Editor's Letter

No Pipe Dream

W

e talked for 30 minutes but historian and political
analyst Daniel Pipes' core message came quickly:
The civilized world is at war. And American Jews
are engaged on two distinct fronts: against Islamists who hate
the West and against Jew-haters who despise Zionism.
Pipes helped crystallize why there's something to the belief
that diplomacy doesn't end wars — victory by one side over
the other does. I'm not willing to scut-
tle hope that compromise won't resolve
America's war against Iraqi insurgents
or Israel's conflict with Palestinian
terrorists. But I understand that if you
don't win a war, you lose it by default.
"We need to win our war and Israel
needs to win its war:' Pipes said in a
candid conversation at a Southfield
restaurant during his Oct. 4-5 visit to
Metro Detroit. He gave StandWithUs/
Michigan-cosponsored public talks
at Wayne State University and the
University of Michigan.
Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East
Forum, often takes the radicalization of Islam and the world-
view of Islamist proponents to task. His definition of triumph
is unrelenting: "By winning, I mean imposing one's will on the
enemy and causing them to give up hope, causing them to see
their movement and their goals as forlorn and defeated — no
longer able to continue the fight."
As I listened, it hit me that the common enemy
is not terrorism, which is a tactic, or Islam, which
is a faith. It's radical Islam, which Pipes calls a
totalitarian political ideology. His disconcerting
drumbeat doesn't mean the Arab-Israeli conflict
can't be resolved. "It is conceivable,' he said.

president of the Palestinian Authority. As Pipes put it: "The
idea that Abbas is our ally, in some fashion working for our
goals, and has a vision that is consonant with that of ours,
is patently absurd. Everything about this individual and the
organization that he heads is in the opposite direction from
what we in the West look for."

Palestinian Intrigue
Don't bet on diplomacy weaving together the
threads of real peace, however.
Pipes foresees that either the Palestinians, both
Hamas and Fatah led, accept Israel's right to exist Daniel Pipe
and prosper, or the Israelis acquiesce to some
form of Palestinian rule and suffer the consequences. The first
option obviously is the best, but I think it'll take at least a gen-
eration before conditions are ripe for that. The Washington-
based Middle East Media Research Institute reported just last
week that the Hamas children's magazine Al Fateh continues
to incite to jihad, glorify terror, describe Jews as "murderers of
the prophets" and laud parents who encourage their sons to
kill Jews for Allah.
The second option just isn't practical. Israeli Jews either
would submit to the rule of terror mongers who want them
dead or would flee to accepting lands. Who really believes
these Jews would abandon Israel as it nears the 60th anniver-
sary of gaining statehood in the shadows of the Holocaust?
Pipes argues that the U.S. should stop aiding the Palestinian
Authority, saying there's little difference between Fatah and
Hamas; they share the ultimate goal of claiming Eretz Yisrael
[Land of Israel] as theirs.
In the same vein, Pipes said, Israel should wake up to the
reality of its off-again, on-again "negotiations" with Palestine
Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas, puppet

Study Up
If there's a ray of hope, it lies in the people of Gaza
reeling from the effects of the West's embargo
of Hamas and thus beginning to rue voting for
what is formally called the Islamic Resistance
Movement. But Hamas is not yet buckling from
the extreme pressure of sanctions.
Meanwhile, Jewish Detroit must better track radical Islam.
Says Pipes: "Law enforcement is cautious, academia neglects
the questions and the news media aren't focused on it."
Detroit Jewry should take the Chicago Jewish community's
lead and designate a local researcher to follow radical Islam.
There are enough local issues to send up red flags, starting
with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Locally sup-
ported CAIR continues to be under public scrutiny for its ties
to individuals and organizations associated with terror.
"The Jewish community is kind of in a fog," Pipes said as
we exchanged farewells. "We're not really aware."
We certainly aren't.

-

Why Help Us?
Extrapolating from our discussion, the Palestinians as a peo-
ple remain committed to believing they can achieve statehood
without forgoing aid, arms or land. If there's no risk to allay,
why should they acknowledge an avowed enemy? That, of
course, ignores the benefit of having an economically strong
and socially giving neighbor like Israel.
The negotiations since the ill-fated 1993 Oslo Accords have
exhilarated the Palestinians, imbuing them with an air of
optimism. "Unwittingly, the Israelis are enfranchising and
empowering the enemy," Pipes said. "The Israelis have con-
vinced themselves that by trying to negotiate, and America is
happy to go along, they are defanging the enemy — causing
them to lose interest. Rather, the Palestinians are far more
enraged today than they were at the bottom of their political
fortunes back in the early 1990s."
Compounding Israel's predicament is the likelihood of
Hamas and Fatah reuniting. The motivation exists — their
differing vision, personnel and tactics notwithstanding.
Historically, they have worked together and fought each other
cyclically.
"There's nothing to say that in a year or two,
they won't be back working together," Pipes said.
"They wish they were working together. They'd be
more effective if they were!"
He added, "The idea that Hamas is worse than
the PLO strikes me as insane."

0 : Do we as a community take radical Islam too
c2 lightly?
I— Ca
Z z Should we designate a researcher to track the
0 0 trends?
0 -

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October 18 a 2007

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