Keep the aid flowing

By Ellen Ratner
With Hamas' decisive win in Palestine last week, the racket of celebratory gunfire and cheers coming from Gaza was matched by only by the wailing and weeping coming from Western capitals. Summarizing this reaction was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who pronounced the victory a ''very, very, very bad result."



Some tried to bury their disappointment behind the self-justifying blather that their own "let's-shoot-our-way-to-a-democratic-Middle-East" policy has wrought. "The people are demanding honest government," declared President Bush, struggling to make lemons into lemonade. "And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories ... There's something healthy about a system that does that."


Sure, Mr. President. That's why the next thing you did was to announce that the United States won't be sending dime one to those who brought about "honest government." Bush and Secretary Rice are now persuading the European Union to do likewise – and based on initial reactions, it won't be a hard sell. Here's a contrary opinion: That would be a Big Mistake in a region where for decades all parties have been inflicting Big Mistakes on their own peoples, the region and the world.

First, you should know a bit of history. In the often la-la land of Israeli-Palestinian politics, where it seems that the less you pay attention, the more you know, peace – real peace, in the form of diplomatic recognition, treaties and no wars – is rarely made by peaceful people. Indeed, it's usually the men everyone thinks of as "hardliners" who show up on the White House lawn or the signing conference in Norway, or Cairo or Jerusalem.

Remember former Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin, who came to his office via Jabotinsky, Irgun, and Likud? He made peace (1979) with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the former aid to the ultra-hardliner Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat participated in many and actually led one war against Israel (1973) and as a younger man, was reported to have kept a picture of Hitler in his office.

Of course, Chairman Yasser Arafat, the man reputed to have invented modern terrorism, took a break from hijacking airplanes to show up in Oslo and sign peace agreements with former Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin, remembered today as a peace-loving, kindly old man, but who in his military prime was chief of staff to the IDF during the Six Day War (1967) that devastated the Arab countries surrounding Israel. And lest we forget, as most of never recognized to begin with, there was the big, bad "Likudnick" Arial Sharon, whose unilateral withdrawal from Gaza probably did more for Palestinian statehood than anything done lately by any single Palestinian.

My point is that if history is any guide, at some point – and knowing Mideast politics as I do, to guess precisely when would be an act of foolishness – top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal may soon be traipsing over the Green Line to meet with his Israeli counterparts. Contrary to rumor, it is the Middle East and not Washington, D.C., where politicians are famous for flip-flopping.

Besides a history which teaches us to assume nothing, there are other good reasons to keep the money spigots flowing to the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the most important of these is a four-letter word spelled I-R-A-N. Currently, the West, mostly the European Union and United States, annually pour some $1 billion into the territories. If that money is cut-off, Hamas will go elsewhere for the dough, and elsewhere is likely to be Tehran.

Thus, Hamas's partnership of convenience with the Iranians is likely to become one of intimacy. This would have the effect of moving Iran into a "front-line" state in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – and thus transforming the Holocaust Denying and genocidal ravings of religious fanatic (did I mention president of Iran?) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into real policy. And that is a very, very bad idea.


Cutting off Hamas is something that the West can do at any time. Destroying Hamas – and re-imposing control over Gaza and the West Bank – is something that the Israelis can do at any time. And one of the dirty little secrets about this election is that everyone, including Hamas, expected that Arafat's Fatah party would win, or at least win enough to require a governing coalition. What nobody expected was that Fatah would lose big enough to leave Hamas in virtual control of the Palestinian government. In short, if insider reports are correct, the biggest shock of Hamas' win came to Hamas itself.

That means that the ultimate outsider has now been stuck with a ward heeler's job – picking up the garbage, delivering services, running the schools, etc. Whining and threats don't run governments; and Hamas knows that if it doesn't perform, the Palestinian people will vote them out for somebody else. So now is not the time to stop funding the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, as the suicide-bombing, toxic-rhetoric spouting Hamas is going to be the first to discover, it's time to, as the old song said, "Give peace a chance."

Uncle Sam vs. Google

By Ellen Ratner
Uncle Sam vs. Google

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Letter to the governor of Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Assembly, Nov. 11, 1755, attributed to Benjamin Franklin.



Once again, I find myself writing about issues that transcend partisanship and that go directly to the heart of our shared Americanism – what this word means and why this generation and those of our ancestors valued it so highly that they died by the collective millions to preserve it for themselves and bequeath it to those rarely mentioned in our own time – our "posterity."

The challenges to our liberties posed by our technologies and the government's attempt to limit the first by exploiting the second often unite the left and the right. This week, an issue arose that perfectly highlights how this process works.

This week Attorney General Alberto Gonzales petitioned a federal court to enforce a White House subpoena that would require Web-searcher Google to provide, for one week (which week hasn't been specified), queries involving search words that might have been used by those trying to access child porn sites. Moreover, the government demanded that Google produce 1 million Web addresses. Google has this information because in an effort to attract advertisers, it retains a history of both the searchers and the searched for long periods of time. Civil libertarians of both parties and all persuasions are alarmed at this development.

This effort has international implications. One British blogger, who attempted to investigate a local sex offender by "Googling" the offender's name and the school wherein the acts took place, now notes ruefully that, "That's me – done for."

The scourge of child pornography, in which innocent children and emotionally sick consumers are exploited by heinous criminals of the worst sort, is, next to Osama bin Laden, probably the least popular cause in America. Who could possibly object to using whatever means the government has to discover and punish the perpetrators of these crimes, and possibly rescue the very children who are exploited? In this sense, the government's position is beguiling – soothing even.

After all, certainly no law-abiding American has anything to hide. No decent person of goodwill would withhold any means necessary to stop the epidemic of child pornography. If the police came to my door and persuaded me that a search of my house was necessary to prevent a major crime, I would welcome them inside, fix them a cup of coffee, and assist with the search, warrant or no warrant.

And therein lays an awful trap. If Google is compelled to yield on this issue, in the future there will be other issues – for the most revealing "trips" we moderns take are usually done from the comfort of one's office, through the keyboard, on the screen and into the Internet. In complete innocence, and as is our right as native-born Americans, we use the Internet for information, to learn, to see for ourselves. This can lead to some pretty unsavory things.

I have sometimes gone to the most disgusting racist websites for information. For the same reason, I have visited the websites of terrorists who wish us harm; to websites of governments with abysmal human-rights records; I have sometimes tapped in the wrong Web address only to face the ugliest pornographic images. Once I needed some text from Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and located it on the Web. Does any of this make me a racist, a war criminal, a pornographer, or a Nazi? I don't think so. And I don't think my experience is much different from most of my Internet-savvy readers.

It is only short steps from investigating child pornography to terrorists, to other types of criminal activities, to tax returns, to politically unpopular points of view, to other, non-criminal personal matters which some future government might conclude is helpful in some way. Two things should be understood – governments will always "do what they have to do" to increase security; private corporations will always "do what they must" to increase advertising revenues, which in Google's case means retaining these data records for long periods of time.

Given the interests of government and corporations, I will make two recommendations. The first is that by law, Google must be compelled to disclose to users what its data retention policies are. If users decline, so be it; if enough users decline, then Google and its competitors will change these policies in the interests of civil liberties. The second is that the types of data stored and the period that it may be stored should likewise be limited. This is not anti-government or anti-corporation. It is pro-citizen.

It also reminds me of the profound and farseeing wisdom of so many of the early figures in our country's history. President Andrew Jackson, in his farewell address of March 4, 1837, implored Americans that "you must remember, my fellow citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing." Wherever old Andy Jackson is today, he is, as he was, truly "wired.

Stop the hearings

By Ellen Ratner
"[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate . . . Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States."

– U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2



When it came to evaluating nominees to the federal bench, these words – "Advice and Consent of the Senate" – used to be understood by all senators and most ordinary citizens. A candidate for a judgeship would first be proposed by the president and then investigated and publicly questioned by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under our Constitution, the Senate is also given "advice and consent" authority for other officers and functions, such as ambassadors or treaties.

But federal judges are special and this power represents an awesome responsibility – unlike other constitutional officers, a judge holds power for life, subject only to good behavior. In short, a federal judge is the closest thing to a monarch that the Framers of the Constitution ever considered.


Do you think that the United States Senate properly discharged its "Advice and Consent" function this week during the hearings on Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court? I ask this question not as a partisan (although I vehemently oppose Judge Alito's nomination) but as an American.

I have heard numerous complaints about these hearings from all across the political spectrum, and sadly, I have reached the conclusion that the Senate Judiciary Committee should simply stop – stop the nonsense, stop these Kabuki dances that pose as serious inquiries into a candidate's fitness for the bench, and simply suspend future hearings, which have become an insult to the American people, the nominees, the president and probably to many senators. Instead, the president should propose a candidate, the Judiciary Committee should be given 90 days to make a recommendation, and if recommended, the nomination should go directly to the Senate floor for an up or down vote.

Consider this week's Alito highlights: The judge's wife fled the hearing room in tears. Sens. Arlen Specter and Ted Kennedy exchanged hissy fits over whether or not to go into executive session to consider subpoenaing documents that actually never had to be subpoenaed. And finally, anyone who watched every second of the hearing, if hypnotized, given truth serum and then tortured wouldn't be able to explain where Judge Alito stood on the only issues that mattered – a woman's right to choose and whether or not he'd support the president's right to torture people and diminish their civil rights. Judge Alito, a product of Princeton and Yale Law School is no dummy – he took good notes during the Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Roberts hearings, and learned the law of the Senate – if asked, don't tell.

The Senate operated on the exact opposite principle – tell all and ask nothing. Most senators used the vast majority of their question time (over 70 percent in some cases) not to ask any questions, but to tell us everything. We learned about Joe Biden's family background and John Cornyn's feelings on abortion; about Ted Kennedy's fears and anxieties and that Lindsey Graham is courtly and courteous to women. The senators – inheritors of the tradition of Clay, Webster, Sumner, Lodge, Vandenberg, Johnson, inter alia in fact proved that they have been mostly influenced by Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams and, at least while Specter and Kennedy clawed each other, Jerry Springer.

Unfortunately, this is continuing evidence of the Senate's decline as an institution. Gone are the great debates over war and peace as the Senate consents to foolishly broad resolutions (with matching foolish debate) that enfranchise presidents to grab powers without any advance public discussion. For example, shouldn't the Senate have demanded that if President Bush wanted large powers to wage a war on terror, that he ask for a formal Declaration of War? That way, hawks could have made their case and doves could have made their case, a vote taken, and the public at least enlightened on the question of "why we fight." Instead, the Senate shirked, the White House grabbed, and we now inhabit a twilight of not-war-not-peace.

And it is the same with Senate consideration of federal judicial nominees. They've become so partisan that the nominees keep their mouths shut while the senators preen for the cameras as they await instructions from the special interests who help pay their campaign bills – anti-abortion groups, pro-abortion groups, pro-civil rights groups, anti-ACLU types, evangelicals, atheists, whatever. Meanwhile, no insight is gained, no enlightenment shed, and nothing is learned.

It's no longer Advice and Consent. To suffer through this buffoonery is now Advice and Relent. Only later, after intellectually dishonest nominees slip through this fraudulent process, does it become Advice and Repent. Stop the hearings.

Sharon's journey

By Ellen Ratner
Occasionally in human affairs, the loss of a single individual can end one epoch, begin another, or unsettle a world. During these times we momentarily gasp as if suddenly staring into an abyss and wonder: What does the loss mean? What will follow? What are we to do?



The world has arrived at just such a moment with the passing from public life of Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon. While I join with others of good will in praying for Sharon's recovery from a massive stroke, it seems safe to conclude that his public life is over. In times like these, analysts, pundits, opinion makers and journalists should aspire to be equal to the occasion and provide their audiences with a non-partisan analysis of the situation and some thoughts about the future.


Sharon's political journey certainly did not end as it began. Sharon began his career in the 1940s with membership in several underground Zionist organizations. With Israel's statehood (1948) these organizations were phased into Israel's regular army. Sharon followed, beginning his rise in the Israeli Defense Force. He balanced military life with outside studies, enrolling in Hebrew University to learn about Middle East history and culture.

But after his return to the army (1952-53) he became commander of the notorious Unit 101, a commando force that specialized in military retaliation against Arab countries as well as Palestinians. This unit was accused of targeting Arab civilians, and thus began the association of Arial Sharon with the dark side of Israeli politics – an architect of the Likud Party and the settlement by Israelis of lands captured in the 1967 war, a man whose tough rhetoric was often matched by tough deeds, which included the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and more recently the building of a security wall along disputed land as well as the targeted assassinations of Palestinian "militants" or "terrorists," depending on your politics.

But this is only part of Arial Sharon's story. After overwhelmingly defeating Ehud Barak in 2001, Sharon began to deal with the Second Intifada and its implications for the security interests and long-term survival of Israel. He quickly concluded that Israel had no future in maintaining wasteful settlements in the Gaza Strip. He proceeded to show rare courage in defying his own Likud Party and unilaterally evacuating Israeli settlers from Gaza.

Many on the Israeli and international left, including yours truly, had for years been calling for just this move. In 2001, no one, including yours truly, would have predicted that it would be Arial Sharon who would risk his political career and actually do it. By doing it, he administered a strong dose of humility to pundits everywhere, including yours truly. In politics, fierce partisanship often obscures the inner depths of leaders who are otherwise demonized. Some leaders, like Sharon, demonstrate the ability to overcome lifelong prejudices and grow as times change; others, like Yasser Arafat, who seemed to cling to an increasingly dysfunctional revolutionary paradigm all of his life, never demonstrated the same ability to change.

Perhaps the most significant feature about Arial Sharon's amazing growth is the legacy he leaves unfulfilled – he was literally just days away from submitting to the Israeli Knesset the first list of candidates for his Kadima Party, a new organization he founded that held the promise of phased dismantling of West Bank settlements. Polls suggest that the Israeli people overwhelming continue to favor this approach.



Where to from here? As most snapshots of objects in motion, the picture suggests both the best of times and the worst of times. The Iraq War has, at least for the short-term, exercised a destabilizing effect on the region. The Palestinian Authority now presides over chaos in Gaza, and the radical Hamas is poised to win elections there. Yet Lebanon is democratizing, with faint hints of the same from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt.

At the same time, and for the first time since Adolph Hitler's Third Reich, a major nation-state – Iran – is now represented by an official Holocaust denier who has publicly pledged the destruction of Israel. Given Iran's nuclear ambitions and Israel's likely possession of the same, this is not promising.

Yet I remain optimistic. The Israeli public has not only embraced the policies of Sharon-the-hawk, but has also embraced his ideas of withdrawal from occupied lands. All serious observers (including me) agree that such a withdrawal is a necessary precondition for peace and the establishment of a real Palestinian state, a goal embraced by President Bush. It is my opinion that any Israeli politician of any stripe will have to conform to the voting public's desires – and Israel's public wants peace.

Let us hope and pray.

My 2006 predictions

By Ellen Ratner
First, some words of thanks as the old year departs. To the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, I think you heroic young people deserve a lot better than what your political commanders – many of whom never wore uniform except at prep school, have dished out to you. Nevertheless, I am grateful for your service and idealism.



To my readers – a patient lot, sometimes irritated with me, but almost always willing to debate the issues as issues – I only wish the political discourse between our two parties was as intelligent.

Finally, to Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily – I doubt we would even agree on what time of day it is. Nevertheless, as publisher of WND, you represent the best of American journalism, allowing for healthy debate between all points of view. In that sense, WND is the perfect one-stop political-opinion-and-news shop.

OK, my conscience unburdened, let's get to my 2006 predictions:

Karl Rove, a descendent of a long line of stealthy, skillful and very lucky cats, is about to use up his "ninth political life" and be indicted by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald over the Valerie Plame leak affair. Politics has become a little like gambling at Las Vegas – ultimately, the odds favor the house, and if you stay at the table long enough, you'll lose everything.

Contrary to his own wishful thinking, Sen. John Forbes Kerry, D-Fantasy Island, will not be a front-runner in the 2008 presidential election. The past is prologue – the Democrats haven't re-nominated a loser since Adlai Stevenson ran in 1952 and 1956 against Dwight Eisenhower. Twice bitten, shy for eternity, if I may paraphrase the old adage.

Mark Warner from Virginia may become the Democratic front-runner. While the current Democrat trio of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Howard Dean keeps liberals like me happy, it doesn't play too well in Peoria. But Warner has mastered the Bill Clinton game of tacking convincingly to the center – without Bill Clinton's political and personal baggage. In short, Warner has played very well in Peoria, and will likely be invited for a return engagement. Plus, he's a governor, and Americans historically prefer their presidents to be ex-governors.

Judge Samuel Alito, to the dismay of people like me, will be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. While this will unbalance the court for decades – abortion-rights advocates and civil libertarians had better fasten their seat belts (while the NRA and Bush administration can unfasten theirs) – it will happen in 2006. Yech!

Sen. John McCain, R-Self-Love, will write yet another book this year as he seeks to increase his public's adoration. (To the old adage "You can't be too rich or too thin," I'll add the words "or too adored.") Moreover, if Bush thinks McCain's been a pain in the derrier until now, 2006 will be the senator's year to become the president's vertigo, as he seeks to differentiate himself in advance of the 2008 election. That means sticking it to the president on any and every issue that he can.

Congress will remain under Republican control after the 2006 mid-year elections. I don't like this, but hiding from facts usually won't change them. The hard truth that Democrats must confront is that the tactics of trio Pelosi-Reid-Dean, while pressuring Bush (thankfully) to start bringing our boys and girls home from Iraq, was done in such a ham-fisted way as to make the president look like a patriot and the Democrats somehow look un-American. It's too bad, because just like the phony label "compassionate conservative," Bush will once again exploit a Democratic idea – drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq – for Republican advantage. For Democrats and libs like me, that means focusing our hopes on the 2008 presidential election.

Speaking of which, Hillary Clinton's prospects for the Democratic nomination are likely to become a lot murkier in 2006. That Hillary-haters from the right could be expected to attack her was always a given. But now, by tacking "right" on Iraq she has antagonized the anti-war left – a group of political warriors as committed, idealistic and well trained in "guerilla theater" as any.

Because of the new information age we live in, Hillary's problems may only get worse. In the old days, the Democrats could tack left to get the nomination and then tack right to win the presidency, just as Republicans tacked right and then left. But the Internet's memory is forever, and with the number of political blogs out there keeping score, what one says in a primary is likely to be used against one in the general election. As I like to say, "the more things change, the more they really change."

And with that, I'll stop and let 2006 roll in and do the talking. A happy, prosperous and healthy New Year to you all.