However, a significantly more powerful pro-Israel organization was also on the Hill at the same time arguing the total antithesis — that now was the time to speed up military aid to Egypt. They based their argument on the idea that the Egyptian military is the most Western and moderating of all Egyptian institutions and that supporting the military was our way of “buying a seat at the table.”

What good is a “seat at the table” when we put masking tape over our mouths? The United States has seldom been successful in utilizing our arms shipments to exert influence or leverage over countries that have taken billions of our dollars and our weapons — just look at the U.S.’s disastrous relationship with Pakistan, whom we are currently supporting with billions of dollars in aid and extensive shipments of the most modern arms, while their military actively supports the Taliban and assists in attacks on U.S. forces.

Since the Camp David Accords were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979, America has  rebuilt the Egyptian military from being  a Russian equipped C- army to a powerful American trained and equipped A+ army  with the most advanced and sophisticated equipment.  Now all that technology and firepower will be in the hands of radical Islamist forces who fully support Hamas and Hezbollah and seek to destabilize the remaining friends of the U.S. in the Middle East.  Behind the scenes the Muslim Brotherhood has had a long and deep relationship with the Egyptian military.  Now, if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to political power in Egypt, it will be openly embraced by the military, producing a potentially disastrous mix of a religious/political ideology and a powerful military machine.

The “seat at the table” argument did not work during the 1979 Iranian revolution when we had to immediately halt our arms shipments to Tehran, nor has it worked with the Lebanese Armed Forces which has been completely over-run by Hizballah.

Anyone with any understanding of the Middle East knows that a.) Armies also want to survive and that the way that they survive is by aligning themselves with the biggest bully in the playground; b.) The Egyptian military is a professional military, and like all professional militaries they do not create policy, but carry it out; and c.) Armies are made up of human beings who are not impervious to the influences of the street.

The revolution that swept through Tahrir Square was initiated by the young, savvy and independent, Facebook crowd, but these idealistic young people lack the deep political infrastructure of the Muslim Brotherhood, the charismatic influence of the Imams and mosques and the deep conservative religious ethos of the Egyptian populace.

Now that Egyptians have gone to the polls, the question is not whether the radical Muslim Brotherhood will win a plurality of seats in their Parliament, but by how many.  The election’s final results will probably not be known until January, but it does not look as though Jeffersonian democracy will spring up in Egypt, or anywhere else in the Muslim and Arab Middle East.

The results of the Moroccan election of November 25^th are no more promising. The Islamist Justice and Development Party, (PJD) easily trumped all the others.  Nor are the October 23^rd Tunisian election results, which shows the Ennahda party, also Islamist, winning a clear plurality of the votes.

As our people painfully learned in 1932, when Hitler came to power through the process of a democratic election and then again in 2006, when Hamas came to power through another process of democratic elections in Gaza: one election is not sufficient to create a vibrant democracy.

Democracy means the ability to have a second, a third and a fourth election.

It means that the institutions of the government are in place that protects the rights of religious and other minorities, that there is an independent judiciary and an independent press. It means, as Natan Sharansky said, “the freedom to stand in the public square and criticize those in power without fearing for one’s life.”

We are facing the beginning of a long, chilling Middle East winter, where their supporters of America will be few and far between and the rights of the individual remain an even more distant dream. The young and idealistic revolutionaries of the Facebook generation must be feeling bereft, as many of them might soon be forced to conceal their yearnings for independence behind oceans of homogeneous abayas and hijabs.

And our one fellow vibrant democracy in the Middle East, Israel, becomes further isolated in a rejectionist sea of radical Islamism.

“Age and health aside, the likelihood of Khomeini taking and holding power for any prolonged period of time are (sic) just about nil. For one thing, the army, the most important organized force in the country could not unite behind him and his concept of instituting a sever religious state opposed to modernization and close ties to the United States.”

James Weighart, Foreign Affairs Columnist,  January 18, 1979

On Saturday, the front page of the New York Times displayed  a picture above the fold showing tens of thousands of Egyptian Islamists pouring into Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding that Egypt be ruled by strict Islamist law. The New York Times caption read, “Islamists show their strength in Egypt.”

This comes as no surprise to us in EMET.  Ever since the dramatic overthrow of the Mubarak government in Egypt last winter, EMET was alone in demanding that the U.S. government halt  the continuing supply of military aid to Egypt — or at least place it on “temporary hold” to  await the results of the upcoming elections in September — if there are elections.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the Middle East should realize that a radical Islamist wind has chilled the atmosphere and high jacked many of these revolutions that began in pursuit of rights and democracy. Although these revolutions might have been initiated by the young and well-educated of the Facebook generation, this group turns out to represent only a small part of their nation’s population.  They may well have initiated the process of political transformation, but it appears that they lack sufficient political influence and infrastructure to gain the support of the masses and be propelled to political power.

There is a rising tide of fundamentalist Islam throughout the Middle East and Egypt will prove no exception.

In a nation where the adult literacy rate (defined as a primary school education) reaches only 58 per cent of the population, the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist Salafi organizations have long ago planted deep roots within the mosques and Imams to spread their influence over the Egyptian masses.

On December 2, 2010, before the  dramatic events of this past  winter in Cairo began to unfold, the Pew Research Center released a poll of  Muslims in Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan,  Nigeria, Lebanon, Jordan and Indonesia.  In Egypt, a full 95 percent of the population believed that Islamic law and the Muslim religion should play a larger role in politics — the highest percentage of all Muslim countries surveyed.

Of the countries surveyed, Egypt also had the highest percentage of respondents who favored the court’s adhering to the strict punishments that are meted out according to Sharia law: 77 percent were in favor either whipping thieves or the amputation of their hands, 82 percent said that women (not men) who commit adultery should be stoned to death (only women can be tried for adultery), and 84 percent say that apostates —  those who convert to Christianity — should receive the death penalty.

Yet, except for EMET, the foreign policy establishment and the pundits in Washington (unfortunately including AIPAC) since the revolutions of the Arab Spring have been on Capitol Hill arguing for continuing the flow of advanced military aid to Egypt. Amazingly, earlier this summer, the U.S. government  even  sold two additional advanced Abrams tanks to the Egyptians.

Now what could be the use of these advanced tanks for Egypt? Are they planning to defend themselves against attacks from Libya or the Sudan?  Unfortunately, we know what they are planning to use these for.

In fact, all the arguments government officials have put forward in favor of continuing the flow of military aid to Egypt are identical to those disastrous arguments that were used to continue sending arms to Iran following the Khomeini revolution in 1979, including:

1.) It is better that the get weapons from us than anyone else.

2.) Their military was trained by America and remains close to the U.S.; the military is a moderating Western influence in a sea of radical Islamists; and as a highly professional American-trained institution their military represents Western ideals.

In terms of the first argument, I never quite understood how our supplying  the weapons  to a potential enemy makes them any less lethal?

In terms of the second argument: we are talking about the Middle East here! The military is neither Western nor Eastern. It wants to survive.  And most people survive in the Middle East by allying themselves with the biggest bully in the playground. Besides, if the military is truly professional, it does not make policy, it implements it. Good soldiers obey orders.

Is there some sort of information that the  CIA or the State Department or the DoD has that they are not telling us? On what basis do they believe  that continuing to supply advanced arms to Egypt will have any greater influence over events than the continuous supply of arms we sent to Iran — who is now an implacable enemy?  The Middle East is overflowing with upheaval and instability and the influence of the radical Islamists grows stronger every day.  This is not the time for our continuing unthinking investment in institutions that may become tomorrow’s new despots or the tools of new radical governments.  Now is the time to await developments while we seriously consider where America’s best interests lie.

Like so much else in regards to the Middle East, I wish to be proven wrong.  But I fear that EMET, once again, will be proven right.

What began as a routine harassment by a government bureaucrat to a Tunisian vegetable vendor (and ended in his self-immolation), resulted in the fall of the governments in Tunis and in Egypt, and has stirred up a virtual tornado of protest stretching from Fez to Damascus.

This hurricane emanated from a deeply pent up human desire for freedom, for basic human rights and dignity.

Over these last five years, ever since EMET’s inception, we have been celebrating and working together with those courageous and rare people from the Muslim and Arab world who have risked everything—-from exclusion of family and friends–to their very lives- in order  to tell the  truth about the Muslim and Arab worlds from which they hail.

These are amazingly brave people such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Ali Alyami, Mosab  Hassan Yousef, Fahrid Ghadry,  Walid Phares, Amil Imani ,Zhudi Jasser, Zeyno Baran and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Manda Ervin, whom you will be hearing tonight.

These are people who have penetrated through our superficial differences and have reached down into the core of what unites us and makes us all truly human. They, and our honorees tonight are our heroes in the struggle to preserve Western civilization from the threat of radical Islam. And tonight we are here to say thank you to each and every one of them.

But we are also here for another reason: As the Muslim and Arab worlds are being rocked by this tsunami of the desire for freedom; their struggle is being increasingly hijacked by an Islamist agenda.

And we have but one precious tiny, little country, Israel, who is the Eastern outpost of Western democratic values of pluralism, of tolerance, of freedom of religion, of a free and independent judiciary and a free and independent press that we here have to protect and to defend.

Because Israel is the Eastern outpost of Western democratic values, that is why it is resented and despised by the Islamists, and because of where Israel sits, exactly on the seam lines in the Clash of Civilizations, it  is protecting every of us in the room here today.

The Facebook generation might have Initiated the struggle for human rights and freedoms in Egypt,  but the Islamists have wide and deep inroads into the mosques and a well established political infrastructure that has  penetrated into the army and the political establishment.

Every Egyptian politician running for office scores political points by saying it is time to re-evaluate the Peace Treaty with Israel, leaving that long border that Israel shares with Egypt, or with Hamas- controlled- Gaza, vulnerable to the infiltration of weapons and vulnerable to the outbreak of new hostilities.

When the Shah of Iran was about to fall during the 1979  Iranian Revolution, folks here in Washington argued that we have to support the Shah and continue to send military aid and equipment to Iran because the army is the most Western o Institutions.. (Sound familiar?)Then, as soon as the Khomeini Revolution occurred, the very first thing that the Islamists did was declare war   United States and Israel by seizing the American Embassy and taking 50 US officials hostage…and people in the Department of Defense were scrambling to stop the shipments.

I am sure  you are all familiar with  George Santayna’s adage of those who do not study history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.

That is why EMET, unlike any other organization in Washington, has been on the Hill since the eruption of the Arab spring, arguing that it is way past time to stop the military aid shipments to Egypt.

On May 5, in Cairo, Abu Mazen of the Palestinian Authority and Khalid Mishal of Hamas of Hamas shook hands and formed a unity government. The PA has crossed a line in the sand, and the wolf that most of us in this room knew Fatah has been all along, has finally emerged from outside of the sheep’s clothing for all of the world to see. It is against American Law to give money to a terrorist organization.

The Last Time I checked, Hamas was still listed in our State Department as a Terrorist Organization. yet our tax payers’ dollars are still going out to the PA as we speak, and our CIA is still training their (quote unquote) police force in the West Bank, (or Judea and Samaria if you will), under the illusion that these rifles will never be turned against Israeli soldiers or civilians.

As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice. Shame on me. We demand an end now to our American taxpayers’ dollars going to the P.A. No more conditions. Now. Period. End of Story.

In Syria, over 1400 people have lost their lives for demonstrating in the streets. The government has used attack helicopters to wantonly and arbitrarily shoot at protestors.  Thousands of anonymous people have been detained and brutally tortured.  Still more are fleeing over the border to Turkey, creating a REAL refugee crisis. President Bashir Assad is guilty of committing crimes against humanity, and has GOT to step aside.

President Obama in his May 19th address regarding the Middle East said that America has a historic opportunity and responsibility for people clamoring for basic freedoms and dignity.  He called upon President Assad to lead his people to democracy or get out of the way. Yet we have done nothing in the last month to help the Syrians in their bloody struggle to overcome the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad

Syria is part of the Iranian constellation, and the only nation that has been empowered by all of this  has been  the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There is a story in today’s Ha’aretz  that Israeli intelligence has found that Iranian Republican Guards are on the ground in Syria, working together  with Hezbollah to brutally crush the demonstrators.  They also instigated and paid people to come out for the notorious Al Nakba  and Al Naksa days  of demonstrations against the state of Israel.

In June of 2009, after the fraudulent election results were announce in Iran, true lovers of democracy were calling out for our help and their calls were summarily ignored, as skulls were being crushed..

Iran has one of the most egregious human rights records in history. More people have been executed and  more women stoned to death on trumped up charges of adultery in Iran than anywhere else in the world

Ahmadinajad, and his mullahs, who are the true Hitlers of our generation, have exploited this period of Arab instability to dig their tentacles, deeper and deeper into the region. They are doing this, as they relentlessly pursue nuclear weapons capabilities and are growing closer to their goal of wiping Israel off the map by passing the day. .

There is a rising tide of radical Islamism throughout the region and we have got to be sure that in this Arab hurricane that is recklessly rocking the Middle East, we do not sacrifice our one proven, true stable democratic, ally in the region, Israel, in order to buy the good will of other fair weathered friends in the international community.

That is why, contrary to what President Obama might have said in his Middle East Speech last month, Israel needs defensible borders. As  Ambassador Dore Gold recently pointed out in a recent article.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the signer of the Oslo Accords, made clear in his last Knesset address in October 1995 that Israel could never withdraw to the 1967 lines. He stressed that Israel would have to retain control of the Jordan Valley, the great eastern, geographic barrier which provided for its security for decades since the Six Day War.

Prime Minister Rabin didn’t say a word about land swaps. For neither Resolution 242 nor any subsequent signed agreements with the Palestinians stipulated that Israel would have to pay for any West Bank land it would retain by handing over its own , pre-1967 sovereign land in exchange.

We are not going to make our tiny Jewish state, only nine miles wide at its narrowest waist, the sacrificial lamb for America to win a popularity contest in the Arab world.

The West Bank is within easy striking distance of every single Israeli city. And just one Kassam rocket missile launched at Ben Gurion airport from Kalkilya, which is only 6 few miles away, will cut off all air transit and isolate the Jewish state.

Now is not the time for people to urge Israel to take risks for peace.

The forces of radical Islam are rampant throughout the region, and it is incredibly naive to believe that the Palestinians are immune from  Islamist and Iranian influences. Israel needs a topographical buffer zone to defend her own population. There is no substitute for a geographical line of defense, especially in the age of missiles.

Israel has given the land…Now where is the peace? This land for peace formulation has produced a paradoxical relationship and has only empowered Iran and other Islamist  groups who despise both Israel and the United States, equally. Every piece of land Israel has ceded has become  an Iranian puppet state controlled by either by Hezbollah of Hamas.

If I were a scientist, I would have said a long time ago that it is time to go back to the null hypothesis. Or as it says in the philosophy of holes: When you are in a hole, stop digging

Yet people in our Foreign Policy Establishment go back to the same old failed foreign policy paradigm because of three factors:1.) a desire to claim their place history, 2.)  a true failure of imagination in our foreign policy establishment  and 3.) cognitive dissonance: Which, in layman’s terms means:: “Don’t bother me with the facts. I have my mind made up.”. Or as the novelist Saul Bellow put it, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

We at EMET are here because we do not think American foreign policy should be based upon illusion and wishful thinking, but upon reality. And the reality in the Middle East is not always so pleasant. We at EMET are different because we will not sweep the truth about the harsh realities of life in the Middle East  under the rug to score popularity contests with everyone across the map.

We do that  for one simple reason: because we need Israel to survive. Our people have gone through  far too much in our history  simply to have our little, tiny strip of land sacrificed on the  alter of political correctness.

And we know that when our enemies talk about wiping us off the face of the map, they mean business.

We in this room all know that Israel is the canary in the coal mine. And we need America, as we love and know it, the last great hope of Western civilization and the democratic values we all cherish, to survive.

And that is why we are here tonight to honor people like Senator Daniel Inouye and Congressmen Trent Franks who has long been  champions of Israel’s survival, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has spoken bravely about the difficulties of life under Islam, Manda Ervin from the Alliance of Iranian Women, and Itamar Marcus  from Palestinian Media Watch whose excellent institute has been documenting for years and years the Palestinian Authority’s systematic program of  incitement to hate and to kill and its failure to teach all of its people, and especially its children, that  all of Israel will not one day become Palestine, from the river to the sea.

At the recent AIPAC Policy Conference, at a packed luncheon forum for higher givers, Chairwoman of the important House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, (R-FL), was interviewed by an AIPAC official.  When she mentioned that she is in favor of cutting off the military aid to Egypt, the remark was met by enthusiastic applause and a standing ovation, to which the AIPAC official promptly changed the subject.

Why is this? It is because ever since the beginnings  of the Arab Spring, which we see as more of an “Arab Hurricane”,  EMET has been  totally alone on Capitol Hill saying that it is time to halt the continuous pipeline of military aid to Egypt, or at least to put a temporary hold on it, until after their  elections in September, to insure that  our American  taxpayers’ dollars do not end up providing missiles, tanks and bullets to a future Egyptian government that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood or some shill of that Islamist organization, who will tear up the Camp David Treaty with Israel.

Unfortunately, AIPAC has taken the absolutely antithetical tack. They have been on the Hill arguing that giving aid to Egypt buys us a “seat at the table.” They have argued that “the Egyptian military is the most western of institutions”, and “a highly professional army”, and that we are therefore buying ourselves goodwill.

But if they are “a highly professional army”, the Egyptian army should not make policy. They should be good soldiers. They are expected to follow orders. High level Egyptian commanders have repeatedly said that they do not want to keep Egypt under a “military occupation.”

So what good is a seat at the table if the partner on whom we spent billions of dollars a year will not or cannot speak up?

Aside from this, we have no idea just how sympathetic the army is to the Islamist agenda, or to what degree they have been infiltrated by Islamist elements.  For that matter, even if they are not co-opted by Islamist parties, if they wish to survive in their tough neighborhood, they may choose to back “the strong horse,” the Muslim Brotherhood.

Unfortunately, events in Egypt continue very much as we had predicted.

The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza has gone from “nominally” controlled under Mubarak, to thrown wide open. 400 Al Qaeda-linked terrorists are now active in the Sinai Peninsula.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the single most effective political organization in  the country, continues to gain strength, as they repeatedly break pledges they have made, including reversing promises not to run a presidential candidate, and to not seek the imposition of Sharia law.  The “secular” “moderate” Brotherhood as foolish so-called experts have insisted on labeling them, has also established an electoral coalition with Jama’a al-Islamiya, a terrorist organization which has killed Americans, and is identified as an Al Qaeda affiliate by Ayman Zawhiri.

Nor is it merely the Muslim Brotherhood which represents a risk to Middle East stability arising from the new Egypt. Former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and leading presidential candidate has called for the termination of the peace between Israel and Egypt, as have other Egyptian presidential  hopefuls, all clamoring to be the first to  announce that they will “rip up the Camp David Accords with Israel.”

That comes as no surprise with elections looming, since in recent polls, more than 50% of Egyptians also favor ending peace with Israel.

Since the “Arab Hurricane” began, EMET has been consistent in its call to heed the philosopher Santayana’s advice, and study the history of another revolution within the Islamic world, so as not to have to repeat its mistakes.  Just as the United States continued to argue that Iran must continue to receive arms shipments in their 1979 Khomeini revolution, because the army was the most Western of institutions,  so too are the cries that Egypt must now continue be armed, regardless of events on the ground.

Iran, we were then told, would not become an Islamist state under Khomeini because of the power of the U.S-modernized Iranian army. In the words of long-time journalist James Wieghart:

“… the likelihood of Khomeini taking and holding power for any prolonged period are just about nil. For one thing, the army, the most important organized force in the country, could not unite behind him and his concept of instituting a severe religious state, opposed to modernization and close ties to the United States.”

That stellar prediction was made in January of 1979. Likewise, U.S. officials and pundits have continued to insist that funding for the Egyptian army must continue, because it represents a force of modernity and stability. As Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified back in February:

“Foolhardy would it be for us to make hasty judgments about the benefits – tangible and intangible – that are about to be derived from forging strong military relationships overseas, such as the one we enjoy with Egypt,” said Admiral Mullen. “Changes to those relationships – in either aid or assistance – ought to be considered only with an abundance of caution and a thorough appreciation for the long view…”

Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates concurred, saying:

“If you ever wanted proof of the value of our military assistance to Egypt over the past 30 years, it has been in the behavior of the Egyptian Army over the past three weeks, and their professionalism in dealing with the kind of situation they had”

Of course as reports are now emerging that the Egyptian Army conducted “virginity checks” on female protestors, perhaps Secretary Gates is right. It is proof, but not for Gate’s conclusion. One anonymous Egyptian general told CNN:

The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” the general said. “These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs).”

He then offered the bizarre rationale that the virginity checks were done so that the women would not later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities. “We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” the general said. “None of them were (virgins).” He did not further explain this confounding logic.

Perhaps there was once reason to hope that the Egyptian military might indeed act as a stabilizing force. If so, “virginity checks” and assaults against Coptic monasteries ought to put an end to such impressions.

Ironically, even as U.S. military aid to Egypt is slated to continue, the Egyptians have begun rejecting aid of a kind which we have long argued is sorely needed. This would be money to help fund democratization and development efforts, so we would have at least a chance of exporting some semblance of democratic values before the planned September elections. EMET has long argued, (even before the Hamas elections in Gaza), that one election, a democracy does not make, but the erection of the institutions of a democracy: an independent judiciary, a free press and most importantly the ability to criticize the government without fear of your very life. Or at the minimum, a chance for a second election, and a thirds, and a fourth.

Unfortunately, Egypt’s interim foreign ministry rejected the $150 million dollars in aid for the purposes of democracy building, stating opposition to some of the NGOs designated in the plan, as well as objections to some of the pre-conditions.

Even so-called military aid, supposedly intended to make Egypt a modern, and more importantly, pro-western force, has not always been put to that purpose. Egyptian military has created an effective “economy within the economy” where, besides defending the country, the military also runs hospitals, and builds cars and jeeps for auto dealerships. These side industries provide an incentive and opportunity for corruption. And as history has shown time and again, a corrupt force, no matter its level of modern Western military equipment, never manages to resist a determined ideological opponent. To imagine that this time, in Egypt, the military will serve as a successful buttress against the Muslim Brotherhood, or other Islamist groups defies credibility.

In the past four decades, billions of dollars have not secured for United States the modern, westernized military partner they have sought, as the disturbing tales from Tahrir square have shown.  Additional aid will serves no further purpose. All we accomplish now is to further arm a state with sophisticated weaponry, when we cannot be certain at whom those weapons will be pointed. Not in the next six months, let alone the next six years.

Our foreign military aid program has bought us no good will.  It has become the foreign policy equivalent of the worst welfare programs.  We simply rewarding bad behavior.  At a time when the American budget is stretched, we are throwing away our tax payers’ dollars at people who mock us and our democratic values.

It is time to call for a halt to the continuous pipeline of military aid to Egypt.  At the very least we must secure a temporary “hold” until after the scheduled elections in September. We hope, as usual, that we will be proven wrong.  If not, at the way things are going,  we might one day well find brave American GIs, and the courageous soldiers of the IDF, on the wrong side of our own “Made in the USA” weapons.

And Israel, of our one, stable democratic ally in the Middle East, will be tiny, vulnerable and alone, once again. She will be left to hold down the fort alone, sitting on a very long border with Egypt, exactly on the seam lines of the conflict of civilizations, between the world of radical Islamism and Western democracy.

By Sarah N. Stern

Today is a great day to be an American. The news of the capture and the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the man who was responsible for the largest terror attack in history on American soil — the very icon of evil — was killed last night in a storybook lightning strike by U.S. Navy SEALS.

Our heart-felt thanks goes to the wonderful men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces who have risked their lives every day since September 11, 2001, and those behind the scenes who paved the way for last night’s victory. And, our deepest and special thanks go to those brave men who carried out this potentially suicide mission that resulted in a decisive triumph for America and the Western world.

Although we know that there remain hundreds of terror cells around the world just waiting for the opportunity to attack American and Western interests, the killing of Osama Bin Laden is an event of overwhelming importance. America’s killing of the one person who was the face, and voice, of radical Islam and the mastermind of its worldwide terror network, showed America’s seriousness in avenging the attack on the World Trade Center and eradicating this source of global terror and destruction.

With the death of Bin Laden, America has once again taken a stand on the side of the moral and the right. Just as America stood against Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, it has again proven that we, as a nation, reveal our strength of character when we stare down the face of evil and put ourselves on the side of moral clarity.

Psychologically and emotionally, for the American victims of September 11, 2001 and the families who had been left behind, it is the closing of a tragic circle. In the case of this person who had made every American, every Christian, every Jew, and the States of Israel and America his sworn enemies, we rejoice in the feeling of relief that Osama Bin Laden, the very face of evil, has been removed from the world.

President Obama’s statement in his speech last night, “Justice has been served,” is an understatement — as much more than “Justice” has been served; retribution has been delivered and a level of fear has been lifted from the world.

Now is also a good time to look back and remember who were Bin Laden’s most enthusiastic supporters and who cheered his murderous attacks on America and the West.

On September 11, 2001, when 19 of Bin Laden’s terrorists high-jacked American airliners and flew them into New York’s World Trade Center, killing 2,752 innocent people, it was the Palestinians in Gaza, in Ramallah and throughout the West Bank, who launched a wild  and jubilant celebration by honking horns and passing out candies to cheer Osama Bin Laden’s deadly attack on America.

The first group that condemned America for killing Osama Bin Laden has been Hamas, the Palestinian leadership of the Gaza Strip. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, accused the United States of pursuing a policy based on “oppression and the shedding of Arab and Muslim blood.”

“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior… We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and martyrs.” he said. This same group, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, has just announced that they will become partners with the Palestine Authority and the prime minister of the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas. The PA has endorsed the killing of Bin Laden.

Article Seven of the Hamas Charter states that Muslims will fight the Jews, (and kill them ), until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which [the rocks and trees] will cry: Oh Muslim!…There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”

As I write these words, high ranking officials from Mahmoud Abbas’ West Bank government are in Cairo preparing to meet with high ranking officials from Hamas to sign a reconciliation agreement.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in September of 1993, the United States has given hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the Palestine Authority. American CIA personnel have even trained their “militia.” Yet, the Palestinian text books, media outlets, maps and sermons from the mosques have for years proclaimed to the world what the P.A’s true intentions are.

How much more evidence do we need before we understand and appreciate who are America’s friends and who are our enemies? We should put an immediate end to any more American taxpayers’ dollars going to the Palestinian Authority.

In this dawning of a new age of decisive moral action, the fig leaf that has masked the Palestinian Authority’s true intentions for the last eighteen years has once and for all been dropped with the agreement between the Palestine Authority and Hamas. Our sophisticated friends and colleagues inside the beltway, who have for years apologized , obfuscated, excused and covered up for the Palestinian Authority’s words and deeds, should once and for all, recognize on which side of the moral divide
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have made their stand.

Recently, I had the profound privilege of accompanying EMET founder and president Sarah Stern, as she met with a myriad of assorted notables on the Hill. I watched with awe as she expressed her concerns regarding the ever-changing tide in the Middle East, concerns expressed with grace, respect and intellectual ability that inspired those with whom she spoke. Recalling relevant events both historic, and recent, she ever so eloquently managed to adeptly achieve the seemingly unthinkable, at least, in this part of the Capitol, that being, to reach across the isle, connect with all she met and gain common ground on a basic fundamental concept. Israel’s safety.

At the end of the day, simply put, the stability of the region revolves around ensuring the safety of those inhabiting that region. Safety from tyranny, safety from oppression, safety from threat of war. This fundamental component is the key to a more stable world as well.

With all the fluidity currently in the Middle East, we have an obligation to remain aware and informed. Further, we have a greater obligation to do what we can to keep the concept of Israel’s safety as the topic of discussion around the water coolers, as part of the Shabbat prayers, sermon and Kiddush conversations, and in the news. Now is when we can help EMET by showing support for Israel, openly and unabashedly.

As Americans.

As Jews.

As those who remember history.

And, as those who seek a peaceful future.

I left Israel, this week, with a heavy heart, wondering how the tables have been turned around so dramatically and in so remarkably short a time, against the Jewish state. It is with  incredible deft, that a physical war to eradicate the revival of an ancient Jewish homeland, the one place where a thriving democracy exists in the Middle East with Arab representatives given full rights in the Kinesset, the place where my son is training to deliver sophisticated medical care to the local Bedouin population in Beer Sheba,  as well as the Jewish population, without regard to  accident of birth, has rapidly been coupled with a moral war, where Israel had been  submitted to disproportionate international pressure and  opprobrium that world leaders apply to the Jewish state that they would not dare apply to their own nations.

The Arab world had realized shortly after the 1973 war that the Israelis had proven their physical prowess on the battlefield , and that the true way to eviscerate the Jewish state would be to attack them on its very foundations: as a homeland for the Jews.

The fact that Mahmoud Abbas refuses to even utter the words, that Israel is a Jewish State, eviscerates the very core foundations of Israel’s existence, yet no-one on the international stage seems to call him on the carpet for this. This would be tantamount to not recognizing that President Obama is the first black president in our nation’s history, and that that is quite an accomplishment, in and of itself. Please, you might have differences with his policies, but give him the dignity for recognizing him as the person that he is.

Recognize first of all, that Israel is the homeland of the Jews that came about after an egregious history of exile and persecution, after winning five wars, after United Nation’s bestowed its legitimacy upon it.  In every way: Israel has proven over and over again its moral legitimacy for its existence. (What nation, I ask you, has been so put to the test to prove their moral legitimacy so many times?)

Then we can speak.

Once again, Israel has become a political football, in which Presidents and Secretary of States are running to make a rapid dash to the goal line so that they can score a  quick, political victory, without any regard, whatsoever, to the consequences of the play.

It is time for someone to cry “Foul”.

Much has been made of the so called “draft letter” to Prime Minister Netanyahu that has been leaked to the press, in which Israel was to have been offered a basketful of goodies for extending the ten month moratorium on construction.

First of all, get the facts straight.

This ten month moratorium on building was a unilateral gesture that the Netanyahu government had made to jump start the so-called “peace process”.

Nine and a half of those months ten months, Mahmoud Abbas would not even come to the table to meet with the Israeli prime minister, if it meant that he had to recognize the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

That is the core mission of Israel’s existence. For the first time millions of Jews who have been discriminated against throughout the world for the sheer accident of having been born Jewish have a home of refuge. We are talking here about Jews of every stripe and color, from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, and now running from the antisemitism that is spreading virally throughout Europe.

When the government of Israel agreed to the freeze in building ten months ago, it was supposed to be a “one time freeze”.

However, the fact that the international community suffers from selective amnesia regarding the assurances that have been offered the Jewish state is nothing new.

What is more disturbing, however, is that the conclusions of this process appear to be foregone before the actual discussions even begin.

It seems that in the opinion of the Obama administration and much of the international community, Israel is supposed to return to the non-defensible pre-1967 borders, which Ambassador Abba Eban had dubbed, “The Auschwitz lines”.

Already, the administration has promised within its inducement package for extending the moratorium, that Israel will be allowed a presence between the Palestinian state and Jordan.

No-one seems to be willing to ask the obvious question: Where exactly are these borders?

If there is one thing Israel has learned through the painful sacrifice of Gaza and the approximately 10,000 Qassam rocket missiles that have rained down on Southern Israel ever since is that Israel has got to have defensible borders.

If Israel were to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, it would place every single Israeli city within easy Qassam rocket range.  Ben Gurion airport would just be 5.9 miles away, within easy rocket reach.

Not recognizing this is simply re-writing history. It is as though the international community has suffered from a lobotomy of its frontal lobe.

After the 1967 war, United Nations resolution 242makes no requirement for Israel to withdraw from all the territories it occupied in its defensive war of 1967.

Instead, it makes reference for every state in the area to have “secure and recognized boundaries”. As U.S ambassador Arthur Goldberg had said in an address before the United Nations Security Council on November 15, 1967. Historically, there has never been any secure and recognized boundaries in the area. Neither the armistice lines of 1949 nor the cease fire lines of 1967 have answered the description.”

While the world focuses its attention on the actions of a few bulldozers in the area, I have watched as the essential facts regarding this dispute have been bulldozed away.

And it is about time to set the record straight.

I was afraid it had been swept up in the current tidal wave of moral equivalency and political correctness and been replaced by a nation where cozying up to despots and dictators seems to be more politically expedient than long lasting alliances between friends who share common values.

In a long, personal struggle for one of my newest and dearest friends, the America that stands for freedom against tyranny triumphed this week.

At least in the following case, the America that I believe in has not disappointed me. However, the battle between the two America’s with two very distinct , conflicting philosophies remains strong, and we have to be vigilant about preserving the sort of America that many, if not most Americans of good will want to believe in.

My newest and dearest friend is Mosab Hassan Yousef. Mosab was born to a family of aristocracy within the world of radical Islam.  His grandfather was a radical Imam in Ramallah, his father a founder of Hamas.

When Mosab was 18, he participated in a youthful operation that landed him in an Israeli jail for many months. It was while serving out time in an Israeli prison that this extremely intelligent and idealistic young man was first forced to confront the sadism and cruelty within Islamic society. This is because Israel allows prisoners within the various terrorist organizations, (Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad), to live amongst themselves and develop their own internal power structures.

From a neighboring cell, Mosab could hear the constant nocturnal screams of Hamas members who were from poor, rural or otherwise not well connected families, being tortured as “Israeli collaborators” by those who were better connected. He realized that his tortured Hamas brothers had been singled out arbitrarily, and came to the conclusion that there is a deeply rooted sadism and cruelty within Palestinian society. He was also impressed by the relative compassion and humanity of his Israeli captors.

Mosab further concluded that Hamas has nurtured and exploited this sadism and cruelty for their own political muscle and hegemonic aspirations. This cruelty and sadism, according to Mosab, who has lived within the world of Islam, and is in a position to know a great deal more about it than those of us in the West, has its roots directly within the Koran.

It was from within the walls of an Israeli prison that Mosab then decided that there was something fiercely wrong with the society in which he was raised and nurtured, in which everyone he knew and loved  deeply had lived.  He began to secretly work for the Shin Bet, simply to save lives, irrespective of whether or not they were Israeli or Palestinian.  A while after that, he secretly converted to Christianity.

This was not an easy decision for the young man to have made. Mosab still feels an empathic love for his family and the people living within the culture in which he was reared.  He doesn’t blame Muslims. He simply feels that they have been misled and exploited by the teachings of the Koran, and that according to his words, (not mine), “The God of the Quran is a God of hate…I chose a God of love over a God of hate.”

For almost ten years, Mosab worked hand in hand with his Shin Bet handler, Gonen Ben Yitzchak, developing an extremely close friendship. They describe one another as “my brother”. In Fact, Gonen Ben Yitzchak , himself, has acted quite heroically, risking criminal prosecution by coming to the United States and revealing his identity publicly in order to vouch for his friend. (This is something that goes against the legal guidelines of the Shin Bet, and although Gonen has been out of the Shin Bet for four years, the statute extends to five years since retirement.)

According to Ben Yitzchak, “Mosab gave us an insight into the workings of Hamas we would never have had without him. He saved hundreds of lives, both Israeli and Palestinian…He didn’t care if it was in imam or a Knesset member, as long as he saved lives.” (Although Mosab modestly interrupts him and says,  “Don’t exaggerate..I know I thwarted dozens of suicide attacks…but we will never know exactly how many lives would have been killed…so we can’t say exactly how many I saved”)

It was Mosab’s work that had led to the capture of a Hamas terrorist and his handler, just as his handler had given the would-be- bomber  his suicide belt in the Manara Square , Mosab had warned the Shin Bet, who immediately moved in to arrest them.

In another operation five Hamas terrorists came knocking at Mosab’s door because their contact had been arrested, and had figured someone from his family would naturally want to help them. They requested money, tea and a ride to a Hamas safe house. He gave them what they had asked for and then proceeded to tip off the Shin Bet, and thwarted another suicide explosion.

Mosab had been responsible for capturing and bringing to justice the Hamas terrorists who had been responsible for the Hebrew University Cafeteria bombing of July 31, 2002, in which four Israelis and five Americans had been killed.

In 2007, Mosab began to grow tired of constantly living a life of duplicity and of struggling with profound conflicting loyalties and loves.  He came to America on a tourist visa and sought political asylum.

It is an absolutely categorical fact that if Mosab had been returned to anywhere in the Middle East that would have been the equivalent of immediately sentencing him to the death penalty. That is because he had committed three cardinal sins, according to Islam: 1.) Collaborating with Israel, 2.) Converting to Christianity and 3.) Publicly criticizing Islam.

It is an also categorically undeniable fact that heroic young men like Mosab would be terrific role models for anyone growing up within the tyranny of radical Islam. He is living proof that an intelligent person can transcend the culture of incitement and propaganda to hate and to kill, and to penetrate through to the core of what makes us all truly human. He chose a path of love for the sanctity of human life, irrespective of the accident of one’s birth.

In 2009, Mosab came out with a book, “Son of Hamas” documenting his incredible life’s story.

Unfortunately, some people from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with either tunnel vision or another agenda entirely, (which we shall later discuss), had read discreet passages from Mosab’s book and had taken them entirely out of context.

Mosab’ s attorney, Steven A. Seick had reported that the lead attorney from the DHS that was working on Mosab’s case , Kerri Calcador had sworn that if Mosab would have won his case on June 30^th, the DHS would appeal, and continue to do so.

She said that this was not her own decision, “but came from orders from above, directly from Washington.”

Why had there been so much effort to deny political asylum to someone so incredibly worthy of it?

Some investigative journalists, such as Richard Miniter have traced the difficulties that Mosab encountered with the DHS back to the time that Arif Alikhan had been appointed by President Obama as a leading official in the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Alikhan had recently spoken at a fundraiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, (MPAC) an organization with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the founders of MPAC is Dr.Muhar Hathout . Dr Hathout credits Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist organization that was founded in Egypt in 1928, as being his primary teacher .[1]

Hassan al Banna is famous for the two extremely revealing quotes:  “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”  [2]

“God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Quran our Constitution, Jihad our way, and dying for God our Supreme Objective.”[3]

MPAC along with CAIR, (The Council for American Islamic Relations), have become very excellent in the art of concealing their true intentions, and have masqueraded themselves as simply American Muslim Civil Rights Organizations.

Yet neither of these two groups have ever met a terrorist incident that they have not blamed on the root cause, which is the existence of the state of Israel.

Neither would ever blame the true root cause: the constant incitement for hatred of the Jew and the Christian, and the elimination of the state of Israel and its replacement with the state of Palestine, which Mosab personally experienced growing up as a young Muslim growing up in Ramallah and attending UNRWA schools that use every opportunity to preach such hatred.

It is certainly understandable that someone who was the featured speaker at an MPAC dinner would be threatened by the surgically incisive statements that Mosab Hassan Yousef dared to utter about Islam, coming out of the mouth of someone who had personally lived it and experienced it.

We seem to forget that radical Islam, the Islam of Hassan al Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared war on the United States on September 11, 2001, and that  American GI’s are dying today at the hands of radical Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our embracement of political correctness and moral equivalency tends to blindside us to the very pernicious philosophy that is at the very root of many of the organizations such as CAIR and MPAC that many Americans would like to embrace as “mainstream”.

It is with a great deal of gratitude to some remarkable individuals, such as James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, Rep Doug Lamborn of Colorado and twenty one other congressmen, and Tzachbai Hanegbi, Director of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee who wrote letters on Mosab’s behalf. All of this might have contributed to the fact that on June 30^th at the hearing concerning Mosab in San Diego, his request for asylum in this country was granted by the government.

What worries me profoundly, however, is that the America that was born out of a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations of Western liberalism, ensuring religious liberties for all, is being eclipsed by an America that allows people into positions of great authority who might, at best, simply overlook or ignore the odious teachings of the founders of organization such as MPAC or CAIR, or at worst, secretly concur with them.

If we do not remain vigilant, we are in danger of losing the America which has been that beacon of religious freedom for the generations of immigrants that brought many of our ancestors to these shores.

In the meantime, however, let’s savor the sweet victory of my newest and dearest friend, someone whose friendship I will always cherish, as a victory not only for Mosab, personally, but for the America that most of us love.

[2] Ibid.  pg 5.

[3] Ibid.  pg 5.

According to the article, DHS is now seeking to deport Yousef, after having denied his request for political asylum on the grounds that, “he was potentially ‘a danger to the security of the United States’ and had  ‘engaged in terrorist activity.’”

“Mosab has done more to save more human lives, Israeli and Palestinian then any individual I know,” according to his Shin Bet Handler, known as “G.”

But instead of awarding Mosab Yousef’s valiant efforts on behalf of the Israeli Security Agency to save human lives, irrespective of ethnicity, and his remarkably commendable and highly anguished, moral decision to transcend the fact that he had been born the son of a Founder of Hamas and was its heir apparent, or “The Green Prince”, The Department of Immigration and Naturalization is using discrete sections of Mosab’s book against him, in seeking his deportation.

They obviously fail to get the big picture.

Mosab is emphatically NOT a danger to America. He is an extraordinary hero-for Israel, the Palestinians, America and the entire free, Western world. Mosab  has risked everything-including his very life- and has been cut off from family and friends and is living in total  isolation-in hiding, in America-in order to speak the  truth about the insanity of the Islamist point of view.

It is only through brave people such as Mosab who come from within Muslim or Arab society and find the courage to speak the truth about the nature of the Muslim and Arab worlds’ from which they hail, that we will ever win the war that radical Islam has waged on the West—Not by imposing our values from outside, our through the back of a bayonet-and certainly NOT through the deportation of a hero to humanity, such as Mr. Yousef.

We should be honoring, feting and celebrating these people who have shown us all what is like to be able to transcend the accident of one’s birth, and to find a deeper morality beneath the constant propaganda, incitement to hate and to kill, and carnage.

Please come out and show our solidarity and support for courageous people such as Mosab on June 23rd. Mosab will be there as well as his Shin Bet handler from Israel.

Deporting Mosab Hassan Yousef will surely be condemning him to certain death.

On June 23rd, Mosab Hassan Yousef will make a rare public appearance at EMET’s Rays of Light in the Darkness Dinner, where he will be honored as one of our coveted “Speakers of the Truth,” only days before facing his deportation hearing.

Also Featuring: Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), and co-founder of Former Muslims United, Amil Imani, each one of them an amazing hero in their own right,  both in the war that the Islamists wage on the West, and in Israel’s proud 62-year old struggle to survive.

Don’t miss this opportunity to show solidarity and support for Mosab Hassan Yousef, and learn of the remarkable friendship between him and his former Shin Bet handler.

Please Register Today for The Rays of Light in the Darkness Dinner, June 23rd, 2010, on Capitol Hill.*

Go to emet.adjournal.com today and make your reservations today.

*For security reasons, additional location information will be provided following reservation.

We recently celebrated the 62^nd anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel. The scratchy video tape of that momentous vote in the United Nations will be forever etched on the collective memories our generation.

And as you can recall, there was that brief moment of ecstasy, of dancing on the streets of Tel Aviv, followed almost immediately by a  call to arms to defend the tiny, embattled Yishuv  against the surrounding Arab invading armies, determined to eviscerate the Jewish presence in the land.

The miracle of that birth born out of the remnants of the most systematic, premeditated attempt at genocide in history, and of Israel’s continuous survival, can never, ever be over-estimated

That fragile fragment of our people went on to create Israel, a vibrant Jewish state, a thriving bastion of Western democracy, governed by the rule of law and  respect for human rights within the Middle East, while being surrounded by a sea of brutal, tyrannical dictatorships that are becoming dominated increasingly by the forces of radical Islam.

Many ,if not all of the Arab nations surrounding Israel  have never abandoned their determination to eradicate the Jewish State…not for a single nanosecond. Their methodology has simply grown more sophisticated and cunning, and their weapons have become much more lethal.

Yet, Israel grew, despite all the years of conflict, from being an impoverished, weak nation to an utter Oasis of high tech , of advances in medicine pharmacology  and health care…And one of the few  nations whose Stock Market actually did well over the last several years of global recession.

And all of watched with pride this winter, as Israel, once again, was the first to arrive on the scene  at yet another disaster area. This time, pulling people from the rubble from the earthquake in Haiti. Yet again, with  hard-earned knowledge Israel has gained through its  many conflicts, with speed and efficiency, setting up field hospitals, saving lives and delivering babies.

But what I am most worried about, is that people in the generations that will follow ours will no longer have those morally clear and unambiguous memories.

The role that memory has played in sustaining our people through the darkest days of our exile can never be overstated. It is the thread of our narrative that we read each week when we convene here, in shul, that has helped to  keep us alive, as a people.

There is a Gemurrah that says that Yousef had two children in Mtizrayim: Ephraim and Maneshe. The meaning of Maneshe is that G-d has caused me to forget my travail. And the meaning of Ephraim is G-d has caused me to be fruitful.

But productivity and a high stock market is not sufficient for the survival of our people if we do not couple it with remembering who we are as a people and where we come from. If all we have is fruitfulness and forgetfulness, then we have no moral compass.

The name of my talk is Israel at 62: Will it survive until 70?

The answer is simple:  If we do not remember where we come from, then we have no idea where we are going.

And if we don’t know where we are going, we cannot appreciate it, once we have arrived.

So it all depends on sustaining the thread of our collective memories.

Israel, during the Oslo years, went through a period of temporary amnesia, where they wanted to forget who they were, they wanted “normalcy”, to be a people like any other people and to deny the painful reality of life for the Jewish state in the Middle East.

And they felt that is we were just a people “like any other people” the world would just love us.

In the ’90′s many in Israel went through a period where the intellectual elite and the academic world had been dominated by “Post Zionists” and the “New Historians” .

And in their hope for a (quote) “New Middle East” they went back into the old Zionist archives and tried to unearth any sort of inequity that might possibly had ever been done to any Arab living on Israeli soil and highlight that.

In fact, a “Peace Curriculum” had been instituted within the Israeli school system.  While in the old textbooks, maps of Israel had arrows  drawn into it showing where the Arab nations invade the Yishuv from, in the new textbooks  arrows were drawn in the opposite direction, going out of the state, showing where the Arab villages living within Israel fled to.

Empathy is a lovely emotion, but not at the expense of our survival.

Because this occurred at precisely the same moment in history when Yasser Arafat had embarked upon a serious brainwashing campaign, using every means possible, television shows for children, textbooks, sermons from PA appointed Imams in the mosques and articles in newspapers teaching that all of Israel, not just the post-1967 boundaries, but Haifa and Tel Aviv,  will one day be theirs, inciting children to  violence and  glorifying Shahids and martyrdom.

The Palestinian Authority, has never, to this very day abandoned these efforts to their children. And if you doubt this, I would suggest that you take a close look at the MEMRI or Palestinian Media Watch website.

This was all occurring while our children, both here and in Israel, had become mired down by moral ambiguity about the rightness of the claim to the land.

The beautiful narrative of the return of our people to their ancient homeland, had become systemically drummed out by an almost deafening cacophony of political correctness and moral relativism.

And nature abhors a vacuum. In the world of ideas, if one side is convinced about the rightness of their claim to the land, and the other is ambivalent whose ideas will ultimately prevail?

It is just basic psychology that if you make yourself a doormat, people step all over you.

Israel had gone through a period that I refer to as “the politics of fatigue and exhaustion.” Because of all of the years of wars, as Shimon Peres had said, “Our people have gotten tired of fighting…” Like in the Stockholm syndrome, they began identifying with their oppressors, and seeing peaceful mirages in the desert. Our guard was down, and all the antisemitic cockroaches throughout the world, all sensed that.

Israeli Noble Prize Laureate, Robert Albaum, once compared Israel during that period to someone who was walking in the snow, in a deep blizzard, so cold, tired and so fatigued, so exhausted… that he thought he would just lie down and take a nap  for a little bit, and then just get up…

But can you get up, when you lie down and fall asleep in the midst of a blizzard?

And while we were asleep at the wheel of history, during that blizzard, our enemies have become empowered.

Friends: I sometimes feel like a Jew living in America is 1939.

We are being confronted today with a despot coming out of Iran who denies the existence of the Holocaust as he steadfastly works to create another one.

The government of Ahmadinejad now has 6,000 centrifuges spinning enriching uranium, and he claims he will have 60,000 soon.

Recent U S intelligence reports now estimate Iran has enough enriched uranium to produce at least one nuclear bomb and will have the delivery mechanism within one year. Israeli estimates are shorter. And Ahmadinejad boasts that he will be ready to join the “nuclear club” this coming May.

Iran’s Shahab 3 and Selij ballistic missiles possess a range of more than 2,000 kilometers enabling them to reach all of Israel, the Middle East, Turkey and much of Southern Europe.

Meanwhile, according to a story appearing in last Sunday’s New York Times, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote a three page memo to the White House, saying that this administration lacks a coherent plan to deal with Iran.

When running for office, President Obama had said that he would give diplomacy a limited amount of time. It has been 15 months..We have given the Iranians valuable time that they have used as a smokescreen behind which they are laboring furiously for a nuclear bomb.

Last winter, both the House and the Senate had passed separate versions of the Iran Petroleum Sanctions Act, but so far staffers on the Hill have told me that the administration has delayed the bills from going to conference committee so there will be one, unified law of the land.

And on the international scene, the administration is watering down the sanctions in order to get Russia and Red China on board, reducing them to the lowest common denominator, so that they are virtually toothless.

Ahmadinejad, in language that is eerily reminiscent of another dictator has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the map, calling Israel “a filthy microbe”, a “dried rotten tree” and a “stinking corpse.”

Where is the sense of urgency among our people? Where is the outcry?

If there is ONE thing that our people have had to learn from our long and bitter history, it is that when our enemies speak, they mean business. We have got to learn to read the writing on the wall, and to take what it is that they say at face value.

Meanwhile Syria, this past week,  recently announced that have given Hizbullah advanced Scud missiles, enabling the terrorist group  to reach every  single city in Israel from its base in Southern Lebanon.

And  meanwhile, in all of the high and mighty  institutions of international jurisdiction, and in the parlors of polite society,   Israel is being held  up to a standard of conduct that would be impossible for any other nation to live up , given the same circumstances.

This is twenty-first century antisemitism, the new, polite sort of antisemitism, which often results in the not so polite shedding of innocent, Jewish blood.

This new antisemitism has reached into the United Nations, where last year, they issued 86 human rights resolutions, and 36 of the 86 were condemning of Israel, much more then the number of resolutions focusing on the Sudan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, where young girls who have been raped are stoned in honor killings by their own families.

The antisemitism reaches into Europe where many universities refuse to cooperate with Israeli academicians, and where foods from the territories carry special labels that are boycotted on grocery shelves.

It reaches to England where last week, The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) criticized Israel for including pictures of the Western Wall in a tourism advertisement, claiming that the Kotel is technically not located within the Israeli borders.

It reaches into our American academic institutions where “Divest from Israel campaigns” are in full gear in many of our nation’s campuses, ranging from Columbia in New York to Harvard and MIT in Boston to Stanford and Berkley in the West, and very close to home at University of California at Irvine where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was almost prevented from uttering a single sentence, recently without hostile interruption.

It reaches into our very own House of Representatives  where Congressmen such as Brian Bard, Dennis Kucinich and Keith Ellison constantly hold seminars on the moral illegitimacy of the state of Israel and its army. An army which according Col Richard Kemp, the Commander of the British Forces in Afghanistan is “the most moral Army in the world.”

And it reaches worldwide where anti-Semitic incidents are reported to have doubled in 2009 since the previous year.

In 1993, when Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat on the White House Lawn there was a flicker of hope. However, as the death toll of Israeli blood continued to mount, did any of the talking heads and sophisticates inside the Beltway ever bother to ask the simple question: Is this Oslo process actually getting us any closer to the goalpost of peace?

I don’t know about you, but I would not exactly define “peace” as people dying on the streets. Never before in Israel’s history have there been so many civilians killed in acts of terrorism then in the ensuing years since Oslo. Yet, people tended to euphemize the extraordinarily high amounts of civilian deaths as quote “Sacrifices for Peace.”

Does anyone possess the intellectual honesty and integrity to think outside of the box? To examine whether or not Israel is better off today than it was in 1993?

I vividly remember when Nachshom Waxman was kidnapped and held for several days, right after the White House lawn signing ceremony on September 13, 1993. Everybody was glued to the television sets to learn of his fate. Everybody knew his name.

And one of the most tragic consequences of Oslo is that the victims mounted so rapidly that they were no longer names  with  stories …They have been reduced to mere statistics.

And with each new successive land withdrawal, whether it be from Southern Lebanon in the North which had become a stronghold of Hizballah, an Iranian proxy, to Gaza in the South, which has become a stronghold of Hamas, an Iranian proxy, each successive land withdrawal has simply whet the appetite of radical Islamist for more.

They intend to make as much of the world as possible into an Islamic caliphate.

Many have stated that there is a linkage between Israel’s willingness to cede land for peace and whether or not she will have to go it alone against Iran.

That linkage has, in reality, been turned on its head against Israel, in more ways than the obvious.

That is because of the simple fact that both Hamas and Hizballah are Iranian PROXIES. So Iran is only empowered either way.

Now that we HAVE the empirical evidence of the withdrawal from Gaza, which culminated in 10,000 missiles raining down on Southern Israel and the neighboring city of Sderot, why would any rational Israeli want to withdraw from the West Bank?

This withdrawal would leave ever single Israeli city within easy Kassam missile range, as well as Ben Gurian airport. Just one missile on a plane to or from Ben Gurian airport would cut off Israel from all air transport and physically isolate the Jewish state.

And in the most ironic twist of history, Israel now is being demanded to make further withdrawals to display “Confidence Building Measures for the Peace Process”?

Friends: This is not linkage. This is blackmail. This is a choice between death at a million blows or instant death in one fell swoop.

I was in Israel during the period of the Gaza withdrawal. It was probably the most heartbreaking thing I have ever witnessed. In an internally divisive and gut-wrenching decision, young IDF soldiers who joined the army to fight Israel’s enemies were taught to be like robots, not to feel any pain, as they ripped Jews from their homes. I remember listening to the radio and hearing one mother saying. “Mr Prime Minister, Will you uproot the tree I planted in memory of my son that was killed in Jenin? I have not been able to go into his room ever since. Can you pack up his room for me?”

People were trying to convince themselves that this will be the opportunity for the Palestinians to prove to the world, once and for all that they could govern themselves in peace.

Wealthy Jews bought the greenhouses so that the fledgling Palestinian state would have an economic infrastructure and Rabbis in Jerusalem were debating whether the shuls should remain, after all, argued one particularly prominent rabbi, “We all pray to the same God”.

As soon as the last IDF soldier locked the gate and the Israeli flag was lowered those greenhouses and synagogues were destroyed in a frenzied atmosphere of nihilism and hatred.

We know about the free and open democratic election of Hamas by the people of Gaza that following January.

We know about the more than 10,000 Kassam rockets raining down upon southern Israel.

We know about the 15 seconds that the children of Sderot had to run for their lives when they heard the wail of the siren, “Seva Adom, Seva Adom.”

We know about the painstaking decision to finally go back into Gaza that the IDF was forced to make in the winter of 2008.   A decision that was made because, under article 51 of the United Nations Charter, the very first obligation of every nation state is to defend the lives of her civilians.

We know about the young IDF soldiers who were buried, who lost their lives because the IDF decided not to risk the Palestinian collateral damage of an air campaign.

And we also know about the asymmetry of the conflict. We know about Hamas using of women and children as human shields. We know about their use of Red Crescent ambulances to smuggle weapons and 5, 6, 7, terrorists at a time; about the tunnels smuggling weapons in from Egypt.

We know about their hiding in civilian population centers. About their use of schools, mosques, playgrounds and hospitals as bases to launch their weapons. All of this was  done, in a sinister calculation of maximizing their own civilian deaths, all done in order to make the Jewish state look bad in the court of public opinion.

And we know that all of this culminated in the notorious Goldstone Report, put out by a sacrosanct UN Human Rights Council…

And NOW our enemies are preparing to go into the United Nations and demand a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and Israel is supposed to withdraw the pre-1967, indefensible borders, which was dubbed by Ambassador Abba Eban of the Labor Party as “The Auschwitz lines”?

Prior to the birth of Israel, we were known as the people of the book, of ideas and of words. However, Hitler taught us that ideas and words were not sufficient to survive…That sometimes we have to use force… and now our enemies have been using words and ideas to delegitimitize the existence of the Jewish state.

Ladies and Gentleman, we have absolutely nothing to apologize for and nothing to be defensive about. Israel has tried, in good faith to sacrifice “land for peace”. They have given the land…Now, may I ask, where is the peace?

I have to leave you with one more story. I was in the Washington Institute on July 25^th 2000. That was the day the Camp David Two talks, with Prime Minister Barak, President Clinton and Yasser Arafat had had broken up. Then Attorney General Eliyakim Rubenstein had come to address the group, and this is what he said:

He said: I could look everyone in the eye and I can tell you that we went as far as any Israeli government could possibly go. There are people right now, in the limousines driving back to the airport who are stunned and crying. They felt if we actually made Chairman Arafat an offer that was too good to refuse, he simply wouldn’t.

What they had to offer was division of Jerusalem, with the Palestinians taking control of the Temple Mount and the Israelis controlling the Western Wall, a quote “Right of Return” of thousands of refugees and some sort of financial compensatory package for those that Israel couldn’t absorb, a full withdrawal from Gaza and a ninety-seven percent withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, if you will.

Arafat did not say yes and he did not say no. He simply walked away from the table. And his response came a few months later in the form of a renewed intifada.

And the Israelis, saying that this was a once or never offer, did not write this down anywhere.

And now we have books, such as that written by President Obama’s friend and advisor, Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University entitled, “Resurrecting Empire”, which is used in college classes all over the United States and which says and I quote: “that what the Israelis had to offer at Camp David was so flimsy it was laughable.”

We have GOT to reclaim ourselves as the People of the Book, again. We have got to get engaged in the Battle of Ideas, and we have got to record and to remember just how far Israel has been willing to go for the sake of peace and where t has brought us.

It is time for us, once and for all, to stop being so apologetic, and to stop being so defensive. We have got to remember our history, INCLUDING OUR Recent History. We have to remember what has happened to us as a people, before, during and since the birth of Israel, all of the struggles Israel has gone through to survive, and and how far  Israel had been willing to go for peace. We have got to tell our story over and over and over again.

As the Czech novelist, Milan Kundwa had written in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Or as Sir Winston Churchill said, “Never give in… never, never, never, never give in… Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Thank you very much.