Palestinian Hamas militants take position in a vehicle inside headquarters for security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas after they seized it in Gaza, June 13, 2007. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Daniel Pipes exposes Bush's abrogation against Iran and Israel's existential dilemma. From the New York Sun:

"Barring a "catastrophic development," Middle East Newsline reports, George Bush has decided not to attack Iran. An administration source explains that Washington deems Iran's cooperation "needed for a withdrawal [of U.S. forces] from Iraq."

If correct, this implies the Jewish state stands alone against a regime that threatens to "wipe Israel off the map" and is building the nuclear weapons to do so. Israeli leaders are hinting that their patience is running out; Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz just warned that "diplomatic efforts should bear results by the end of 2007."

Can the Israel Defense Forces in fact disrupt Iran's nuclear program?

Top secret analyses from intelligence agencies normally reply to such a question. But talented outsiders, using open sources, can also try their hand. Whitney Raas and Austin Long studied this problem at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published their impressive analysis, "Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities," in the journal International Security.

Also, as the world witnesses the true nature of Hamas' Islamist supremacism over Fatah and any Jewish sovereign Israel, it's time that the world recognize the danger of continuing to delude itself about the propagandized delegitimization of Israel and the notion of a peaceful, autonomous Palestinian neighbor. Melanie Phillips writes:

"Even Human Rights Watch has now been forced to condemn the Palestinians:

The Human Rights Watch organization Wednesday condemned Hamas and Fatah for committing ‘serious violations of international humanitarian law, in some cases amounting to war crimes’ in violence in Gaza in recent days. It also took the Islamic Jihad and the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades to task for a June 9 incident in which gunmen used a jeep bearing ‘TV’ insignias to allow them to approach and attack an IDF post in southern Israel, calling it a ‘serious violation of the laws of war.’ In internal Palestinian fighting over the last three days, both Fatah and Hamas military forces have summarily executed captives, killed people not involved in hostilities, and engaged in gun battles with one another inside and near Palestinian hospitals,’ the organization said in a statement.

War crimes, eh? Throwing civilians off the top of buildings? Attacking the wounded in hospitals? Using press insignia as camouflage for attacks, thus putting all journalists at risk? Dozens and dozens of civilians murdered, including children?

So where’s the call for a boycott of the Palestinians?

To those for whom Israel is the cosmic villain of our times — even though it has never behaved in such a barbaric fashion — the implications of these terrible events in Gaza are simply unprocessable. Their extreme discomfiture is evident in their silence. If Israel kills Palestinians in its attempt to defend its civilians from being blown up in pizza parlours or pulverised by rocket attack, the media descends into an instant frenzy of (unjust and distorted) condemnation. But presented with this orgy of Palestinian violence in Gaza, there is little more than an embarrassed shuffling of feet. The Independent ventures bravely into these treacherous waters by blaming everyone other than the Palestinians for reducing them to economic desperation — this despite the fact that since sanctions were imposed on Hamas, the amount of funding going intro Gaza has actually doubled, if not trebled.

The fact is that what is happening in Gaza is the savage retort to all those who believe that a Palestinian state is the answer. When handed the reins of self-government, this is how the Palestinians behave. Hundreds of rockets fired upon Israel, and their own people thrown off the top of tall buildings and murdered in hospital. As of today, a Palestinian state is simply impossible. Gaza and the West Bank have become two different political entities.

Israel’s fight is suddenly not merely the west’s own fight but that of swathes of the Arab world itself. In the past, Israel has done the dirty work of an international community which has been happy to stand back as it does so — including certain Arab states which have quietly rejoiced as it has gone in against the Palestinians, only to take advantage of the breathing space it thus provided for them by promptly resuming their century-old war of attrition against Jewish peoplehood. Israel should no longer furnish the political kindling for its own sacrifice in this way. The Arab states themselves must finally be forced to deal with the monster they have created.

As ever, Israel is today between yet another murderous rock and a genocidal hard place. And as ever, the international community which has put it there by refusing to acknowledge the real nature of this terrible conflict — and that includes Israel’s so-called friends in America and Britain — continues to make Israel’s position more, not less difficult. From Europe to Washington, siren voices call for ‘engagement’ with Hamas on the grounds that this will bring the wild men in from the cold.

Since Hamas is committed to the genocide of the Jews, it is puzzling to know precisely what there is to engage about. Look, whisper these European and American useful idiots, there are people in Hamas talking about a ten-year ceasefire! They’re even talking about removing their endorsement of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from their Charter!! Such ignorance and naivety make one want to weep. The most likely outcome of such noises-off is that Hamas will very reasonably conclude that the more rockets they fire at Israel and the more Palestinians they throw off the top of tall buildings, the more the Europeans — whose response to brute power is invariably to prostrate themselves before it —will seize any excuse to convince themselves that, yes, these are people with whom we can do business. . .

And meanwhile the elephant in the room remains Iran, which is funding and arming Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Syria, not to mention waging war against the west by proxy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel remains caught in a lethal trap, because it is trying to solve a problem that it cannot solve since it did not create it.

The real architects of this impasse are the countries of the free world, which have failed utterly to grasp that the Israel/Palestine conflict is but one theatre of a global struggle; not a conflict over the division of a piece of land but rather one front in a global onslaught against the west.

While trying vainly to solve Israel /Palestine in hope this will calm everything else down, the free world fails to grasp that it is only by dealing with regional and global aggression that Israel/Palestine will ever be resolved.

Backing the Big Lie of the justice of Palestinian statehood, which has meant in fact that a country (Israel) that was victorious at its rebirth against forces that tried to wipe it out has uniquely been expected ever since to make reparations to its attackers - who continue to try to destroy it, and to provide them with a state from which they can finish the job, has been the biggest single incentive to terror and war in the Middle East.

Only when this is acknowledged, and the free world locates the moral compass which has been absent from its dealings for decades, will there be any prospect of justice in the Middle East and peace for the world. "