Caroline Glick: Israel's Unwavering Guardsmen

March 26, 2010, 11:20 AM

As the local and international press corps converged on Jerusalem's Old City to cover the Arab riots at the Temple Mount two weeks ago, little mention was made of the fact that Jerusalem was not the only flashpoint. In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israeli Arab rioters supported by far-left protesters stoned buses. Israeli Arabs firebombed motorists on Highway 443 and on the roads to Beersheba. In the North, cars were stoned.

These little-reported attacks are the consequence of one of the most dangerous emerging threats to Israel's national survival: the rapidly escalating radicalization of Israel's Arab citizens.

Over the past decade and at a frenzied pace since the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, acting at least partially at the direction of the Israeli Islamic Movement and with the active support of the far left, Israeli Arabs and Beduin have launched a massive assault on the state. The relevant national authorities including the courts, the state prosecution, the police, the IDF, the Jewish National Fund, the Israel Lands Authority and the Ministry of Interior have failed to defend against it.

Firebombing Jewish-owned vehicles is small potatoes in comparison to developments at the center of mass of the Israeli Arab onslaught: state land. Over the past decade, Israeli Arabs have seized millions of dunams of state land.

The dimensions of this phenomenon were spelled out in last year's State Comptroller's Report. While the local and international Left pillories Israel when the state tries to demolish a handful of the thousands of illegal Arab buildings in Jerusalem, what goes unmentioned is that by the end of 2007 there were more than 100,000 illegally built structures in Israel. The overwhelming majority were constructed on state land seized by Arab land thieves in the Negev and the Galilee. By the end of 2009, the number of illegal buildings grew to an estimated 150,000. The scope of the theft is so vast that the Comptroller's Report referred to it as a "national scourge."

Most of the open land in Israel is owned by the state and administered by farmers, ranchers and the IDF. Farmers and ranchers - particularly in the North and the South, but in areas around Jerusalem as well - are daily terrorized by neighboring Arab thieves. The thieves destroy their fences, steal and slaughter their livestock and threaten to murder them if they raise any objections, mend their fences or install surveillance cameras. Many farmers and ranchers - like most business owners around Beersheba and Upper Nazareth - are coerced into paying protection money to the same Arab gangs who target their fields.

As the Comptroller's Report makes clear, the threatened and abused farmers have no official body to turn to for help. While incidence of land theft has increased more than 50 percent in recent years, enforcement measures at all levels have decreased by 81%. In 2007, courts issued just 5,400 judgments on illegal construction. Of these, only 193 led to demolition orders. And just a handful of those orders were carried out.

Israel has no official policy for contending with the problem. A police unit formed specifically to enforce land laws has only recruited 55% of its allotted personnel and most of those 64 policemen devote their energies to routine policing duties.

The absence of state protection has led farmers and ranchers to abandon their lands. For instance, continuous harassment by Arabs from the village of Tuba Zangaria forced Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi just east of Rosh Pinna to abandon 4,000 dunams (400 hectares) of land. Neighboring Kibbutz Amiad abandoned 13,000 dunams. Upper Nazareth is poised to abandon 20,000 dunams. The police refuse to even escort Upper Nazareth's Mayor Shimon Gafsou to threatened areas.

In the South, the situation is no different. Illegal Beduin squatters from the Taarbiya tribe that migrated to Israel from Sinai have gone to war against the Omer Local Council for trying to build a new neighborhood on land they illegally seized. They have shot at contractors, attacked police escorts. They burned down an electrical transformer station, leaving the area with no electricity for over a week, and then burned down a replacement station.

Omer Council Chairman Pini Badash has been the target of repeated attacks. Badash bought an airplane to document the illegal construction as part of his efforts to force the state to act. The Beduin burned his plane. They burned his wife's car in front of her and have repeatedly threatened to kill him.

LIKE THE farmers and local councils, the army has simply given up. The IDF has abandoned training areas throughout the North and South. For instance, the Nevetim Air Force base has abandoned 17,000 dunams stolen by Beduin. According to the Comptroller's Report, 220-250 families have squatted on the land and built approximately 800 illegal buildings. Between 2004 and 2008, there was a 53% increase in the number of illegally built structures.

Rather than defend its bases and the surrounding areas, the IDF has limited the movement of its own officers. The IAF has prohibited its fighter pilots (!) from traveling alone on the highway linking Tel Arad with Beersheba via the Shoket junction. Due to repeated shooting attacks on Jewish-owned vehicles, the pilots who protect our skies are required to travel in convoys of no less than four vehicles.

Just as its grantees played a lead role in the formation of the UN's Goldstone Commission and the drafting of its defamatory accusations against Israel, organizations supported by the New Israel Fund have played a large role in abetting the Israeli Arab theft of state lands. NIF- and EU-supported groups like Adallah, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Arab Villages, Um Batin and The Steering Committee for Planning and Protection of Arab Rights in the Negev have waged a political and legal assault on Israel to prevent the state from protecting itself and its citizens from Beduin and Arab land crimes.

Cowed by the twin forces of the Red-Green alliance, successive governments have tried to solve the problem by buying off the Arabs. The Olmert government built a village for the Taarbiya Beduin outside of Omer and gave each family NIS 180,000 to leave the illegal structures they had built on state land and accept free houses. Most agreed to relocate, but the 50 families who remained in place stepped up their assaults on Omer while demanding to receive ownership rights for the land they stole.

Just this past Sunday the cabinet unanimously approved a multi-year program to transfer NIS 800 million to 12 Beduin and Arab communities. The government touted the move as a "stimulus plan."

LUCKILY FOR Israel, the leadership vacuum created by successive governments is beginning to be filled today by a group of law abiding, idealistic young Israelis. The New Israeli Guardsman is a voluntary organization formed two years ago by the sons and daughters of distressed farmers and ranchers.

Yoel Zilberman was an officer in one of the IDF's elite commando units who got tired of watching his father - a farmer at Moshav Tzipori in the Western Galilee - despair as Arab gangs from surrounding villages cut his fences, stole his livestock and wrecked his crops. During his furloughs, Zilberman began carrying out night time patrols of his father's fields and repeatedly intercepted thieves as they infiltrated his land.

Over time, Zilberman realized that it wasn't enough for him to guard his father's land. His efforts just deflected the problem onto his neighbors. So he organized his friends, the sons and daughters of other farmers in the area, and formed the New Israeli Guardsmen, named after the original Guardsmen - the first Jewish self-defense organization in the Land of Israel in the modern era, which was formed a hundred years ago.

The New Israeli Guardsmen - which today operates throughout the Galilee and the Negev - fields more than 650 volunteers who devote up to 20 days a year to guarding land or mending vandalized farm equipment and fences.

Recognizing that the long-term solution to the problem is to increase the public's dedication to classic Zionist ideals of Jewish control over the Land of Israel, in addition to building and manning guard posts, the Guardsmen organize courses and lectures on Jewish history, Zionism, Jewish philosophy and other relevant topics at their guard posts for the general public.

Next year, 30 young men carefully vetted from a pool of 300 volunteers will receive a yearlong deferral of their military service to serve with the Guardsmen. They will be split into three groups of 10 and man three guard posts in the Galilee and the Negev. Each guard station controls between 5,000 and 20,000 dunams. In addition to their guard duties, the young men will receive agricultural training and study Jewish history, Talmud, philosophy and Arab history. Zilberman hopes that the program will inspire its participants to choose farming as their vocation after they finish their army service.

The Guardsmen operate on a shoestring budget scraped together from private donors. Contingent on raising the necessary funds, the group intends to increase its corps of volunteers tenfold by 2013. If it meet its goals, 6,000 volunteers and 300 national service program members will operate from 30 guard stations in the Galilee and the Negev and protect between 400,000 and 600,000 dunams of state land. They also hope to reach out to Jews in the Diaspora and encourage them to come to Israel and volunteer for the Guardsmen, to bring them closer to the story and fate of the State of Israel.

Zilberman believes that the success of the Guardsmen will empower the state to take the necessary action to enforce Israel's laws and so defeat the strategic threat posed by the radicalization of the Israeli Arab sector. And he is probably right. At any rate, it is all but certain that the government could take no action without the Guardsmen.

In light of the growing force of the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist, no government in Jerusalem will act unless it feels it has strong and stable backing from a mobilized citizenry. For instance, it is hard to imagine how Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could have defended Jerusalem as stalwartly as he did during his trip to Washington this week if he hadn't known that the public is with him.

By the same token, the state will only enforce its laws without prejudice when it is certain that the public will rally behind it. Our leaders need to know that the public will stand behind them when the New Israel Fund grantees collaborate with the international Left and the Islamic Movement to demonize Israel as racist for protecting the property rights of the state and its citizens.

Israel, like all democracies, is only as strong as its citizens. What organizations like the New Israeli Guardsmen show is that Israel's citizens are strong. We are willing to bear the burdens of a free people. As Pessah, the Jewish festival of freedom, approaches, we must support their endeavors and demand that our leaders follow their example.

How to contribute to the New Israeli Guardsmen

Comment by Caroline Glick:

If you were inspired by the story of the New Israeli Guardsmen (Hashomer Hahadash) and would like to support their efforts, here is the information you need to contribute.

US citizens may make tax exempt contributions to the Guardsmen through the Israel Independence Fund. Please stipulate on the check that the contribution is for the Shomer Hahadash (New Guardsmen).

The fund's mailing address:

The Israel Independence Fund
c/o NGN Capital
369 Lexington Avenue, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10017

If you would like to make a non-tax-deductible direct bank transfer contribution, please wire the money to Bank Yahav, branch 142, account number 5002 for the Shomer Hahadash.

You can also send checks in shekels directly to the organization as follows:

Make the checks out to:

Yoel Zilberman for the Shomer Hahadash
Moshav Tzippori, Israel, 17910.

If you are Israeli and would like to make a tax exempt contribution, the group has made arrangements to accept such contributions. To get precise information please contact Yoel Zilberman at sando.shomer@gmail.com.

Thanks for your support for these important endeavors on behalf of Israel.

Caroline Glick: Obama's Jewish Defenders

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem.

Second, as Obama's advisors explained to The Atlantic, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima.

It is a startling turn of events. Obama of course was elected to the presidency with the overwhelming support of the American Jewish community. Part of that support - which netted him 78 percent of the Jewish vote -- was based on his repeated assertion that he is absolutely committed to Israel's security.

Obama's expressed desire to overthrow the democratically elected government of Israel stands in contrast to his refusal to acknowledge the basic illegitimacy of the Iranian regime he seeks to appease. That government is founded on last June's stolen presidential elections which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power amidst massive opposition from the Iranian people. And of course, the Iranian regime which Obama coddles is publicly developing nuclear weapons with the declared purpose of destroying Israel; serves as the leading state sponsor of terrorism; and according to the US and British militaries is training al Qaida and Taliban fighters to kill US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In an interview with ABC News in January, Obama made clear that the transformative change he pledged to bring to America during the 2008 presidential campaign remained the goal of his administration. Indeed, he made clear that to enact the sort of unpopular, radical domestic and foreign policies he favors, he is willing to diminish his prospects for reelection. As he put it, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

To enact his deeply unpopular domestic agenda, Obama relies for support on labor unions, the leftist leadership of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill, the leftist media and pressure organizations like MoveOn.org. These organs work to demonize Republicans while threatening Democrats who are not leftists with defunding and primary challenges in order to coerce them to support Obama's radical domestic policies.

In light of the deep and widespread support Israel enjoys among Israelis, Obama has cobbled together a similar coalition against the Netanyahu government specifically and against a strong Israel generally. His coalition for weakening the US alliance with Israel is comprised of Leftist Israelis - and particularly the Kadima Party and the Israeli media on the one hand -- and leftist pro-Palestinian American Jewish groups on the other hand. Together, these Israeli and American Jewish groups provide political cover for Obama's onslaught against Israel and the US alike.

The Jerusalem planning board's decision was non-political. The board is staffed by professional urban planners, representatives of the nature reserves authority and other statutory bodies who convene to determine whether building schemes comport with law and building regulations or not. Its meetings never attract much attention.

As the Netanyahu government sought to understand how a routine meeting of the board became an international story, many officials alleged that Kadima had colluded with the Obama administration to exploit the board's decision to provoke a crisis in US-Israel relations. Kadima's purpose in this, it was argued, was to lower the public's support for Netanyahu.

These allegations have been supported by the fact that a week before Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel, Livni confidante and Kadima MK Yoel Hasson told Israeli Radio, "In the coming weeks we will see how messed up Netanyahu's relations with the Europeans and Americans are."

Furthermore, Makor Rishon's senior columnist Amnon Lord reported last Friday that Kadima heavyweight Haim Ramon met with one of Obama's senior Middle East advisors ahead of Biden's visit. He also pointed out that Livni's key political advisor Eyal Arad is also an advisor to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

Whether or not Kadima colluded with the Obama administration to cook up the crisis over building in Jerusalem, Livni and her cohorts were quick to loudly condemn Netanyahu for the decision - about which he was uninformed and regarding which he has no legal authority to intervene.

In condemning Netanyahu, Livni and her Kadima colleagues were energetically assisted by the Israeli media.

All the major commentators at all the major newspapers pounced on the story as a means to attack Netanyahu and side with the Obama administration. Prominent among these condemnations was Yediot Ahronot's senior commentator Shimon Shiffer. Ignoring Biden's long record in the Senate of rejecting every sanctions bill against Iran, and his fair-weathered support for Israel, Shiffer declared Biden the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the US Senate while lambasting Netanyahu for "insulting" this great friend of Israel by not preventing a meeting he didn't know about and had no authority to interfere with.

With the Israeli Left actively supporting Obama's onslaught against Netanyahu in Israel, Obama's Jewish American surrogates J Street and Americans for Peace Now denounced his critics at home. In time for AIPAC's annual policy conference this week in Washington, J-Street published a full page ad in The New York Times on Monday applauding Obama's condemnation of Israel and calling for the administration to dictate the terms of a "peace" deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

These Jewish American and Israeli forces provide cover not only for Obama to attack Israel, but even for anti-Semites to gain credibility for their vicious broadsides against the Jewish state. So it is that last week The Washington Post published an op-ed by Prof. Steve Walt, the co-author of the anti-Semitic tome The Israel and US Foreign Policy. In his article, Walt claimed that AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti Defamation League are anti-Israel and that Obama, J-Street and Americans for Peace Now are Israel's true friends. By inference, of course, Walt asserted that he too, is a great friend of Israel. And this is from a man who won his fame by claiming that Israel's Jewish American supporters operate in a conspiratorial, underhanded manner to influence US foreign policy in a way that harms US national security.

By proclaiming that Obama is pro-Israel, his Jewish supporters in Israel and the US invert reality. Their obvious intention is to use the jargon of supporting Israel to confuse, demoralize and disenfranchise Israel's actual supporters in the US while demonizing the majority of Israelis who believe that Obama is hostile to Israel and support Netanyahu in his rejection of Obama's pressure.

The great challenge of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, and of Israel's actual supporters in the US is to hold these mendacious voices in Israel and in the American Jewish community alike accountable for their actions. Otherwise, by pretending to be pro-Israel while attacking Israel's sovereign rights and actual supporters these forces will do more than simply destabilizing the democratically elected government of Israel. They will undermine the foundations of the US-Israel alliance and endanger the security of the Jewish state and the wellbeing of the American Jewish community.

Originally published in The Jewish Press.

Posted on March 28, 2010 at 4:15 PM

Sarah Palin: Peace Not Possible if Iran Not Sanctioned

Peace Not Possible if Iran Escapes Real Sanctions

GI Note: Please take note of Israeli flag behind Mrs. Palin's desk before she was nominated as VP candidate and USA-Israel lapel pin she wore at recent Nashville Tea Party.

This is a meaningful week for so many of us. As millions of Christians and Jews celebrate this Holy Week, it's appropriate to reflect on developments in the Holy Land.

Israel faces a nuclear threat from Iran that grows every day. Today we learned that the CIA has concluded that Iran already has the capability and the know-how to build nuclear weapons.

While President Obama once said a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable," after more than a year in office it's sobering to have to acknowledge that his administration has made no progress in implementing "crippling" sanctions on Iran, let alone halting Iran's nuclear program. Even the rhetoric moved in the wrong direction – recently the administration downgraded their call for "crippling" sanctions to sanctions that "bite."

Shockingly, as we learned last week, these "biting" sanctions will no longer include actions that could actually change Iran's behavior, including limiting Iran's access to international capital markets and banking services or closing air space and waters to Iran's national air and shipping lines.

So the issue is not when the so-called sanctions will come (President Obama promised them in "weeks" today) but whether they will even "nibble." And while the Obama administration was more than willing to use every parliamentary trick in the book to ram its government health care takeover through Congress, conversely, it has worked hard to stall bipartisan efforts to pass the Iran Sanctions Act.

Many, many Americans and our allies know that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the consequences will be catastrophic for our interests in the Middle East, and we want our government to do everything in its power to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes.

We foresee a regional nuclear arms race beginning as other countries seek their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves from Iran. Nuclear non-proliferation efforts would be over.

The U.S. and our allies in the international community would be shown to be impotent – after long claiming that Iranian nuclear weapons could not and would not be tolerated. And Israel would face the gravest threat since its creation. Iran's leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, the mullahs would be in a position to launch a Second Holocaust.

Iran continues to develop long range missiles. Its missiles can reach Israel and Europe right now and in time they will be able to reach US territory.

This issue is the most serious security challenge facing the U.S. in the region. Yet just as the Obama administration inexplicably gives up on imposing crippling sanctions on Iran, it's taken an uncompromising hard line against one country in the Middle East: Israel. On his recent visit to Washington, the Israeli Prime Minister was treated like an unwelcome guest, as shown by White House actions such as refusing to be photographed with Israel's Prime Minister.

Public demands for concessions have been made of the Israelis while the Palestinians add ever more conditions to their participation in peace talks, and those in the administration that dare to argue for looking at these policies through the lens of Israel's security needs are subject to slanderous attacks from "senior administration officials." The Obama administration has their priorities exactly backwards; we should be working with our friend and democratic ally to stop Iran's nuclear program, not throwing in the towel on sanctions while treating Israel like an enemy.

In a week when events in the Holy Land thousands of years ago are on the minds of millions, we would all do well to include Israel's security in our prayers as we encourage our government to do all it can to ensure there is never a nuclear Iran able to threaten our interests or our allies.

- Sarah Palin

Caroline Glick: Sarah Palin's Friendship

From the GI Archives: Sarah Palin's Friendship
February 12, 2010, 10:40 AM

US President Barack Obama is an inept, incompetent leader. More than his failure to pass his domestic agenda on health care and global warming despite his Democratic Party's control over both houses of Congress, Iran's announcement on Thursday that it is a nuclear power and has the capacity to produce weapons-grade uranium is a testament to Obama's feckless incompetence. Even his most ardent supporters are admitting this.

Take The New York Times. In a news analysis Thursday of Obama's failure to prevent Iran from advancing with its nuclear program, David Sanger wrote that for the US president, the last year has been "a year in which little in his dealings with Iran has gone the way that the White House expected."

Since Obama first announced his wish to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a Democratic presidential candidates' debate in the spring of 2008, the 44th US president's only strategy for dealing with Iran has been to appease its leaders. And as of Tuesday, he still believes that ingratiating himself with the regime is his best bet.

At his press conference Tuesday, Obama wouldn't admit that appeasement has failed, even as all of Iran's top leaders said they were expanding their illicit uranium enrichment activities. The most he would do was acknowledge that the regime's leaders "have made their choice so far, although the door is still open."

As for sanctions, well, Obama said it will take "several weeks" to put those together at the UN.

The distressing truth is that Obama's aim has never been to prevent Teheran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. His whole "sanctions-if-engagement-fails" strategy is just a ruse. The Obama administration has never intended to place serious sanctions on Iran. As one senior administration official told The New York Times, the purpose of the sanctions talk is to get the Iranians to agree to negotiate. As he put it, "This is about driving them back to negotiations, because the real goal here is to avoid war."

Got that? As far as Obama is concerned, Iran with nuclear weapons isn't the main concern. Israel using force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the main concern.

US PRESIDENTS have a far freer hand in foreign policy than they have in domestic affairs. A president's ability to implement his domestic agenda is constrained by Congress. Congress has much less of a say in foreign policy. But the main constraining factor for a US president in both domestic and foreign affairs is public opinion.

Over the past year, Obama failed to pass his domestic agenda even though he enjoyed governing majorities in both houses of Congress, because the public opposed his agenda. So, too, if the public is able to express its opposition to his foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Israel and Iran, he will be unable to sustain it.

To date, in light of his sinking approval ratings, the main thing Obama has had going for him is that since the presidential election, his political opponents have lacked a leader capable of uniting his opponents around an alternative path. Over the past week, that leader may have emerged.

On Saturday, former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave the keynote address at the Tea Party Movement convention in Nashville, Tennessee. As she did in the presidential campaign, Palin electrified her audience in Nashville by credibly channeling the populist impulses of American voters. In her signature line she asked, "So how's that hopey changey stuff working out for ya?"

Palin excoriated Obama on his handling of US foreign policy. Among other things, she noted that a year into his quest to appease dictators, America's international standing is in shambles. "Israel, a friend and a critical ally, now questions the strength of our support," she added.

Palin bellowed that on issues of foreign policy, there is no room for self-delusion. As she put it, "National security, that's the one place where you've got to call it like it is." And then, "We need a foreign policy that distinguishes America's friends from her enemies and recognizes the true nature of the threats that we face."

If her address wasn't enough to convince Americans - and specifically American Jews - that Palin thinks supporting Israel and standing up to Iran are the keys to US national security, then there was her interview on Fox News Sunday. Asked how Obama can win reelection in 2012, Palin responded, "Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do."

And if that still isn't enough, there is her lapel pin. The politician who leads the populist opposition to Obama decided to make her most important speech since the 2008 election wearing a pin featuring the US flag and the Israeli flag.

Palin, who is considering a run in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, is using her public platforms to reassemble the coalition of security hawks, social conservatives and blue collar workers that propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. Her support for Israel serves her in building support among both security hawks and social conservatives.

Unlike Obama's empty protestations of support for Israel, Palin's support is obviously heartfelt and therefore will not diminish while Obama remains in office. And as Palin becomes stronger, her ability to influence the US debate in a manner that constrains Obama's freedom to intimidate Israel into allowing Iran to become a nuclear power will rise.

DISTURBINGLY, IN spite of Palin's extraordinary support for Israel, the American Jewish community overwhelmingly rejects her. As Jennifer Rubin noted in her article, "Why Jews hate Palin," in Commentary magazine, Jews disapproved of Sen. John McCain's choice of Palin as his running-mate by a 54 to 37 percent majority. The sneering broadsides published against Palin by leading American Jewish writers are legion.

In her article, Rubin gives a number of reasons for American Jews' rejection of Palin.

On the one hand, American Jews, who overwhelmingly self-identify as Democrats and disproportionately identify as liberals, oppose Palin for the same reason they oppose all social-conservative Republicans - because she isn't a liberal Democrat. What makes American Jews' rejection of Palin unique is its emotional potency. Rubin argues that the visceral hatred that many American Jews express towards Palin is effectively an issue of class hatred, or snobbery. They are four generations removed from the sweatshops where their great grandparents labored on New York's Lower East Side. And they don't like this woman with a funny accent who went to University of Idaho, guts fish and shoots moose.

This may be true. But if it is, American Jews might want to rethink their loyalty to their social class. As the demonstrations against Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine, against former prime minister Ehud Olmert at University of Chicago, against Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon at Oxford, as well as the disinvitation of Prof. Benny Morris at Cambridge and the celebrity of Harvard's anti-Semitic Prof. Steve Walt show clearly, the bastions of intellectual elitism where American Jews feel most at home have become the repositories of the most virulent hatred of Jews in America and the West today. Liberal standard bearers like Hollywood have had no compunction about giving prestigious awards to movies like Paradise Now, which glorified murderers of Jews in a manner unmatched since the days of Leni Riefenstahl. Elite media outlets like The Atlantic Monthly are only too happy to publish the rantings of newly fashionable haters like Andrew Sullivan.

Liberal Democratic Jewish voices, like Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic, are aware that there is a problem with the rampant anti-Semitism in their camp. And they fear that as a consequence, American Jews may take a second look at Palin with her Israeli flag lapel pin. As Wieseltier wrote this week, "A day does not go by when I do not do my humble part to prevent such a transformation [of American Jewry from liberals to conservatives] from coming to pass."

THE FACT of the matter is that for Israel's sake such a transformation can't happen quickly enough. It isn't that American Jews have to change their social agenda, but they must recognize that today, sadly, there is not meaningful bipartisan support for Israel in the US Congress. The 54 lawmakers who wrote Obama a letter last month asking him to force Israel to open up Gaza's borders were all Democrats. Opposition to passing sanctions against Iran, and opposition to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations, are only politically significant among Democrats.

In her speech at the Tea Party Conference, Palin said, "We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern."

The fact of the matter is that Obama came to many of his anti-Israel sensibilities through his professor friends - Rashid Khalidi, John Mearshimer, Samantha Power, William Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn and, of course, the late Edward Said. Americans interested in national security - and particularly American Jews who support Israel - should be the first ones to second Palin's statement.

Sarah Palin's emergence as the mouthpiece of populist opposition to Obama presents Israel's supporters - and particularly Israel's Jewish supporters - with an extraordinary opportunity and an extraordinary challenge. Palin's coupling of support for Israel with her populist domestic agenda marks the first time that support for Israel has been treated as a core, populist issue. The opportunity this presents for American Jews who care about Israel is without precedent.

But of course, to make the best use of this opportunity, American Jews who support Israel have to disappoint Wieseltier. They have to acknowledge that the Left has rejected their cause and increasingly, rejects them.

Obama's failure to prevent Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program, and his stubborn refusal to support an Israeli move to deny Iran the ability to threaten Israel and global security as a whole, place Israel and core US national security interests in unprecedented jeopardy. His fellow Democrats' willingness to support him as he maintains this perilous course means that the Democratic ship has abandoned Israel, and strategic sanity.

Palin's future in politics is unknowable. But what is clear enough is that today hers is the strongest single American voice opposing Obama's foreign policy and the loudest advocate for supporting Israel and denying Iran nuclear weapons. For this she deserves the thanks and support of American Jewry.