The timing of this paltry “agreement” announced by the IAEA suggests that the Iranians are once again rope-a-doping the U.N. and the West, playing for time by exploiting both Obama’s fear of an Israeli attack before the elections, and the Europeans’ usual preference for using diplomatic words to avoid military deeds. Thus this latest “breakthrough” is nothing more than another Iranian tactic in its long-term strategy for acquiring nuclear weapons. As Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak responded to the announcement, “The Iranians appear to be trying to reach a technical deal that will create an appearance as if there is progress in the talks to remove some of the pressure ahead of the talks in Baghdad and to postpone an escalation in sanctions.” Indeed, using the talks to ease sanctions is clearly what the Iranians are up to. Parliament Chairman Ali Larijani ordered the West to “stop the shell game they have played on Iran,” since it would be “improper” for the P5+1 powers to negotiate while imposing tighter sanctions. The implication is that relaxing sanctions is a precondition for any agreement.

But even if the Iranians sign the deal with the IAEA, and even if some more definitive agreement is reached in Baghdad, the problem of a nuclear Iran will not be solved, but merely delayed. The history of North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons suggests the playbook Iran is following. In 1994, North Korea signed an agreement that called for the North to shut down its plutonium-based Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for help in building two nuclear reactors for producing electricity. Eight years later, the Koreans admitted to a U.S. delegation that all along it had been enriching uranium. The next year, the North withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and began the “six-nation” negotiations over its nuclear program. That gabfest masked the ongoing development of nuclear weapons, which Korea announced it possessed a year later. Subsequent years saw more promises of cooperation and action by the Koreans when food-aid or other economic help was needed, followed by further provocations and threats, followed in turn by more Western concessions, starting the cycle all over again. Meanwhile the North has continued testing and developing missiles, threatening its neighbors, and providing rogue regimes like Iran and Syria with nuclear technology and know-how.

Given the success of the North Koreans, the Iranians are following the same strategy for becoming a nuclear power, combining diplomatic engagement, threatening bluster, meaningless “agreements,” and duplicitous evasion in order to keep the West off balance. Thus it’s no coincidence that on the same day talks begin in Baghdad the Iranians are launching a satellite on a missile that could be adapted for delivering a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile as the diplomatic dance proceeds, the centrifuges are spinning and nuclear facilities are being buried deep underground, activities that will continue until it’s too late or too costly for the West to do anything about Iran’s nukes.

Polling residents of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Australia, Indonesia, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, and Nigeria, Globescan found that only 21 percent of respondents had a positive impression of Israel, and that the only one of the Western countries surveyed whose residents have an overall positive view of Israel is the U.S.

Looking at the study in its entirety, one discovers that while 50 percent of Americans took a positive view of Israel and 35 percent were negative, the breakdown in Canada was a very different 25-59.  Of Russia, France, Britain, Germany, and Spain, guess which had the most positive view of Israel?  Believe it or not, Russia – land of the shtetls and pogroms, of Sakharov and Sharansky.  While French attitudes toward Israel split 20-65, British 16-68, Germans 16-69, and Spaniards 12-74, the Russians broke almost even, 25-26.  Indeed, Nigerians (54-29) and Kenyans (45-31) were far friendlier to Israel than any of the Western European countries.  Unsurprisingly, the Muslim countries surveyed were not terribly pro-Israel: the figures for Egypt were 7-85, for Pakistan 9-50, for Indonesia 8-61.  But the country that was most hostile of all was Japan, where only 3 percent had an affirmative view of Israel.

The report, of course, only confirms what many of us already know: that with the exception of the U.S., the countries of the West – in which diaspora Jews have lived for centuries and which, in the wake of the Holocaust, fell all over themselves apologizing for, and trying to atone for, their roles in the destruction of the Jews – are today no friends of the Jewish state.  Mountains of anecdotal evidence, moreover, make it clear that it is impossible to separate this antagonism from pure and simple anti-Semitism.

American Jews who still believe that they are living in a world – or, at least, in a Western world – in which anti-Semitism is, by and large, a thing of the past need to open their eyes.  They should be aware of what is going on in the minds of many of the people they encounter when they travel to places like Paris or London.  They should recognize that the relative lack of Jew-hatred that they experience in the U.S. is an outright aberration – an aberration, moreover, that, as rhetoric emanating from the Occupy Wall Street movement has suggested, may not persist for much longer.

Similarly, Western European gentiles who think that they inhabit the most civilized, tolerant, and peaceable corner of the world need to think again.  For the ancient prejudice that led Europe down the road to the Holocaust has come crawling back out of its dark hole.

Clearly, the main reason for the widespread enmity toward Israel in Western Europe is that left-leaning individuals in positions of influence – from politicians and journalists to schoolteachers and professors – have been engaged for quite a long time in a relentless campaign of disinformation and demonization directed against Israel and, frankly, Jews generally.  In turn, a major (if not the only) reason for that effort is a misbegotten desire to please, and appease, European Muslims.

“I am so tired,” complained Søren Espersen of the Danish Folkeparti last Friday on his Jyllands-Posten blog, “of all the lies about Israel.” He elaborated:

I am often invited to high schools, where both teachers and students get such a very special masochistic thrill out of seeing and meeting someone like me – the very epitome of Danish political evil ….! It is, of course, [my] foreign policy they most want to be outraged by, but the second most important topic at Danish schools is actually the Middle East. The relationship between Israelis and Arabs, between Jews and Muslims.

And time after time it has struck me that even in a situation where the interest in the Middle East conflict is burning hot, for the most part neither the teachers nor the students are aware of the historical background.

Dr. Irving Moskowitz and his wife Cherna epitomize the essence of what Hillel spoke – acting and working tirelessly for the people of Israel. And they do it with tremendous self-sacrifice, facing perpetual negative publicity and threats to their safety. There are those in the media who have an obsession with these Jewish heroes – and what is it that has caused this obsession? The Moskowitzs have devoted their lives to their love for the Jewish people. An Orthodox Jew who lost 120 relatives in the Holocaust, Dr. Moskowitz asks: “What could be more natural for a person with [my] upbringing than to want to help his people in Israel who are being surrounded by people that want to destroy the country?”

A Jew can buy a home in Harlem or East Los Angeles, Moscow or Tokyo. Is there a reason that a Jew (even one named Moskowitz) can’t buy a home in any area of Jerusalem? Does not the whole world speak of human rights, equality amongst people and recognize the rights of Jews as equals? So why this big news about a Jew who is so passionate about helping his people? Universally, the Jewish community and every single Israeli government since 1967 has been firm that Jerusalem will remain united under Israeli control – one of the few things that all of Israel (and nearly every Jew in the world) agrees on. Moskowitz puts his money where his mouth is: putting facts on the ground and ensuring that Jerusalem remains the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Worldwide, Jews should stand up and say: “Thank you, Cherna & Dr. Irving Moskowitz.”

Media can spread misinformation with words like “occupation” and “settlements,” but in reality, as Mrs. Moskowitz has said, “It is a continuation of a 2,000-year-old habit of Jews being told where they can and cannot live. This spanned from the ghettos of medieval Europe, to severe zoning restrictions in czarist Russia and finally to the edicts of Nazism where we were eventually told that we could not live at all.”

Renewed talks with Iran come on the heels of a speech delivered Sunday by Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, Iran’s military chief of staff, in which he called for the “full annihilation of Israel.” Like every other Iranian pronouncement revealing the murderous nature of the current regime, it will likely be brushed aside when negotiations between Iran and P5+1, (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany), begin in Baghdad tomorrow.

Amano’s rare trip to Iran marks the fourth meeting between the IAEA and Tehran. Two rounds of talks took place in Tehran in January and February this year, followed by a third round in Vienna on May 14-15. Yet despite reports of a more “upbeat atmosphere” both last week and yesterday, a large degree of genuine substance apparently remains beyond reach. “We have extensive activities in fighting cancer, food safety and security, supplying water needs and other applications of the nuclear technology,” Amano said. In other words, there was no indication of progress regarding the principal disagreement between the IAEA and Iran, namely a deal allowing the IAEA to inspect Iranian nuclear sites, most specifically the Parchin research facility, where IAEA inspectors were refused entry as recently as February.

Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator who attended the meeting Monday and who will be in Baghdad tomorrow, inadvertently confirmed the banality of the talks between the two sides, noting that his country was “a serious supporter of…global disarmament, confronting the spread of nuclear weapons and the usage of peaceful nuclear technology for (non-proliferation treaty) member states.” “Today we have good negotiations with Amano on these three fields and we hope to have good cooperation with the agency in the future in these areas,” Jalili said.

Furthermore, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) may have revealed Iran’s true intent in negotiating with the IAEA prior to the Baghdad meeting. “The IAEA’s opposition to the U.S. false claim over Iraq helped the agency steer clear of Washington so that the U.N. agency’s officials could not be considered as accomplice to the crimes committed by the U.S. statesmen in Iraq,” it reported. “Iran considers IAEA’s independence and promotion as a factor which would prevent violation of the member states’ rights,” it added.

This is a useful gambit in that it seeks to draw a dividing line between the IAEA and the United States. For optimists, it presents the possibility that Iran might be willing to make substantial concessions as long as it can make them directly to the U.N. instead of the U.S., thereby saving a certain amount of face should that reality come to pass. For realists, it is little more than an attempt to introduce another stumbling block between the international body and the P5+1, one either designed to gain Iran leverage in Baghdad–or give the Islamic nation still more time to develop nuclear weapons.

Adding to the intrigue is the idea expressed by many diplomats that Amano would not have traveled to Iran — his first trip to that nation since becoming the IAEA chief in 2009 — unless a deal between his agency and Tehran was close. Yet when Amano was asked if some sort of framework had been found that would answer questions about Iranian intentions, he declined to get specific. “I will not go into details but the agency has some viewpoints and Iran has its own specific viewpoints,” he said.

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Lars Gule is, as of 2012, a postdoctoral research fellow at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. His stated research interests are multiculturalism, the Middle East and especially Arab-Islamic political thought. The Socialist Gule is usually referred to as a respected “expert” on multiculturalism in the national media or even the international press. In The Christian Science Monitor he was labeled a neutral academic “terrorism expert” after the Breivik case, although he is in fact an admitted terrorist himself.

In 1977, Gule was arrested in Lebanon for carrying explosives intended for an armed attack in Israel. He has not denied this since, yet his history hasn’t notably impeded his career. He is a prominent national figure on the political Left and was the Secretary General of the Norwegian Humanist Association from 2000 to 2005. Gule was one of seven writers to receive a special scholarship from the Norwegian Non-fiction Writers And Translators Association after the 2011 terror attacks, which he used to write a book focusing on right-wing extremism.

Sadly, the phenomenon of left-wing terrorists who enjoy respectable academic careers afterwards is not limited to Scandinavia. A particularly nasty case in the USA involves the unrepentant Marxist terrorist bomber Bill Ayers. In the late 1960s, Ayers became a leader of the Weather Underground (WU), “an American Red Army.”

Ayers summed up the organization’s ideology as follows: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.” This didn’t prevent him from becoming a well-connected university professor in Chicago a few years later, however. In 2008, journalists such as Stanley Kurtz and Sean Hannity tried to bring more attention to ties between the presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama and various representatives of extreme left-wing organizations and groups, among them Bill Ayers.

One of the alleged experts cited by the mainstream media about Islamic issues is the Swedish historian and Socialist activist Mattias Gardell, author of a book about so-called “Islamophobia” that was hailed by reviewer Per Jönsson in the liberal paper Dagens Nyheter as a gold mine of wisdom about the supposedly irrational Islamophobia of the medieval Crusades as well as the politician Kent Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats.

In 2010 Mattias Gardell, the Swedish organizer of the Ship to Gaza initiative, said Israelis had committed “premeditated murder” and were guilty of piracy. Gardell, a professor of religious history at Uppsala University, returned to Sweden accompanied by six others who had been held captive after their ship was boarded by Israeli soldiers. The activists were met at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport by a crowd of journalists and sympathizers. People presented them with flowers and chanted “long live Palestine” and anti-Israeli slogans. Another passionate supporter of the ships to Gaza is the Swedish bestselling crime author Henning Mankell.

When asked directly about this, Mattias Gardell made no attempt to hide the fact that the pro-Palestinian ship which he organized headed for the Gaza strip contained members not just of Fatah and the PFLP, but of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as well as Hamas. He sees nothing wrong with this, and claims that Hamas, responsible for hundreds of individual terror attacks, is not a terror organization but a social movement.

Gardell wants to be taken seriously as an objective scholar when he is not an “activist.” Unfortunately, he often is, whereas “Islamophobes” of all stripes are widely attacked in the press and branded as right-wing extremists.

Yadlin—who now heads Israel’s leading defense think-tank, the Institute for National Security Studies—also said that while serving in his former post, “We expressed ourselves straightforwardly, with a great deal of integrity and professionalism.”

His words are significant because they contrast with those of two other ex-Israeli spy chiefs who served at the same time. Former Shin Bet (internal security) chief Yuval Diskin and, particularly, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan have made large international media waves by publicly trashing Netanyahu and Barak’s Iran policy and portraying the two as irresponsible extremists if not, in Diskin’s term, “messianic.”

Yadlin, indeed, slammed Dagan and Diskin in his weekend interview on Israeli TV, saying that “when we are regular citizens, we should impose on ourselves a cooling-off period, and not come out with explosive statements.” He could have added that it is Dagan and Diskin’s irresponsible behavior that threatens the viability of Israeli governance. Top-echelon security officials cannot function if they fear that in a few months their colleagues will be slandering them on CNN.

Nor was this the first time Yadlin has made important pronouncements on the Iranian issue. Speaking earlier this month at a conference of the Washington Institute in Virginia, he said Iran had a “sophisticated” strategy to pursue nuclear weapons that was “unfortunately” working. He added that, while he favored exhausting all other options before using military force, a

nuclear Iran is more dangerous than attacking Iran.

If they can’t be contained when they don’t have nuclear weapon[s], how can they be contained when they do?…

I am sure they won’t launch a nuclear bomb the moment they get it, but the possibility [that] as a result of miscalculations and lack of stability, they will launch [a] nuclear missile—it’s not a possibility you can ignore. The flying time of a missile from Tehran to Tel Aviv is seven minutes and the temptation for a first strike is huge.

If you really want all options on the table, you need to be very credible with the military option.

These, clearly, are dramatic words—but to say they didn’t get as much play as Dagan and Diskin’s claims that international diplomacy is indeed working, and Israel should take a back seat to it, is a great understatement. Which can be easily demonstrated by Googling: the result totals for “Meir Dagan,” “Yuval Diskin,” and “Amos Yadlin” came out at 608,000, 297,000, and 120,000 respectively.

Two weeks ago, US Congressman Joe Walsh published an op-ed in the The Washington Times in which he called for the US and Israel to abandon the two-state solution.

After running through the record of Palestinian duplicity, failed governance, terrorism and bad faith, he called for Israel to apply its sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. In his words, Israel should “adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region.”

The evidence that the two-state paradigm has failed is overwhelming. The Palestinians’ decision to reject statehood at Camp David in 2000 and launch a terror war against Israel made clear that they had not abandoned their refusal from 1947 to accept partition of the Land of Israel with the Jews.

So, too, the Palestinians’ election of Hamas in the 2006 elections, and their missile war against Israel from Gaza in the aftermath of Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, all made clear that they are not interested in a Palestinian state. Rather, their chief desire is Israel’s annihilation.

Consequentially, there is no chance whatsoever that the two state paradigm can work.

Indeed, the fact that there is no Palestinian leader willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist makes clear that if a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria – in addition to the de facto Palestinian state in Gaza – that state will be in state of war with Israel. All territory under its control will be used to attack the rump Jewish state.

Given the abject failure of the two-state paradigm, it is abundantly clear that for all the complications that may be associated with the application of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it is a better option for Israel than Israeli surrender of the areas.

Walsh’s op-ed is not his first statement of support for Israeli annexation. Last September, ahead of the UN general assembly, Walsh authored Congressional Resolution 394 supporting Israel’s right to annex Judea and Samaria in the event that the Palestinians asked the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. Forty-four other congressmen co-sponsored the resolution.

And this makes sense.

The Palestinians’ decision to turn the issue of Palestinian statehood over to the UN constituted a substantive breach of the treaties the PLO signed with Israel. Those agreements stipulated that both sides agreed that their conflict would be solved through negotiations and not through unilateral actions. By ending negotiations with Israel and turning the issue of statehood over to the UN, the Palestinians canceled their treaties with Israel. Consequently, Israel is no longer bound by those accords and is free to take its own unilateral actions, including applying its laws to Judea and Samaria as it did in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past.

For his unstinting support for Israel, Walsh has been subject to an unbridled assault by leftist American Jews. Ron Kampeas from JTA, for instance,attacked Walsh, accusing him of being no different than Israel’s enemies who seek to destroy Israel by ending its ability to define itself as a Jewish state through what they refer to as the “one-state solution.”

Kampeas blasted Walsh for suggesting that Palestinians unwilling to live under Israeli rule could move to Jordan which, with its 75-percent Palestinian majority, is effectively the Palestinian state. To back up his condemnation, Kampeas quoted Robert Wright’s excoriation of Walsh in The Atlantic.

There Wright wrote, “Offhand, I don’t recall a member of Congress in my lifetime saying anything so grotesquely at odds with American ideals about ethnic relations and for that matter basic human rights.”

For its part, the Jewish-run anti-Israel lobby J Street is mobilizing its supporters to bring about Walsh’s defeat in the November elections by soliciting contributions to his Democratic challenger. J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote that “Walsh’s prescription amounts to a call for an end to Israel as the democratic home of the Jewish people.”

It is hard to know where to begin a discussion of this assault in which Jewish Americans attacked one of Israel’s strongest supporters simply because he had the temerity to recognize reality and call for the US to support an Israeli victory against our enemies who seek our destruction.

It quotes a “senior military official in Israel’s northern command” saying that, while Hizbullah may not want another war with Israel, Iran would order it to attack Israel in case of an Israeli strike on Iran. In that case, says the official, the Israel-Hizbullah clash would go “much faster” than the 2006Second Lebanon War.

That conflict, which lasted 34 days, ended with Hizbullah somewhat shaken by the prowess shown by Israel’s air force, mainly in the war’s opening days when it took out Hizbullah’s long-range rocket launchers in Beirut.

But it also ended with Hizbullah still essentially in control of southern Lebanon. Since then—despite halfhearted efforts by a beefed-up UNIFIL—Hizbullah has only tightened its grip not only over the south but over Lebanon as a whole.

And most problematically, it has kept importing Iranian rockets, missiles, and other weaponry via Syria, and now—UNIFIL or no UNIFIL—has over 50,000 rockets and missiles that, as Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasts, can hit any part of Israel.

Those considerations—the inconclusive results of the 2006 war and the power Hizbullah has amassed since that time—are undoubtedly what leads the senior military official to tell AFP that another conflict would be “much shorter, much faster…. The most important mission today is to win decisively in any kind of war in Lebanon. If you win, you win—everybody sees it.”

The official then cites what he says will be Israel’s “biggest challenge,” namely:

Hezbollah’s positioning of weapons in the heart of civilian areas in around 100 Lebanese towns and villages along the border.

“In the villages there are three-story houses: on one floor there are rockets, then there is a family on the next floor, then a (military) headquarters then another family. The people that live there are human shields….

“Every Shiite village has become such a compound. The great challenge will be to deal with all these compounds.”

Indeed, last year Israel released declassified maps to the Washington Post showing part of Hizbullah’s network of military facilities in southernLebanon. It was a way of signaling that Israel knows where these are and is capable of hitting them if necessary.

But apart from the operational aspect, what Hizbullah means to confront Israel with—by ensconcing itself in the homes of families, thereby dissolving any distinction between fighters and civilians, gun-toting warriors and mothers and babies—is a “moral” challenge.

The list of the Top 10 Living Tough Jews it is not only about brute physical strength – it is about a people who are smart, strong, resilient, rugged, bold and fearless. This is a reflection of good, tough Jews who are positive representations of the Jewish people, (no gangsters here) – don’t let a yarmulke fool you.

In no particular order here’s my List of the Top 10 Living Tough Jews – it’s a list compiled by a Public Relations pro, not a Rabbinical Authority.

Open for Debate, (In No Particular Order):

1. Israel Defense Forces: All of the men and women of the Israel Defense Forces – the holy Jewish army are the toughest (and holiest) Jews one can ever imagine. They protect the people of Israel against tremendous odds, and with Israel’s survival threatened daily these Jews are consummate warriors, fighting not only for a country but for an important ideal.

2. Elie Wiesel & All of The Holocaust Survivors: Elie Wiesel and all of the Holocaust survivors who survived the tremendous inhumanity of the Nazis are tough beyond comprehension. Wiesel said: “I have tried to keep memory alive. I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are all accomplices.” The Holocaust survivors all lost so much – and fight on every single day in life; few can imagine how much toughness and inner strength that takes.

3. Yitzchak Shamir: Israel’s founding father, Shamir served as Prime Minister of Israel in 1983–84 and 1986–92. Before Israel became a state he served in the heroic underground, and then in the Mossad (Israel secret service).  Shamir is a man with amazing legacy – elegant, strong and determined, this tough man devoted his whole life to building the land and people of Israel. Shamir, whose name means “hard stone,” always said “I would like to be remembered as a person who loved Eretz Israel and never ever gave up an inch.” Tough man.

4. Liev Schreiber: Defiance is one of the greatest Jewish movies ever, as it makes my point clear for audiences around the world to see, and it can make any tough guy cry. Schreiber’s character in the movie, Zus Bielski, is a real life tough Jew.  (Bielski is one of three Jewish warrior brothers who fought the Nazis). As Schreiber says, “this was a remarkable story — a triumphant story. It sets out to redefine the Jewish image — that of fighter. We all know tough Jews like that. My own grandfather was incredibly tough and athletic and was the main male role model in my life.”  For his portrayal and his own pride of his heritage,  Schreiber makes the list.

5. Sandy Koufax: Perhaps the greatest known Jewish athlete ever, Koufax was a legendary pitcher – the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 at the age of 36. Skilled and determined on the mound, he had tremendous inner strength to be able to not pitch in Game One of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.  As legendary Dodgers scout Al Campanis said, “There are two times in my life the hair on my arms has stood up: The first time I saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the first time I saw Sandy Koufax throw a fastball.”

6. Sam Zell: This business magnate may be the most hated man in the newspaper business – and he’s one damn tough Jew. “I’m an immigrant’s kid. I have a very different perspective on the world than somebody who grew up in Chicago and led what I would call a normal life.” Zell was raised in an Orthodox household and is a supporter of Israel, and says no matter where he travels: “In no way, shape, or form do I hide the fact that I believe in Israel—open kimono!” he declared. “There’s this Yiddish term, derech ertez, and it means respect. My father and mother, particularly my father, brought us up with the premise that respect was non-negotiable. Love was optional. I’m not saying this in a bad way. It was: ‘I want you to love me, but you have to respect me.” A great lesson for all of the Jewish people.

At a time when international desks are being cut to the bone, this is the one bone that the newshounds won’t give up. Wars can be covered from thousands of miles away, genocide can go to the back page, but, when a rock flies in the West Bank, there had better be a correspondent with a fake continental accent and a khaki shirt to cover it.

Writing about Israel isn’t hard. Anyone who has consumed a steady diet of media over the years already knows all the bullet points. The trick is arranging them artistically, like so many wilted flowers, in the story of this week’s outrage.

Israel is hot, even in the winter, with the suggestion of violence brimming under the surface. It should be described as a “troubled land.” Throw in occasional ironic biblical references and end every article or broadcast by emphasizing that peace is still far away.

It has two types of people; the Israelis who live in posh houses stocked with all the latest appliances and the Arabs who live in crumbling shacks that are always in danger of being bulldozed. The Israelis are fanatical, the Arabs are passionate. The Israelis are hate-filled, while the Arabs are embittered. The Israelis have everything while the Arabs have nothing.

Avoid mentioning all the mansions that you pass on the way to interviewing some Palestinian Authority or Hamas bigwig. When visiting a terrorist prisoner in an Israeli jail, be sure to call him a militant, somewhere in the fifth paragraph, but do not mention the sheer amount of food in the prison, especially if he is on a hunger strike. If you happen to notice that the prisoners live better than most Israelis, that is something you will not refer to. Instead describe them as passionate and embittered. Never ask them how many children they killed or how much they make a month. Ask them what they think the prospects for peace are. Nod knowingly when they say that it’s up to Israel.

Weigh every story one way. Depersonalize Israelis, personalize Muslims. One is a statistic, the other a precious snowflake. A Muslim terrorist attack is always in retaliation for something, but an Israeli attack is rarely a retaliation for anything. When Israeli planes bomb a terrorist hideout, suggest that this latest action only feeds the “Cycle of Violence” and quote some official who urges Israel to return to peace negotiations– whether or not there actually are any negotiations to return to.

Center everything around peace negotiations. If Israel has any domestic politics that don’t involve checkpoints and air strikes, do your best to avoid learning about them. Frame all Israeli politics by asking whether a politician is finally willing to make the compromises that you think are necessary for peace. Always sigh regretfully and find them wanting. Assume that all Israelis think the same way. Every vote is a referendum on the peace process. A vote for a conservative party means that Israelis hate peace.

The Israelis can also be divided into two categories. There are the good Israelis, who wear glasses, own iPads and live in trendy neighborhoods. They are very concerned that the country is losing its soul by oppressing another people. They strum out-of-date American peace songs on guitars that they play badly, but which you will describe them as playing “soulfully”, and they show up at rallies demanding that the government make peace with the Palestinians.

My first experience with Israel Apartheid week came back in 2000 at UCLA, when I was greeted on campus with pamphlets openly fundraising for Hamas and Hezbollah.

It was a spectacle I’d see repeated year after year. Just before September 11, the Muslim student newspaper Al-Talib ran a story joking about changing the name of the magazine to Al-Taliban and making Osama Bin Laden editor-in chief.

Every year, I’d ask the editorial team at the UCLA Daily Bruin to run a column on the association between the Muslim Student Association and terror groups; each year, they’d turn me down. Finally, after they decided to run a piece I’d written on the subject, they submitted it to the MSA directly for vetting. The piece never ran.

That was over ten years ago. But nothing has changed.

The University of California system is dominated by Israel Apartheid Week at least once per year per campus; in a not-coincidental correlation, anti-Semitic incidents on campuses seem to be rising.

On March 8, UC president Mark Yudof wrote an open letter decrying the hate. “Attempting to shout down speakers is not protected speech,” he wrote. “It is an action meant to deny others the right to free speech … What is not acceptable are hate-driven physical and … verbal attacks on any group or individual that are meant to silence or intimidate those who would express differing opinions.”

This week, congressional candidate Mark Reed called on Representatives Brad Sherman and Howard Berman to investigate anti-Semitism at University of California and California State University campuses. As Tammi Rossman Benjamin, Hebrew lecturer at UC Santa Cruz recently wrote in a complaint, “The harassing and intimidating environment for Jewish students has been worsened by the fact that NO other racial or national origin group on campus has been subjected by faculty or administrators to such hostile and demonizing criticism.”

Columnist Marsha Sutton of the Del Mar Times recalled one incident from June 2011, in which the UCSD libraries were shut down due to budget cuts. Palestinian activists immediately took over the buildings and hung Palestinian flags on them. When a Jewish student hung up an Israel flag, however, it was quickly torn down. “These actions,” writes Sutton, “would never be tolerated at a county or city library, so why are they permitted at a state-supported university library?”

“It can be said that within the last 60 years, this is the first time that the Zionist regime, since its illegal inception, has had to endure rejection by the West over its vision and interest in the region,” wrote Sadollah Zarei, according to a translation by Reza Kahlili.

It’s easy to see why Iran has picked up on this fact, which Democrats have desperately tried to deny throughout Obama’s tenure. Headline after headline is about the U.S. trying to hold Israel back. In March, an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post, “We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel.”

There’s been a steady stream of leaks from administration officials potentially damaging Israel. On March 28, Foreign Policy reported on the alleged existence of a secret agreement between Israel and Azerbaijan making the latter’s airbases available for a potential strike on Iran. The results of a classified war game simulating a conflict between Israel and Iran that showed hundreds of U.S. casualties made its way into the press. Another report claimed that Israel is using members of the MEK Iranian opposition group to target Iran’s nuclear scientists.

The author attributes the change in U.S. policy to recognition of Iranian strength because of the Arab Spring, which he refers to as the “Islamic Awakening.” He specifically mentions the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent takeover of the country by Islamist forces. Zarei also claims that the U.S. is “on the verge of accepting the Iranian nuclear program” and points to statements by Israeli officials that Iran is “rational” as proof that the Israeli government is weakening.

Don’t let the fact that Iran is Shiite and the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists are Sunni fool you. The two forces may be battling in Syria, but the Iranian regime still believes that its rise is a fulfillment of Islamic End Times prophecy. Last year, Ahmadinejad’s office produced a documentary titled The Coming Is Upon Us. It outlined how it views its role in Islamic prophecy and plainly states that the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendance is “in accordance with the Hadith.”

In February, Khamenei declared, “From now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help.” This should be seen as an overture to the Muslim Brotherhood. The film states that the destruction of Israel is preceded by the creation of an anti-Western Arab coalition.

Arguably the most important line in Zarei’s column is this: “With diminishing support for Israel and with the (upcoming) collapse of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, there won’t be any obstacles left facing Iran with its policy of annihilation of Israel.”

This statement echoes what the apocalyptic documentary said. In The Coming Is Upon Us, the regime teaches that the death of Saudi King Abdullah will be a fulfillment of prophecy and one of the last precursors to Israel’s destruction. Saudi Arabia will be consumed with internal turmoil until the Mahdi appears to vanquish Islam’s enemies. King Abdullah is at least 87 years old.

Israel’s citizen army naturally mobilizes its reserve troops where they live. This means primarily an “L” shaped land mass, from Jerusalem at one end and Haifa at the other with Tel Aviv in the middle. Along this short and narrow strip resides some 70 percent of Israel’s population (and 80 percent of its industrial base) and therefore, about 70 percent of the nation’s reserve soldiers (as well as 70 percent of its labor force).

Even before Israel has the opportunity to field the full complement of its army, including its reserves, in time of war, Israel must prevent this area from being overrun by an invading enemy. Should the enemy forces succeed in cutting into the “L”, the damage to Israel’s mobilization and deployment process might well be beyond repair. Worse, if the invasion force cannot be stopped before the fighting reached the main cities, Israel would have lost the war.

This grave situation is recognized by Israel’s military, even if not fully grasped by all its politicians. In 1952, IDF Chief of Operations General Yitzhak Rabin ordered IDF Chief of Planning Colonel Yuval Ne’eman (who helped organize the IDF into a reservist-based army, developed the mobilization system, and wrote the first draft of Israel’s defense doctrine) to conduct an exercise to test the IDF under conditions of a surprise attack, under the then-prevailing 1949 ceasefire lines, i.e. the pre-’67 lines known today as the “Green Line.”

The maneuvers were organized, and the ensuing results were a disaster. During the exercise, Israel’s first president, Dr. Chaim Weizman, passed away. The exercise was then cancelled to deal with the State funeral that had to be carried out. However, by that time the exercise’s “invading force” had conquered Petach Tikva and Ramat Gan, two cities surrounding the approach to Tel Aviv proper (the distance from the pre-’67 ceasefire lines to the outskirts of metropolitan Tel Aviv is a mere 11 miles), and had yet to be stopped in its tracks. It is this nightmarish situation that hung over Israel’s neck like the Sword of Damocles until the 1967 Six Day War and the extension of Israeli control over the Biblical mountain ranges of Judea and Samaria.

Imagine further, how much worse in reality the results of the 1952 exercise could have been if Israel’s enemies, large and small, added to the invasion force barrage after barrage of missiles onto Israel’s main population centers.

The “Land for Peace” concept, accepted and unquestioned in Western capitals (and by Israel’s political Left), if implemented, would seriously weaken Israel, even clearing the path to its ultimate destruction. The areas already given over to the control of the Palestinian Authority (and now also Hamas) has considerably complicated Israel’s defense in an all out war situation. Further territorial concessions would prove catastrophic.

The missile age has not made strategic depth irrelevant, it has made it even more vital. The advanced weapons systems and missiles now in the hands of the Arabs, make the threat of the reduction of Israel’s size back to pre-’67 dimensions potentially devastating. Permitting such a diminution would also be a foolhardy move on the part of the Western democracies. A truncated Israel, forced to concentrate all its defenses on high-population areas, would effectively become useless to those it currently serves so well as a major linchpin in the Western global strategy against the threat from radical Islamic expansionism.

Editor’s note: The following is an open letter to French journalist Charles Enderlin who helped publicize the infamous and discredited video of the supposed shooting death of Palestinian Muhammad al-Durrah, which fanned the flames of the Second Intifada against Israel. The author of this letter, Pierre Rehov, is a French filmmaker and novelist who, along with French journalist Philippe Karsenty, was at the fore of the effort to debunk the al-Durrah video.  

Charles,

In our previous discussions we had taken the habit of addressing each other in an informal way, so I will not adopt a pseudo-official tone to speak to you publicly.

The open letter you have published against Philippe Karsenty has put me in such a rage after years of silence on this matter, I have to intervene or to speak in a familiar way, to add “my two cents.”

The reasons for this anger? The underlying bad faith in each of your sentences makes me feel ashamed for the special correspondent I used to respect … once upon a time.

You probably already know I was the very first, with the support of the Bn’ai Brith, to be revolted against the deadly false report that your TV channel and yourself released in September 2000. My disbelief in the face of such images, the certainty that there was rigging, manipulation, or at best, misinterpretation of facts led me at the time to involve myself body and soul into the conflict and, without you, and the phony images of your activist cameraman, I would probably not have embarked on this career of independent documentary filmmaker, which launched me in your line of work. But quite obviously not on the same track.

Between September 2000 and January 2001, I traveled to Israel four times and once to Gaza to meet most of the participants, some politicians, and the Druze soldiers of Magen Shaloch accused of the “murder” of al-Dura, whom you, as you yourself said in your open letter, have never even approached.

During this same period, I hired a lawyer, Maître Julien, to file a complaint against France 2 “for spreading false news causing a disturbance of public order.” Had it not been shouted “death to Jews” on the streets of Paris the next day? In the complaint, I added a folder which you can still find traces on the net today: debriefing.org/A-Dura.

Strangely enough, the case was dismissed by the prosecutor in less time than it takes for an Arab propagandist to convince his audience of the monstrosity of Israel. My attorney, who specializes in defamation cases, could not believe it.

I was hoping that thanks to our exchanges I would perceive some form of regret on your part, because I was convinced that you had been manipulated and that somehow you were now defending your honor the best you could. I had come to feel compassion for you. Indeed, what a burden it must be for a Jew to know he has been indirectly, unintentionally and out of clumsiness, responsible for the deaths of so many innocents. Innocents on both sides, Charles!

As, if instead of preparing his Al Aqsa Intifada for two years, Arafat had not refused the proposal of Barak, if he had accepted the truce proposed by Bill Clinton after Ariel Sharon went on Temple Mount, if Mr Chirac had not meddled with it with all the arrogance and all the smugness that characterize French politics towards Israel, and if, finally, you had not been fooled,if you had not had wool pulled over your eyes by the nephew of one of the founders of the PLO, I mean your beloved Talal, thousands of lives would have been spared on both sides and, perhaps, today, the Arabs living in the disputed territories (I do confirm, this is official language, rooted in international law) would have a country by now, provided they are able to have one, without foreign help and that of Israel.

In the latest news, Bahrain in the last 12 months has hired at least ten public relations companies since last year.  Yes, you read it right – ten – including Qorvis, the Washington company hired by Saudi Arabia to salvage that kingdom’s reputation abroad after the 9/11 terrorist attack. The regime of Bahrain, which tortures its own citizens, has an awful human rights record and doesn’t recognize the existence of Israel, also hired Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, and Sanitas International, whose partner Christopher Harvin is a former Bush White House aide.

In the “new” Middle East a lot has changed – except recognition of Israel, and millions are spent by Arab interests on professional public relations campaigns:

• Harbour Group, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm has been hired by the new Libyan government. As the Hill recently revealed, Harbour recently signed a new $15,000 per month contract with the Libyan embassy. Patton Boggs, another large K Street lobbying group, is also now representing the new Libyan regime. They previously worked with Gadhafi, alongside the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Monitor Group and held a hefty $250,000 per month contract with Tripoli, recruiting prominent American academics to praise the Libyan government.
• It’s nothing new in the Middle East – Arab governments spend lots of money on public relations. The Syrian regime continues to butcher thousands of their people in the streets – and its by and large missing from the mainstream media (and one of the things a good crisis PR agency is able to do is ensure negative stories never be printed). One day we will read about who is working for Syria now. A few months ago hackers released hundreds of e-mails from Syrian President Assad’s office, which revealed a document preparing Assad for his December 2011 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters.
• This week, the glowing profile and stunning full-page picture of Asma al-Assad, Syria’s First Lady, which appeared in Vogue in February 2011 with the titled: “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert” was quietly removed from Vogue’s website.  Vogue wouldn’t comment on why the story was removed – but the story which described her as “glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” ran as the Syrian government was butchering anti-regime protesters. A PR firm, Brown Lloyd James, worked for Syria to arrange the story in the past.

Brown Lloyd James worked in the past to boost the regime of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadaffi. They said, “…we assisted the Libyan government in its efforts to reach out to the international political community through the United Nations and to the U.S. political and university community.”

Editor’s note: To read Part I of this three-part article series, click here. 

Conceding Israeli control of the 34-mile-wide area known as Judea and Samaria to any of Israel’s actual or even potential enemies means a return to the pre-1967 nine-mile waistline across Israel’s coastal strip and a security border of 223 miles to patrol and defend. Retention of said territories means a mere 62 miles of security border to patrol and defend. It also means Israeli control of vital mountain passes, the 4,200-foot high ground overlooking the Jordan Rift Valley, and the minimal strategic depth between the Jordan River and Israel’s highly populated and industrialized coastal plain.

To comprehend why this is so important to Israel’s security, it is necessary to understand the difference between Israel before mass mobilization and afterwards.

When Israel fights a war, it must take into account many factors: weapons technologies, tactical knowledge, motivation and education of the soldiers, etc. However, the prime factor is still numbers. The best equipped and most superiorly trained army cannot win if it is hopelessly outnumbered. This has always been an issue for Israel.

The IDF, as every responsible army, must be prepared for every eventuality. Israel cannot afford to lose a war. According to reports, the latest annual IDF General Staff exercises dealt with various combinations of possible attacks from different fronts including south (Gaza and Egypt), north (Lebanon and Syria) and east (Iran). Other possibilities were also taken into account, but those were the major ones.

In each of these possibilities, strategic depth is a critical factor. In the south, Israel has already given up its strategic buffer areas, and if the IDF were to fail to take the battle into enemy territory (basic IDF doctrine), the fighting would be within easy range of major Israeli population centers.

In the north, the Golan Heights are, as always, critical, and in the northeast and east, Judea and Samaria are not only vital for defense, but would also serve as passage ways for mobilization and logistics. (The Cross-Samarian Highway, for example, was originally planned by the IDF General Staff following the 1967 Six Day War as the major connecting artery to the Jordan Valley from the coastal plain.)

Despite the immense security risks Israel faces, the Jewish State’s small population means it doesn’t have the security of a large standing army despite the immense security risks it faces. For that reason, soldiers who have completed their mandatory service, continue in the reserves – especially in combat units – well into their forties, contributing up to over a month or more of service each year for both training and active-duty assignments. In short: the army reserves constitute the backbone of the IDF’s manpower needs.

IDF doctrine encompasses a number of basic security truths. Among them are that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war, we must have a credible deterrent posture including territorially, and that the outcome of war must be determined quickly and decisively. Proper preparation means Israel’s small standing army must be equipped with an early-warning capability, coupled with an efficient reserve mobilization and deployment system.

Israel, prior to mobilization, is basically a relatively weak country militarily in terms of all out war with more than one front involved – which is a distinct possibility that the IDF planners seriously take into account. Post-mobilization Israel, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

Israel has the potential to mobilize hundreds of thousands of reserves which more than triples the manpower of the Israeli army. This considerably alters the ratio against the enemy. While exact figures are classified, suffice to say the combined Arab armies outnumber Israel’s standing army by a ratio of approximately 15 to 1. Whereas after a full scale call-up of Israel’s reserves, the ratio is reduced to less than 4 to 1.

Strangely few perceive the inherent contradiction between the call for a “strong and secure Israel” and the call to give up the very territory that would – at minimum – comprise said strength and security.

This was the case with Egypt, for example. More than 30 years ago, Israel gave up the entire Sinai Peninsula, including its vast strategic depths and bottleneck passes as well as the Abu Rodeis oil fields, which supplied Israel more than half its energy needs and would have made Israel energy independent within a few short years more than 30 years ago. And this is also the case today with the Palestinian Arabs. As long as there are Palestinian Arabs willing to take territory from Israel even without any quid pro quo from their side, Israel is expected to unilaterally give up its most strategically critical territory.

Israel, without the administered territories, is a strategically crippled country. These areas, known historically as Judea and Samaria and labeled “the West Bank” following the Jordanian occupation of said territories in 1949, are the key to Israel’s strategic strength against any attack from the east (Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, et al.). An Israel with control of these territories is a strategic asset to the West in defense against radical Islamic expansionism no less, if not more, than during the Cold War period when Israel was the West’s reliable bulwark against Soviet expansionism in the Middle East.

Up until the late 1980s, following the outbreak of the so-called “Palestinian uprising” or “first intifada,” everyone viewed the security threat to Israel to be solely by conventional Arab armies who, to quote the late Egyptian President Nasser, wished to “drive the Jews into the sea.” In the following two decades, with the vast increase of terrorist attacks and the introduction to the missile age, it appeared that conventional war no longer threatened Israel’s existence per se. And if the threat was primarily terrorism and missiles fired from afar, territory with its high ground and strategic depth no longer seemed as important. From the standpoint of Israel’s national security, however, this is a misconception. Territory is not only still vital for national defense, it is even more so than previously.

There is a basic premise: Israel’s security can be discussed only in terms of national survival. It is necessary to understand the price Israel pays if she unilaterally gives up more of these territories and what she benefits by their retention.

Given the three potential threats of missile attacks, terrorism, and conventional warfare, Israel must retain a safety zone with the aforementioned high ground and strategic depth to deal with any potential future threats — even if political agreements are signed with its Arab neighbors. Israel cannot afford to bet its survival on signed agreements while giving up critical tangible physical strategic assets. Israel needs to maintain the ability to defend itself under any and all possible circumstances. (Given the Muslim/Arab history for not keeping agreements with non-Muslims, this is not mere whimsy.)

The key question Israeli policy makers must ask themselves: If Israel were attacked by a combination of a conventional Arab army, ballistic missiles, and terrorist bands, would a truncated border with its lack of strategic depth be sufficient for the IDF’s small standing army to successfully repel the invaders and do so with minor damage to Israel’s national infrastructure? Or to be blunt: Could Israel survive such an attack in the event of an all-out war?

Eisner was immediately condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff. The Israeli media relentlessly covered the incident. He was suspended, has been banned from holding command posts for two years, was reassigned to a training school and is still under investigation. It is very possible that he will face further punishment.

That is the real story here. Israel’s furious reaction to the video debunks what its enemies claim it proves. If the Israelis were so inhumane, this wouldn’t be such a big story. There is no other country in the Middle East that would react the same way if roles were reversed. Ironically, the controversy is showing what is so good about Israel, even if no one notices.

Some context is also needed here. A group of about 250 anti-Israel activists were stopped as they tried to get on Highway 90, as the IDF requires advance notice of such crossings as a security precaution. Keep in mind, the group was part of the International Solidarity Movement, a group that says it is non-violent but supports “the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggles.” In other words, ISM supports violence.

The ISM-affiliated group began illegally blocking the road and the stand-off continued for two hours. The Israeli soldiers didn’t open fire or forcibly disperse them. Eisner was assaulted, breaking two of his fingers. You can see his bandaged fingers in the video. After a Danish anarchist got in his face, Eisner lost his temper and whacked him in the face with his rifle. The ISM got what it wanted, all on tape. A second video surfaced, showing Eisner hitting some others as they tried to force their way past the Israeli soldiers.

The founders of the ISM sought to supplement the jihadists’  violent campaign with a political and psychological campaign. Lee Kaplan, an expert on the ISM and founder of StoptheISM.com, says that a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, was instrumental in its creation. His website describes the group as “a front group for Yasser Arafat’s PLO and its affiliated Palestinian terrorist groups, such as the PFLP and Hamas. It works in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority’s propaganda ministries by Saudi funding through the Muslim Students Association on our U.S. and Canadian campuses.”

For both of the main protagonists in the deal—Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz—it makes eminent sense. While all polls showed Netanyahu easily emerging triumphant again from the putative elections, the deal saves him—and the country—the trouble and debilities of having to prepare for them, not to mention prolonged coalition negotiations once the results would have been in.

As for Mofaz—who wrested leadership of Kadima from Tzipi Livni in a primary less than two months ago—the polls showed his party plummeting, had elections been held, from its current 28 seats to about a dozen. While Kadima’s fate in the October 2013 (when Netanyahu’s four-year term runs out) elections will not necessarily be better, Mofaz—whom the deal makes deputy prime minister and member of the Forum of Eight (now nine) ministers, Israel’s highest policymaking body—gets a chance to make more of an impact on a public never particularly impressed with him.

But apart from Netanyahu and Mofaz, the deal—by creating a massive coalition immune to extortionate pressures by small parties—holds great potential for the country.

For two of Israel’s most intractable problems—refusal of military or national service by most of its growing ultra-Orthodox population, and dysfunctionalities of its parliamentary system—solutions are now eminently possible. In their joint press conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu and Mofaz pledged that the new coalition would tackle these issues without offering any specifics.

The problems are indeed complex. The draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox, which are contingent on yeshiva study, not only sow bitterness among the army-serving public but lead to large-scale unemployment among ultra-Orthodox men and a growing, worrisome drain on the economy. To date, ultra-Orthodox parties in fragile coalitions have prevented possible solutions. For the mega-coalition, though, the path appears clear to legislating some sort of mandatory service and remedying this longstanding malady.

This being linked, of course, to the issue of a parliamentary system that allows small parties of various—not just ultra-Orthodox—descriptions to proliferate and wield disproportionate influence. Again, the new coalition stands a real chance to cure the illness. Raising the electoral threshold and introducing regional elections are two often-mentioned ideas. Israel could emerge as a better-functioning, more representational democracy with much more stable governments.