Jewish Current Issues

More on Hewitt at the RJC Dinner

Thank you to Power Line, HughHewitt.com, South Carolina Conservative, Random Jottings, Memeorandum, Ed Driscoll, Flash Report, and Road to the Middle Class for linking to yesterday’s post on Natan Sharansky and Hugh Hewitt at the Republican Jewish Coalition dinner at the Reagan Library.

The transcript of Hugh Hewitt’s speech in the post was an edited one, designed to preserve his points while making the excerpt short enough for readers to absorb quickly. But here is a video of the first 6 minutes and 40 seconds of the speech, unedited, which will enable you to appreciate the full flow of his argument:

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Why only 6 min, 40 seconds? Note to JCI Technical Staff: next time, re-charge the battery before the event. But even this short excerpt is worth viewing in its entirety.

Sharansky and Hewitt at the Annual RJC Dinner

Last year the speaker at the California dinner of the Republican Jewish Coalition was Ken Mehlman (then Chair of the Republican National Committee).  Mehlman recounted growing up in a Democratic family, devoted to helping the refuseniks in the Soviet Union, listening to their stories about how important Ronald Reagan’s words had been to them.  Melhman said he became not a “Reagan Democrat” but rather the first “Sharansky Republican.”

This year, the speaker at the dinner last Sunday at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, attended by some 600 people, was Natan Sharansky himself:

Sharansky’s speech looked back at the moral clarity that produced the fall of the Soviet Union, and forward through George W. Bush’s decision to attend the Prague dissidents conference and meet personally with every one of the dissidents from 17 countries who attended.  Standing before the group, he was living proof that a single individual could change the world.

Sharansky was followed by Hugh Hewitt, whose address was a masterful discussion of what he thinks will be the central issue in the coming election.  His speech began (after some eloquent words of praise of Sharansky) as follows:  

In 1978, when Mr. Sharansky was convicted wrongfully by an illegal regime, I was a graduating senior from Harvard, driving across the country to go to work for Richard Nixon in San Clemente. . .  [T]here are so many parallels between the election of 2008 and the election of 1980 that I observed from San Clemente, the Elba of America at the time. 

I had gone out to ghostwrite a book for President Nixon . . . called “The Real War.” . . . . 

It was, perhaps, in 1978-1979 the lowest point of the Cold War -- the point at which America seemed least likely to even win a stalemate. 

If you will recall, Cubans were throughout Africa and on the march; the Shah had fallen; shortly thereafter the Soviets would occupy Afghanistan; Americans were held hostage in Teheran; Mr. Sharansky was in the most infamous prison in the most dictatorial country in the world, on his way to exile eventually in Siberia.  The future looked very, very bleak indeed . .  I had sat at my commencement, in the rain, listening to Alexander Solzhenitsyn

tell us about A World Split Apart, and predicting that in fact the West would not survive. . .

Ronald Reagan’s candidacy was also in trouble. . . .  Reagan was flaying around through early 1980 and it did not look, even though Carter was in trouble, that the Republicans could pull it together. . . . A lot of people think 1980 [was easy].  It was such a close thing if you go back and revisit it. . . . [I]t did not in fact break until October 28 of that year. . .

I bring that up because I believe we are in for the same kind of election.  I believe that 2008 is going to be as closely run and as difficult . . . but for a very different reason.  In 1980 Ronald Reagan presented optimism . . . against Jimmy Carter’s resigned defeatism . . . a belief that we could not rally ourselves and perhaps we could get to some sort of separate peace.  This time it’s not defeatists . . .

This [election] . . . is really against fantasists -- against people who do not believe that the threat is what it is. . . .  Our fellow citizens and our friends also felt as badly as we did about the events of [9/11].  But increasingly they have come to believe that it was a lucky one-off, a fluke, a tragedy, as opposed to the first massive expression of a very sinister and very powerful will . . . intent not on peaceful coexistence . . . but on the relentless expansion of their radical vision of Islam.

[T]he Republicans are going to be saying a very hard thing to hear -- that we are locked in an existential struggle . . . and that indeed it is going to be a long and difficult and often bloody 20-30 years ahead of us.  That’s a very tough hard message to sell in 60 seconds . . . especially when Democrats insist on saying it’s not so, and that we can retreat from Iraq without the carnage following us home, and that we can pretend that the radicalization of the Islamic population in Europe is neither far advanced nor continuing.

Toward the end of his speech, Hewitt presented his strategy for victory, with a reading list to go with it:

[W]e are only going to win if we make a sophisticated argument, based upon facts, and we do it every single day, and we do it day in and day out. 

It’s why I recommend the book “Looming Tower” to everyone who will listen to me.  You’ve got to understand what Sayed Qtub was saying and how it has spread and how it has metastasized . . . and it’s not about poverty in the Middle East, and it’s not about the West Bank, and it is not about Gaza.  It is about a relentless ideological understanding of Islam that cannot be treated with.  That book does it better than any.

I’d recommend “America Alone” . . . Mark Steyn’s effort to alert the world that it isn’t getting better in Europe; it is getting worse, and it’s getting worse in a hurry . . . .

I’d recommend Robert Kaplan’s “Imperial Grunts” . . . the story of the American military . . .  an astonishing group of extraordinarily capable men and women who indeed are protecting the peace and preserving liberties -- and that is a reason for optimism.

I would also recommend the book that President Bush recommended . . . “The Case for Democracy” by Mr. Sharansky . . . It’s why the Bush Doctrine is . . . the only opportunity we have, the only rational choice, which is what Bernard Lewis said in Newport Beach Temple where I went to hear him a few weeks ago:  either we will bring them freedom, or they will kill us . . . and he is right.

And finally one other book -- “Alone,” which is the story of the Thirties, the story of Winston Churchill by William Manchester -- the story of how Churchill never stopped doing one thing, which was say listen to what Hitler is saying, take him seriously, he means what he says and you cannot negotiate with him.  It took a very long time and an extraordinarily terrible loss in history, for people to believe Churchill. . . .

Recently our friends at MEMRII put out a pamphlet “The Doctrine of Mahdism” and . . . I recommend you download it.  It is the ideology of Mesbah-e Yazdi and Ahmadinejad.  And people need to know that unlike the Thirties, horrible as they were, the next nut who gets their hands on weapons and begins offensive war is not going to have four and five years to roll out their divisions.  It will be a flash of light . . . There is no Atlantic fortress to come to the rescue. . . .   

That’s what we have to tell the American people repeatedly from now until November 2008.  And it may not be until Election Day that we discover that they indeed were listening.

Hewitt ended his speech with an anecdote of historical optimism:

[A] week ago I was in Rome, and I always go to the Forum when I am in Rome, and heading toward the Forum you see the Arch of Titus.  Of course Titus destroyed the Temple, and thought he had subjugated the Jews for all time, and scattered them to the winds.  Nobody knows who Titus is.  The Jews are back in Jerusalem.   

There were some 600 people in attendance at the dinner, including some very prominent people: William Daroff, National Vice President of the United Jewish Communities; Avi Davis of the American Freedom Alliance; Roz Rothstein and Esther Renzer of StandWithUs; Greg Ross of Aish Ha Torah; Erik Werth of the movie "Obsession;" Si Frumkin, longtime Soviet Jewry activist; Doris Wise Montrose, President of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles; Senior Pastor of Simi Hills Christian Church Kevin Dieckilman; Mark Paredes from the Morman Church community and the American Jewish Congress; Shimon Erem, Gary Dalin and Patricia Johnson of the Israel Christian Nexus; David Justman and Adam Schreiber from JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs); Michael Warder, Vice Chancellor of Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and Jay Hoffman from the Pepperdine Board; David Horowitz and others from the David Horowitz Freedom Center; and Dan Polisar, President of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem (when Natan Sharansky now works). This is a partial list. Brad Greenberg covered the event for the Jewish Journal and posted a nice write-up at his blog the next morning.

StandWithUs Esther Renzer (L) and Roz Rothstein (C) with Natan Sharansky:

David Horowitz with Natan Sharansky

California RJC Director Larry Greenfield addressing Natan Sharansky after his speech:

"Thank you Natan for your leadership, and your inspiration, and for being with us this evening. Please return to Israel first with our best wishes and our heartfelt support for the families of Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev, and for the citizens of Sderot, and throughout the Jewish state, and know that we are not only there in spirit, but our RJC mission to Israel will be with you in 3 weeks."

Natan Sharansky with the editor of Jewish Current Issues

The dinner was sold out. [Note: the first two photos above, and the photo of Larry Greenfield, are by Glenn Marzano; the rest are by JCI].

Harvard, Rosen and Giuliani

The New York Sun reports on a speech by Harvard Professor Stephen Rosen, the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs, and the relationship to a presidential campaign:

When Harvard's acting president, Derek Bok, and its president-elect, Drew Gilpin Faust, skipped this year's commissioning ceremony for the Reserve Officers Training Corps, which Harvard's ex-president, Lawrence Summers, had made a point of attending, the Wall Street Journal thought it worth an editorial, which it was. Our own attention was riveted by the remarks offered at the ceremony by a professor of government at Harvard, Stephen Rosen, which were excerpted in the latest number of Harvard Magazine. When we asked Professor Rosen for the full text, he was kind enough to oblige.

"You did not choose the peacetime military, but, rather, the life of a warrior," Mr. Rosen told the students graduating Harvard and entering military service.  "Harvard honors public service, but is uneasy with national military service, because it is uneasy with war, and with warriors, and it is no longer comfortable with the idea of Harvard as an American university, as opposed to an international university."

The professor continued, "We all wish to avoid war, none more so than the men and women who must confront the face of war directly. We welcome students and faculty from around the world. But the United States is our country. Without the United States, there would be no Harvard, and we should never forget that. And our country is still at war, and so I salute your courage, your commitment to national service, and the sacrifices you have made and will make."

They were appropriate remarks and gracious ones, worthy of Harvard's motto. The disclosure yesterday by the presidential campaign of Mayor Giuliani that Mr. Rosen will serve as its senior defense adviser makes them even more newsworthy. In the Giuliani campaign Mr. Rosen joins a remarkably distinguished — not to mention hawkish — foreign policy team that, as announced yesterday, includes the Middle East expert Martin Kramer and the scholar Peter Berkowitz, both of whom have contributed to the Sun, as well as Norman Podhoretz, author of the forthcoming book "World War IV."

The indefatigable Ed Lasky expertly covers "Rudy Giuliani's New Foreign Policy Team" in American Thinker today.

What Kind of Salmon is State Smoking Now?

The following colloquy occurred yesterday in the State Department Daily Press Conference, when Press Spokesman Sean McCormack asserted that prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians are better than at any time in the recent past:

QUESTION: . . . How do you arrive at that when you have a huge swath of Palestinian territory under the control of a group that doesn't even recognize Israel? I don't see how you get from Hamas in control of Gaza to the prospects. . . .

MR. MCCORMACK: . . . When I think about the prospects for peace in the region are -- between the Israelis and the Palestinians are better than they have been in any recent time, I'm referring back to the era of, you know, 2001, just around the time President Bush came into office. Remember -

QUESTION: A.D.?

MR. MCCORMACK: No, step back for a second. Remember the situation in which we found ourselves back in January 21st, 2001. And President Clinton made Herculean efforts to try to bring the parties together. Ultimately, it was Yasser Arafat who scuttled those efforts. But you had a raging intifada. You had a situation where Yasser Arafat was running the Palestinian Authority as his own personal fiefdom and apparently for his own personal gain as well as the gain of many of those around him. He had just turned down what, by the account of most pundits, was a very attractive deal for the Palestinian people. He just couldn't bring himself to make the compromises necessary to reach an agreement.

You had Israeli politics which was bitterly divided. You had a situation where there was a new prime minister who was coming in who was the father of the settlement movement and unalterably opposed to any compromise involving the West Bank. But, and now we find ourselves in the situation where Israeli politics has re-centered around the idea of an accommodation with the Palestinians, and that re-centering of Israeli politics was led by the very person who previously was unalterably opposed to any sort of accommodation with respect to the Palestinians, including in the West Bank. And by the way, the Israelis back in 2005 gave up some settlements on the West Bank.

We now have in place a Palestinian Government that is led by a well-respected, internationally well-respected Palestinian Prime Minister, a President who is foursquare for a negotiated settlement for a Palestinian state and who is also interested in reforming Palestinian institutions and is interested in reforming his own political party.

You also have a situation now where the Arab states have reissued an offer to Israel regarding how Arab states could recognize Israel. Now, everybody understands that the Israelis have problems with the proposed solution as it stands right now, but what we have encouraged is for the sides to look at it as a starting point, as a basis for discussions.

So that's sort of the thumbnail version of why we think now the underlying conditions are better than they have been in the recent past. Now, that is not to say, as you pointed out, that there aren't great challenges, that the fact that the Palestinian people still need to reconcile the fundamental contradictions within their political system still exists. But that existed back in 2001 as well. Hamas was not just something that appeared within the past two or three years. It was something that was building strength over time. It was building strength over time because you had a Palestinian Authority that was not well-governed and that did not serve the needs of the people. So as a result, it was able to build strength. Now, you have something out there for the Palestinian people to look towards. They have a Palestinian Authority that is interested in trying to serve their needs. Now, they have a ways to go and that's part of what Tony Blair is going to be working on with President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. So that's my case in brief.

QUESTION: Oh, that was the brief version?

MR. MCCORMACK: That was the brief one.

QUESTION: Well, I'm glad we didn't get the long one.

The problem in State’s view was that Arafat “just couldn't bring himself to make the compromises necessary.”  But now the Palestinians “have a Palestinian Authority that is interested in trying to serve their needs” with a president who is “interested” in reforming Palestinian institutions. Of course “the fundamental contradictions within their political system still exists” and Gaza is in the hands of Islamic terrorists. 

But the Arabs have made an “offer” they know Israel can’t accept:  a paper peace if Israel will just move to indefensible borders, uproot 250,000 citizens, and accept a right of return.  The State Department thinks this is a “basis for discussion” and prospects are the best since 2001.   Bring on Phase III.

(Previously at JCI:  "What Kind of Salmon is She Smoking?")

Statecraft and Botox

Jacob Heilbrunn reviews Dennis Ross’s new book -- “Statecraft:  And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) -- in today’s New York Times Book Review. You would think that someone involved in the biggest diplomatic disaster of the last decade would be more . . diplomatic in his criticism of those who had to deal with the situation he left them:

Ross’s most censorious remarks are reserved for the administration’s disengagement from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ross believes Arab antipathy toward America has been greatly heightened by the perception that Bush is “indifferent to a conflict that animated a basic grievance among those in the Arab and Islamic worlds.”

As Ross sees it, while nothing America did could by itself have permanently ended the conflict, the Bush administration remained recklessly aloof. Coupled with the fiasco in Iraq, America undermined its own security by inadvertently becoming Al Qaeda’s best recruiting agent.

How can this mess be fixed? Ross concludes that an injection of what he calls a “neoliberal agenda for U.S. foreign policy” will almost instantly act as a form of Botox to firm up America’s sagging reputation.

What, exactly, is the “basic grievance” that Bush supposedly was “indifferent to” and from which he was “recklessly aloof”? 

It cannot be the absence of a Palestinian state.  Ross spent four months, after the failure of Camp David in July 2000, preparing the Clinton Parameters -- formally offered to both sides on December 23, 2000, proposing a state on 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with a capital in Jerusalem and full international compensation of all refugees -- and saw the offer rejected by the Palestinians even after Ross warned them (as he recounts in day-by-day detail in his prior book) that they would not see such an offer again.

Notwithstanding that rejection (and a new war), Bush offered the Palestinians a state a year and a half later, conditioned on dismantlement of their terrorist infrastructure and acceptance of a phased process of negotiation.  He put together an internationally-accepted roadmap to get there.  He got Israel to sign on to it.  He negotiated a deal under which Israel completely withdrew from Gaza to give the Palestinians the chance to demonstrate their ability to “live side by side, in peace and security.” 

He tried, in other words, to create a Palestinian state in a way that did not simply repeat the “hands-on” failure of Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross.  And once again, the Palestinians “missed an opportunity.” 

It’s almost as if a second state was not the opportunity they sought.

No people in the history of the world have had a state offered to them more times than the Palestinians, nor had their supposed “basic grievance” addressed more often, over a longer period of time, even after losing multiple wars to exterminate their neighbor.  The beginning of diplomatic wisdom would be a recognition that the “basic grievance” is something else. 

So it is no wonder that Ross in the next breath admits that “nothing America did could by itself have permanently ended the conflict.”  Indeed the only reasonable conclusion, after watching Clinton and Ross and then Bush and Rice try multiple approaches unsuccessfully over 14 years, and watching rockets into Israel from areas from which all Jews have totally withdrawn, is that no new “plan,” no amount of new “concessions,” no degree of “hands-on” involvement, no prescription of endless “statecraft” can meet the real grievance involved.  

Given all this history, the one thing we know will not work -- and that will in fact make matters worse -- is simply to give ourselves an injection of Botox to re-create the happy faces we used to have.

Waiting for Bibi

The Peace Index Project at Tel Aviv University has published the results of its telephone survey of 580 interviewees on June 26-27, 2007.  Here are the three main findings of the survey (headings provided by JCI):

1.  Assisting Fatah.  “While the majority [54.5%] favors financial assistance [to Abu Mazen’s government], there is sweeping opposition to supplying weapons [79%] and removing checkpoints [71%] . . . The overwhelming majority (67%), however, would condition [financial] assistance on the Abu Mazen government . . . recognizing Israel and putting a stop to terrorism.  Only 22.5% support assistance without conditions . . . .”

2.  Withdrawing from the Golan Heights.  “The Syrian issue showed . . . widespread opposition to a full peace agreement in return for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. . . .   with rates of opposition and support at 63% and 20%, respectively. Fourteen percent are ambivalent and the rest do not know. The opposition to an agreement seems to stem, at least in part, from the unanimous (85%) assessment that Syria would not be prepared, in return for the Golan, to cut off its relations with Iran and end its support for Hizballah, Hamas, and the other Palestinian terror organizations whose leaders are based in Damascus.”

3.  Netanyahu vs. Barak vs. Olmert.  “On the question of who among the heads of the three large parties is now most capable of safeguarding Israel’s security interests while promoting the chances to achieve peace with the Arabs, there is a clear preference for Bibi Netanyahu over Ehud Barak, with Ehud Olmert trailing far behind. . . . The findings show that 38% of the Israeli Jewish public prefer Bibi Netanyahu, 24% Ehud Barak, and 5.5% Ehud Olmert. Twenty-four percent reject all three . . . ."

The overwhelming majority of Israelis thus oppose unconditional financial assistance to Fatah, with sweeping opposition to removing checkpoints or supplying weapons, and overwhelming opposition to withdrawal from the Golan Heights. 

And the combined support for Olmert and Barak (the two leaders of the current coalition government) does not even approach the support for Netanyahu. 

Moshe Ya'alon -- The Israeli Realist

Former Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon gave an address yesterday at the Shalem Center on the consequences of the Hamas takeover of Gaza:

Ya'alon said Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip and the creation of "the first jihadist Arab entity" on Israel's doorstep last month was "the last nail in the coffin" in a string of faulty conceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that had characterized Israeli and Western policy for decades.

Ya’alon covered at least five “faulty conceptions” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Ya'alon said the faulty conceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict included the beliefs that [1] the Palestinians want -- or were able -- to establish an independent state within the pre-1967 armistice lines, that [2] the creation of two states within those boundaries would solve the conflict, that [3] land for peace was the basis for any peace agreement, that [4] peace would bring security, and that [5] the key to stability in the Middle East was the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In an incisive post, Lynn-B analyzes each of these points.  Ya’alon had an important bloggers conference call last year that is worth listening to again. 

Independence Day as Religious Holiday

From George W. Bush’s “Independence Day 2007” greeting:

Two hundred thirty-one years ago, 56 brave men signed their names to a bold creed of freedom that set the course of our Nation and changed the history of the world. On this anniversary, we remember the great courage and conviction of our Founders, and we celebrate the enduring principles of our Declaration of Independence. . .

We believe that freedom is a blessing from the Almighty and the birthright of every man and woman. . . .  On Independence Day, we express our gratitude to the generations of courageous Americans who have defended us and those who continue to serve in our country's hour of need, and we celebrate the liberty that makes America a light to the nations.

The references to a “bold creed of freedom” that is a “blessing from the Almighty” and a “light to the nations” reflect the country’s religious roots that David Gelernter describes in his new book: “Americanism:  The Fourth Great Western Religion.”  He argues that “America” is a religious idea, and he traces the development of the American religion “from its roots in the Puritan Zionism of seventeenth-century New England to the idealistic fighting faith it has become, a militant creed dedicated to spreading freedom around the world.”  He says the central figures in this process were Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.

To whom we should add John F. Kennedy (and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush).  Here is the final paragraph of Kennedy’s final speech (to have been delivered at a luncheon on November 22, 1963), which reminds us that this day imposes not only a duty of remembrance and gratitude but an obligation relating to the present and the future:

"We in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.  We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ‘peace on earth, good will toward men.’  That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength.  For as was written long ago:  ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’”

The reference in the first sentence to “watchmen on the walls of world freedom” was to Isaiah 62:6-7:  “I have set watchmen upon your walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day nor night; you who make mention of the Lord, take no rest.”  The reference in the last sentence was to Psalm 127.

Today is essentially a religious holiday, or a holiday about religious freedom.  Dennis Prager says we need a Fourth of July Seder to celebrate it.  Our country’s historian laureate, David McCullough, would undoubtedly see the connection.

Scooter Libby's Sentence

The New York Sun’s editorial on President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence got it right:

The decision to spare Libby time in prison is not only humane but also just, for the underlying leak of Valerie Plame's identity was committed not by Libby but by Richard Armitage, and once that was known, the investigation should have stopped. Clemency is one of the presidency's least fettered constitutional powers, and in exercising it yesterday, Mr. Bush made clear that he understands the office he holds.

Mr. Bush's nuanced statement paid heed both to the decision of the judge and jury in the case and also to the facts as they are. Not so the intemperate response by the special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, who, in an extraordinary statement for an employee of the executive branch, challenged Mr. Bush's judgment that the 30-month prison sentence imposed on Mr. Libby was "excessive."

As Story realized and as Mr. Bush realizes, it was precisely to deal with failures of judgment such as Mr. Fitzgerald's and the sentencing judge's that the Founders of America inserted the powers of pardon and clemency into the Constitution.

It makes no sense that Libby would go to jail for lying about what was not a crime, while Armitage -- who committed the actual act in question and kept silent about it while Libby was questioned -- remains free.

It makes no sense that Sandy Berger can steal and destroy documents regarding 9/11 from the National Archives (while the event was under Senate investigation) and receive not only no jail time but a fine one-fifth of that levied on Libby.

George W. Bush’s statement was not simply nuanced, but reflective and eloquent.  He will receive criticism from both the New York Times (for going too far) and the Wall Street Journal (for not going far enough).  But he balanced justice and mercy and came to the right result for a good man who rendered extraordinary service to his country.  Even after the commutation, Libby's punishment will exceed that imposed on Armitage for releasing Plame's name and Berger for destroying national security documents.

Clarity on Iran

Rudy Guiliani’s lengthy interview last week with The Wall Street Journal is worth reading in its entirety. 

So what's your bottom line [on Iran]?

My bottom line is that we can't let them to become nuclear. I said that during the debates.

Does that mean taking all steps?

Whatever is necessary.

Including military?

Whatever is necessary.

Guiliani’s position is even clearer than the one Benjamin Netanyahu set forth in his June 3, 2006 interview with Ari Shavit in Haaretz (summarized here, but also worth reading in its entirety):

Isn't it too late? Are we not fated to accept a nuclear Iran?

"Absolutely not. We have to prevent Iran from going nuclear."

At any price? By every means?

"We have to prevent Iran from going nuclear."

It is possible that, after elections in 2008, both the United States and Israel will be led by leaders with both moral and strategic clarity about Iran.