By Daniel Brodsky
SAN DIEGO — For many years I have been awed by the writings and speeches of Caroline Glick, the formidable Jerusalem Post columnist. If you could read only one Israeli reporter’s news, it would have to be Glick. In her biweekly commentaries she “spot-on” analyzes events as they unfold both globally and in Israel. The contents of this fascinating book are thrilling, and a must read for those of us who love Israel and support the free world.
I urge you to read this book. Short of that, take the time to skim through these enlightening excerpts.
Glick’s goal was to write a book that explains our current predicaments. She achieved that, and more.
The book comprises a remarkable collection of some of her biweekly analysis reports written from 2002 to 2007 for the Jerusalem Post. Take note of the early date in which many of these comments are written. The reading of her reports is so fascinating that I thought it a good idea to put together some very brief quotes from her book which gives us a quick, compelling, running chronicle of the war which “we dare not acknowledge”… the war between the West and the forces of Islamic Jihad.
Caroline Glick is amazing. She has lived a most impressive life: She grew up in America. After receiving a degree in political science from Columbia, she made aliyah to Israel in 1991 and joined the IDF. She became an officer and was coordinator of negotiations with the PLO and the Palestinians. In 1996 she became Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu for two years. After returning to the USA to earn a masters degree in public policy from Harvard, she returned to Israel to become Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post.
During operation Iraqi Freedom, she covered the war as a journalist imbedded in the front lines with the US Army. Her reports and writings are published virtually everywhere. She lectures throughout the free world and frequently appears on TV. Glick is the Senior Fellow with the Middle Eastern Affairs Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC, and travels several times a year to Washington to brief members of Congress and senior administration officials.
Her yearly awards are too numerous to list; in 2003 she was named the most prominent woman in Israel. Enjoy and learn from the following excerpts:
2002 A LIGHT UNTO THE NATIONS
We see this patriotism in our army, where officers are reporting a 130 percent mobilization rate of reservists…reported for duty…
A group of reservists … took up a collection… and gave it to the (Palestinian) family to pay for the damage.
Another group of reservists gave a Palestinian family NIS 2,000 after seizing three rooms in their home for 48 hours.
Reservists in Bethlehem and Ramallah insisted on mopping the floors before departing.
Reservists have added candy to their regular gear.
On the friends’ side, we have the American people and Diaspora Jewry.
We look in the mirror, and we like what we see.
… it is not surprising that 83 percent of Israelis wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
…such men forming the backbone of the IDF is a source of pride… in the context of the forces arrayed against us today.
The international community has pilloried us with accusations of a “massacre”…
There was no massacre whatsoever.
As for the house demolitions, a balanced person does not booby-trap his house with the intent to return to it.
2002 A PROVIDENTIAL FRIENDSHIP
For the past 35 years, the United States has been Israel’s closest, and often only, ally.
Yet, in spite of the closeness of our relationship, over the years there has been little reflection on what America really is or how it came to pass that the USA has become Israel’s best friend.
In the 1990’s, both Israel and the USA took freedom for granted.
For Israel, the lynching of our IDF reservists in Ramallah shattered these irresponsible delusions. For the USA it was, of course, September 11…
What we see today is that there is no contradiction between being an American patriot and being an Israeli patriot. Both countries are a finger in the eye to enemies of these common values…
2002 NO TOLERANCE FOR GENOCIDE
Yes, genocide. The Palestinians have reached a point in this war…there goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called “occupation,” but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews because they are Jewish.
While Hitler…dominated Germany, the Germans allowed themselves to be dominated.
…_Palestinian society itself must be transformed…
…Jew hatred and dehumanization has become for the Palestinians…the central unifying theme…
…there can be no negotiations, no legitimacy, and no tolerance for a society who central organizing principle is the physical elimination of the Jewish people.
2002 ENDING THE OSTRICH STRATEGY
Quite simply, if a sonic boom can cause a general panic, we have no sense of security.
We are being victimized…on two fronts…in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, and Hezbollah…
…Impossibility of deterring Hezbollah was brought home yet again…
As with the USA war on a;-Qaeda, our war…will be long, costly…but the alternative is too frightening to contemplate.
2003 ILAN RAMON’S LEGACY
In 1981, IAF Col. Ilan Ramon flew one of the F-16 jets that blew up the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak. In doing so he saved the country…from the specter of a nuclear holocaust. …as Israel’s first astronaut…Ramon saved us…by reminding us of who we are and what we can accomplish…
…Ramon was not simply a Jew. He was an Israeli Jew.
2003 DEPENDING ON THE ENEMY
The world will condemn us. But we will survive. -Yigal Allon
America’s dependence on… oil has brought about the unprecedented situation where it is engaged in a world war against an enemy it is partly dependent on.
Bush administration not only makes no use of Israel’s capabilities, but it places limitations on Israel’s ability to carry out operations in its own defense.
2003 ONE MINUTE TO ZERO-HOUR
Kuwaiti Desert – Monday afternoon I ate a hamentaschen on the hood of a humvee…
We had Iraq1 soldiers surrendering to us with our leaflets in their hands. If we hadn’t come they would have died. They had no water…
They came with their hands up with their fingers pointing to the food pictures. They ate our entire rations…
Saddam tortures women and children in front of their husbands and fathers.
2003 ODYSSEY OF AN ISRAELI JOURNALIST
To the best of my knowledge, Kuwaiti forces never participated in the Arab world’s wars against Israel…
From the moment I arrived, the Kuwaiti government sought to silence me as a writer, a journalist and an Israeli even as I was traveling as a USA citizen on a valid visa.
Kuwait City is lethargic, bereft of human vitality. My experience…showed me that the Kuwaitis care very much about hating Israel.
…at its root the conflict is about the Arab world’s obsession with rejecting Israel.
Kuwait hates the Palestinians.
2003 WHY THEY FIGHT
All of these enemy prisoners of war tell us how much they love us and hate Saddam. Obviously, they are lying to us.
No matter what you do for these people they are going to hate us.
2003 COMBAT DIARY
…even though I never approached the level of filth and exhaustion…I have never felt more alive or more myself.
I finished my breakfast after I saw the dead Iraqi officer.
I mentioned that the Palestinians have loaded bombs on donkey carts several times…several Israelis have been murdered by this tactic. He stopped laughing.
I have taken on the role of terrorism advisor (to the American troops). These men have deep respect for the IDF.
I feel a pride in America that I have never felt before. And yet…I have never felt more Israeli, or more attached to the Land of Israel.
I carry the Land of Israel with me wherever I go.
I have found my America. And I have discovered that I can never leave Israel. It sits inside of me, strengthens me, and comforts me to the center of my soul.
2003 THE BATTLE FOR BAGHDAD
…white pickup trucks – the Iraqi version of Japanese kamikaze plains – littered both sides of the road…
…defense of Baghdad is largely being carried out by Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian troops.
Iraqis surrendering to US forces had detonated explosive belts strapped to their bodies as the Americans approached them.
If you see something move that isn’t ours, kill it…
2003 AMERICA’S GIFT FOR PASSOVER
We rightly assumed that the Iraqi people themselves would not fight for Saddam’s regime.
Watching thousands of civilians looting and plundering in the streets of Baghdad…
A free Iraq may be a seed for change in the mind-set of the Arab world…
2003 MORALITY UNDER FIRE
…over the past three years, we have rearranged our lives…in an attempt to minimize the risk of death by terror.
This…is a testament to the terrorists” success…
…it makes perfect sense that in the year-long run-up to the US-led invasion, Saddam would find a way to either destroy or hide his WMD arsenal.
Winning a war against a terrorist enemy is perhaps the most difficult victory for a democratic society…
2003 OUR NATIONAL CONFUSION
Terror that no longer terrorizes or paralyzes is no longer terror. Perhaps. But then terror never paralyzed Israelis.
We have gotten used to being killed.
2003 MALAYSIAN ROAD MAP
…the Europeans have no interest in actually preventing the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.
…The UN General Assembly’s decision to condemn Israel for building a security fence…
…clear that Israel cannot accept a nuclear-armed Iran.
…Israel has the capacity to conduct long-range bombing missions.
2003 THE EUROPEAN SOLUTION
…59 percent of Europeans believe that Israel is the single largest threat to peace in the world.
…current European hostility towards Israel…never fully accepting Israel’s right to exist.
…resurgence of Jew-hatred in Europe has to do with the European quest for power.
2003 OF INTELLECTUAL BONDAGE
How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein? …milder questions I received from…undergraduate students from Tel Aviv’ University’s Political Science Dept.
America is a totalitarian state. Did you learn that in Russia? No, at Tel Aviv University. That is what my professors say.
…Israeli professors have signed petitions calling for boycott of Israeli goods.
…rampant anti-Semitism on European campuses.
…our academic tyrants…
2004 STOP NAVEL GAZING
We are in a world war and yet we do not notice it.
…Al Qaeda-linked groups are operating in Africa…
…jihadis in countries like Niger, Chad, and Mali…
…when we observe the American confusion in Iraq today…
…we see no discussion of Gaza as part of a larger whole…
…weakening our ability to recognize our enemies as such, seeing them rather as erstwhile peace partners.
2004 LEAVING THE HALL OF MIRRORS
Terrorists shoot from mosques so mosques must be raided.
…ambulances must be inspected.
…the majority of Palestinians support the aims of the terrorists to murder Israeli civilians…goal of destroying Israel.
…the majority of girls are forced by their fathers to undergo…genital mutilation…
One third of Egyptian women have been beaten by their husbands…
…indeed we are the good guys here.
2005 THE INCITEMENT OF IDEAS
…Sharon’s policy of withdrawal and expulsion.
Sharon has not explained how turning Gaza over to the Palestinians will enhance Israel’s security.
…has not explained how Israel will protect itself from rockets and mortar attacks…
2005 THE HOLOCAUST FETISH
…almost everybody agreed that the Jews had no right to live.
That goes straight to the bone.
Such a volume of hatred…has never been heard or felt…
It was genocidal anti-Semitism, nurtured by 2000 years of…
There is something deeply distasteful and viscerally disturbing about the spectacle of dozens of anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian governments coming together at Auschwitz or the UN…and self-righteously bowing their heads for our exterminated brothers and sisters.
Jews cannot convince anti-Semites not to hate us any more than a deer can convince a wolf not to hunt it. That work must be done by…
Israel has a duty to recall…
2005 AN ATTACK AGAINST US ALL
…Israel stands with Britain in the aftermath of the murderous attacks on its citizens…
…for the civilized nations of the world to win the war against jihad, it is necessary for all to understand that the forces who fight us are the same ones (Jehadists). An attack against any of us…is an attack against all of us.
2005 DEMOCRACY’S DESCENT TO DARKNESS
It is still unknown what will happen today…in the newest face-off between the police and the tens of thousands of Israeli citizens who wish to assemble in Sderot to protest the Sharon government’s plan to expel 10,000 Israeli citizens from their homes and communities in Gaza…
Is this really a price the Israeli public is willing to pay – for anything? Is this what we have come to?
2006 A PRAYER FOR 5767
If the Zionist entity were destroyed and the survivors forced to become perpetual cruise-line stewards…they’d be hated for that, too.
Hatred only defines the haters…
…the state in which we live is one of the most vibrant, optimistic, “happening” countries in the world.
We are one of the most highly educated…
…among the most patriotic citizens in the world.
…high level of volunteerism in all age groups.
Jewish life blossoms in Israel as it has nowhere else in our history.
The Jewish people gave humanity the concepts of God, liberty, and law.
2006 THE FICTITIOUS THIRD WAY
…the army is at a loss to find adequate responses to the post-withdrawal transformation of Gaza into the largest terrorist base in the Arab world.
2006 THE JEWISH THREAT
Today there is only one leader capable of rebuilding Israel’s standing in the international community generally and in American society particularly. His name is Binyamin Netanyahu.
2006 ISRAEL’S NEW WAR
…According to Zawahari, the global jihad began in 2000 and will end in 2020.
…third stage, which includes the toppling of regimes in Jordan, Syria and Egypt and the targeting of Israel for destruction.
Al-Qaeda is building its presence in Gaza, Judea and Samaria gradually. It drafts Palestinian terrorists…
Talk of…the abandonment of Judea and Samaria to Hamas sound hallucinatory…
2006 HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION
Northern Israel is a vacationer’s paradise.
Israel stood by and did nothing as Hezbollah built up its massive arsenal of rockets and missiles. It is impossible to deter Hezbollah…
The Lebanese army cannot disarm Hezbollah.
Iran’s proxy war against Israel…against the USA in Iraq.
…both the UN and the EU are organizations dedicated to ensuring the survival of …Hezbollah and Hamas.
…by retreating from Lebanon and Gaza, Israel effectively surrendered the initiative for waging war…
2006 AN ACCEPTABLE CEASE-FIRE
…Israel must not accept an international force in south Lebanon.
…Israelis feel they do not have a partner for peace.
…Palestinian society is unwilling to live at peace with Israel.
2006 WHY ISRAEL MUST WIN
Why are fanatical Muslims on the march…?
…a clear sign that the Democratic Party is morphing into a radical leftist party.
…victory or defeat will influence not only Israel’s future. It will influence the future of the free world as a whole.
If Israel is defeated,…
…forces in Washington who claim that Israel is not worthy of America’s support.
…it is up to our nation to force our leaders to lead us to victory.
2006 THE OLMERT GOVERNMENT MUST GO
…failed on every level.
Handling of the war has been a failure.
…wanted to win war on the cheap.
…Tzipi Livni did her best to demoralize the IDF and the public…
…managed to undermine Israel’s alliance with America.
Iran has been emboldened.
The Palestinians have been emboldened.
2006 TERRORISTS THEATER TRICKS
…the global media and the international NGO community, which profess to be neutral observers, are in fact colluding with terrorist organizations.
…systematic staging of news events, fabrication of attacks…doctoring of photographic images…
The International…Red Cross…is particularly culpable.
2006 POSTCARDS FROM SAIGON
…the August cease-fire in Lebanon under which Israel is prevented from defending itself and Hezbollah is moving swiftly to rebuild its forces.
…Iran, Syria and North Korea behave as though the USA is a paper tiger.
…European “allies” national interests best served by distancing themselves from the USA as much as possible.
A USA retreat will place Israel in grave danger.
The leaders of the Democratic Party today compete amongst themselves to see who can be more defeatist.
2006 THE SECOND WORST OPTION
…Senator John McCain said, “There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.”
The USA and its allies are paying a high price…
Yet the alternative to paying that price will be suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale.
2006 AFTER THE MUSES FALL SILENT
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone on an appeasement spree and no one seems to mind.
…Blair…is suing for…an ignominious American-British retreat from Iraq.
Blair…belief that peace in Iraq begins with Israeli surrender to the Palestinians, Hezbollah and Syria.
…Al-Jazeera is used as a recruiting tool for global jihad.
…actions like Blair’s strategic retreat from reason and responsibility have gone uncriticized by the media.
…Western and particularly European journalists are overwhelmingly anti-American and virulently anti-Israel.
…today Islam tries to put its leaden mantel all over the world.
…British author Douglas Murray…noted that the two strongest voices in Holland warning against Islamic subversion…were murdered.
Geert Wilders…has been unable to campaign because his whereabouts can never be announced.
…two of his campaign workers beaten…
Another leading conservative voice, law professor…Paul Cliteur…announced on television that he would no longer speak out or write about the Islamic takeover of Holland.
In Britain itself…no media organ dared to publish the Danish cartoons of Muhammad…a clear indication of the level of fear…
We are at war, and those who warn of its dangers are being systematically silenced by our enemies who demand that nothing get in the way of our complacency with our own destruction.
…one day, years from now, when students of history ask how it came to pass that the free world willingly enabled its own destruction…
2006 THE NEW ZIONIST OCCUPIERS
Last year Iran signed a $70 billion deal with the Chinese to modernize its oil and gas fields.
…an oil deal with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez that guarantees its fuel imports will be sanction-proof.
To make itself immune from…sanctions…Iran is building two new oil refineries.
…Iranians truly believe in the ideals of jihad…
The Iranian regime wants to see jihad everywhere…
2007 WELCOME TO PALESTINE
…Gaza…the first wholly independent Palestinian state in history.
In the State of Palestine, two year-olds are killed…Worshipers …are gunned down…women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets…wounded are shot in cold blood…Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life support machines…and no one cares. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission…
…journalists…are part of the 88 percent of their public who are afraid.
…Hamas terrorists operating under Iranian and Syrian direction…
…reinstatement of the so-called peace process…
Palestine is a terror state and an economic basket case fully funded by the international community.
…receive more aid per capita than any people on earth…
So it is that 57 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel.
The hordes of political leaders mindlessly squawking about “visions” and two-state solutions” should know: This is Palestine. Enter at your own risk.
2007 SCAPEGOATING OUR FRIENDS
…81 percent of British Muslims identify with their religion, while only 7 percent identify with Britain.
In many French cities with a growing radical Islamist population, no teenage girl can go out in the evening, at least without a full burqa – otherwise she’s admitting that she’s worse than a whore and asking to be raped.
2007 JIHAD’S CAMPUS COLLABORATORS
…Britain faces the specter of mass attacks carried out by its own citizens in the name of Allah.
…”sudden jihad syndrome”
Fordham University…providing a platform for Holocaust deniers.
2007 THE ROAD TO SERFDOM
George Soros is an anti-Zionist Jew with a troubling past.
…Soros collaborated with the Nazis in seizing Jewish property in Budapest in 1944.
Since 2003, Soros has donated more than $100 million to radical left-wing groups…
His money has made him one of the most influential forces in the Democratic Party.
This week Soros laid out his anti-Israel views…
…Saudi plan which calls for Israel’s effective destruction through a forced Israeli withdrawal…
…28 percent of Israeli Arabs deny the Holocaust.
2007 THE WEAKEST LINK
Anti-Semitism has increasingly become the defining characteristic of British society.
Britain today is in the throes of a noxious blend of virulent anti-Semitism and indifference.
…a bid to appease their Muslim students.
…136 “major violent attacks” against Jews last year
2007 HIRSI ALI’S CHALLENGE TO HUMANITY
Ayaan Hirsi Ali one of the bravest and most remarkable women of our times.
…struggles to force the Western world to take note of Islam’s divinely ordained enslavement of women…Muslims shot up the Omariyah elementary school in Gaza.
…UN run school…had organized a sports day …in which little boys would be playing with little girls.
It was an insult to Islam…so they decided to kill the little boys and girls.
To save the world for Allah, they decided to butcher…
…inside their mosques in Norway, Norwegian imams praise female genital mutilation.
…a five-year old in Somalia…her grandmother tied her down and had a man with a knife mutilate her…
…in the name of Allah Most Gracious and Most Merciful.
…Hirsi Ali continues to warn the West of the dangers of Islam…
…the West must help these women free themselves from oppression.
2007 GROUNDED IN FANTASY
Iran and its client state Syria…wish to take over Lebanon…to destroy Israel…to defeat the US in Iraq…to drive the US and NATO from Afghanistan…to dominate the region by driving the rest of the Arab world to its jihad-supporting knees.
…both the US and Israel also have a strategic vision. Unfortunately, it is grounded in fantasy.
…European monitors…were a joke..Spanish troops in UNIFUL devote their time in Lebanon to teaching villagers Spanish.
…mindless peace process prattle. They will reject reality…
2007 THE LONGEST-RUNNING BIG LIE
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Yasser Arafat was a master of the big lie.
…he invented global terrorism…
How many lives would have been saved if the US had not been intent on upholding Arafat’s big lie?
2007 ECHOES OF 1919
…Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that the administration stands united around her policy of appeasing the Iranian regime…
…Bush has opted to ignore Fatah’s involvement in terrorism…
…26 percent of young Muslims in America believe that suicide bombings are justified. Only 40 percent believe that Arabs carried out the September 11 attacks.
2007 WHERE AMERICA AND IRAQ CONVERGE
…if the US Congress or the next administration decide to pull the plug on American-led efforts in Iraq, the results will be horrendous.
…danger implicit in the raw hostility and irrationality of the American Left toward everything related to the Iraq campaign…
…it is clear that something horrible has happened to the Democratic Party.
Unless the Democrats regain their senses…
Scattered throughout the book are various quotes from famous people, some of which appear below:
Where are the roots to this conflict?
They’re in the history of the Arab conquests and the rise and spread and fall and rise of Islam… John Keegan
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse…John Stuart Mill
If you let a bully come in your front yard, he’ll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed…Lyndon B. Johnson
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else…Winston Churchill
The struggle for world domination is between me and the Jews. All else is meaningless…Adolf Hitler
Israel must be wiped off the map…The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world…Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
In a democracy, the majority f the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority…Edmund Burke
Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence…Kingsley Amis
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?…Groucho Marx
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it…George Orwell
…the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart…Oliver Wendell Holmes
I would rather opt for living here in continual battle than for becoming part of the wandering Jewish people. Any compromise will simply hasten the end…Yoni Netanyahu
The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who has been living for so long the guardian of prophecy, and who transmitted it to the rest of the world – such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is everlasting as is eternity itself…Leo Tolstoy
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Brodsky is a San Diego based advocate for Israel. He obtained permission from Carolyn Glick to reprint excerpts from her book.