success for U.S. diplomacy.
 
But the U.S. has had less success in other areas. And the administration must show results soon if it doesn’t want Congress to pass new legislation that will impose mandatory sanctions on foreign companies trading with Iran.
 
Sen. Chris Dodd (D, Conn) berated administration witnesses during a hearing of the Senate Banking committee on Wednesday for their failure to cut off foreign investment in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
 
He displayed a chart showing 14 recent investment deals worth potentially $126 billion, which companies in Britain, France, Italy, Holland, China, Malaysia have signed with Iran.
 
Despite laws on the books passed initially during the Clinton administration that require the administration to impose sanctions on foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in Iran’s oil and gas sector, “not one foreign energy concern has been sanctioned,” Dodd said.
 
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns replied that top U.S. officials have been “jawboning” foreign oil companies to get them to back off from those contracts, and that he expected many of the deals on Dodd’s chart would never materialize. “We’ve gone to their CEOs and said, ‘this is a bad idea.’” Burns said.
 
Then he warned that stronger action would destroy two years of patient U.S. diplomatic efforts to build a coalition that has gradually ratcheted up the pressure on Iran. With no results yet to show, he was essentially saying, trust me.
 
Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey described the type of financial steps the U.S. has been taking with our allies behind the scenes. These have had a real impact, and have made it more difficult for Iran to use the international financial system to send money to terrorist groups and to purchase equipment for their WMD programs.
 
Just one example: In January 2006, the U.S. imposed $70 million in fines on ABN Amro Bank NV of Holland for violating sanctions on Iran and laundering payments for Iranian entities. The fines were an effective measure that sent a clear message to the international banking community. They also led Amro and other banks to announce in the ensuing months that they would take no new business in Iran.
 
I travel the United States speaking to various groups about the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Except for pro-Tehran groups, or hard Leftists who would like the United States to become an Islamic Republic, no one really disputes Iran’s nuclear weapons intentions or their support for international terrorism.
 
But no one really knows what to do about it. They see what the U.S. government claims to be doing, and then they look at Sen. Dodd’s chart: $126 billion in fresh investment in Iran is no chump change.
 
American corporations continue to do business with Iran despite the total U.S. trade embargo imposed by Executive Order in 1995. They do it by flowing their Iran contracts through foreign subsidiaries. This is perfectly legal, but it is wrong.
 
So what can ordinary citizens do about it? Here are a few suggestions.
 
In Maryland, where I live, Delegate Ron George has introduced a bill into the state legislature that would require the State Pension funds to disinvest from companies that continue to do business with Iran. He needs your support.
 
Maryland is a relatively small state of just over five million citizens. And yet, the state pension funds have nearly $2 billion invested in companies that invest in terrorist-sponsoring states.
 
The pitch is very simple: Do you want your pension fund invested in companies who prop up Iran? There are lots of other places you can invest. Why choose companies helping countries such as Iran whose leaders state publicly they want to destroy America?
 
A similar bill has been introduced in California, whose state pension fund, Calpers, controls a hefty $338 billion dollars of investments along with the California State Teacher’s Retirement System. Joel Anderson, the Republican legislator who introduced the bill, said it would impact $24 billion worth of investments. Pennsylvania is contemplating a similar measure.
 
The “Divest Terror” bandwagon, spearheaded by my friend Frank Gaffney, has begun to roll. It worked with South Africa. It can work with Iran.
 
Gaffney has a very simple idea. Identify a “dirty dozen” group of international companies who supply capital or technology or know-how to terrorist states, and encourage U.S. state pension funds to pull funding from them.
 
Even State Department Undersecretary Nick Burns acknowledged in a back-handed way that such legislation helps, since it provides State Department diplomats with a bogeyman they can trot out in front of reluctant coalition partners: if you don’t play ball, it gets much worse.
 
There are other measures ordinary Americans can take on a more personal level.
 
How many of us buy gasoline from Shell stations, or own vehicles produced by DaimlerChrysler? These are just two examples of international corporations heavily invested in Iran. Boycotting their products, and letting the companies know it, can have an impact.
 
DaimlerChrysler has been expanding its operations in Iran in recent years, and recently opened an assembly line to build E-class vehicles in Iran. It also owns a factory that builds Mercedes-Benz diesel engines for trucks and buses under license.
 
In 2004, DaimlerChyrsler sold through a Saudi affiliate 270 Mercedes Benz commercial vehicles to Iran in a $22 million contract. Those vehicles have since been used by law enforcement authorities in Iran for riot control. A German prosecutor in Stuttgart opened an investigation into the sale.
 
DaimlerChrysler AG is the parent corporation of what used to be Chrysler corporation here in the United States. The U.S. company has no legal or corporate responsibility for the sales of its parent to Iran. Those sales are perfectly legal. But they are wrong.
 
Shell has signed pre-contractual agreements to invest billions of dollars in Iran’s oil and gas sector. Without help from Shell and other major oil companies, the International Energy Agency projects that Iranian oil exports will grind to a halt by 2015.
 
There are dozens of U.S. and international corporations in a similar situations as DaimlerChrysler or Shell. And most of them do business here in the United States.
 
Want to have a personal impact? Start there.

"Saudi Arabia has proposed a new formula for a comprehensive peace."

FACT

In an effort to jumpstart the peace process, Saudi Arabia has resurrected the idea of negotiating with Israel on the basis of a formula outlined by then Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002. Abdullah's ideas were revised and adopted by the Arab League as a peace initiative that offered Israel"normal relations" in exchange for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders and
resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue.

In response to the renewed discussion of the plan in March 2007, Prime Minister Olmert expressed a willingness to talk about the Saudi initiative. When the plan was brought up a few months earlier, Olmert reportedly met secretly with a member of the Saudi royal family (Reuters, October 4, 2006). More recently, Israel tried to persuade the Saudis to modify the
plan's position on the refugees to make it more palatable, but the Palestinians objected to any changes.

For the plan to have any chance of serving as a starting point for negotiations, the Saudis and other Arab League members will have to negotiate directly with Israel. In 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would go the Arab League summit to discuss the plan, but he was not
invited. The Saudis were also been invited to Jerusalem to discuss their proposal, but they rejected this idea as well.

As it is, this initiative is nothing more than a restatement of the Arab interpretation of UN Resolution 242. The problem is that 242 does not say what the Saudi plan demands of Israel. The resolution calls on Israel to withdraw from territories occupied during the war, not "all" the
territories in exchange for peace.

In addition, Resolution 242 also says that every state has the right to live within "secure and recognizable boundaries," which all military analysts have understood to mean the 1967 borders with modifications to satisfy Israel's security requirements. Moreover, Israel is under no obligation to withdraw before the Arabs agree to live in peace.

"There are some who have urged, as a single, simple solution, an immediate return to the situation as it was on June 4..this is not a prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities."

- President Lyndon Johnson, speech on June 19, 1967


The Arab plan calls for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights. The Israeli government has offered to do withdraw from most, if not all of the Golan in exchange for a peace agreement; however, Syrian President Bashar Assad has so far been unwilling to negotiate at all with Israel.

The demand that Israel withdraw from "the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon" is at odds with the UN conclusion that Israel has completely fulfilled its obligation to withdraw from Lebanese territory.

The Arab initiative calls for a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem based on the nonbinding UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Today, the UNRWA says that 4.3. million Palestinians are refugees. The current population of Israel is approximately 7 million, 5 million of whom are Jews. If the Palestinians all returned, the population would exceed 10 million and the proportion of Jews and Palestinian Arabs would be roughly 60-40. Given the higher Arab birth rate, Israel would soon cease to be a Jewish state and would de facto become a second Palestinian state (along with the one expected to be created on the West Bank and Gaza Strip). This suicidal formula has been rejected by Israel since the end of the 1948 war
and is totally unacceptable to all Israelis today. Israel does, however, recognize a right for all the refugees to live in a future Palestinian state.

Israel has agreed to allow some Palestinian refugees to live in Israel on a humanitarian basis, and as part of family reunification. Thousands have returned already this way. In the past, Israel has repeatedly expressed a willingness to accept as many as 100,000 refugees as part of a resolution of the issue. In fact, one government report said that Israel accepted
140,000 refugees in the decade following the Oslo agreement of 1993 (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 6, 2002).

The refugee issue was not part of Abdullah's original proposal and was added at the summit under pressure from other delegations. Also, it is important to note that Resolution 242 says nothing about the Palestinians and the reference to refugees can also be applied to the Jews who fled and were driven from their homes in Arab countries. Another change from
Abdullah's previously stated vision was a retreat from a promise of full normalization of relations with Israel to an even vaguer pledge of "normal relations."

The Arab demand that Israel accept the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital has been part of the negotiations since Oslo. Israel's leaders, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have accepted the idea of creating a Palestinian state in part of those territories, and Israel has even offered compromises on the status of Jerusalem, but the Palestinians have rejected them all.

It is also worth noting that most of the Arab League nations have no reason not to be at peace with Israel now. Israel holds none of their territory and is more than willing to make peace with the members of the League. Several members of the League had already begun to normalize relations with Israel before the latest outbreak of violence, and their principal critic
was Saudi Arabia.

The Delusional World of the Realists
                                     
By Sarah N. Stern

In memory of Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who did not suffer fools or despots gladly.

    “Alice: There is no use trying…one can’t believe impossible things.
      The Queen: I dare say you haven’t had much practice. Why sometimes I’ve believed             as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
                            -----Lewis Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland”

The Bush administration is in a difficult spot. Even the most ardent supporters of the War in Iraq are admitting to the fact that the war has been a much more arduous battle than they had originally contemplated.  Many political strategists on both sides have been taking the mid-term defeat of many congressional republicans as a referendum not only on the Iraqi War, but on the entire Bush foreign policy agenda, including his ideas of bringing democracy to the Middle East, and his suspicion of various contemporary Muslim leaders.

Americans do not like long wars. The body count is reaching almost 3,000 American lives. None of us like the prospect of our sons or daughters arriving home in body bags. We would all like a quick fix, a silver bullet, something to extract us from this deadly, long, expensive war that is splitting apart the nation.

This December, with a great deal of fanfare and Washington showmanship, former Secretary of State James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton made a dramatic re-entrance into the field of public policy with their much touted Iraqi Study Group (ISG) Report. The quite proficient public relations firm of Edelman had generated quite a public “buzz” before, during and after the immediate release of the results of collective wisdom of this venerable group, which includes many of the Washington elite from a few decades ago.

Read it all >>

The Myth of a “Moderate” Fatah

Arlene Kushner

There is a prevailing notion in Western diplomatic circles today that Hamas – and only Hamas – is the stumbling block to a successful negotiation of peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.  According to this thinking, Fatah – and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in particular – are essentially “moderate” in outlook and should be strengthened in the interests of achieving that peace. 

Statements offered to a Western world eager to embrace peace are cheap.  They represent the major difference between Fatah and Hamas:  While Hamas is boldly belligerent and declares its intentions outright, Fatah appears to play the game.  But this difference is one of style and not of ultimate intentions.    

A review of salient facts dispels the notion that Fatah is “moderate.”

The argument has been made that it was the influence of Arafat that caused Fatah to lack moderation, and that we are seeing a “new” Fatah since Arafat’s death.  There is scant evidence to support this.

We begin by looking at the Fatah of today, for this is of immediate concern. 

We then turn to a broader look at Fatah, and a consideration of the years leading up to the present.  No accurate understanding of Fatah would be possible without this perspective.  What we find is that, while style may have changed, the essence of Fatah goals and policies have not. It is all of a piece.

read the entire paper

Should U.S. Hold Direct Talks With Iran?
Kenneth R. Timmerman
Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006

 WASHINGTON -- The talk of the town in Washington these days is all about getting "real."

Less than two full weeks after Democrats won control of Congress by opposing the war in Iraq, Iraqi leaders bowed their heads in submission and agreed to hold direct talks with Iran and Syria.

 President Jalal Talabani was initially supposed to go to Tehran over Thanksgiving weekend, but a curfew in Baghdad (put in place because of Iranian-backed violence) prevented him from traveling. He finally made the trip on Monday.

Iran has real "influence" with bad actors in Iraq, so Talabani needed to slouch to Tehran, hat in hand.

The Iraq Study Group, led by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, is widely expected to recommend that the United States negotiate directly with Syria and Iran, to convince them to reduce their assistance to the terrorists in Iraq.

What 'Getting Real' Really Entails

Talking to the funders and the strategists and the weapons-suppliers of the terrorists who are trying to kill us is called getting "real." And yet, a lot of very influential people, including two former National Security advisors, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and virtually the entire Council on Foreign Relations, believe that is what we should do.

 To these so-called realists, we never should have ventured into Iraq to depose the regime of Saddam Hussein in the first place. As Scowcroft hectored U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a semi-public forum three years ago, "at least with Saddam in power, we've had 50 years of peace."

Besides the arithmetic exaggeration (Saddam only assumed full power in Iraq in 1979), Scowcroft's argument is not unlike what we are hearing today from the Baker-Hamilton commission.

 Let's negotiate with Syria and Iran.

 After all, these regimes respect power. They know we can do them tremendous harm. So we have leverage that we can and should use to achieve our goals. We don't need to overreach by seeking to overthrow them.

 America's goal, in the eyes of the realists, is to get Syria and Iran to moderate their support for the insurgents, so we can prevent a few attacks today and tomorrow. Let's decrease the level of violence, so the U.S. can withdraw troops from Iraq without destabilizing the country.

'Help' Smacks of Aid to Terror

In exchange for their help in achieving a very temporary goal (which is certainly in their power, since they are backing the insurgents), the United States must abandon all support to pro-democracy forces in Syria and Iran and provide security guarantees to both regimes. That's the deal that is currently on the table.

We get political cover for a troop withdrawal, and they tell their terrorist proxies to lay low for a time and half a time (if we're lucky). All we really get is a fig leaf. But smiling as we put it on is called realism.

 On the contrary, I believe talking to Tehran and Damascus would not just be a mistake. It would be a mistake of monumental and historic proportions:

 It would reward the world's two major state sponsors of terrorism for their success in murdering Americans.

 It would demoralize our friends in Iraq who want to see their country win its freedom and achieve stability and prosperity.

 It would encourage Iran to pursue its nuclear weapons program, and embolden Iran to continue using terrorism to achieve its goals.

 It would terrify our allies in the region, who would understand immediately that the United States will not be there to protect them when Iran asserts its hegemony over the entire region.

The Path Toward Destrcution

The realists are leading us into very dangerous territory.

 For 27 years, the United States has imposed various forms of punishment on the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a vain hope that pain would induce them to change their behavior.

 Clearly, it hasn't worked, because the pain has been too slight.

 So now the Realists are telling us that we should abandon those tools and simply ask politely, and hope for better results.

This is not "realism," but pure folly.

 Ultimately, U.S. talks with Iran could set the stage for a disastrous war that would sweep across the entire region.

 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not been shy about informing us that his goals are to "wipe Israel off the map" and to "destroy America." Each day we allow his power to go unchecked, he gets a little bit closer to acquiring the capabilities to achieve those goals.

Feeding the Crocodile
By Kenneth R. Timmerman

We’re told it’s the Realists versus the Neo-Cons, and the Realists are winning.

On Monday, less than two full weeks after Democrats won the Congress on a platform of “phased withdrawal” from Iraq, Iraqi leaders bowed their heads in submission, announcing that they will hold direct talks with Iran and Syria in Tehran this weekend.

Right on cue, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group leaked on Tuesday its recommendation that the United States negotiate directly with Syria and Iran, to convince them to reduce their assistance to the terrorists in Iraq.

Also on Tuesday, the Syrians and the Iranians (and their agents in Lebanon) assassinated yet another pro-Western political leader, Lebanon’s ministry of industry, Pierre Gemayel.

Pierre Gemayel, the 34-year old scion of one of Lebanon’s most prominent Maronite Christian families, had joined forces with the anti-Syrian alliance led by Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated former prime minister. His uncle, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated by the Syrians in August 1982, just weeks after he was elected Lebanon’s president in an earlier élan of Lebanese independence. His father, Amin, was elected president to replace him.

To the Realist school of American foreign policy, such events are the sad necessities of life. We can’t keep murderers and thugs from killing each other. But through cautious diplomacy and the judicious use of force, we can keep them from killing us.

Nobody, in either school, believes this sequence of events is mere coincidence. Neo-Cons such as Michael Ledeen view these developments as signs of U.S. weakness and drift; a failure to pursue the terrorists who declared war on us in 1979, when Iranian “students” (including Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 54 diplomats and all of America hostage for 444 days.

To the Realists, whose current champions are former National Security advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, we never should have ventured into Iraq to depose the regime of Saddam Hussein. As Scowcroft hectored Condoleeza Rice in a semi-public forum 3 years ago, “at least with Saddam in power, we’ve had fifty years of peace.”

Besides the arithmetic exaggeration (Saddam only assumed full power in Iraq in 1979), Scowcroft’s argument is not unlike what we are hearing today from the Baker-Hamilton commission. Let’s negotiate with Syria and Iran. After all, these regimes respect power. They know we can do them tremendous harm. So we have leverage that we can and should use to achieve our goals. We don’t need to over-reach by seeking to overthrow them.

America’s goal, in the eyes of the Realists, is to get Syria and Iran to moderate their support for the insurgents, so we can prevent a few attacks today and tomorrow. Let’s decrease the level of violence, so the U.S. can withdraw troops from Iraq without destabilizing the country.

In exchange for their help in achieving a very temporary goal (which is certainly in their power, since they are backing the insurgents), the United States must abandon all support to pro-democracy forces in Syria and Iran and provide security guaranties to both regimes. That’s the deal that is currently on the table.

We get political cover for a troop withdrawal, and they tell their terrorist proxies to lay low for a time and half a time (if we’re lucky). All we really get is a fig leaf. But smiling as we put it on is called Realism.

Neo-cons view these events quite differently. They remember that these very same Realists called on the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War in March 1991, and then we withdrew, allowing Saddam to slaughter his opponents by the tens of thousands.

Neo-cons understand that Iraqi president Jalal Talabani is not bowing his head and slouching toward Tehran out of any desire to conclude a pact with Iran’s Islamofascist leaders. He is going there because he knows we are about to abandon his country once again.

But Neo-cons also argue that we have never seriously tried to achieve the policy goals the President has so eloquently laid out in speech after speech, where he has spoken of his “freedom agenda” and of breaking fifty years of stability that was based on U.S. support for regional dictators.

• We have failed to carry out that agenda in Iraq, by allowing an ill-chosen “Viceroy” to transform liberation into occupation through his monumental arrogance.

• We have failed to support freedom-fighters in Iran, bowing to pro-regime lobbyists in the United States and to the siren-songs of regime envoys, who claim their willingness to cooperate if only we would treat them with respect;

• We have never even tried to help the pro-democracy forces in Syria, while abandoning the Lebanese to Hezbollah militiamen and Syrian thugs.

The Realists argue, we don’t have time to wait for the seeds of freedom to sprout. Indeed, it may be that they are being sown on rocky ground and will never grow, at least not in our lifetime.

On the contrary, we don’t have the luxury of accommodating Islamo-fascist regimes that are hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, and have no intention of abandoning that quest just because we kowtow before them.

The Realists are leading us into very dangerous territory. Where have James Baker and Lee Hamilton taken their cues when it comes to recommending direct talks with Iran? From Iranian officials and Iranian regime surrogates, among others.

Baker himself had a three-hour lunch in New York recently with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, while special envoy Frank Wisner has reportedly been meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s national Security advisor, Ali Larijani, in Stockholm and other places to discuss the terms of America’s surrender.

For 27 years, the United States has imposed various forms of punishment on the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a vain hope that pain would induce them to change their behavior. Clearly, it hasn’t worked, because the pain has been too slight.

So now the Realists are telling us that we should abandon those tools and simply ask politely, and hope for better results.

This is realistic? Even a flaming left-wing Hollywood screenwriter could go to town with that plot. That is precisely what Neville Chamberlain did in Munich when he negotiated with a very reasonable Adolf Hitler in 1938, and returned home to Britain proclaiming “Peace in our time!”

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile,” Winston Churchill said famously, “hoping it will eat him last.”

Neo-cons got a boost from an unsuspected quarter earlier this week: Saudi ambassador to Washington, and long-time head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki bin Faisel bin Abdel-Aziz. Envisaging a future for Iraq of open civil war, massive ethnic cleansing, and the military involvement of Iraq’s neighbors, he told the Washington Post: “Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited.”

The Democrats won Congress on a program of unilateral surrender. And they are about to reap the spoils as we prepare the terms of our submission to the Islamofascists in Iran and to the thugs in Syria.

Unfortunately, the rest of us are going to pay the price of their folly – and so will countless thousands of freedom-loving Iraqis, Iranians, and Lebanese, who so foolishly believed in us and our commitment to freedom.

We have seen the first victims over these past few days. Many more are about to fall.

The United Nations Emperor is Naked
By Sarah N. Stern
   
How does one respond when the international forum that is established for the sole purpose of creating peace and stability in the world, calls for the violation of its very own resolutions? And how does one respond when this is done by none other than the individual who is charged with the sole responsibility of ensuring that these resolutions are enforced?

Such is the case, now, when Secretary General Koffi Annan has been parading throughout the international community calling for Israel’s lifting of the blockade, citing UN Resolution 1701.

However, Mr. Annan seems to currently be experiencing a rather convenient bout of selective amnesia.  Towards the beginning of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, a rather lengthy document, it explicitly calls for the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers.

The exact wording is this: “Emphasizing, (italics theirs), the need for an end to violence, but at the same time emphasizing, (again, italics, theirs), the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers.”

Yet Koffi Annan has been in Jerusalem, subjecting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to enormous pressure to lift the blockade that Israel has imposed on Lebanon, and basically impugning Israel, solely, with the culpability of violating UN Resolution 1701.

Needless to say, the reason that the Israelis have deemed it necessary to impose this blockade has also been conveniently forgotten by Secretary General Annan.

The reason is that, to this day, Syria has been supplying Hizballah with arms for the next round of their terrorist war against the Jewish state. The arms, no doubt, are the same ones that the Israeli defense forces have found in the last round, which include the C-802 missiles, the Fajir 3 and Fajir 5 rockets, as well as the longer range Zilzal 1 and Zilzal 2 missiles, all stamped, “made in Iran”.

As has been well established by now, Iran is the godfather of this ongoing terrorist  war, Syria is the stepfather, and the rightful father is Hizballah. The conduit through which these arms are reaching Hizballah in Lebanon, is through the porous border with Syria: Hence the grounds for the Israeli blockade.

In an interview with an Iranian news agency, Fars, on August 30th, the Persian Hizballah representative, Muhammad Abdul Sif al Din, reported that the Hizballah leader Sheik Nasrallah is being armed by Iran, and getting ready for the next phase of the war. Mr. Sif al Din stated that the Hizballah leader, Hassan Nisrallah has a entered a new strategic phase “to rearm ahead of the next round with Israel.”

In these series of quite convenient memory lapses, the Secretary General has also forgotten that the very opening clause of the resolution he is responsible for enforcing.

That opening clause cites no less than seven United Nations resolutions, going back twenty eight years to 1978. Each resolution calls for the strict respect for the territorial integrity of Lebanon, and for the withdrawal of all foreign forces, with the exception of the United Nations UNIFIL forces.

First Syria, and now Hizballah, has flagrantly ignored these seven resolutions, and have kept the good people of Lebanon under a constant state of siege, fear and repression.

In a beautiful display of semantic double speak, Hizballah representative Sif al Din, said on his August 30th interview, “From the perspective of the parliament and government in Lebanon, we are not a military militia, but a resistance force. Therefore the clause in 1559, [which calls for the disarmament of all militias], can’t include Hizballah.”

Mr. Sif Al Din describes Hizballah as a resistance force. What, precisely, is Hizballah resisting?
Might I remind you that in May of 2000, Israeli forces honored not only the letter, but the spirit of United Nations resolution 425, going south of the border with Lebanon, and even going so far as painting the stones blue, as a physical demarcation of the border, as a reminder over where not to transverse. (Hence we derived the term, “blue line).

So thorough was the Israeli withdrawal that the Security Council made a statement on June 18th of 2000, which was read by the then President of the United Nations Security Council, Jean David Levitt of France, confirming that Israel had withdrawn its forces from Southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Resolution 425, saying that it was “a happy day for Lebanon”. It then called upon all parties to respect the line identified by the United Nations.  (This statement was also made a part of the first clause of the recent UN resolution 1701  However, again, this fact was conveniently forgotten by Mr. Annan.)

What, then, might I ask, is it that Hizballah is resisting? To bring it closer to home, it would be one thing to say that the American Indians were forming a group to resist American occupation of the South West. It would be quite another thing to say that the Mexicans or Canadians are resisting American occupation.

Yet, despite this, Mr. Annan seems to be holding only Israel culpable for a violation of UN Council resolution 1701.

Poor Mr. Annan really must see someone about his memory lapses. The fifth clause of UN resolution 1701 states that it is “Welcoming (italics theirs), the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the commitment of the Government of Lebanon, in its seven point plan, to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such as there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon, and no authority other than the government of Lebanon…”

No weapons? What about the porous border with Syria through which the Iranian weapons are being passed to Hizballah? How is it that this clause of the oft-cited resolution 1701 is also forgotten? The absence of Lebanon’s enforcement of this aspect of the UN resolution has left it to Israel to fill the void. Israel should actually be commended for freeing up Lebanon from the very weapons with which Hizballah, acting as “a state within a state,” has been using to hold the Lebanese people captive. 

Let me remind Mr. Annan that article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which constitutes the very philosophical foundation of the audacious body over which he presides, says that “Nothing shall impair the right of individual or collective self defense, if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.”

Perhaps it is an early onset of Alzheimer’s.
   

British PM Tony Blair

Speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, August 1, 2006

Overnight, the news came through that as well as continuing conflict in the Lebanon, Britain's Armed Forces suffered losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. It brings home yet again the extraordinary courage and commitment of our armed forces who risk their lives and in some cases tragically lose them, defending our country's security and that of the wider world. These are people of whom we should be very proud.

I know the US has suffered heavy losses too in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We should never forget how much we owe these people, how great their bravery, and their sacrifice.

I planned the basis of this speech several weeks ago. The crisis in the Lebanon has not changed its thesis. It has brought it into sharp relief.

The purpose of the provocation that began the conflict was clear. It was to create chaos, division and bloodshed, to provoke retaliation by Israel that would lead to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed, not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it.

It is still possible even now to come out of this crisis with a better long-term prospect for the cause of moderation in the Middle East succeeding. But it would be absurd not to face up to the immediate damage to that cause which has been done.

We will continue to do all we can to halt the hostilities. But once that has happened, we must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world.

The point is this. This is war, but of a completely unconventional kind.

9/11 in the US, 7/7 in the UK, 11/3 in Madrid, the countless terrorist attacks in countries as disparate as Indonesia or Algeria, what is now happening in Afghanistan and in Indonesia, the continuing conflict in Lebanon and Palestine, it is all part of the same thing. What are the values that govern the future of the world? Are they those of tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity or those of reaction, division and hatred? My point is that this war can't be won in a conventional way. It can only be won by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative. Doing this, however, requires us to change dramatically the focus of our policy.

Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalize the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.

What is happening today out in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and beyond is an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future.

It is in part a struggle between what I will call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam. But its implications go far wider. We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values.

The root causes of the current crisis are supremely indicative of this. Ever since September 11th, the US has embarked on a policy of intervention in order to protect its and our future security. Hence Afghanistan. Hence Iraq. Hence the broader Middle East initiative in support of moves towards democracy in the Arab world.
The point about these interventions, however, military and otherwise, is that they were not just about changing regimes but changing the values systems governing the nations concerned. The banner was not actually "regime change" it was "values change".

What we have done therefore in intervening in this way, is far more momentous than possibly we appreciated at the time.

Of course the fanatics, attached to a completely wrong and reactionary view of Islam, had been engaging in terrorism for years before September 11th. In Chechnya, in India and Pakistan, in Algeria, in many other Muslim countries, atrocities were occurring. But we did not feel the impact directly. So we were not bending our eye or our will to it as we should have. We had barely heard of the Taleban. We rather inclined to the view that where there was terrorism, perhaps it was partly the fault of the governments of the countries concerned.

We were in error. In fact, these acts of terrorism were not isolated incidents. They were part of a growing movement. A movement that believed Muslims had departed from their proper faith, were being taken over by Western culture, were being governed treacherously by Muslims complicit in this take-over, whereas the true way to recover not just the true faith, but Muslim confidence and self esteem, was to take on the West and all its works.

Sometimes political strategy comes deliberatively, sometimes by instinct. For this movement, it was probably by instinct. It has an ideology, a world-view, it has deep convictions and the determination of the fanatic. It resembles in many ways early revolutionary Communism. It doesn't always need structures and command centres or even explicit communication. It knows what it thinks.

Its strategy in the late 1990s became clear. If they were merely fighting with Islam, they ran the risk that fellow Muslims - being as decent and fair-minded as anyone else - would choose to reject their fanaticism. A battle about Islam was just Muslim versus Muslim. They realised they had to create a completely different battle in Muslim minds: Muslim versus Western.

This is what September 11th did. Still now, I am amazed at how many people will say, in effect, there is increased terrorism today because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. They seem to forget entirely that September 11th predated either. The West didn't attack this movement. We were attacked. Until then we had largely ignored it.

The reason I say our response was even more momentous than it seemed at the time, is this. We could have chosen security as the battleground. But we didn't. We chose values. We said we didn't want another Taleban or a different Saddam. Rightly, in my view, we realised that you can't defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas.

There is a host of analysis written about mistakes made in Iraq or Afghanistan, much of it with hindsight but some of it with justification. But it all misses one vital point. The moment we decided not to change regime but to change the value system, we made both Iraq and Afghanistan into existential battles for Reactionary Islam. We posed a threat not to their activities simply: but to their values, to the roots of their existence.

We committed ourselves to supporting Moderate, Mainstream Islam. In almost pristine form, the battles in Iraq or Afghanistan became battles between the majority of Muslims in either country who wanted democracy and the minority who realise that this rings the death-knell of their ideology.

What is more, in doing this, we widened the definition of Reactionary Islam. It is not just Al-Qaeda who felt threatened by the prospect of two brutal dictatorships - one secular, one religious - becoming tolerant democracies. Any other country who could see that change in those countries might result in change in theirs, immediately also felt under threat. Syria and Iran, for example. No matter that previously, in what was effectively another political age, many of those under threat hated each other. Suddenly new alliances became formed under the impulsion of the common threat.

So in Iraq, Syria allowed Al-Qaeda operatives to cross the border. Iran has supported extremist Shia there. The purpose of the terrorism in Iraq is absolutely
simple: carnage, causing sectarian hatred, leading to civil war.

However, there was one cause which, the world over, unites Islam, one issue that even the most westernised Muslims find unjust and, perhaps worse, humiliating: Palestine. Here a moderate leadership was squeezed between its own inability to control the radical elements and the political stagnation of the peace process. When Prime Minister Sharon took the brave step of disengagement from Gaza, it could have been and should have been the opportunity to re-start the process. But the squeeze was too great and as ever because these processes never stay still, instead of moving forward, it fell back. Hamas won the election. Even then, had moderate elements in Hamas been able to show progress, the situation might have been saved. But they couldn't.

So the opportunity passed to Reactionary Islam and they seized it: first in Gaza, then in Lebanon. They knew what would happen. Their terrorism would provoke massive retaliation by Israel. Within days, the world would forget the original provocation and be shocked by the retaliation. They want to trap the Moderates between support for America and an Arab street furious at what they see nightly on their television. This is what has happened.

For them, what is vital is that the struggle is defined in their terms: Islam versus the West; that instead of Muslims seeing this as about democracy versus dictatorship, they see only the bombs and the brutality of war, and sent from Israel.

In this way, they hope that the arc of extremism that now stretches across the region, will sweep away the fledgling but faltering steps Modern Islam wants to take into the future.

To turn all of this around requires us first to perceive the nature of the struggle we are fighting and secondly to have a realistic strategy to win it. At present we are challenged on both fronts.

As to the first, it is almost incredible to me that so much of Western opinion appears to buy the idea that the emergence of this global terrorism is somehow our fault. For a start, it is indeed global. No-one who ever half bothers to look at the spread and range of activity related to this terrorism can fail to see its presence in virtually every major nation in the world. It is directed at the United States and its allies, of course. But it is also directed at nations who could not conceivably be said to be allies of the West. It is also rubbish to suggest that it is the product of poverty. It is true it will use the cause of poverty. But its fanatics are hardly the champions of economic development. It is based on religious extremism. That is the fact. And not any religious extremism; but a specifically Muslim version.

What it is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is not about those countries' liberation from US occupation. It is actually the only reason for the continuing presence of our troops. And it is they not us who are doing the slaughter of the innocent and doing it deliberately.

Its purpose is explicitly to prevent those countries becoming democracies and not "Western style" democracies, any sort of democracy. It is to prevent Palestine living side by side with Israel; not to fight for the coming into being of a Palestinian State, but for the going out of being, of an Israeli State. It is not wanting Muslim countries to modernise but to retreat into governance by a semi-feudal religious oligarchy.

Yet despite all of this, which I consider virtually obvious, we look at the bloodshed in Iraq and say that's a reason for leaving; we listen to the propaganda that tells us its all because of our suppression of Muslims and have parts of our opinion seriously believing that if we only got out of Iraq and Afghanistan, it would all stop.

And most contemporaneously, and in some ways most perniciously, a very large and, I fear, growing part of our opinion looks at Israel, and thinks we pay too great a price for supporting it and sympathises with Muslim opinion that condemns it. Absent from so much of the coverage, is any understanding of the Israeli predicament.

I, and any halfway sentient human being, regards the loss of civilian life in Lebanon as unacceptable, grieves for that nation, is sickened by its plight and wants the war to stop now. But just for a moment, put yourself in Israel's place. It has a crisis in Gaza, sparked by the kidnap of a solider by Hamas. Suddenly, without warning, Hizbollah who have been continuing to operate in Southern Lebanon for two years in defiance of UN Resolution 1559, cross the UN blue line, kill eight Israeli soldiers and kidnap two more. They then fire rockets indiscriminately at the civilian population in Northern Israel.

Hizbollah gets their weapons from Iran. Iran are now also financing militant elements in Hamas. Iran's President has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". And he's trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. Just to complete the picture, Israel's main neighbour along its eastern flank is Syria who support Hizbollah and house the hardline leaders of Hamas.

It's not exactly a situation conducive to a feeling of security is it?

But the central point is this. In the end, even the issue of Israel is just part of the same, wider struggle for the soul of the region. If we recognised this struggle for what it truly is, we would be at least along the first steps of the path to winning it. But a vast part of the Western opinion is not remotely near this yet.

Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time - in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iraq and add to that in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in a host of other nations including now some in Africa - it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it; it is about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs. Islamist extremism's whole strategy is based on a presumed sense of grievance that can motivate people to divide against each other. Our answer has to be a set of values strong enough to unite people with each other.

This is not just about security or military tactics. It is about hearts and minds about inspiring people, persuading them, showing them what our values at their best stand for.

Just to state it in these terms, is to underline how much we have to do. Convincing our own opinion of the nature of the battle is hard enough. But we then have to empower Moderate, Mainstream Islam to defeat Reactionary Islam. And because so much focus is now, world-wide on this issue, it is becoming itself a kind of surrogate for all the other issues the rest of the world has with the West. In other words, fail on this and across the range, everything gets harder.

Why are we not yet succeeding? Because we are not being bold enough, consistent enough, thorough enough, in fighting for the values we believe in.

We start this battle with some self-evident challenges. Iraq's political process has worked in an extraordinary way. But the continued sectarian bloodshed is appalling: and threatens its progress deeply. In Afghanistan, the Taleban are making a determined effort to return and using the drugs trade a front. Years of anti-Israeli and therefore anti-American teaching and propaganda has left the Arab street often wildly divorced from the practical politics of their governments. Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria are a constant source of de-stabilisation and reaction. The purpose of terrorism - whether in Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon or Palestine is never just the terrorist act itself. It is to use the act to trigger a chain reaction, to expunge any willingness to negotiate or compromise. Unfortunately it frequently works, as we know from our own experience in Northern Ireland, though thankfully the huge progress made in the last decade there, shows that it can also be overcome.

So, short-term, we can't say we are winning. But, there are many reasons for long-term optimism. Across the Middle East, there is a process of modernisation as well as reaction. It is unnoticed but it is there: in the UAE; in Bahrain; in Kuwait; in Qatar. In Egypt, there is debate about the speed of change but not about its direction. In Libya and Algeria, there is both greater stability and a gradual but significant opening up.

Most of all, there is one incontrovertible truth that should give us hope. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and of course in the Lebanon, any time that pe