For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.
...It is as if someone burglarizes your house, the police take custody of the stolen property, and decide to give it to the burglars — because after all, it was in their possession.
Fresnozionism.org..
23 October '13..
Here is the story in a few lines (Caroline Glick has all the details here):
Iraq had a Jewish population of 137,000 in 1940. Today there are about a dozen left, thanks to Islamic Jew-hatred, fanned in part by our old friend, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and continued through the days of Saddam Hussein.
A collection of books and documents belonging to what was left of the Iraqi Jewish community was looted by Saddam and kept in the basement of the secret police building. In 2003 the documents were rescued from the flooded building by a Defense Department Mideast expert named Harold Rhode. They were brought to the US, where they have been preserved and are being exhibited at the National Archives. Here is a short video from the Archives that tells the remarkable story.
The State Department has decided that they belong to the Iraqi government, because they were found in a government building, and plans to return them to Iraq next year. Of course, they are not the property of anyone but the Iraqi Jewish community, the great majority of whose surviving members and descendants live in Israel.
WITH a controversial Israeli attack in the news, I have thought back to another controversial Israeli attack, one that took place 29 (30) years ago today: the strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq. The daring, risky bombing dealt a fatal blow to Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. I was then President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, after having been his chief foreign policy adviser for several years.
That Sunday afternoon, I was on my back porch in Arlington, Va., wading through a small mountain of staff memorandums, reports, diplomatic cables and the rest of my perpetually mounting paperwork. My progress was interrupted by a call on the “drop line” direct link from the communications center next to the White House Situation Room; the duty officer was requesting that I go to the special secure line, kept in a safe in my basement.
After a few fumbles with the rotary dial, I opened the safe, inserted the current secure chip and connected to the comm center. On the scratchy connection, the duty officer reported that Israeli warplanes were returning from their mission in Iraq, and were by then over Saudi airspace. Oddly, the aircraft, F-16’s and F-15’s, were thought to be unable to make a round trip to Iraq: Israel couldn’t refuel its planes in the air and landing between the two countries was considered unthinkable.
Equipped with this fragmentary information, I requested constant updates, then hastily connected to the White House switchboard and asked to be put through to President Reagan. Within seconds, an officer at Camp David answered; I directed him to get the president on the line immediately. He hesitated, then said, “Sorry, sir, he is just boarding the chopper here.”
I ordered the officer to get the president off the helicopter and to the phone without delay, but he demurred, indicating that the president might not like to be recalled. I suggested that if he wasn’t immediately brought to the phone, there would be consequences. I could hear the whirring of the helicopter blades in the background.
In what seemed an eternity but was only two minutes or so, President Reagan was on the line, a slight note of irritation in his voice: “Yes, Dick, what is it?” I quickly recited what happened, and he asked me to repeat the message. After pausing for a few seconds, he asked, “Why do you suppose they did that?” My answer was something to the effect that the Israelis clearly did not want that reactor to become operational.
He went silent, and the phone line again filled with the churning of the copter. With characteristic aplomb, he suddenly asked: “Well, you know what?” I said, “What, Mr. President?” His retort was classic: “Boys will be boys!”
This was typical Reagan. He could simultaneously recognize the long-range strategic consequences and appreciate the seriousness of the situation — then cut to the chase with a pithy comment. I said I would have a report by the time the helicopter landed back at the White House.
The next day, with all hell breaking loose in the newspapers and on TV, cabinet members and senior staff members held a long, animated Oval Office meeting and tried to assess the impact of the sensational strike from every angle.
The vigorous discussion provided some surprises, including the opinions presented by Vice President George H. W. Bush; the chief of staff, James Baker; and the president’s omnipresent aide, Michael Deaver. They argued strongly for punitive actions against Israel, including taking back aircraft and delaying or canceling scheduled deliveries. There also came the unexpected news that several important Middle East countries, while publicly professing outrage and dismay, were privately pleased.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was angry, but measured, while Secretary of State Alexander Haig carefully presented the diplomatic concerns. As he explained to me before the meeting, Haig was inclined to stand by Israel, but great pressure from within the State Department and from other countries prompted him to be less vocal and ultimately to authorize official American criticism of Israel. The C.I.A. director, William J. Casey, was circumspect; like Haig, he understood the president’s views well. I said nothing. The president himself said little, listening patiently.
Even today, few people realize that in the years before his presidency, Reagan devoted himself to foreign-policy study, filling his hours with reading, correspondence, travel abroad and briefings with experts. There were actually disagreements among advisers about the wisdom of his devoting so much time to these substantive tasks, some considering this work marginal to political or other considerations. But as a result of his extensive preparation, Reagan developed deeply held principles on foreign policy, and while he was always willing to listen to opposing perspectives, he was not easily persuaded to yield.
When the session concluded, I lingered behind. The president looked up from the papers on his desk. “Well, what did you think of all that?” he asked. I suggested that he had basically heard all points of view — and that I had heard his comment the day before. He smiled, and returned to the papers on his desk.
By the end of the year, the United States and Israel had signed a strategic cooperation agreement.
Richard V. Allen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, was the national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1982. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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Twenty years ago, Saddam Hussein’s Scud rockets began to rain down on Tel Aviv. The specter of a chemical attack was Israel’s nightmare, because anthrax was a reality in Saddam’s Iraq. Thirty-nine missiles fell on Israel. On those cold nights, the Israelis wore gas masks, because Saddam had revived the idea in the Israeli unconscious that the Jews could be gassed again. The Israelis checked the shelters, sealing doors and windows, they stood in line for gas masks in the hallways of neighborhood elementary schools, and watched chemical-warfare defense videos. Food cans quickly disappeared from the supermarkets. “Drink a lot of water” was the army’s advice against the effects of a possible biochemical attack. Saddam’s Scuds damaged 4,393 buildings, 3,991 apartments, and 331 public institutions. This accounting does not include the incalculable costs of equipping every Israeli with a gas mask, of the need for every Israeli family to prepare sealed rooms, of the national disruption caused by multiple alerts, and of lost business and tourism.
Twenty years ago, Saddam Hussein threatened to “burn half of Israel.” Today Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to wipe out the “dead rats,” as he called the Israelis. Tehran is the biggest strategic threat to Israel’s existence, especially by the terror satellites of Hezbollah and Hamas. According to the new Israeli intelligence reports, Iran would now be able to launch 400 “lethal” missiles on Tel Aviv. Hezbollah could launch up to 600 rockets per day. From Teheran to Tel Aviv, an Iranian Shihab-3 rocket would take 12 minutes to hit the Jewish state. The Dan area of Tel Aviv, where live a quarter of the entire Israeli population, is the target of the next war, about which nobody knows if and when it will burst, but everyone knows that it will have emblazoned within it the eyes of the ayatollahs.
Israel is investing in its own survival. Both Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa were severely hit by the rockets of 1991. But, for the first time since the birth of Israel, tomorrow these cities could be reached by devastating bombs. The power of death in the region has risen dramatically. It has been estimated that four years ago, Syria had 300 missiles that could reach Tel Aviv, a dozen for Hezbollah, 50 for Iran, and nothing for Hamas. Two years later, Syria had 1,300, Hezbollah 800, Hamas a dozen, and Iran 300. Today it’s 2,300 for Syria, 1,200 for Hezbollah, 400 for Teheran, and a good arsenal of Fajr-5 for Hamas. Jerusalem could be hit with a precision that would leave intact the Al-Aqsa Mosque. So Tel Aviv today is not extending only to the sky with its beautiful skyscrapers but also sinks into the ground because it’s a new target for Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
It should be too obvious to have to say so but unfortunately some people don't get it: dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran is an extraordinarily important task in which the lives of millions of people will be at risk. Such a policy cannot be based on wishful thinking, on faith in the "rationality" of Iran, or on faith in the competence of the current U.S. government. This is not an issue of ""left-wing" or "right-wing" interpretation but of policy analysis.
What concerns me is that the mainstream debate regarding containment is being conducted in a flippant and sloppy manner, based on some questionable assumptions. Attempts to critique those concepts are blithely dismissed rather than seen as pointing out serious issues and necessary adjustments. At present, this seems an abstract debate. In future, though, the failure to consider and plan could be the source of a major tragedy.
In my view, the most likely outcome is not a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, or an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. While these are, of course, real possibilities, too much focus has been devoted to them. I want to suggest two other scenarios that are more likely: a U.S.-Iran war based on American mistakes and Iranian miscalculations, or huge strategic gains for Iran and revolutionary Islamism in the Middle East.
Another key point is the common error of assuming that there is only one "rational" response by Middle Eastern regimes or states and that this has to be a mirror image of how American experts or policymakers would respond. What is required of an expert is to understand the particular rational response--based on perceptions, history, power structure, ideology, and other factors--that takes place in the context of a specific country's leadership making decisions.
Rational responses are not necessarily moderate ones. For example, based on his "rational" response that Iran was weak, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and set off a long, bloody war. Based on his "rational" response that America would not intervene, Saddam invaded Kuwait setting off a world crisis and another war. Neither of these moves was "irrational," they were merely based on false perceptions and mistaken assumptions that were quite understandable given Saddam's world view and information.
If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page. .
Morris Pollard/David Kirshenbaum JPost 22 November 09
(Excellent presentation of the facts surrounding this case. Even for those who automatically reject his position out of hand, this article should raise many questions.)
Yesterday, Jonathan Pollard began the twenty-fifth year of his life sentence for passing to Israel during the 1980s classified US data concerning various Arab states, including evidence of Saddam Hussein's development of chemical weapons. This distressing anniversary is an appropriate moment to take stock of the bona fides of Jonathan's unprecedented punishment and the continued obsession of many in the US government with insuring, in the words of Jonathan's lead prosecutor, that Jonathan "never see the light of day."
One of the cornerstones of Barack Obama's presidency has been an expressed intent to make a clear break with a purported American policy of acting like a bully to the world. We would do well then to consider just who the United States was bullying and which countries it was coddling when the Pollard affair broke and whether US behavior is any different today under President Obama.
PRIOR TO the Khomeini revolution in 1979, US Middle East policy was anchored in the "Twin Pillars" of Iran and Saudi Arabia. With the overthrow of the Shah, the US sought a replacement for one of its now fallen pillars. It turned to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the brutal dictator of a country that was on America's list of state sponsors of terror.
This US policy shift was the genesis to the Pollard. Throughout the 1980s, continuing until one week before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, the US government pursued a policy of craven appeasement of Iraq. America turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, it allowed the transfer of billions of dollars of US taxpayer backed credits to Iraq via the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank to secretly finance Hussein's purchase of both agricultural goods and weaponry, and cooperated in the sale to Iraq by third parties of a wide variety of military equipment, including US military rocket cluster bombs, chemical weapons technology and missile technology.
Every sane government in the world today looks with grave concern at the nuclear weapons capability that Iran is on the threshold of acquiring. And they shudder at the thought of what might have been if Iraq had a nuclear weapon when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. That power was denied Saddam Hussein when Israel destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor in June 1981. But at the time, Israel was not thanked, but rather was subjected to near-universal condemnation, including from the United States.
In the Reagan White House, there was a consensus among vice president George Bush, defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and chief of staff James Baker that Israel needed to be punished. Weinberger persuaded Reagan to delay delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Israel and the similarly incensed Deputy CIA Director Bobby Ray Inman ordered withholding from Israel all satellite photography and other similar materials involving areas more than 250 miles from Israel's borders. This ban was then formally approved by Weinberger and converted what was until then a routine intelligence transfer into a criminal violation.
I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"
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