Iran’s nuclear program is stuck.

Maybe because of the Stuxnet worm? (Just a suggestion.)

This report inspires the thought:

Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Strategic Affairs, Gen (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, told a radio interviewer that Iran was not currently able to manufacture a nuclear bomb because of technical difficulties but he estimated it would attain this capability within three years. …

His estimate represented the first official Israel evaluation of the scale of the destruction and havoc the Stuxnet malworm has wrought to Iran’s most secret nuclear weaponization facilities. Up until now, only the nuclear reactor at Bushehr and the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz had been admitted to have been affected by the invasive virus.

Three years delay, then. That is, if Israel knows anything at all about the worm and what it can do.

At the very least we have the pleasure of seeing egg on Ahmadinejad’s face. And a lot can happen in three years. It’s even possible that the deferring of the Iranian threat could lead to its being permanently averted.

“Western misunderstandings and misreporting help make the world a worse and more dangerous place.” Barry Rubin writes.

We agree.

The example he gives is the misunderstanding and misreporting of the firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza, the territory Hamas rules dictatorially.

If I had to pick one paragraph that shows what’s profoundly wrong with Middle East coverage in the Western mass media, it would be from the following New York Times article: “A rocket fired from Gaza fell close to a kindergarten in an Israeli village on Tuesday morning. Earlier, the Israel Air Force struck several targets in Gaza in retaliation for a recent increase in rocket and mortar shell fire. Small groups appear to be behind the fire, but Israel says it holds Hamas, the Islamist organization that governs Gaza, responsible.”

What the West, or a powerful part of it at least, the news media, seem not to understand – Rubin rightly points out – is that Hamas is a dictatorship, a totalitarian tyranny.

“Small groups” do not operate freely to attack a neighboring country from a totalitarian tyranny.

What [Hamas] wants to happen happens; what it doesn’t want to happen doesn’t happen, or if it does, someone is going to pay severely for it. There are smaller groups allied with Hamas, notably Islamic Jihad.

Nothing could be more obvious than the fact that Hamas uses these groups as fronts so it can attack Israel and then deny responsibility for doing so.

Of course it may be that the New York Times, and the media generally, are disingenuous, and know perfectly well that when Islamic Jihad fires rockets on Israel it is Hamas who “permits” – ie requires – the group to do so. That would mean that the Western media are largely sympathetic to Hamas and only too happy to  help the Islamic tyrants put out their propaganda lies.

Impossible to believe? Or at least an exaggeration, an unfair accusation? Funnily enough, without stretching our imagination in the slightest, we find we can believe it. In fact, we’re convinced of it.

Yet we also believe that the West does find it hard to grasp what a dictatorship  is; how a totalitarian tyranny operates.

Take the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, for instance. He’s the man who was found guilty of placing the bomb in the PanAm plane that blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.

On strong evidence of his involvement, the US and Scotland indicted him in November 1991, and requested his extradition from Libya. Colonel Gaddafi refused the request for three years, but eventually, under diplomatic pressure, let him go to be tried in the Netherlands under Scottish law. His trial lasted from May 3, 2000, to January 31, 2001, when he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

He served less that nine years. In August 2009 he was released and returned to Libya. The excuse the Scottish authorities made for letting him go was that he was dying of cancer and had only about three months to live. Fifteen months later he is still alive, and WikiLeaks have confirmed what was strongly suspected: that his release had actually been part of a British trade deal with Colonel Gaddafi, and the “compassionate grounds” for it had been a hunk of baloney. (See our posts, Oily gassing villainous politicians, August 23, 2009, and Being really nice to democratic Libya, September 28, 2009.)

We recall all this because the Megrahi case is another example of the West’s misunderstanding – whether genuine or sham – of the nature of dictatorship.

There are no freelance terrorists running round in Gaddafi’s Libya. Gaddafi is the dictator of Libya, and Megrahi was a  highly-place official in his intelligence service.

The only person in Libya who can give the order for an American civil aircraft to be bombed, is Colonel Gaddafi himself. He would leave the detailed planning to his underlings.

When he finally handed Megrahi over for trial, he no doubt promised his man that he, Gaddafi, would do everything he could to get him back. Which he did. Megrahi was the tyrant’s fall-guy – which is not to say that he wasn’t active in carrying out the atrocity, but he would never have thought of doing it, would not have been able to do it, and would have had absolutely no reason to do it on his own initiative. He carried out a Libyan operation for the autocratic ruler of Libya. He served his master well, even enduring over eight years of imprisonment for him. Not once in his trial did he try to save himself by saying that he was carrying out Gaddafi’s orders. No wonder the dictator received his faithful servant with open arms and a hero’s welcome when Megrahi stepped out of the plane that flew him back to Libya, and to what passes for freedom in that unfree land.

Why would the Arab states not let in their brethren who fled from Israel in 1948?

An equal or greater number of Jews fled Arab states, many of them to Israel, where they were resettled.

The answer is as simple as it is appalling: The Arabs wanted them to suffer in order to stir pity in the Western world so that compassionate public opinion would compel the Western powers to press Israel to readmit them. In other words, the Arab refugees were cynically used by fellow Arabs without conscience to stir the consciences of others and emotionally blackmail them for political ends. Wise politicians would have been disgusted and angry over the cruel maneuver, but if such beings exist they are a rare breed, and with most political leaders throughout the world the ploy worked all too well.

That this exploitation of the refugees was Arab policy is beyond dispute. The historical facts demonstrate it: no Arab country will integrate Palestinian refugees. It was confirmed to me personally by a leading Palestinian academic.

I quote from my book The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization* (it did fall and nearly die, but was tragically resuscitated by Western governments and Israeli leftists):

Professor Sari Nusseibeh, Oxford-trained teacher of Islamic Philosophy at Bir-Zeit University, and a member of one of the oldest and most respected Arab families of Jerusalem, said to me as we sat and talked in his beautiful house in the old city of Jerusalem: ‘We do not want to solve the Palestinian problem in terms of “human rights”, what we want is a political solution.’

I asked what plan he had in mind to advance such a solution. Had not the PLO let every opportunity for a political settlement slip away by refusing to adapt to political realities?

‘I admire my people more for clinging to their dreams,’ he said, ‘than if they were to compromise with what others call political realities.’

So for the Palestinians in the camps there was no message of hope. They had been sacrificed to the incontinent ambitions of Haj Amin al-Husseini [the Mufti of Jerusalem], Nasser [president of Egypt], Arafat, Assad [president of Syria], and the other Arab leaders, and still they were not to be redeemed. …

The tragedy of the Palestinians is that they were led by people who despised or were devoid of political realism; and Palestinian affairs and concerns were made subordinate to those of the Arab states, which were, of course, pursuing their own self-interest.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, friend of Adolf Hitler and advocate of the Final Solution, is thought to have  personally advised the Arabs to leave when the Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel in 1948,  and to return when the Arabs had won. I always asked people  in the refugee camps in Lebanon in 1983 why they had left their homes, and the invariable reply (through my Arab interpreter) was that they had been advised to go and come back when the Jews had been defeated. When I asked who had advised them to do so, most of them  gave vague answers, amounting to “everyone told everyone else”. But some were sure that the Mufti had “said it on the radio”.

Fast forward to a conversation, reported by the New York Times on December 2, 2010, held between the Israeli novelist Amos Oz and Professor Sari Nusseibeh, in Berlin, where the two men had come to share an award. The conversation was “moderated” by Serge Schmemann, editor of the International Herald Tribune editorial pages.

OZ: … [T]he first issue we need to deal with is the refugee issue, because this one is really urgent. … The refugees are hundreds of thousands of people decomposing in dehumanizing conditions in refugee camps. Israel cannot take these refugees back or it would not be Israel. There would be two Palestinian states, and there would be no Israel. But Israel can do something, along with the Arab world, along with the entire world, to take those people out of the camps, into homes and jobs. Peace or no peace, as long as the refugees are rotting in the camps Israel will have no security.

The description of refugees “rotting” and “decomposing in dehumanizing conditions” may still be true of their lives in the Lebanese camps, but not now on the West Bank or in Gaza. Still, wherever they are, their lives and opportunities are restricted, and they exist as it were in a state of suspension, awaiting emancipation.

This was Nusseibeh’s response:

NUSSEIBEH: I agree. Whether there is or isn’t a solution, the refugee problem is a human problem and it needs to be resolved. It cannot just be shelved day after day after day in the hope that something will happen. The human dimension is far more important in this whole conflict than the territorial.

Let’s not call this a contradiction. Let’s not conjecture that he has forgotten his acquiescence in the long held policy of all the Arab states. Let’s say that he has simply changed his mind. That would be fine if only he understood that while he had been of his previous mind he had contributed to the plight of the refugees which he is now deploring. A regret needs to be expressed, an admission of responsibility needs to be made, a resolution to apply remedies even at this late date needs to be decided upon. It is the lack of those corrections which is so enormously, so frustratingly provoking.

Highly pertinent is this further extract from the same conversation:

SERGE SCHMEMANN: Gentlemen, both of you in your memoirs write about the same historical moment, the founding of the state of Israel, but it is as if you are writing about totally different events.

In your book, Sari, you write: “The year of my conception, 1948, witnessed the collapse of the Palestinian dream…”

And in your book, Amos, that same moment is one of redemption, when your father tells you: “From now on, from the moment we have our own state, you will never be bullied just because you are a Jew and because Jews are so-and-sos. Not that. Never again.”

Oz and Nusseibeh discussed their different views of what happened in 1948 – that is, of the establishment of the state of Israel – amicably.  But the point had been made by Schmemann. For the Jews, 1948 was one of the most important dates in their very long history; the most important date since 70 C.E.. It is the year of their return to their homeland from which they were exiled by a conquering power.

For the Palestinians, it was the year in which they came into existence as a distinct people, as much the creation of the State of Israel as are the Israelis. Before that date there had been no separate “Palestinian” identity, they had been Arabs among Arabs in the Ottoman Empire. (And Sari Nusseibeh, we learn from the extract, was conceived in that very year, so he was born a Palestinian, into the new nation of Palestinians, and is exactly as old as his people.) What could “the Palestinians’ dream” have been before they even existed as a people?

What we have to remember is that there never was, in all history, a State of Palestine, and that the Palestinian people were brought into existence, which is to say named “Palestinians”, in order to lay claim to the State of Israel. That was their creators’ purpose; their suffering, inflicted and maintained by their fellow Arabs, was the means.

The Arabs were humiliated by their defeat in 1948, and again in 1967. Their fight is as much for revenge as for territory. To strengthen their cause they made it an Islamic issue after 1967, thus multiplying the numbers on their side by many hundreds of millions.

And the United Nations have helped to keep the Palestinians economically dependent and, through their UNRWA schools, full of bitterness and hatred. (UNWRA denies this, but I saw the materials used by the Palestinian teachers in Lebanon, and know for sure that they are rabidly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, designed to teach bitterness, hatred, revenge, murder and martyrdom by suicide bombing, generation after generation, paid for by Western liberal democracies.)

There is a story in a book by Gita Mehta called Karma Cola ** about a mendicant in India bringing his little daughter, aged six, to a temple outside Katmandu where tourists were gathered. The child was –

.. naked with matted hair that fell in knots on her scarred shoulders. Through each cheek her father had inserted an iron nail. There were scars down the front of her body and her back was crisscrossed with the marks of the lash. Her father carried a whip made of rope to which were attached the blades of small knives … The father led the child by a rope tied to her neck. Outside the temple when a sufficiently large crowd had collected, he took the whip out of his bag and flayed the child. People flung money at them in recognition of their asceticism and in respect for the child, who everybody realized would be reborn a saint for the penances she was undergoing in this life.

That child’s story is the story of the Palestinian people. Her father was no more blamed then are the Arab leaders. The values of the cultures are not questioned. What a gift has been bestowed on the refugees – the opportunity for martyrdom.

Weep and throw money!

Jillian Becker   December 23, 2010

*St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1984 page 227

**Jonathan Cape, London, 1980 page 160

A scene from the jihad in “pacified and democratized” Iraq:

On Sunday, October 31, 2010, nine al-Qaeda terrorists stormed the Syriac Catholic cathedral of Baghdad and murdered dozens of the congregation, including very small children. For a full account of what happened go here. Fifty-eight people were killed in addition to the suicide-bombers. Among the dead were some of the men belonging to the “unprepared and ill-led” security forces, who bungled a rescue attempt after some five hours.

Photos of the atrocity have not been widely published in the US, perhaps because they are too shocking, or perhaps for fear of provoking Muslim protest, so we are publishing them.

Some of the victims were beheaded, as can be seen in the bottom picture. It looks as if in this case the severing was done after the body was blown apart.

It seems that the chance of Israel’s survival is about to be considerably diminished.

For some time it has been all too predictable that a small beleaguered democratic Jewish state in the midst of hostile Arab tyrannies would be existentially threatened when Europe became dominated by its Muslim populations in the middle of this century. It will be a tiny strip of dry land in a rising Islamic ocean covering a large part of Asia, north Africa, and all Europe.

Now it seems that its doom is much nearer, as European foreign ministers have declared that their countries are willing to recognize a self-declared State of Palestine. The information comes hot on the heels of announcements by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay that that’s what they intend to do.

What this means in effect is that Europe will be joining in the war of annihilation the Arabs have been waging against Israel ever since it was legally established in 1948.

Israel can win a war against the Arabs, and probably against a nuclear armed Iran, but not against Europe, and especially not when America is under the leadership of an anti-Israel, pro-Islam president.

Melanie Phillips writes about this in the Spectator. Even she, to our mind, does not seem fully to comprehend the significance of what this EU policy – if it becomes policy, which it probably will – would be. Her analysis, however, is spot on:

Europe’s foreign ministers have threatened to recognise an independent Palestinian state to punish Israeli refusal to halt ‘illegal’ Jewish settlements. …

So let’s get our heads round this.

Israel, the victim of six decades of Arab aggression, is to be punished for frustrating ‘peace’ talks with its aggressors in which it is prepared to take part, on the grounds that it refuses to halt building homes which are said to be illegal but are not; while no punishment is to be meted out to the Arab aggressors who refused to take part in negotiations during the ten months that Israel did halt building these homes — within territories which during these past nine decades it has been entitled to settle under international law – even though these Arabs are the belligerents in the Middle East conflict and continue repeatedly to assert that they will never accept Israel as a Jewish state and who accordingly teach their children to grow up to hate and kill Israelis in order to achieve their never-renounced aim of destroying Israel; nevertheless these genocidal belligerents who have repeatedly turned down a state of their own ever since this was first offered to them more than seven decades ago because they wanted to wipe out Israel instead are to be rewarded by the EU while their victim is to be punished; and all to realise the creation of a state of Palestine which will surely turn in short measure into part of greater Iran, to the terrible cost of the Arabs living in such a state of Palestine and placing the free world in even more danger.

Question: are these morally bankrupt European politicians evil, or just very, very stupid?

Our answer is that they are evil, of course, since their intention is so intensely unjust as to be nothing less than evil – though we don’t rule out the high probability that they’re stupid too.

We see no suggestion that Europe will demand any concessions from Palestine on Israel’s security – or even that Palestine recognize Israel – in exchange for European recognition of Palestinian statehood. We can see no suggestion that in exchange for recognition of another Arab state within designated borders, the Europeans will demand that Arabs forfeit the “inalienable” right of over 1million of their number to reside in Israel (whatever its borders). Understandably. In making those demands, Europe would be putting itself in Israel’s place negotiating “peace” on the same terms. And will get nowhere, just as every Israeli government has got nowhere.

So, Europe, by recognizing Palestine, will also be tacitly supporting the ongoing war of Palestine against Israel. There is nothing to suggest that Palestine – led by the PA or by Hamas – will stay happily behind any borders. The “right of return” will still fuel resistance, as will Islamic fundamentalism. Israel will not cede Jerusalem, even if chunks of Judea and Samaria are handed over to a Palestine. The fighting will continue.

Will Europe put its money where its mouth is? Will it boycott and sanction Israel economically? Will it, in fact, implement the Arab boycott – which is part of the 60-year-old Arab war against Israel?

In other words, will Europe’s tacit support of Palestine by recognizing it as a de jure state become an active war alliance against Israel – economically and militarily? Does Europe propose to field an army at the Palestine borders – through the UN or under its own colors? Will the Europeans fight a border contest on behalf of Arabs? Will they fight the Israelis’ self-defense on behalf of Arabs? Will they, in effect, continue their unfinished business against Jews, in alliance (again) with Arabs?

Unless Europe is prepared to impose sanctions and fight Israel when Israel takes action against Palestinian rocket-launchers and terrorist acts, we cannot see how the European recognition of Palestine along stated borders (1948 armistice lines?!) will change the situation at all, except in one very important respect: peace will have been decoupled from statehood. The dangerous delusion that peace and Palestinian statehood can simultaneously be reached after negotiations – direct, indirect, Likud or Labor, mediated by quartets, or soloists – will be shattered, finally and forever. The Europeans will awaken to the fact that national self-determination for Palestine is defined as war with Israel (whether the nation has real or imaginary borders), for as long as Israel exists within any borders at all.

With the land-for-peace delusion gone, and Europe actively siding with the Arabs against Israel, it may be harder for Europe to pretend – even to itself – that it is motivated by compassion for a select group of Arabs, or justice, or the wish for peace, or even, as we hear so often, the best interests of Israel and Jews. The only mighty international law principles Europe will vindicate is that mighty principals make international law. Sadly, it will be the Jews who will (again) pay the price for the revelation of this banal truth.

What Israel should urgently do – in anticipation of any declaration of Palestinian statehood – is declare and secure the borders it is prepared to defend. That would at least put an end to the negotiability of that territory under the futile “land for peace” formula and place it firmly under the protection of the “war for war ” formula. If Israel defends its borders in war, she keeps them. Peace, should it ever come, will be for peace, and only for peace.

Which Israel might at last enjoy for a few remaining decades.

C. Gee   December 15, 2010

More WikiLeaks information that it’s good for us to know:

On Iran and North Korea here.

The release of confidential diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks (and the pending release of thousands more) has undoubtedly done damage to our ability to win the trust of informants, foreign officials, and intelligence services. [We doubt it – JB.] There is ample reason to be angry over this scandal, but there is also reason to be encouraged. The content of the documents shows the roof is collapsing on the Iranian and North Korean regimes and that a coalition has formed to support regime change for both.

The begging among the Arabs for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program has been widely covered, but their appetite to go even further and support regime change has not been. …

The cables also show optimism about the prospects for a policy of regime change. The chief of Kuwait’s military intelligence comments on the instability in Iran, and says that an event like the arrest of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi could spark an uprising that ends the regime. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan is documented as having “viewed the situation as very tense within Iran and believed it could erupt at any time.”

The U.S. is also pressured by Meir Dagan, the director of Israel’s legendary Mossad intelligence service, to make moves to support regime change by supporting minorities like the Azeris, Baluchis, and Kurds, as well as the student democracy movement. Dagan is recorded as being “sure” that the regime could be toppled with U.S. support. That comes from a cable in August 2007, well before the uprising in the summer of 2009 following Ahmadinejad’s so-called “re-election.” Dagan’s confidence in fomenting regime change has surely been strengthened since then.

A cable from June 2009 reports that several Iranian contacts say that there is a “surge in Baluchi violence in the border area” so severe that the government may be losing control of the region. Violent clashes by Baluchis and other minorities have grown markedly since then. The Obama administration has put distance between the U.S. and the Baluchi militants, condemning their attacks and listing the Jundullah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as was previously done to the Free Life Party of Kurdistan.

Another document shows that a rare opportunity to undermine the regime will come soon. A source was told by former President Rafsanjani in 2009 that Ayatollah Khamenei was in the last stages of his life and could die from cancer within months. Once the supreme leader dies, the regime will face its biggest fracture since 1979 as the battle over his successor ensues.

Altogether, the cables give good reason to believe that Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, and Lebanon would all support military action and even a strategy of regime change towards Iran. Yemen, Oman, Algeria, Morocco, and other countries can also be expected to quietly back it. …

Europe can also be counted on to support such a strategy. A cable from September 2009 records a French diplomat as saying: “The current Iranian regime is effectively a fascist state and the time has come to decide on next steps.” …

The cables also report on the Iranians’ failures in Iraq. …

The WikiLeaks disclosures also paint a disturbing picture for the North Korean regime. The cables show that South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-woo was told by two senior Chinese officials that the leadership of their country was increasingly supportive of a united Korea with Seoul as the capital. … [and] after the story broke, Chinese officials in Europe anonymously said that their country supported a united Korea “in the long term.” …

The WikiLeaks document dump, though its negative affects overshadow anything positive [do they?– JB], shows that the West does not have to accept the Iranian and North Korean regimes. If they survive over the long-term, it will be because the U.S. allowed it.

On the climate change scam here.

Just a year ago, the Climategate … files’ release probably led to the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference — to which the Obama administration had committed no little amount of political capital — and certainly contributed to the public’s increasing skepticism about the supposed consensus of climate science. …

Almost exactly a year later, Julius Assange and the WikiLeaks website revealed another collection … [this time of] cable traffic among American diplomats all over the world …

On December 3rd, the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom published one of a series of stories based on the cables, this one titled “WikiLeaks cables reveal how U.S. manipulated climate accord.” The United States really was applying considerable political and diplomatic pressure on other players; the scientific “consensus” had long since been subsumed by the pressure to score a political win. As the Guardian put it:

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage. … bribes ….. no mean amount of money … [of] tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. …

This pressure, however, wasn’t limited to financial transactions: the United States was developing intelligence on the other participants in the conferences. …

The lesson of the WikiLeaks climate cables turns out to be very much like the lesson of the Climategate files last year. The most surprising aspect of this story is how thoroughly the cables confirm the dark suspicions of climate skeptics.

On Iran and Latin America here.

The WikiLeaks sabotage campaign against the US gave us a first person account of the magnitude of Ahmadinejad’s electoral fraud.

In a cable from the US Embassy in Turkmenistan dated 15 June 2009, or three days after Ahmadinejad stole the Iranian presidential elections, the embassy reported a conversation with an Iranian source regarding the true election results. The Iranian source referred to the poll as a “coup d’etat.”

The regime declared Ahmadinejad the winner with 63% of the vote. According to the Iranian source, he received less than a tenth of that amount. As the cable put it, “based on calculations from [opponent Mir Hossain] Mousavi’s campaign observers who were present at polling stations around the country and who witnessed the vote counts, Mousavi received approximately 26 million (or 61%) of the 42 million votes cast in Friday’s election, followed by Mehdi Karroubi (10-12 million)…. Ahmadinejad received ‘a maximum of 4-5 million votes,’ with the remainder going to Mohsen Rezai.” …

In April 2009 US President Barack Obama sat through a 50-minute anti-American rant by [Daniel] Ortega [Nicaragua’s Sandinista president] at the Summit of the Americas. He then sought out Chavez for a photo-op. In his own address Obama distanced himself from US history, saying, “We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

Unfortunately, Obama’s attempted appeasement hasn’t done any good. Nicaragua invaded neighboring Costa Rica last month along the San Juan River. Ortega’s forces are dredging the river as part of an Iranian-sponsored project to build a canal along the Isthmus of Nicaragua that will rival the Panama Canal.

Even Obama’s ambassador in Managua admits that Ortega remains deeply hostile to the US. In a cable from February illicitly published by WikiLeaks, Ambassador Robert Callahan argued that Ortega’s charm offensive towards the US was “unlikely to portend a new, friendly Ortega with whom we can work in the long-term.”

A wealth of vital information poured out for us through the conduit of WikiLeaks!

And we’re still waiting to hear of a single specific instance of any real harm being done to an individual anywhere, or convincingly to the United States as a whole, as a result of WikiLeaks’ “scandalous” operation.

These are a few of the WikiLeaks revelations that are exciting much comment on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Middle East, and that we find helpful to know:

The release of Magrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, from a Scottish prison, was done for cowardly motives that had nothing to do with justice or compassion, just as we always thought. (See the Telegraph here and here, and the Scotsman here.)

Contrary to Obama’s assumptions, the Arab States are much more interested in stopping Iran developing a nuclear capability than they are in the Israel-Palestinian “peace process”, and they confer directly with Israel about this crisis, having lost patience with Obama. (See the Jerusalem Post here and Front Page here.)

Ireland impeded US arms transfers to Israel. (See the Jerusalem Post here.)

In the vain desire to empty Guantanamo, the US administration used questionable inducements to persuade foreign governments to accept prisoners – with little success. (See PowerLine here.)

The Saudi Arabian rulers – under whose strictly “moral” Wahhabi regime young girls were pushed back into a burning school because they ran out with their faces uncovered – entertain themselves in extravagant orgies, with every kind of sexual indulgence and drugs, with music they forbid their subjects to listen to.  [Note it is their hypocrisy and cruelty we find morally repulsive, not their choices of entertainment,  except when they involve the exploitation and corruption of children – which, to our certain knowledge, they frequently do, especially homosexual exploitation.] (See the Guardian here.)

These revelations underline the message that many others convey, such as those concerning the Obama administration’s mishandling of relations with and between North Korea, Iran and China. (See our posts Thanks to WikiLeaks? December 3, 2010, and More on WikiLeaks December 4, 2010).

If WikiLeaks, which did not steal the documents but published them, is guilty of a crime – what crime we are waiting to be told – then are not the newspapers that publish them, such as the New York Times, equally guilty?

Attorney General Eric Holder, no master of understanding or expression, will name the crime eventually perhaps. So far he has only told us that the WikiLeaks publication of the documents was “not helpful”. To whom? For what? They’re certainly helpful in proving, inter alia, that the State Department is an institution which does not serve the interests of the country. Or, to be a little less delicate, that it’s a malignant tumor on the body politic.

From Mere Rhetoric

In a DebkaFile report on the unlikely yet apparently thriving Saudi-Israeli co-operation in the face of the Iranian threat, a clue may be found as to just who is directing operations againt Iran’s nuclear program, and most probably sent it the Stuxnet worm:

Riyadh has signaled its intention for the secret Saudi-Israeli meetings on Iran taking place for more than a year to continue after the changing of the guard at the Mossad… This was one of the first messages Tamir Pardo found on his desk as head of Israel’s external spy agency when he took over from Meir Dagan this week. The Saudis were clearly not put off by any possible awkwardness from the WikiLeaks disclosure that they had been pressing the US to attack Iran’s nuclear sites before it developed a weapon.

The meetings between Saudi General Intelligence Director Prince Muqrin bin Abdaziz and Meir Dagan, most of which were held in the Jordanian capital Amman, dealt extensively with clandestine cooperation between the two agencies and plans for attacking Iran. Arab and Western sources reported that they reached agreement in the course of the year for Israeli fighter-bombers to transit Saudi air space on their way to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Saudis were even willing to build a new landing strip in the desert with refueling facilities for the use of the warplanes en route to their mission.

Western intelligence experts on Saudi Arabia found special significance in the publication by the Saudi Arab News site of Monday, Nov. 29 of a long report on Meir Dagan and his retirement after eight years as head of Israel’s external espionage agency. The Saudi official media never, ever report on Israeli military or intelligence affairs. …

Still more out of character was the tone of the Arab News report [which admiringly describes] the outgoing Mossad chief … as … “widely seen as responsible for a wave of covert actions including the sabotage of Iranian nuclear projects.”

Western sources found a connection between this comment and the attack 24 hours earlier in the heart of Tehran on two senior Iranian nuclear scientists, killing Prof. Majid Shahriari on the spot and leaving Prof. Feredoun Abbassi-Davani critically injured. …

Pardo’s job is termed “at the heart of Israel’s secret war against Iran.”…

The WikiLeaks disclosure, which also showed the Obama administration rejecting the Gulf Arab rulers’ demand for military action against Iran, may even have spurred the Saudis to insist on carrying on with their backdoor meetings with Israel so as to underline their abiding conviction that Iran’s nuclear program must be wiped out.

And we understand that Meir Dagan did not bow to King Abdullah. In a manner of speaking, the obeisance is being paid the other way about.

Abraham H. Miller, professor emeritus of political science, has an article at PajamasMedia that we applaud, because he succinctly endorses our own opinion of Obama’s treacherous and catastrophic pro-Islam policy – which we suspect springs from deep emotional ties to that cruel, totalitarian, and deathly religion.

Sharing Professor Miller’s indignation, we cannot resist quoting a fair chunk of his commentary, and hope you will go here to read all of it:

You’re about to be groped, X-rayed, and generally humiliated in the airport. The Islamic Fiqh Council, however, has issued a fatwa prohibiting Muslims from going through an X-ray machine. Separately, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is advising Muslim women to avoid pat-downs beyond the head and neck. Our culturally sensitive administration will undoubtedly acquiesce. You, however, will be groped and X-rayed, unless of course you show up at the airport dressed in a tent. …

After stooping and genuflecting to the Islamic world and cutting Israel off at the knees, President Barack Obama has had such a positive impact on the Muslim street that its attitudes toward America were slightly better during Bush’s last year.

Cultural sensitivity has fared no better in Afghanistan, where the rules of engagement put the lives of our soldiers at greater risk in an effort to reduce civilian casualties. The administration has decided to trade American deaths for Afghan lives. The Afghan people, however, seem to have engaged in the rational calculus that it is better to side with those who will be there, the Taliban, than those who have announced their intention to leave. …

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is still unable to utter the words “Islamist terrorist,” preferring to engage in Newspeak about “man-made disasters.” The real man-made disasters are the multi-ethnic states of Iraq and Afghanistan, lines on the map encompassing diverse people who have found familiarity breeds contempt and contempt breeds irrational violence. But more irrational is our hubris, thinking that we can suddenly transform seventh century societies into modern democracies amid the most virulent and transformative ideology on the planet, radical Islam.

The wars persist. Victory is as elusive as it is undefined. The spilling of blood and treasure goes on. We cannot kill our way to victory, and we cannot reshape the foundation of these cultures.

Our status in the world diminishes. …

And the Obama administration, having disengaged from Israel, has decided, in an act of consummate recklessness, to create a Saudi hegemony, to balance Iran, with the largest arms deal in the history of our nation, sixty billion dollars. Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. This was the policy of prior administrations with regard to the shah of Iran, who was supposed to be the hegemonic power in the Persian Gulf, offsetting then Soviet interests in that region. And we all saw how well that turned out.

So now we are banking on an aging royal family with the legitimacy of Weimar standing in the headwinds of rising fundamentalism, a family that has walked the tightrope of dealing with the West while exporting its own brand of Islamic fundamentalism to undermine Western traditions and institutions. We are afraid to confront them, for in our multicultural mindset one culture is as good as another. …

Our influence in the world declines along with the value of our currency. We elected a president whom the world’s leaders do not take seriously. We are saddled with large unemployment in an economy that exports jobs faster than it creates them. We are becoming Britain of the post-World War II era, but now there is no America in the West to step into the power vacuum.