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The recent dramatic decision by the Sharon government to term the Palestinian Authority a terror-supporting entity» and to regard its leader «irrelevant» rendered redundant all the previous talk of Yasser Arafat’s inability or unwillingness to fight anti-Israel terror coming from areas under his jurisdiction.

This issue didn’t really make much of a difference to Israeli victims of terrorism. It was irrelevant whether the bombs that killed them were manufactured by an Islamic radical of Hamas or by a secular nationalist of Fatah.

But for politicians in Israel and elsewhere, it was a different story. What was really at stake was PLO Chairman Arafat’s viability as a peace partner. They knew that Arafat could have fought Islamic terror, but chose not to. The evidence was so overwhelming that it is hard to understand how the «debate» could persist for so long.

Arafat has built an apparatus of 12 security services that employ 40,000 men whose annual salaries reach the amount of $500 million. The PA has the highest ratio of policemen per capita in the world: one policeman for every 60 residents — the most heavily policed territory in the globe. (For comparison, Israel has one police officer for every 236 residents; the United States, there’s one police officer for every 400 residents.)

Besides, Palestinian forces were trained by the CIA and Scotland Yard as well as by the French, German, Austrian and Dutch police.

Even the United Nations provided a few training courses to PA security forces. For years, Israeli intelligence has warned that the Palestinian «police» had an arsenal of grenades, anti-tank missiles, bazookas, mortar shells and rifles.
And yet, we have been told again and again that this amazingly huge security body was unable to deal with the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who, by most estimates, are fewer than 2,000 people. In fact, far from fighting terrorism, Arafat tolerated it and even promoted it. The official Palestinian media and school curricula praise the virtues of Jihad and armed struggle.

In 1996, after the Israelis killed Yihye Ayyash, a leading figure in Hamas’ military wing, Arafat paid a televised condolence visit to the home of Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud a-Zahar. He later called Ayyash «a hero of the Palestinian people,» declared him an official martyr, had the Palestinian forces honor him with a 21-gun salute at his funeral and named a square in Jericho under his name.

When Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin was released from an Israeli prison in late 1997, Arafat flew to Jordan to kiss and hug him. Imad Faluji and Tala Sidr, two Hamas activists from Gaza and Hebron respectively, are cabinet ministers in Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. His ceaseless «green lights» to terrorism left the Israeli government with no other option but to declare him no longer relevant and his PA a terror-sponsor entity.

Under great diplomatic pressure and sensing international isolation, the Palestinian leader came out with an unprecedented speech Sunday calling for a halt to terrorist activities. What’s more, he pronounced these words not in English, as customary, but in Arabic, no less, on Palestinian television on the eve of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Very impressive – and very superfluous. The last time Arafat called for a cease-fire was on Sept. 27. Since then, 67 Israelis have been killed and scores wounded in terror attacks, which should be the least surprising.

In Jordan and Lebanon during the ’70s and ’80s, Arafat declared and/or signed dozens of such cease-fires. Haaretz columnist Yoel Marcus once remarked that the Palestinian leader celebrated more cease-fires than I birthdays in his life.

In 1993 Israel imported the PLO leadership from Tunis and gave it international legitimacy, land, weapons and an economy. Astonishingly, Israel delegated to the PLO its paramount responsibility to protect its citizens from Palestinian terror. In other words, as former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has observed, Israel chose to «subcontract» the fight against terrorism to the terrorists themselves, paving the way for an unprecedented wave of death across Israeli cities.

That year, Israel allowed the emergence of the sole place in the planet where Palestinian terrorists would be immune to Israeli retaliation. It was a tragic mistake. Now, eight years later, a national-unity government headed by veteran hawk Ariel Sharon and prominent Oslo architect Shimon Peres had to reverse that fateful decision.

This has put Arafat back where he rightly belongs — not among world statesmen but with unreconstructed terrorists.

As to Israel, the valiant decision signals a healthy return to national sanity.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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With the laudable exception of some prominent European individuals and organizations, Europe’s overall attitude toward Israel can be defined as contradictory at best, problematic at worst. Consider:

• At the dawn of the 20th Century, the British were in favor of establishing a Jewish national home in Eretz Israel (Palestine), thus allowing a Jewish state to reemerge in its ancestral homeland. A few decades later, Great Britain was doing its best to stop Jewish immigration to Palestine; it went so far as to return ships full of Jewish refugees, who ended up in Nazi ovens.
• The French, who in 1956 (together with the British) assisted Israel during the Sinai Campaign, imposed a military embargo on the Jewish state in 1967 at a time when Israel’s national existence was in critical jeopardy.
• Post-World War II Germany did emerge as an unequivocal diplomatic ally of Israel. However, by the early 1990s, it had become such a major supplier of biological weapons to the Arab World that when Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles against Tel Aviv, some Israelis noted that — had those missiles carried nerve gas – it would have been the second time in the same century that Jews would had been murdered with German gas.
• The Oslo process was a European (specifically Norwegian) contribution to «peace and stability in the Middle East.» Yet this political program resulted in Israel’s relinquishing strategic land assets, making it more vulnerable geographically and more isolated regionally. Eventually it led to today’s tragic war of attrition.
• Belgium is currently trying to prosecute Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a war criminal for his role in the Lebanon war, which took place almost two decades ago.
• Denmark created a diplomatic scandal recently when it objected to Israel’s designation of Carmi Gillon as ambassador to Copenhagen. (In the end, it accepted him.) Gillon is a former head of Israel’s security services, who publicly has said that he favors using «moderate physical pressure» against suspected Palestinian terrorists.
• Europe funds incitive and outright anti-Semitic textbooks in the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Syria. It holds many «constructive dialogues» with terror-sponsoring states; it confers a red-carpet treatment upon the most brutal of Middle Eastern dictators. It has a vocally anti-Israel intelligentsia (a French newspaper recently likened the Palestinians to a people hanging on a cross, while a British daily questioned the wisdom of the existence of a Jewish state).

When you consider all these facts, you realize that a fundamentally Arabist orientation is a deeply ingrained reality of European politics.

Which leaves us with some difficult questions: Why is Europe so anti-Israel? Why does it almost al- ways side with Israel’s most implacable foes?

One could point to Europe’s 12 million-strong Muslim community, to the fact that the Middle East has half of the world’s oil reserves, and to the continental determination to chart a separate political course from that of the United States (thus «balancing» the perceived pro-Israel American stance).

But in addition to these factors, Francois Zimeray, one of the 10 pro-Israel supporters in the 626-member European Parliament, has suggested a psychological consideration. He argues that Europeans still carry around with them the burden of responsibility for the Holocaust. It is a heavy load to bear, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict brings «an extraordinary opportunity to expiate this responsibility.» Accordingly, he says, many Europeans – often unwittingly – reason that they bear less guilt for what they did to the Jews in the past in light of what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians today. In other words, if yesterday’s victims are today’s aggressors, then the guilty of yesterday feel more innocent in the present. Thus the need to portray the Israelis as consummate victimizers.

There is an even deeper and more-ominous question concerning the problematic nature of European history as it intersects with that of the Jews. Over the centuries, the Europeans have visited upon the Jews massacres, expulsions, book-burnings, inquisitions and gas chambers. Although today’s Europeans are not actively engaged in murdering Jews, they are nonetheless supporting -militarily, economically and diplomatically – the states and entities that can impose a national tragedy on the only Jewish state in the globe.

Evidently, there is something very wrong at the root of European behavior toward Israel. Something that may go beyond political, economic and even psychological considerations. Something that may have to do with a moral disease that has afflicted mankind for millennia. We all know its name.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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It was only a matter of time. We knew it was coming.

Anyone even superficially aware of the dominant themes in Arab media knew that sooner or later they would blame the Sept. 11 attacks on the Jews. And, in vintage fashion, they have.

Take Egyptian sheik Muhammad Al-Gamei’a, Al-Azhar University representative in the United States and imam of New York’s Islamic Cultural Center. In early October he said, «All the signs indicate that the Jews have the most to gain from an explosion like that. They are the ones capable of planning such acts.»

The evidence? «It was found that the automatic pilot was neutralized a few minutes before the flight, and the automatic pilot cannot be neutralized if you don’t have command of the control tower,» reasoned the sheik.

So how do the Jews fit in? In case you didn’t know: «Jews control decision-making in the airports.»

For his part, well-known Islamist Egyptian journalist Fahmi Huweidi wrote in the Saudi press that the Israeli secret service was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Hezbollah’s television channel reported that 4,000 Israelis who worked at the World Trade Center were warned by the Israeli Mossad of the attack in advance. And of course, according to this report, none of the 4.000 went to work that day.

What’s more, some Jews rejoiced in the streets the day of the attack, but you didn’t know about it because «the Jews who control the media acted to hush it up,» in the candid words of the above-quoted sheik.

America itself is not let off the hook. When New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected a $10 million donation from Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, the Saudi press called him a «homosexual» guilty of «»idiotic behavior,» whereas Hafez al-Barghouthi, the editor of the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper, added that the mayor «hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father, so as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph Hitler [sic]. This is why he prefers to shorten it to Rudy.»

There’s more: Palestinian official Adli Sadeq charged that «the U.S. is the enemy of the democratic aspirations of the Arab peoples,» and that «it is the No. 1 schemer against development in the Arab world.»

It does not stop even here. Ibrahim Nafi, editor of the government-owned Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, called the American humanitarian food drops over Afghanistan a «crime against humanity,» given that U.S. planes were dropping food «in areas full of land mines, which cause damage to the Afghani citizens trying to gather it up.» He went on to claim that «there were several reports that the humanitarian materials have been genetically treated with the aim of affecting the health of the Afghani people.»

For years, Israelis and Jews have been subject to this kind of treatment. The official Syrian daily Tishrin once accused Jewish and Israeli organizations of colonizing «100 percent» of the Internet, and as a result, no material on the information highway could be defined as «benign to Syrian interests.»

When Time magazine chose Albert Einstein as scientist of the century in late 1999, the largest Egyptian weekly charged that Zionists had «resuscitated the dead» in order to prevent an Egyptian scientist from being awarded the distinction.

What can we say about all this? First, the Bush administration may want to revisit its coalition politics. All of these quotes came from Arab countries that, save Syria, are regarded as «moderate» by official Washington.

But can America really trust partners this delusional?

Second, it is to be hoped that advocates of political negotiations between Arabs and Israelis now understand why peace has remained so difficult to achieve in the Middle East. The real conflict is not about land and settlements, but about a colossal clash of cultures.

This harsh fact no longer can be ignored, and policy should be constructed accordingly. After all, as Saudi columnist Suleiman Al-Nkidan courageously asked last October:

“If this is the condition of the enlightened elite (of the Arab world), what can be said about the cave-dwellers?”

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Instead of receiving a Nobel Prize for Peace, they should have got the Nobel Prize for Collaborating with Terror,» said Likud Knesset member Zeev Boim regarding the distinction awarded the United Nations a few days ago. He said this protesting the role played by the international organization vis-vis Israel and Hezbollah some time ago, when the United Nations essentially sided with the terrorists who had crossed the international border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers.

Boim’s observation is appropriate, but not only because of that regrettable incident. Since the early 70s, the United Nations has adopted various measures toward legitimizing global terror, thus paving the way for grave conceptual confusion to emerge among world public opinion. The genesis of this irresponsible historical attitude began with the organization’s first definition of terrorism.

In 1972, upon request of then-Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, the General Assembly met to discuss the question of international terrorism and measures to prevent it. After Western pressures to effect the meeting and Arab counter-pressures to avoid it, the issue was referred to the Legal Committee. On Dec. 18, 1972, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3034 titled: «Measures to prevent international terrorism which endangers or takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms, and study of the underlying causes of those forms of terrorism and acts of violence which lie in misery, frustration, grievance and despair and which cause some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own, in an attempt to affect radical changes.»

This definition not only justified the phenomenon under study by pointing out its putative causes («which lie in misery, frustration, grievance and despair»), but it also justified its perpetrators («which cause some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own»).

The Ad hoc Committee on Terrorism was later established; among its members: Syria and Iran, terror-sponsor states. On Dec. 16, 1977, based on the committee’s recommendations, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 32/147, which justified the use of terror by any group that called itself a national liberation movement.

In the same vein, in 1979 the U.N. International Convention Against Hostage-Taking left outside the definition of hostage-taking every act «committed in the cause of armed conflict… in which people are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.» This controversial definition of terror and its variants was further promoted within the framework of many more U.N. resolutions, conferences and meetings.

The prevailing perception of terror within the United Nations slowly but gradually had turned into conventional wisdom in the court of public opinion. Just as former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jane Kirkpatrick once remarked: «Thanks in large part to this relentless campaign, much of the world is now confused about who is the aggressor and who is the victim, who is the terrorist and who is the victim of terrorism.»

Thus one can see the legal and conceptual base upon which the current differentiations concerning condemnable and justifiable terrorism (depending on the victims’ nationality) made by so many Arab leaders — as well as some Western liberals – rest. The present simplistic and confusing approach to the phenomenon of international terrorism premised on a naive attempt to «understand» the motives of the worst kind of criminals undoubtedly is a result of the process described above.

Amid the avalanche of images, information and analyses since Sept. 11, what is conspicuously absent is the debate about the moral responsibility that the United Nations has for its reckless legitimization of terror.

The Free World long ago should have raised an accusatory finger submerging the United Nations in a state of perpetual institutional shame.

That, instead, it chose to reward the organization with the Nobel Prize for Peace should be seen as a political scandal and a moral obscenity of epic proportions.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem – The unspeakable atrocity of Sept. 11 left the democratic world facing a difficult challenge and a unique opportunity. The challenge derives from the enormity of the malice that threatens the free world; the opportunity lies in the very possibility of eradicating it.

After the tragedy, President Bush announced: «Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.»

This is no modest ambition. Any grand plan to destroy evil in our globe will require moral clarity. No sound policy will last unless it rests on conceptual and moral coherence. To define the enemy as «the terrorists and those who support them» was, for instance, a crucially correct first step. To warn the entire world «either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists» was another positive step. However, to guarantee the success of its global anti-terror policies, the United States must ensure that its philosophical positions match its political behavior.

This is why Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent call to Israel to engage in “political dialogue” with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat looks so dangerously inadequate. It does not seem right for the United States to engage on a military operation that will result in Osama bin Laden’s meeting Allah Himself and at the same time demand of Israel to talk to its own Osama bin Laden — to use Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s characterization.

Like Afghanistan, the Palestinian Authority shelters well-known terrorist. Like Afghanistan, the PA tolerates – even encourages — terrorism. Like Afghanistan, the PA is viscerally anti-American.

For those who may not regard the usual burning of U.S. flags on the Palestinian streets as proof of popular hatred of America, consider this:

• A Sept. 11 editorial in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda, reads: «The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors … the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson [in Lebanon]. . . . These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history. . . . They are the most honorable [people] among us.»
• Last month the Palestinian mufti, Ikrima Sabri, an Arafat appointee, called for the destruction of America, England and Israel and asked Allah to «paint the White House black.»
• The current PA textbooks extol the virtues of jihad.
• A November 2000 poll conducted by Beir Zit University in Ramallah showed that 73 percent of the Palestinians supported suicide attacks against the United States. (Translations from the Palestinian media courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch).

Thus it comes as no surprise that Palestinians flocked to the streets to celebrate the carnage. They honked their horns, fired live ammunition and handed over candy. An embarrassed Arafat ordered his police to detain the photographers who had captured the event and to confiscate their films. He then orchestrated a public-relations gimmick that included offering his forces to take part in the international anti-terror coalition as well as a donation of blood by the rais himself.

This would be comical were it not so cynical. So confident are the Palestinians that they are fooling America, they even advertise their deceit. A cartoon published Saturday in the PA’s Al-Ayyam shows a Palestinian man, wearing an «I Love NY» T-shirt and waving a U.S. flag, telling a Palestinian woman, «To annoy the bastard taking our picture from above,» as a helicopter with wide-open eyes is flying over their heads.

You may say many things about the Palestinians, but chutzpah they lack not.

The U.S. government could ignore, as it did for years, this ongoing anti-American animosity. It also could demand of Israel to engage in fruitless talks with the leader of a people who has conducted a war of terror for the last 12 months. It even could ask its ally to stay out of the anti-terror coalition, out of deference to Arab and Muslim sensitivities. And it could do much more. But what it won’t be able to do is to grandilocuently declare that it is ridding the world of evil.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Since the beginning of the current confrontation with the Palestinians, Israelis have been debating whether a military or a political program should be pursued to end the violence.

• Advocates of the military option claim that the only way to crush the «cycle of violence» (in diplomatic parlance) is through might. In other words, destroy the Palestinian Authority or make it realize that, should it continue along the path of rejectionism, the price to be paid significantly will overshadow any potential political benefit.
• Subscribers to the political option argue that the only realistic way to achieve a durable peace is by way of political negotiations among the leaders. A military victory, they say, may buy calm for a while but could never bring peace.

Those who claim that there is no military solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict are right. Israel won all its wars – in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982 – and yet, peace has not arrived. Not only have the Arabs never reconciled themselves to the presence of an independent Jewish state in the Middle East, but they have even rejected the outcome of the many wars they have launched. Harvard University Professor Ruth Wisse has observed that war is generally the final arbiter of international disputes; in the absence of a political agreement, war settles the score in otherwise intractable conflicts. However, Israel’s victories over several Arab armies were never accepted by the aggressors. What’s more, the Arabs are still waiting for the next round.

This derives from a fundamental asymmetry: Whereas the Arab states can impose a military solution on the conflict (e.g., the destruction of Israel), the Jewish state cannot correspond; that is, unless Israel is ready to annihilate the entire Middle East. Unfortunately, this does not mean that a political solution therefore exists by default.

Consider this: The Palestinians rejected the most generous Israeli offer imaginable during the Camp David talks. Are they going to settle for something less now, after so much pain? And will the Israelis offer even more than what they did at Camp David, knowing that they effectively would be rewarding Palestinian intransigence by doing so?

In the current circumstances, peace will remain elusive for Palestinians and Israelis alike. A feasible plan will aim at reaching a state of «no war» at best, a cease-fire at worst. If this can be achieved politically, fine. If not, a military option should be applied. Some continue to talk of peace, but sadly, it is not a realistic option in this arena.

Those who advocate a political solution should stop calling for it and start presenting it. And they’d better lay out a political program that is not premised on the same ill-fated assumptions of the Oslo accords, for Oslo has brought nothing but wanton disaster.

There is no magical solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The reason is rooted in a harsh fact of life aptly captured by Albert Einstein: «Peace cannot be kept by force; it can be achieved only through understanding.» In the absence of such understanding, peace will remain unreachable. Israelis will never be able to impose peace on terminal enemies.

The Arab-Israeli conflict was never a normal territorial dispute. Arab opposition to Israel was never — as Palestinians claim – predicated on a normal rejection to «occupation» but rather, to quote Wisse, «an ideological assault on the legitimacy of an independent Jewish polity» in the region. Which brings us to the core flaw of the now-defunct peace process: By reducing the conflict to a land dispute, Oslo’s framers ignored the existential nature of that dispute. Israeli academic Arieh Stav once explained Oslo’s initiative as a «paradox where a minuscule democracy is being forced to provide to its totalitarian enemies — scores of times its size — the only thing that it lacks: territory. In exchange, these dictatorial regimes promise to provide the one and only thing that they lack: peace.»

The Oslo process failed not only because it was a poorly designed and badly implemented program but essentially because there has never been a real peace partner on the Arab side. Any realistic approach to this question should be premised on this cold fact.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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An Egyptian professor is sentenced to seven years in prison.

Three recent instances of human-rights abuses in countries neighboring Israel have shed new light on how adrift the long-held Western policy of appeasement to dictatorships has been.

The first case involved an American-Egyptian scholar sentenced by a State Security Court in Egypt. Saad el-Din Ibrahim – a human-rights activist, professor at the American University in Cairo and head of the Cairo-based Khaldoun Center for Social Research — produced a documentary film exposing fraud in past Egyptian elections.

Considering that Hosni Mubarak regularly gets 99 percent of the vote, one can assume that the film was not needed at all to prove what common sense already can see. But this scholar’s crusade for truth should nonetheless be applauded — especially for taking place in a country were such initiatives are virtually nonexistent.

And to make sure that such initiatives won’t recur, Mubarak’s regime intervened with full force. The professor and 27 of his students and assistants were charged with disseminating false information harmful to Egypt. They also were charged with accepting foreign donations without official permission (the money came from the European Union).

The professor was sentenced to seven years in prison — with forced labor — whereas his assistants received jail terms ranging from one to three years.

The second case involved a Lebanese-American journalist sentenced in absentia by a Military Court in Lebanon. Raghida Dergham, a reporter for Al-Hayat and a frequent political commentator on Mideast issues, was accused of «dealing with the enemy» for daring to take part in a debate last May at a Washington-based think tank along with an Israeli — as well as with two other analysts, one American, the other British.

The fact that she was regarded a traitor, in spite of being an ardent critic of Israel who minces no words of public condemnation when it comes to Israeli policies, only highlights the level that political temperature and official radicalism have reached in Lebanon.

In the third case, an Arab-Israeli journalist and poet was kidnapped and tortured — no trial on this occasion — by the Palestinian Authority. Youssef Samir, a veteran staffer of Israel’s Radio Arabic Service and noted advocate of Palestinian nationalism, made a routine visit to Bethlehem with his wife in April, only to be ordered by the Palestinian police to leave the city at once.

He left, insulted, but decided to come back to show his many works to the Palestinian officials to prove his loyalty to the Palestinian people. He was arrested on the spot and went missing. After two months at the mercy of his captors, Samir escaped, running away barefoot with his hands tied behind his back. He reached a friend’s house, and was soon taken to an Israeli checkpoint.

«When I saw the Israeli soldiers, I nearly fainted from happiness. I fell on the floor and kissed the earth before their feet,» he recounted. «I saw a country that cared about its citizens, something that would not happen to such an extent even in Western cultures like the United States. . . .

«A lot has changed in my outlook.»

Whether his statement was exaggerated due to the stress and trauma of the moment is beyond the point. What is significant is how just a taste of life under the PA made a zealous Palestinian nationalist more appreciative of the freedom, individual rights and civil liberties he can enjoy at his own country.

This episode should also invite honest reflection on the part of those tireless apologists of Arab totalitarianism who wouldn’t survive a week under any Arab regime, and yet enthusiastically defend the many despots of the Middle East.

The Western nations, with the European Union and the United States at the vanguard of the initiative, have been investing considerable amounts of political and financial capital in the Arab world in order to promote a more-benign foreign policy there.

But the promotion of democratic government, freedom of the press, respect for individual liberties and advocacy for human rights has been, unfortunately, conspicuously absent in the West’s attitude toward the Middle East.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant was right when he wrote in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace that democracy is a necessary requirement for peace to prevail among the nations. The three instances of official harassment cited aptly — and all too dramatically — show just how much work must be done in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jewish delegates were forbidden to attend a U.N. meeting.

Jerusalem – When the United Nations was established in 1945, it had 51 member states; today it has 189. This dramatic membership increase is the result of a process of decolonization that began in the 1950s and led to the emergence of new nations. This development created a quantitative and qualitative change within the United Nations, in that it allowed many essentially nondemocratic regimes to become full-fledged members.

An organization that was founded basically by Western nations thereby evolved into a Third World forum, leading to the peculiar situation in which underdeveloped and autarchic nations relegated the founding, mostly democratic countries to minority status.

These nations of the Third World then gathered themselves within the framework of different regional blocs (such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab-Muslim bloc, among others), which produced the phenomenon commonly known as the «tyranny of the automatic majority.» Achieving influence through these regional blocs, the Third World countries gained more representation in the U.N. departments, committees, divisions and agencies, which in turn allowed them to set both the agenda and the tone of U.N. deliberations.

This may explain a few things:

• Why the Palestine Liberation Organization, which committed more than 11,500 terror attacks over a span of more than 30 years, was never condemned by any U.N. body.
• Why anti-Semitism was recognized as a form of racism by this international institution just eight years ago.
• Why Israel, and only Israel, was defined by the United Nations as a «non-peace loving state.»
• Why the national liberation movement of the Jewish people was the only such movement in the world ever to be equated with racism.

This situation at times has been so ludicrous that some Israelis have taken it with a grain of humor. Commentator David Bar-lllan once remarked that «a visitor from another planet should be pardoned for assuming that the organization was established with the sole purpose of bashing Israel.»

When Zionism was called «hegemonism» in 1979 (it seems that the 1975 comparison with «racism» had not sufficed), Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Blum, aware of the exploits of the «automatic majority,» pointed out that the United Nations could have compared Zionism with vegetarianism, rheumatism or any other «ism» for that matter.

Former Foreign Minister Abba Ebban once famously observed that, upon command of the Arab nations, the United Nations would adopt a resolution claiming that the Earth is flat.

This background should serve as an introductory remark to the upcoming World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (to be held in Durban, South Africa, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7), whose final preparatory conference will take place on Monday in Geneva. If the latest draft of its Declaration and Programme of Action remains unaltered, we will witness yet another Arab-Muslim hijacking of a U.N. forum, the politicization of an important conference and the abuse of that conference’s agenda.

To begin with, the most recent preparatory conference took place in Teheran, where Jewish, Israeli and Bahai delegates were forbidden to attend – this, at a conference dealing with «related intolerance.»

Israel also is the only country condemned by name in the 70 pages of the above-mentioned draft text pertaining to a conference addressing «discrimination.» And almost fittingly, Arab and Muslim states have inserted unabashedly racist language in a conference dealing with «racism.»

As U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization monitoring the U.N. performance by the yardstick of its charter, has observed, the most disquieting developments taking place are:

• An attempt to resurrect the «Zionism = Racism» resolution.
• An attempt to redefine anti-Semitism as bigotry against the Arabs by making references to «Zionist practices against Semitism.»
• An attempt to minimize the Holocaust, by writing the term in lowercase; to universalize it, by speaking of plural «holocausts»; and to trivialize it, by pairing it with «the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic Palestine.»

In 1998, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced the infamous 1975 Zionism is Racism resolution, calling it «unfortunate» and «the lowest point in the [U.N.-Israel] relationship.» If that resolution alone marked the nadir of U.N.-Israel relations, one wonders how Annan would define the diplomatic atrocities persisting, even today, under U.N. auspices.

Although some future statement 23 years from now condemning the final declaration of this upcoming circus conference might be welcome, the time for action is now.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Today, Israelis are being almost literally sacrificed for public-relations points.

Twenty-five years ago this week, Israel stunned the world with a daring and impressive operation. On July 4, 1976, an elite Israeli commando unit flew 3,500 kilometers over four enemy countries and freed more than 100 hostages held at the Entebbe airport in Uganda.

The story began on June 27, 1976, when an Air France plane flying from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists. There were 246 passengers on board – 105 of whom were Jewish and most of them Israelis – and 12 crew members. The hijackers landed the plane in Uganda and demanded the release of 53 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and elsewhere.

Loyal to their principle of never negotiating with terrorists, the Israelis rejected this demand and began planning a high-level rescue operation.

Time was not on Israel’s side. Four Hercules aircraft and a Boeing 707 carrying Israeli commandos took off for Uganda even as the Israeli cabinet was debating the mission. It finally voted unanimously in favor.

As they approached the Entebbe airport, the commando planes identified themselves, respectively, as an Air France flight delivering the Palestinian prisoners and an East African Airways flight scheduled to arrive in Entebbe a few minutes later. After landing, a black Mercedes-Benz, similar to the one owned by Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin, who collaborated with the terrorists, followed by several Land Rovers, sped toward the airport terminal where the passengers were held captive. After a five-minute exchange of fire, the elite Israeli squad managed to kill the terrorists and free the hostages. The operation left casualties: three hostages were killed in the shooting spree; an elderly woman hostage who had been taken to a Ugandan hospital later was murdered by a furious Idi Amin; and the leader of the rescue operation, Yonatan Netanyahu, was shot dead in the fighting.

In a sense, not much has changed for Israel in the last quarter century. These words, written in 1968 by Yonatan Netanyahu to his family, could easily have been written today: «The real cause is a sense of helplessness in the face of a war that has not ended…. it seems to me that it will go on and on…. it continues with every mine and killing and murder.
«This is the quiet before the next storm. I have no doubt that war will come. Nor do I doubt that we will win. But for how long? Until when?»

At the same time, significant changes have occurred in Israel, and the world, since then. Today, it is almost impossible to fathom a similar operation taking place – not because Israel lacks the means to carry it out, but because it now lacks political will and courage at the governmental level. Take, for instance, the infamous concept of «victims of peace» originated by the Rabin-Peres administration during the Oslo days. Or take the current policy of restraint initiated by Ehud Barak and later taken to absurd levels by Ariel Sharon.

This concept was predicated on the cold assumption that if a few Israelis had to pay with their lives on the altar of peace at the hands of Palestinian rejectionists who opposed the peace process, then so be it. Today, Israelis are being almost literally sacrificed for public-relations points. We could call them «victims of ratings.» This concept is dictated by the need to please a Western world increasingly – and shockingly – insensitive to Israel’s predicament. It is as if the decisions concerning the lives of the Israeli population are being made in the studios of CNN and the BBC rather than at the Israeli cabinet table.

Natan Sharansky, a former prisoner of conscience in Communist Russia and a current Israeli minister, warned the Sharon government that «as important as it is to want to gain understanding abroad, at some point the government will have to say that fateful decisions affecting the Jewish people are in its hands and not in the hands of the rest of the world.»

It is imperative for Israel to restore its lost self-confidence. Not for the sake of honor, national pride or glory – but for the sakeof its very survival.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.