“47 years ago the [Fatah] revolution started.  Which revolution?  The modern revolution of the Palestinian people’s history.  In fact, Palestine in its entirety is a revolution, since [Caliph] Umar came [to conquer Jerusalem, 637 CE], and continuing today, and until the End of Days.  The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says: “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.  The Jew will hide behind stones or trees.  Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him…”

-PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein, PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012

There is nothing particularly surprising about the above statement, made so recently by the Palestinian Authority (PA) funded Palestinian Mufti, who is the leading Sunni Muslim religious authority in the PA.  In fact, it is well representative of the state of current Palestinian society (which I described more fully in a previous column), with its government sponsorship of hate against Israelis and Jews, its promotion of terrorism, its production of murderous children’s television shows, and even its advocacy of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.  Unfortunately, beginning in 1994, with the removal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian areas, the governing Palestinian group Fatah received control the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, (although the Hamas terror group seized control of Gaza in 2007).

Palestinian leaders could have taken advantage of their new power to develop the economy, produce jobs, provide support for its disadvantaged, and develop an agricultural base.  Instead the Palestinian leaders cancelled democratic elections,  cracked down on free speech and  religion, tortured and killed their own people, and funneled money into personal bank accounts or into support for terrorism against Israel.

A distinction can be made between Fatah and Hamas. Fatah, subsidized by the U.S., international organizations, Europe, the Gulf States, and even Israel,  is the more secular of the two even though it continues to fund Muslim religious events demonizing Jews, and paying the salary for the anti-Semitic Palestinian Authority Mufti. Fatah continues to glorify terrorism on television, including praising vicious murderer of an Israeli family, including two children and an infant.

This ought not come as a surprise, since for forty years Fatah was the personal fiefdom of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, the man who introduced the world to airline skyjackings.  (Unholy Alliance, David Horowitz, pg.145) Arafat spent much of his diplomatic career walking away from peace deals that would have given him a viable Palestinian state, the very thing he claimed to want, when speaking to a western audience. Under their current leader, Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah has continued to avoid any final settlement of the peace process. Just this month, the Abbas appointed terrorist Mahmoud Awad Damra to serve as a PA official, despite his recent release from jail for attacks which killed Israelis and Americans. Last month, Abbas pushed for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood in the UN, in an effort to bypass bilateral peace negotiations and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

The other ruling Palestinian regime is the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Hamas is the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which now dominates the Egyptian parliament. Hamas and the Brotherhood’s goal is to implement Sharia (Islamic law), with all of its mandated 7^th century punishments including flogging, stoning and amputation. Hamas has a strong claim of legitimacy, having defeated Fatah in Palestinian elections in 2006, and because its genocidal covenant is strongly grounded in traditional Islamic anti-Semitism and contains the exact hadith uttered by the PA‘s Mufti. In fact, it is so identified with virulent anti-Semitism that the foreign travels of its leadership have led to mass demonstrations throughout the Arab world reminiscent of the demonstrations 1930’s Nazi Germany.  Hamas is led by a triumvirate of terrorists: Khaled Mashal, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar. Mashal has praised Osama Bin Laden and condemned Bin Laden’s killing. Al-Zahar has reiterated that Hamas will “never give up its armed struggle against the Zionist enemy.” Nor is such talk likely to end, as each member of the leadership attempts to outdo the other in demonstrations of their terrorist credentials and Jew-hatred in an effort to emerge victorious in an internal Hamas power struggle.

Because of these factors, Hamas manages to be even more repressive and destructive to the hopes of a stable Palestinian society than Fatah. When the Israelis removed their settlements from the Gaza strip in 2005, it was Hamas which led the Gazans in riots to destroy the agricultural industry Israel left behind. Hamas has spent its three years cracking down on the rights of women in the Gaza Strip, harassing its tiny Christian community into exile, and suppressing free speech.  There has been some growing resentment of the authoritarian and fundamentalist Hamas among young Palestinian Muslims. As a result Hamas has resorted to conducting a “charm offensive” in Gaza to win back public support.

Recently, “President” Abbas and Khaled Meshaal met to discuss reconciliation between the two groups. They agreed to hold presidential and legislative elections by May of 2012, and to initiate some confidence-building measures. But so far negotiations have not resolved the issue of forming a unity government, nor who would lead it. Hamas remains adamant that the West Bank’s Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, popular in the West for his statements in favor of developing a more economically advanced and democratic Palestinian entity, be removed, while Abbas is pretending to support him to keep the foreign aid flowing.  If the two sides do eventually come together, it will be to produce a government which shares the values which unite the two parties, namely, terrorism against Jews, government corruption, and opposition to free speech.

Until there is a fundamental change in the nature of Palestinian society, negotiations will never succeed. All moderation will continue to be “English-only” meant to purchase western aid to facilitate corruption and terror.  Palestinian leaders will continue to compete with each other over the support of a Palestinian public, in order to show that they are the party that best represents the principle, “there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s election victory indicates strong support for Islamism and for Sharia law. Sharia law does not tolerate free speech or protests against the government, and it exploits and suppresses minorities.  Muslim Brotherhood has expressed their goal to see the newly-formed government, “evolv[e] into a rightly guided caliphate.”

This naturally alarms Israel because the Brotherhood is closely allied with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for murdering hundreds of civilians, including Americans, in Israel. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s prime minister, has described his organization as the “jihadi movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face.” Haniyeh stated recently that “our presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity.”

The parliamentary elections will soon be followed by a rewriting of the 1971 constitution which will take place prior to the presidential elections.  That will ensure that the power will reside in the Islamist-dominated parliament. In any case, most of the current presidential contenders have a similar agenda to the Brotherhood, calling for imposing Sharia law in Egypt and modifying the country’s peace treaty with Israel.

The 1979 peace treaty was negotiated by Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, and Israel is rightly concerned about whether the document will be honored.  Odds are slim, since the ruling military junta, The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) plans to put the Camp David accords on the ballot for a national referendum. The Brotherhood has vowed never to recognize Israel as legitimate.

As Islamists were swept into power throughout the Middle East, what was the White House doing? It was standing shoulder to shoulder with the Islamists. As the revolution in Egypt evoked Western fears (now proven to be prescient) of a Brotherhood rise to power, the administration dispatched Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to announce that the Islamist group was “largely secular.” The U.S. government provided election training to Egyptian Islamist parties.

The N.Y. Times reported that the Obama administration accepts the Muslim Brotherhood’s assurances that it will build a democracy that respects individual rights, free markets and free speech. On January 4, the administration began to “forge closer ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that once was received as irreconcilably opposed to U.S. interests,” the newspaper said.  The White House is giving the Brotherhood international legitimacy, based on the platitudes the latter expresses in English, while in Arabic it has demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and called for preparations for war against Israel.

At the same time, the White House has represented the Egyptian military as a pro-Western and secular force which will restrain Islamist elements. In reality, the Egyptian military has used deadly force against civilian protesters. In response to a Coptic protest in the Cairo neighborhood of Maspero, SCAF unleashed armored vehicles, which deliberately ran over protestors. Protestors were assaulted and beaten as Egyptian troops yelled “Allahu akbar” at those they called “Christian sons of dogs.”

These recent attacks by the military and their Islamist allies against Coptic Christians (who make up 10 percent of the 82 million Egyptians) give us a preview of what is to come when the Islamists impose Sharia law:

“The Islamists have been unleashed,” says Nasri, a Copt pharmacist who is hoping to leave Egypt.  “You’re talking about no rights for women.  No rights for Coptic Christians.  They’ll make us more of a minority.  It will be like living centuries ago.”

Red lights are flashing and sirens are blasting, but the Obama administration does not sense the threat. That is not for lack of information. EMET predicted early-on that the Brotherhood would take power and that the Egyptian military would not stand for democracy and minority rights. Unfortunately, President Obama believes that America’s role in the world is far too aggressive and arrogant in promoting democracy. As a result, he apologizes for our supposed failure to understand others, our alleged selfishness in pursuing U.S. interests instead of global interests and showing far too much concern for U.S. independence and freedom of action.

Perhaps Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sees the danger in Obama’s support for Egypt’s incoming government. Traditionally, Washington appropriates $1.3 billion a year to Egypt, plus additional support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Senator Leahy has sponsored a bill in the Appropriations Committee that calls for restrictions in military aid to Egypt. Leahy also calls for funds to be earmarked to promote democracy and limit military power there. The Egyptian military has lobbied aggressively against the Leahy legislation, and it upped the ante by raiding Western pro-democracy Non-governmental organizations.  According to The Washington Post, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also opposes these restrictions, and the State Department has proposed an additional billion dollars in debt relief, to provide funds for the Egyptian government’s “transition.”

The seismic wave of change in Middle East has swept Sharia advocates into power, and the Obama Administration has been a contributor to that outcome. Now, freedoms of speech and of minority rights are threatened. So is Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, which long has stood as the only democracy in the region. The White House has settled for the democracy of “one man, one vote, one time,” thus bringing even worse regimes to power than had previously ruled in the region. Who will take a stand and promote real democratic values?

With Republican Congressman Ron Paul coming in a close third in the Iowa presidential caucus, we must look seriously at his foreign policy views, particularly on the Middle East and Israel, and ask whether such views are suitable for a commander-in-chief charged with the security of the United States during a period of conflict with a determined Islamic enemy.

Much attention has been paid, since Paul’s strong showing in Iowa, to statements issued in Rep. Paul’s newsletter publications. Many of these newsletters contain material on domestic matters (such as race relations) that may be objectionable, but one of the most troubling statements on the foreign policy front relates to credence given to a conspiracy theory blaming the Mossad for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. From an April 1993 edition of the newsletter:

It was only a matter of a few days after the World Trade Center bombing before Mohammad A. Salameh was arrested. Is he guilty? Who knows? Recall that shortly after the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended and accusations were made. Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists matters little.

This statement shows a susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking, which, while contrary to any good analysis, is particularly dangerous when considering the Middle East. The Arab world is fraught with all manner of ludicrous and delusional conspiracy theories about the Jews and Israel, and that a potential American Commander-in-Chief would give them any credence is deeply troubling. Even if, as Rep. Paul claims, he was not the author of the newsletters in question, then at the very least he hired and supervised, or failed to supervise, individuals who maintained these beliefs. Anyone who genuinely considers the possibility that Israel would intentionally bomb an American civilian building for the sole purpose of framing Islamic terrorists, cannot ever be an ally of or, indeed, even neutral in regards to Israel.

The other interesting element of the quote is the use of the word “retaliation.” The assumption that any act of terrorism committed by Muslims must be the result of U.S. behavior, and, therefore, justifiable is a hallmark of Paul’s policies and is deeply troubling. A perfect illustration occurred in Paul’s remarks during the December 15th Iowa Republican debate. “… [T]o say all Muslims are the same is dangerous talk,” he stated. “They don’t come to kill us because we are free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean that’s absurd.”

Of course all Muslims are not the same. No one is suggesting that they are. Paul’s claim that Muslims want to harm us “because we are bombing them” ignores the reality that Islamists have deeply-held religious and ideological beliefs that mandate jihad against non-believers, the spread of Sharia, and the dominance of an Islamic caliphate. We know this because not just Islamic terrorists, but Muslim jurists, thinkers and policy-makers say so routinely, as evidenced by a wide collection of Arabic-language video and transcripts available from translation services like MEMRI.

Ironically the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police recognizes better than does Rep. Paul the reality of jihadist motivations, writing in a 2006 report summary, that Switzerland was both home to, and a target for, Islamist terrorists.

Furthermore, which Muslims exactly does Paul claim the United States bombed prior to the 1993 “retaliation” bombing?

Paul blames Israel for much of the faults of the Middle East and, according to former Paul staffer Eric Dondero, has privately expressed his wish that Israel not exist. Dondero writes,

He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the American taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.

Paul has attempted to create the impression that his stance on Israel is motivated not by anti-Zionism, but, rather, by a principled position on independent national sovereignty. He points to his voting against condemning Israel for the 1981 Osirak reactor bombing, and claims that our “interference” with Israel is to their detriment. Said Paul in a November presidential debate in Washington,

We interfere with them when they deal with their borders. When they want to have peace treaties, we tell them what they can do because we buy their allegiance and they sacrifice their sovereignty to us. And then they decide they want to bomb something, that’s their business, but they should, you know, suffer the consequences. When they bombed the Iraqi missile site, nuclear site, back in the ’80s, I was one of the few in Congress that said it’s none of our business and Israel should take care of themselves.

EMET believes that a close American-Israeli security alliance is to the benefit of both nations, but we understand that one could make the opposing argument that Israel is burdened by its American alliance in good faith. However Paul’s stance is disingenuous, as evidenced by his remarks on the House floor on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza that began in December 2008. Paul claimed that Hamas was “encouraged by and really started by Israel,” much as he blames the U.S. for the rise of Al Qaeda. In interviews with Iranian state television, Press TV, he described Gaza as a “concentration camp.” Far from wanting to free Israel to see to its own national security, Paul seizes upon occasions when Israel acts to ensure its security, as in Operation Cast Lead, to condemn it and, by extension, the United States.

Paul prefers pat answers that blame America and Israel to conducting serious investigation of the motivations of our self-declared enemies. Indeed Paul’s belief in American-centric grievance terrorism denies agency to other countries and cultures. He refuses to take into account any historical, cultural or political developments prior to America’s rise to superpower status. Paul’s only solution is a return to American isolationism as a foreign policy.

Paul believes that if Washington ceases to support and ally itself with the Jewish state, then a large number of America’s problems with the Muslim world will disappear. But suppose that a President Paul initiated a foreign policy in which the U.S. government didn’t defend Israel in the United Nations Security Council, recognized “Palestine” as a nation, called on Israel to negotiate with that state, and stopped the sale of American weapons or technology to the Jewish state. Would these actions prompt the Islamist or Muslim worlds to reward us with better behavior?

Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they would not, just by examining the past three years. President Barack Obama is markedly less supportive of Israel than was President George W. Bush. Obama made improved relations with the Muslim world a cornerstone of his foreign policy, as delineated in his Cairo declaration in 2009. Based on the Paul logic, positive results should come from the Muslim world, but we see no evidence of its becoming more supportive of the United States. Have the Palestinians been more willing to compromise? No. The Palestinian Authority seems to be approaching the even more extreme and radical group, Hamas, with which it now plans to merge. Also, the PA has unilaterally pushed for statehood recognition by the United Nations, an effort the Obama Administration has opposed. And has the rest of the Muslim world become more cooperative with the United States? Not at all. Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden until we found and killed him, and it continues to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia still produces textbooks and religious materials filled with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry. And Iran still pushes ahead with nuclear weapons production.

We have every reason to suspect, therefore, that the Middle East’s reaction to an even softer Ron Paul approach to diplomacy would be greater intransigence.

Paul pretends that this reality does not exist or that it does not matter. Osama bin Laden should not have been killed, under Paul’s reasoning. Iran is not trying to acquire a nuclear bomb, he claims, and if it were, that’s Teheran’s choice. “If I were an Iranian, I’d like to have a nuclear weapon, too, because you gain respect from them,” he told Iowans.

Paul’s foreign policy has a seductive attraction. If all the troubles America endures are because of her actions, then ceasing these actions is a cure-all. But this is simply not so. A retreat to some mythical isolationist foreign policy is as impossible as it is undesirable. It would cede regional hegemony to national and non-state actors who have their own innate motivations for wishing death to those they label “infidels,” and make the world, America, and Israel, infinitely more insecure.

December 25, 2011

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, is touted — by the UN and a number of nations — as the ”sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”  As such, it is officially the organization responsible for negotiating on behalf of Palestinian Arabs: It was the PLO that negotiated with Israel with regard to the Oslo Accords.     While 10 groups (e.g., Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - PFLP) are members, it has long been heavily dominated by Fatah: Major figures in Fatah — notably Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas — have played key roles in the running of the PLO.    That situation may be changing shortly, and I see considerable significance in this possibility. On Thursday Palestinian Arab leaders representing several groups announced an “historic” agreement to “activate and reconstruct” the PLO so that organizations that do not currently belong might join.  Most significantly, this would open the door to membership by Hamas, as well as the “up-and-coming” Islamic Jihad.

As I have watched a continually shifting situation with regard to Fatah-Hamas relations and the possibility of a “reunification” agreement, it has seemed to me that one of the major prizes that Hamas was seeking was membership in the PLO.  More important than a joint government and all the rest — most of which probably will never materialize.   This is a shift from its earlier position, which was one of shunning PLO membership — a shift from having no part of this “official” organization to seeking to play from within.  And make no mistake about it: The ultimate goal of Hamas is not to belong to the PLO, but to dominate and control it.  Hamas speaking for and acting on behalf of the Palestinian Arab people.

The meeting on Thursday (ed. note: December, 22nd, 2011) took place in Cairo, with Abbas, Palestinian National Council speaker Salim Zanoun (also Fatah) and Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal in attendance. It was agreed that a committee, headed by Zanoun, would meet — in Amman, starting January 15 — to discuss ways to incorporate groups such as Hamas into the PLO.    According to Khaled Abu Toameh and Herb Keinon, writing in Friday’s JPost (ed note: December 23rd, 2011), this will pave the way for a new provisional PLO leadership that would include Hamas and other radical groups for the first time. Ultimately, this would lead to incorporation into various PLO institutions — most significantly, the Palestinian National Council, the PLO’s parliament in exile.   The Council elects the Executive Committee, the PLO’s main decision-making body.  So we can see where this may be going.

With statements by Hamas leaders over the weekend, we can see this even more clearly:   Osama Hamdan – referred to as Hamas’s “foreign minister” – in response to claims that Hamas was moderating, felt the need to clarify what is happening.  He was quoted by the Quds Press news agency:   “Anyone who thinks Hamas has changed its positions and now accepts the PLO’s defeating political program is living in an illusion.  Hamas cannot make the mistake of joining a process that has proved to be a failed one…”   By moving towards “reconciliation,” Hamas is aimed at “reconstructing the organization and reconsidering its political program.”  Hamas’s goal is “first and foremost the liberation of our lands from the sea to the river and achieving the right of return.”

Another Hamas leader, Khalil Abu Leila, cited by Abu Toameh, said that Hamas would not join the PLO’s current political program.  Rather, a major task of the provisional leadership will be to “bring the PLO back to its correct path and the goal for which it was established, namely the liberation of Palestine.”

And it’s here that I want to stop for a moment and provide important background and context.    The PLO was founded in 1964 at a summit of the Arab League, which committed to being more active in “liberating” Palestine.  A pivotal role was played by Egypt’s president Gamal Abdul Nasser, and indeed the first chair of the PLO was a Nasser protégé, Ahmad Shuqeiri.  The first meeting was held at the Intercontinental Hotel in eastern Jerusalem (then under Jordanian control) and meetings continued to be held in eastern Jerusalem until 1967.   The overriding factor of significance here is that the founding of the PLO took place BEFORE 1967, before Israel controlled Judea, Samaria and Gaza.  What it sought to “liberate” was Israel INSIDE the Green Line.  This puts the lie to all the hoopla regarding Oslo, a “two-state solution,” a Palestinian state with the ’67 line as border, etc. etc.    The original Palestinian National Charter clearly specified that there were no designs on the areas within “Palestine” that were controlled by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (Judea and Samaria).  All that was to be “liberated” was what Israel then controlled.  This Charter was amended once, in 1968, after Israel acquired control of the land from the river to the sea.  That is, what the PLO sought to “liberate” was adjusted according to what Israel controlled — the ultimate goal being the eradication of Israel.

The complications arose with Oslo, in 1993.  As part of understandings at that time, Arafat was committed to amending the PLO Charter, removing or changing those sections that called for Israel’s destruction.  But all Arafat did was declare the intention of making required changes.  Those changes were never actually made.  A committee to explore the matter was appointed, following a vote by the PLO National Council, but the committee never met.   What followed was what I have dubbed “as if” diplomacy: nations conducting themselves “as if” something has happened, when it fact it has not. Among those celebrating the changes was then-President Bill Clinton.

The sense of the Charter, and the need for elimination or amendment of certain clauses, becomes clear from the following examples:

“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.” (Article 2)

“The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after achieving the liberation of their country.” (Article 3)

“…[The Palestinian] must be prepared for the armed struggle and ready to sacrifice his wealth and his life in order to win back his homeland and bring about its liberation.” {Article 7]

“Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it…” [Article 9]

“The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland…” [Article 19]:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood…”  [Article 20]

“The demand of security and peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to consider Zionism an illegitimate movement, to outlaw its existence, and to ban its operations..” [Article 23]

But these clauses stand to this day.  What they represent is not significantly different from what Hamas espouses.

The entire charter can be seen at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/plocov.asp

One would have to ask how it was that the Western world, over a period of almost two decades, could have anticipated a “peace process” resulting in a “two-state solution” if one of the parties to that process embraced the above principles so thoroughly inimical to true peace.   The answer, of course, is that the Western leaders (including many Israeli leaders) were imitating the three monkeys who hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

They allowed themselves to be convinced that these were not the PLO principles any longer and that its leaders were prepared to seek peace.   But since, indeed, the PLO has retained these principles, while feigning the embrace of peace in English for Western consumption, only disaster has ensued.

Now along comes a more forthright Hamas, determined to call the PLO back to honestly embracing what it was supposed to stand for in the first place.  No more subterfuge or mixed messages.   Of course, when it comes to interactions between Fatah and Hamas, everything is tentative.  And so it remains to be seen what role Hamas does ultimately play in the PLO.  But I’m not at all certain that this transition would be a bad thing: it would eliminate a very pernicious pretense and push Western leaders towards having to face the reality of the situation.   Then — as Minister of Security Affairs Moshe Ya’alon said this evening (ed. note: December 25th, 2011), when I queried him about this at a meeting — it would be important to make certain that Western nations continued to recognize the Quartet requirements.

I have been told by an Israeli official that all have been involved in acts of terrorism  and that some, no doubt, were involved in the murder and maiming of American citizens. This is beyond infuriating to me, not because American blood is any redder than Israeli blood, but because American laws for dealing with such matters have been completely ignored.

The United States’ anti-terrorism statute, passed in 1990, states that any time an American has been killed or wounded in a terrorist attack anywhere around the globe, the federal government has the right to seek out the suspect, and bring him or her to these shores to face justice.

Among the first wave of released prisoners in the Shalit deal was Ahlam Tamimi. On August 9, 2001, Ms. Tamimi planned and helped to execute the bombing of the Sbarro’s pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem. We know that at least two American citizens were killed during this attack: Judith Greenbaum, 31, from Passaic, New Jersey, and Malki Roth, 15, from Queens, New York.

In a taped interview that Ms. Tamimi gave while in prison, she confessed to the crime and said that if given the opportunity, she would not hesitate to do it again. When told that her act was responsible for the deaths of eight children, a smile of deep satisfaction came across her face.

Ms. Tamimi is currently in Jordan, where she is widely recognized as a hero and is on the lecture circuit. The United States has an extradition treaty with Jordan, and should demand her extradition.

On September 8, 2003, an emergency room doctor at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, David Applebaum, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, took his daughter Nava, out for a father-daughter dinner at Café Hillel in the capital’s trendy Emek Refaim neighborhood. The dinner was special: Nava was to be married the very next day. David was known to be a quintessential mensch, always the first to arrive in the emergency room after a disaster or suicide bombing, even when he wasn’t “on call.”  When the suicide bomber entered Café Hillel and blew himself up, everyone wondered why David hadn’t come running immediately to the emergency room to help out. That was because David and Nava were among the dead. Ibraham Dar Musa, who planned the Café Hillel bombing,  was one of those released last October.

There are approximately 54 cases of American citizens who have been killed and 83 of Americans who have been injured by Palestinian terrorists since the singing of the Oslo Accords. The United States government seems to be treating them as invisible, disposable Americans, mere pawns on a political chessboard.

On May 8, 2001, my friends Sherri and Seth Mandell, originally from Silver Spring, Maryland, suffered an unspeakable loss. Their son, Koby, and his friend, Yoseph Ishran, decided to play hooky from school. When they did not return home that evening, their families were incredibly worried. Koby’s and Yoseph’s bodies were found the next day, brutally dismembered, in a cave outside their families’ community of Tekoa, Israel. The boys had been stoned to death.

In those days, I had been working on a law to give the Justice Department primary responsibility for rendering justice on terrorists who had killed American citizens overseas. Prior to that, the State Department had handled such matters. I felt that the State Department was primarily concerned with politics and diplomacy, not justice. By changing the address, we had felt there might be a greater chance of securing justice for victims and their families that wasn’t contaminated by diplomatic or political factors.

I had called Sherri Mandell while she was sitting shiva. What do you say to a woman who has just lost her first-born son, her bechor, so brutally? So, I told her about the bill that I was working on, and asked if she would like it to be named for Koby.

I will never forget her response. In fact, her voice is still ringing in my ears. She said, with a tinge of joy, “I could just see Koby jumping up and down in heaven to have a law named after him.”

I thought to myself, “Sweetheart, it is a long way before a bill becomes a law.” I vowed to myself that I would not rest until it happened. The bill was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2004.

In May 2005, the Office of Victims of Overseas Terrorism was opened in the Department of Justice. The office lists on its website that it was established “to ensure that the investigation and prosecution of terrorist attacks that result in deaths and/or injuries of American citizens overseas remain a high priority within the Department of Justice.”

The office takes special credit for the seizure and indictment of an Indonesian murderer of one Christian missionary. However, when reading the law, it is clear that the legislative intent of the bill was to address a specific population of Americans who were either studying in, touring in, or living in Israel at the time, the office has not brought a single Palestinian terrorist to justice on these shores. Vicki Eisenfeld of West Hartford, Connecticut, — whose son Matthew, a Yale University graduate, was killed together with his girlfriend, Sara Drucker,  a graduate of Barnard College, on Jerusalem bus number 18 — once confided in me, “It makes me feel that my son’s blood is less American.”

I spend a great deal of time on Capitol Hill, and when I walk between the House side and the Senate side, I see the Supreme Court. Etched on top of the beautiful building are the words, “Equal Justice Under Law.”

Therein lies my profound indignation and sadness.

This article can be seen in the current edition of the Washington Jewish Week.

This past Friday, at a policy conference in Washington, Puneet Talwar, Senior Director for Iran, Iraq and the Gulf States at the White House National Security Council addressed the group. In his “on the record” remarks, Mr. Talwar calmly stated, “We have a three legged stool in our policy toward Iran: The first leg of the stool is engagement. The second is sanctions. And the third is our military option. We are keeping all of the options on the table.”

This is eerily familiar. It is precisely the same statement we had heard from then candidate Obama when he came to address the AIPAC policy conference while running for office in 2008.

Since then, almost four years have elapsed, and the centrifuges have been assiduously spinning  uranium to the highly enriched grade necessary for a nuclear bomb. It is said they now have enough enriched uranium for at least one nuclear bomb, and that they are hard at work at a delivery mechanism. As these words are written the Iranians are launching yet another atomic facility, deeply underground, beneath the mountains near the holy city of Qom.

One of the most chilling elements of the policy debate regarding the Iranian nuclear program is the bizarre time stasis in which those who oppose action against Iran exist. Warnings of an approaching nuclear deadline date back at least as far as 2004, when European experts warned Iran could be between five and six years away from a bomb. Even the widely panned and inaccurate 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which incorrectly claimed that Iran had halted production in 2003, set the earliest possible date for Iran to possess enough highly enriched Uranium for nuclear weapons at some time between 2009 and 2010. More recent assessments, such as that of Israeli military intelligence, put Iran is six months to one year away from producing a bomb. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told CNN Iran was less than a year away from being “unstoppable” in its nuclear effort. Weapons inspector David Albright put the Iranians within six months of possessing enough nuclear material if they conduct a crash program, while a more hawkish estimate placed it as low as 62 days.

Yet none of this fazed the Obama Administration, which spent a substantial amount of energy in arm-twisting Congressmen in an effort to push back implementation dates for a new round of Iranian Central Bank sanctions proposed by Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) from two months (already quite a long time) to half a year.  The Obama Administration had also been seeking wider latitude and discretion in applying the proposed sanctions.

According to one report, by Reuters, the Administration has received at least some of those demands, although Sen. Mark Kirk has said the Congressional negotiators resisted “most” of the administration’s attempts to weaken sanctions. A press release from the Armed Services Committee indicates that the implementation timeline survived Administration pressure, a positive sign.

But in what bizarre dimension of time and space does this administration reside where sanctions, implemented six months from now can halt a nuclear program that could potentially be completed, or at least “unstoppable” by the time they take effect?  And yet the officials from the same administration expect to have their cake and eat it too by the claim that “all options” including the military option are on the table, as did Mr. Talwar, or as referenced by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in his speech to the Saban Center.

One must doubt very seriously that anyone in the administration believes that boilerplate response, and for certain the Iranians do not considered it a credible threat. Are the Iranians expected to believe, that an administration which refuses to recover its own downed aircraft for fear of the reaction, will take a full scale military option against it? The same “military option” that has been “on the table” for the past decade, as Iran continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions?

The reality is that while American policy, focused on its table full of options, has remained static for the past ten years, Iran has quietly, persistently marched forward. All policy options, whether they are sanctions, or military force, or even diplomacy, are perishable goods. The longer you wait, the less valuable they become.

This is not to say that the sort of covert attacks against Iranian nuclear installations which appear to be underway , are not helpful, and that they have not bought us time. They are and they have.  But however much time such actions buy, it is not all the time in the world. We must stop treating the Iranian nuclear bomb as though it is some kind of desert mirage, which remains just out of reach, regardless of how much time is spent moving towards it.

The Kirk-Menendez Amendment was a noble and bipartisan move, of the kind all too rare in Washington. It is disturbing the amount of pressure the administration was willing to bring to bear against elected legislators, in the name of NOT bringing pressure against Iranian thugs. It stands also as evidence that American legislators can still come together and produce innovative and useful policy legislation, but only if they are willing to stand up to an administration which expends momentous energy to insure that nothing effective gets done.

There is a fourth option which neither President Obama or Mr. Talwar has discussed, or used, at all, but it is worth discussing briefly.

In June of 2009, after the elections, there were thousands of brave dissidents on the streets. Most people in Iran are under age 30. They despise the mullahcracy in which they have been raised. These people were crying out for a word of support from the leader of the free world, and nothing was said in their behalf for nearly two weeks, while skulls were being crushed and people have summarily disappeared from the streets.

During the era of the Soviet dissidents, we worked with one the “refuseniks”, and everyone knew some of their names.  But few known the names of those like Sa’id Malikpur, a 35 year old web designer from Canada who went to visit his sick father in Iran in 2008, and was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prior to his incarceration, he had been developing a web site, which the regime says he used for posting pornographic images, but which Mr. Malikpur claims no knowledge of. He has been held in the notorious Evin prison, where he has been held in solitary confinement for over a year, and human rights groups say he has been routinely tortured. Mr. Malikpur has been sentenced to death.

It is absolutely unconscionable that we are not empowering the brave dissidents of Iran, and widely distributing these dramatic stories of human rights abuse. The window of opportunity was wide open in June of 2009. We must try, using the new technologies of the internet; Facebook and Twitter to see if we can pry open the window once again, and help these brave people overthrow this despicable regime.

And in terms of the other three options:  Despite the complacent assurances of some people in Washington, we are quickly running out of time.

Mr. Panetta said that he “believes security is dependent on a strong military, but also on diplomacy,” and he added, “Unfortunately over the past year we have seen Israel’s isolation from the traditional security partners in the region grow and the pursuit of a comprehensive Middle East peace has effectively been put on hold.”

The Secretary of Defense then demanded that Israel reach out, not only to the Palestinians, but to Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, her past traditional allies.

First of all, as has been documented in an article by Khaled Abu Toameh in this Monday’s Jerusalem Post, chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat has rejected the demand by the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union, the UN), for direct negotiations between the two parties.

The Palestinians refuse to sit down and talk to the Israelis, man to man. Why? Because they refuse to recognize the nation for what it is: a Jewish state. How do Obama and Panetta expect the two nations to live together in a peace that will endure for generations if the Palestinians cannot even accept Israel for what it is, and call it by its name?

What’s more:  PA negotiator Saeb Erekat expressed “surprise” that State Department’s Mark Toner has even asked the Palestinians to sit down in direct face-to-face negotiations with Israel.

In his worldview, the United States is out of line to ask anything of the Palestinians. He believes it is the Palestinians alone who have the right and power to do the demanding and set the rules.

The answer lies in the history of the way this administration has coddled the Palestinians since assuming office and has not acted as an “honest broker” or a referee between the sides, but as a consistent coach and cheerleader for the Palestinians.

As soon as Obama entered office, he quickly demanded that the Netanyahu government stop construction anywhere in the territories that Israel captured in its defensive war of 1967 and retained  when attacked again in the war of 1973. Astonishingly, his demand included any building in the city of Jerusalem, the eternal capitol of the Jewish people. The actions of the President and Secretary of State gave the Palestinian Authority a new feeling of invulnerability and entitlement.  This was brought out in a now-famous interview that Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post had with P.A. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas  shortly after President Obama assumed office.  Abbas claimed all he had to do to achieve his Palestinian state was to wait for Obama to deliver the state and the land from the Israelis.

Now, Abbas has developed such a heightened sense of entitlement that he said he will not sit down with the Israelis unless first, they deliver on everything on the Palestinian wish list, including  a return to the 1949 armistice lines, which  UN representative Abba Eban of the Labor Party had realistically dubbed “the Auschwitz” lines because they were simply indefensible.  The 1948 lines would put every single Israeli city within easy range of an Arab Kassam missile. The Arab town of Kalkilya could easily launch Kassam rockets at Ben Gurion Airport. Just one Kassam rocket launched at the airport and the entire country would be closed off from air traffic.

Right of return of all Palestinian refugees.

As far as the right of return is concerned, the Palestinians have a very creative, ingenious way of accounting. The demographic rosters have been infinitely inflated. Every time a woman in Ramallah has an appendix attack, she is listed as giving birth to a child. Any unlimited Palestinian “right of return” would be a demographic nightmare that would signal the end of Israel as both a Jewish state and a democracy.

This growing listing of Palestinian hubris runs contrary to the iron-clad assurances that American  President George W. Bush gave to the government of Israel.

In a letter dated  April 14, 2004, given to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and signed by President George W. Bush, he stated: “As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

What happened to these American iron-clad assurances to the Jewish state when President Obama assumed office? Do American guarantees last only until the administration that gave them is out of office? And what does that make of American credibility and trustworthiness?

Furthermore, the Secretary of Defense seems to feel that it is Israel’s responsibility to make peace with Turkey, whose Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogen refuses diplomatic ties with Israel and has called Israel  the “military threat to the region.” Or with Egypt, who just voted in an “Islamist” Parliament last week. Islamists who have historically viewed both Israel and America as adversaries. And Jordan, whose king finds himself at high risk as Islamist fever and revolution overturn both monarchies and dictators across the Middle East.

It is interesting how a great deal of attention has been given recently to the subject of bullying. We  have suddenly noticed that there are kids in the classroom and on the playground who for one reason or another are singled out as vulnerable and everyone piles on them. In the Middle Eastern playground, Israel is cast as the vulnerable child, because she is different and because she is Jewish. The Arab world has never accepted her existence; not in 1929, not in 1948, not in 1967 and not in 2011. And no one in the neighborhood wants her on their team.

We have grown to expect that sort of bullying from the Arab world. It is sad and tragic, however, to see it come from spokesman of the United States.

That is because the kids in this neighborhood play with toys that are all too lethal, and when they sense that the United States is pulling away from Israel, they feel emboldened — and the neighborhood becomes that much more dangerous.

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.

According to reports, the army was joined in attacking Christians by gangs of Muslim men armed with knives and clubs. A young Copt told Reuters that the violence was reserved for Christians, and that Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups were not attacked when they conducted similar protests.  Egyptian State-controlled media broadcasted calls for Muslims to take to the streets against Christians, even as the Prime Minister blamed “outside forces” a code word which usually implies alleged Israeli or American interference.

But in truth all the American “interference” is on the side of the Egyptian junta squashing protests and targeting minority Copts. The United States provides approximately $2 billion in military aid to Egypt every year, including for the purchase of armored vehicles like those turned on the Copts. Just two weeks the Egyptian government lodged a protest with the Obama Administration, after the Senate appropriations bill, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), included limitations on military aid, including requiring certification that the Egyptian government was respecting freedom of expression and other democratic norms. Secretary Clinton promised the Egyptians that the Obama Administration opposed the restrictions, according to the Washington Post. Following the clashes Sunday, White House Spokesman Jay Carney said the President urged “restraint on all sides,” as if there was some moral equivalence between peaceful protestors and those running them down.   Despite the violence the White House is pushing for the election to continue on schedule; an election which the well established Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are expected to dominate. Even as the Obama administration opposes the Senate appropriations bill, which would provide money for democracy promotion in Egypt and impose limitations on the army, the Obama State Department has held high-level talks with members of the Muslim Brotherhood according to a State Department official last week.  This has occurred despite the Brotherhood’s own electoral alliance with Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiya, an affiliate of Al Qaeda involved in the first World Trade Center attack, and #11 on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Whether done by design or incompetence, one cannot help but believe that the Administration’s policy is on course to ensure the rise of an Islamist anti-Western, Egypt.

EMET has made numerous warnings that the military was far more likely to side with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups, than it was to support minority rights, democratic activists and peace with Israel. Despite this, the administration, and even some pro-Israel organizations have continued to lobby for military aid to Egypt to continue to flow uninterrupted, oblivious to the facts on the ground, motivated by a failed understanding of the dynamics at play within Egyptian society. The events that occurred Sunday, are not the first Egyptian Army outrage. As we have previously reported, the Egyptian Army has conducted virginity checks against protestors, attacked Coptic monasteries, and committed other reprehensible acts against civilians.

Unfortunately there is no reason to imagine that the Obama Administration will reverse course following the tragic events in Maspero. However Sen. Leahy’s appropriations bill, with its restrictions on aid, are the beginning of a sign that those in Congress are beginning to sit up and take notice. However it seems likely that if the administration is granted any leeway by the legislative branch, it will continue its disastrous policy of arming the Egyptian military while at the same time reaching out to Islamists within the Egyptian political process. The U.S. Congress should act immediately to halt all transfers of funds to Egypt for arms, and demand an immediate halt to outreach to the Brotherhood members and other Islamists in Egypt. That is the only course which will provide religious minorities or Egyptian secularists even a modicum of a chance to prevail against the Egyptian Islamist-military alliance.  Until that happens, U.S. Taxpayers will continue to find themselves funding these sorts of massacres in the streets throughout Egypt.

In an attempt to understand the events of that day, the immediate comparison was to Pearl Harbor., the starting point of America’s entry into the conflict which defined the 20th century. 9/11 had much to compare itself with Pearl Harbor after all. Both from the surprise nature of the attack, to the number of casualties, and the sheer rarity of an attack upon the American homeland. Perhaps the comparison also drew hope of a united America dealing an overwhelming and certain defeat to a determined foe. And perhaps it brought to mind the apocryphal quote from Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, that to attack America was, “to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

As the American people learned more about the foes that struck us that day, it became clearer that this was not a 20th century conflict. It was, simultaneously something both new and ancient. In western minds it conjured up images of a bold new threat. The risk was seen as one of asymmetrical warfare against shadowy transnational groups. But in the minds of our enemy there was nothing new about 9/11. This was ancient warfare, reborn. 9/11 was a razzia, a raid, into the heart of Dar-Al-Harb, the abode of war, the lands of the infidel. This was the same jihad in pursuit of the same age-old goal. They sought to impose a global Caliphate and the ultimate domination of Islam in the world. As the 9/11 Commission report made clear at the time, there was no method of modern statecraft which might appease this enemy. “[A]l Qaeda’s answer [to the question of what American could do to avoid such attacks] was, “America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture…”

As America became more familiar with this enemy ideology, they realized that it was not merely the held belief of a few hijackers, or even a few thousand terrorists spread across camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks to billions in petro-dollars provided by Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia, it was the curriculum for generations of young men educated in madrassas from Indonesia to east Africa. It could even be found within Europe and the United States itself. Its adherents were inculcated in the belief in the righteousness of Jihad, in the status of non-Muslims as infidels and oppressors who must be fought. Among those brought up to believe America and the West were their mortal enemies, were citizens of nations that America thought to be friends and allies. The 9/11 investigation revealed the extensive role played by our so-called allies in financing this jihad war against the West. These facts were revealed to the American public despite the millions of oil dollars the Gulf nations were spending with America’s largest public relations and lobbying firms to convince the American people otherwise.

Even as the depth of the problem became more easily understood by the average American, American leaders were at pains to limit the public’s exposure to certain realities about the nature of the challenge before us. The phrase “the religion of peace,” has been used so often by politicians that it has come to be regarded as a mostly risible and ironic phrase. “Thereligionofpeace.com” for instance, is a website that tracks attacks by terrorists committed in the name of Islam since September 11, 2001, at a current count of 17,710 world-wide. But both the Bush and Obama administrations insisted that any question of the role of religious doctrine or ideology or how widely such ideology might be held, was a dangerous distraction and that outreach to Muslim communities at home and abroad would be the center-piece of the resistance to Al Qaeda, not understanding and countering the enemy’s doctrine.

However in 2004, in the basement of Ismail Elbarasse, were discovered the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The same Muslim Brotherhood whose principle ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, was featured in the 9/11 Commission’s explanation of Osama Bin Laden’s origins and intentions. The documents found there would later be used as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, perhaps the most important terrorism finance trial ever to take place, where several Muslim Brothers were indicted, and convicted of funding Hamas. The documents entered into evidence, and stipulated to by the defense, illustrated to the public a decades’ long “civilization-jihadist” program against the West, to be waged by the Brotherhood. As part of this campaign, the Brotherhood had created numerous front-groups. Now they were marked as unindicted co-conspirators for terrorism, in a federal court.

In the years since 9/11, it was these unindicted co-conspirators that had been sought out by the government as sensitivity trainers, and outreach partners for their anti-terrorism efforts. Even after 2004, despite the government’s knowledge, the Brotherhood remained responsible for certifying the chaplains of America’s prisons, and her military, and remained a close partner for reaching out to Muslim communities. A loud outcry from concerned citizens groups and a few astute lawmakers led to a few of these M.B. organizations being excluded. But federal departments soon were opening up new associations with other Muslim Brotherhood groups — which ironically were also were listed as unindicted co-conspirators for supporting terror organizations.

Since the arrival into office of the Obama administration, this matter of Muslim Brotherhood subversion, once worrisome, have now reached levels of the deepest concern. Administration officials now openly praise the brotherhood as a “largely secular” organization and have squashed future prosecutions against the Muslim Brotherhood and its support for terrorism.

Where once the 9/11 commission openly discussed Islamic history and Bin’ Laden’s ideological motivations, now there is only “violent extremism,” a shapeless meaninglessly vague threat. Where once some complained that the denotation “the War on Terror” was too vague and ill-suited, now there are only “overseas contingency operations” aimed at preventing “man-caused disasters.” These bland characterizations have not stuck with the American public however. Today, more than ever, the American people understand the depth of the threat from the theocratic political doctrine, Sharia, which unites Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and others that pose a threat to the American way of life.

The only way to judge the status of our struggle, is to ask whether Al Qaeda and those who share their beliefs, are closer, or further from their goals? We must say in fairness that they are closer. Secular regimes across the Middle East are in turmoil, and may yet be replaced by Islamic governments. Western academic elites proudly and publicly declare that the very totalitarian law which Al Qaeda and the Brotherhood would impose is neither threatening nor undemocratic. In western countries free expression about the nature of Islam, and those who commit terrorism in its name has been sharply curtailed. In the United States of America, cartoonists are censored, even sent into hiding, because they have violated some Islamic stricture against so-called blasphemy. What’s worse, the government has now partnered with the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (formerly Islamic Conference) and Muslim countries to institute global speech codes aiming to brand any critical statements, even those made by apostates or reformers of Islam, to be hate speech and therefore illegal.

Ten years after, we are not a sleeping giant anymore. The public is more awake now, certainly more aware now, of what is happening then it has ever been. We see far more clearly than we did that day in September. But yet we find that despite the awakening of the American people, the organs of our national power do not respond, do not take the appropriate action, despite the warnings. We are a giant suffering under a local anesthetic. A potent mixture of infiltration, subversion, and cowardly political correctness saps our national will. In whatever ways this conflict differs from modern wars of the past century, until America restores its “terrible resolve”, we remain no closer to resolution of this great conflict of the 21st century.