by Scott Italiaander

I have a problem with Caroline Glick, columnist and deputy managing editor at The Jerusalem Post. It seems that whenever I get a brilliant insight into foreign affairs and set about to share it with the world, she beats me to the punch. Her style is direct, and utterly lacking in sarcasm or gratuitous emotion; by comparison my prose can be flowery and pretentious. Often when Caroline has written about something she has done it so directly and clearly that that there is nothing left to be said on the subject. Darn her.

Caroline's focus, of course, is Israel, and she is now the senior Middle East fellow at Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C. (I believe she lives and works in Jerusalem, though). The great thing about Caroline is that she is focused almost entirely on the well being and security of the Jews of Israel, and her views are not colored by partisan allegiance or political sympathies. She is facile of intellect and determined in spirit, and is willing to gore whomever's ox needs to be gored.

Perhaps these traits were developed during the 1990s, during and after her work in the Ministry of Defense as coordinator of negotiations with the PLO.   Here is her account of what happened in the days following the murder of two teenage Israeli boys by Palestinian terrorist in 1995, as the Oslo process took on a life of its own:

They were each shot in the head and then, after they were dead, their throats were slit. They were killed on a Friday morning. I was sitting at a hotel in Zikhron Yaacov with the heads of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams as they laid out the schedule for the next week of talks when we got word of the killings.

On Sunday morning while I was driving up the coastal highway to Zikhron Yaacov, opponents of the Oslo process staged a creative demonstration.
A convoy of cars, buses and trucks drove up the highway at 20 miles an hour with signs reading, “Rabin, Peres, go slow.”

I was deeply moved by the demonstration. I cried the whole way to Zikhron. I was grateful to the protesters - who made me arrive an hour late at the talks. I was grateful to them for taking the time to show their loyalty to the memory of the young men – for maintaining the honor of our dead.

But when I got to the hotel, my tears were replaced by shock. Here, the heads of our delegation were livid at what they considered the chutzpa of the demonstrators for making us start our negotiations late. Uri Savir, then director general of the Foreign Ministry and head of our delegation, like the politicized IDF generals, apologized to the Palestinians for the inconvenience caused them by the demonstrators.

(speech by Caroline Glick delivered at the annual dinner of the Zionist Organization of America at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City December 11, 2005)

Since that time until today she has taken on leaders and apparatchiks of Labor, Likud and Kadima alike as well as the politicized IDF brass when she has believed that they are serving their own narrow interests rather than those of the of their citizens. Caroline did this to great effect in excoriating Ariel Sharon and the IDF politicized bureaucracy in their push to unilaterally “disengage” from Gaza last year. I imagine no one is less surprised than she is that the arrogance, corruption and cynicism of the political class and military establishment so apparent in the Gaza episode would lead to the Lebanon crisis less than a year later.

This week Caroline takes on the North Korea nuclear situation, and seamlessly weaves U.S. policy failures relative to the Hermit Kingdom into our missteps regarding Iran and the Palestinian Authority. While her most withering fire is reserved for Clinton’s shameless appeasement of both Kim Jong-Il and Yasser Arafat, the Bush administration comes under attack as well, particularly its relations with the Palestinian Authority. Here is how she describes the problem:

And as is the case with Iran and North Korea, the stubborn and ill-considered continuation of the Clinton administration's appeasement policy toward the PA during the Bush years has only exacerbated and escalated the threat posed by the PA to US national security interests and to the national security of US allies - first and foremost, of Israel http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CarolineBGlick/2006/10/10/historys_dangerous_repetition

Ms. Glick proceeds to describe how the Administration and in particular the State Department have a blind spot when it comes to PA prime minister Abbas, treating him as a moderate to be strengthened rather than the terrorist leader that he is.

The North Korea nuclear test is just the kind of event that can serve to remove the scales from our eyes, and show us the consequences of pursuing failed polices like negotiating with and appeasing leaders of criminal regimes or terrorist entities. The kind of event whose lessons, if properly learned, just might save 6,000,000 Jews, give or take.

Caroline Glick should be required reading for anyone who cares about Israel and the Jewish people. Someone once said that whatever happens in the world, “its all about the Jews.” Reading Caroline Glick, it is not hard to imagine that she thinks so, too.

I just wish she’d let me write what she’s thinking instead of the other way around.