The Syrian Al Kibar reactor after the Israeli attack

In September of 2007 the Israelis destroyed the Al Kibar nuclear plant in Syria that was under construction.  It got a little press at the time, but many people have dashed this action from their memory.

Clifford May writes about this action in National Review in Cheney Got it Right on Syrian Nukes, 9/22/11.

Excerpt:

In the end, after Bush decided not to act and diplomacy went nowhere, the Israelis took it upon themselves to destroy the reactor. The former advisers write: “Syria then spent months trying to sanitize the site and stonewall the IAEA — confirmation of its non-peaceful intentions. The Israeli attack in September 2007 was flawless, Syria and North Korea did not lash out, and a dire proliferation threat was eliminated for good. America and the world are safer for it.”

History will record that the CIA failed in this mission. Such failures have happened before and will happen again. That is to be expected, but this isn’t: After Bush’s decision not to take out the nuclear reactor, Woodward writes, the CIA officers responsible for providing the “low confidence” assessment “were pleased they had succeeded in avoiding the overreaching so evident in the Iraq WMD case. So they issued a very limited-circulation memorial coin. One side showed a map of Syria with a star at the site of the former reactor. On the other side the coin said, ‘No core/No war.’”

In other words, they considered it a victory that they had prevented Bush from acting. That is shameful. The CIA’s job is to provide the president with the intelligence he needs to make policy. The CIA’s job is not to substitute its policy preferences for those of the commander-in-chief — and then celebrate such power-grabs.

HKO Comments:

Foreign policy is difficult at best and often entails a choice of several bad alternatives.  After the intelligence failures preceding Iraq and the absence of WMD stockpiles we expected to find, our intelligence was understandably reluctant to risk a second bad call.

The problem in politics is that bad decisions are memorialized and actions that truly prevent disasters are often quiet and forgotten.  Fortunately in this case the reluctance to act on good but not infallible information was corrected by the Israelis.  Recall that they also did this when they destroyed the Osirik reactor  in Iraq in 1980.

Intelligence is fraught with fallibility, uncertainty and risk. Yet often the greatest risk is to take no risk until the information is infallible.

In recent news headlines:

• San Francisco will have a ballot initiative to ban circumcision.  While one could make an argument for this on other grounds those who support this initiative have used a comic book format featuring a blond muscled caped superhero named Foreskin Man fighting the evil moyels (the one who performs the circumcision) and rabbis who are displayed in graphic evil Jewish stereotypes entirely reminiscent of the most offensive anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis in the 1930’s.
• In Scotland,  West Durbantonshire banned books by Israeli authors. To their credit The Scottish Government and the Scottish National Party have spoken out against this action by one of their towns.
• In the Netherlands the Dutch parliament is debating a bill that would ban kosher slaughter on humanitarian grounds.
• Delta Airlines has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia partnering with their airline. This move would require Delta to ban Jews or those holding Israeli passports from entering Saudi Arabia on their planes.

I am reluctant to adhere to the paranoid Jewish stereotype that sees anti-Semitism lingering on every word, and an anti-Semite around every corner.  Yet  I must wonder what other people, what other country or what other religion is faced with such blatant affronts.  Can we imagine the outcry if a Muslim was banned from entering a country, if a gay was banned from getting on a plane going anywhere, or if books were banned from any other country or religious group?

The irony that Israel is the most tolerant of women, gays, and religious minorities of any country in the Middle East seems lost on those who seem to be unable to tolerate such a tolerant country.  If the point is to disassociate from oppressors, have any of them noticed what has been going on in Darfur for the last several years, or Libya and Syria in the last few months?  Have they noticed which direction the missiles are flying between Gaza and Siderot?

In a world that has become stiflingly politically correct there is only one bigotry still permitted without a public outcry.  It is time for that to change.

An airline was hijacked to Uganda by  terrorists with 95 Jewish hostages on June 27th, 1976. On July 4th three planes landed in Israel with most of the hostages rescued after one of the most audacious  and successful raids in military history.

Three hostages were killed in the battle and the only IDF casualty;  Yoni Netanyahu, the brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, was killed by a Ugandan sniper.

Yoni Netanyahu

This digital recreation shows the raid but the film “Raid on Entebbe” starring Charles Bronson and Peter Finch (Yaphet Kotto played a great Idi Amin) better captured the intense emotion involved in the Israeli’s decision to execute the plan.  Training was top secret and when the Knesset finally approved the mission the planes were half way there.

The success of the Israeli mission inspired other counter terrorist actions by other nations.  It is a reminder that terrorism can be fought and beaten. It is another great reason to remember July 4th.

Anti-Semitism continues to prove to be the most adaptive hatred as well as the oldest.  Its most recent incarnations have drifted more to the left. This is a relatively recent development, spurred by the closer affection the Christian evangelical community has developed for both Israel and the more conservative part of the political spectrum.

A few years ago evangelical leader John Hagee made one of the most impassioned speeches in support of Israel I have ever heard at a national AIPAC meeting.  The American evangelical movement has largely (but not totally) moved away from the Jew as an object of scorn or heresy to be saved and converted, to a people to be respected.  There was Ann Coulter’s comment about the view of Jews as ‘unperfected Christians’ or Pat Buchanan’s references to a conspiratorial nature of Jews that supposedly got us involved in the war in Iraq.  These were both offensive and factually incorrect.  Jews and Israeli affiliates went out of their way to avoid any semblance of influence in the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ambassador Dore Gold (at that same AIPAC meeting) commented that while they saw Iraq as a problem they felt Iran was the bigger threat. Israel had unilaterally destroyed the Osirik nuclear reactor in Baghdad in 1981.

But the transgressions from the right that were anti-Semitic in nature have become increasingly dwarfed by the anti-Semitic outpourings from the left for years.   This is hard to explain as mere sympathy for the underdog status of the Palestinians since the 1967 war.  Israel is far more socially liberal than its neighbors who seek to destroy it.  Israel offers far greater free speech, women’s rights, gay rights, and religious freedom than any of its neighbors.  Its contribution to the arts, sciences and commerce dwarfs the rest of the combined Arab world. Yet it remains the only country in the world where threats to its very existence is tolerated in international circles and especially from the floor of the United Nations.

Modern anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism has become much more tolerated on the left.  Every Israeli act to defend itself is condemned as disproportionate or inhuman.  Just days before her infamous comment Helen Thomas was working from her respected seat in the White House Press Corps and referring to Israel’s ‘massacre’ of  innocents on one boat out of several of the Gaza flotilla. She made no comment about the 41 South Korean sailors that were ‘massacred’ weeks earlier intentionally by a North Korean gunboat.  I doubt the North Koreans were armed with paintball guns.

Her contemptuous dismissal that the Jews should return to Germany and Poland ignores the basic fact that more Israelis came from the Middle East- ejected from the lands they inhabited for thousands of years- than from Europe. But as we continue to observe, such hatreds do not listen to reason or fact, they only seek excuses.

Jewish Women from Yemen

Helen Thomas’ venom for Israel has been typical of many from the media and the left for years.  I have often wondered if there was line where even the left would not cross when it came to Israel.  Well apparently there was and Helen Thomas found it.

Her comment was as offensive as suggesting that black people should be shipped back to Africa. To their credit there was no defense of her comment from the left. In fact they were quick to reject her comments.

Statistically there is a significant and important difference between saying that many anti-Semites are liberal and saying that most liberals are anti-Semites. Perhaps we can even thank Helen Thomas for drawing a line that even liberals cannot ignore. While it may be politically fashionable to criticize Israel, at least Jews may now be recognized as having a right to be in the land they have built and defended as a state for over sixty years; but as a homeland for thousands of years.

Perhaps in this case an extremist has served to draw a rational line.

In Israel and Its Liberal Friends WSJ columnist Bret Stephens asks what if the standards of friendship Israel’s ‘friends’ claim is the source of their criticism was applied to the Palestinians as well.

an excerpt

Finally there’s the fact that liberalism has become a politics of easy targets. Liberals have no trouble taking stands against abstinence educators, Prop 8 supporters or members of the tea party. But when it comes to genuine bigots and religious fanatics—and Hamas has few equals in those categories—liberals have a way of discovering their capacity for cultural nuance and political pragmatism.