Louis Rene Beres

Can the current government of Israel protect its citizens? Clearly, Israelis have already experienced the Oslo and Road Map "peace process," as a Terror Process. If Judea/Samaria are soon transformed into "Palestine," the peace process will once again become a war and terror process.

I like this book. Very much. Terrorist Cop will be of interest to all Americans and Israelis who remain deeply concerned (as they should) about our continuing vulnerability to Jihadist terror attacks. It will be of even greater interest, moreover, to readers of The Jewish Press. After all, the author, now retired New York City homicide Detective First Grade Mordecai Dzikansky, spent his distinguished 25-year career as an NYPD "Jewish cop."

In strategy and law, war, terrorism and genocide are not mutually exclusive. Now, following the “Arab Spring,” even as the usual suspects maintain their explicitly genocidal threats against Israel, certain “progressive” Jews proudly lead various rallies and publications for "peace” and “democracy” in the Middle East. Such “progress,” we might learn from Roman Polanski’s film “The Pianist,” could only be fashioned upon yet another generation of Jewish corpses.

In the 2554 years between 587 B.C.E. and 1967 C.E., Jerusalem was conquered more than twenty times, and, as part of many empires, was ruled from different and distant capital cities. Only for the Jews (for more than 650 years), for the Crusaders (for 188 years), and for the State of Israel (since 1949) has Jerusalem served as a capital city.

At the conclusion of the recent [Editor’s Note: the first] Gulf War [Operation Desert Storm], the Bush administration announced plans to sell Saudi Arabia, a country of six million inhabitants, an arms package including over 500 tanks, 48 F-15 fighter planes, Apache helicopter gunships, more than 30 Patriot batteries, tens of thousands of armored vehicles, multiple rocket-launchers and command/control systems.

I am a professor of international law. In my columns, therefore, I focus from time to time on distinctly legal aspects of Israel's foreign relations. Nonetheless, I am always deeply attentive to examining these particular aspects within a genuinely realistic geopolitical or geostrategic context.

The Palestinians continue to speak of "occupied territories." They are joined by their civilized European allies whose traditional anti-Semitism is now reinvigorated by Arab/Islamic Jew hatred.

Under international law, Saddam Hussein is the quintessential Hostes Humani Generis, a "Common Enemy of Mankind." Prosecuting the former Iraqi dictator, therefore, would now appear to be a decidedly simple judicial matter.

'Faced with imminent and existential attacks, Israel − properly taking its cue from The National Security Strategy of the United States of America − could decide to preempt enemy aggression with conventional forces.

Everyone who reads newspapers should know at least one thing. Threats to annihilate Israel have always been unremarkable. Almost never, it seems, have Israel’s existential enemies sought any reason for concealment.

Zalman Shoval served two terms as Israel's Ambassador to the United States. Although I had made his personal acquaintance only briefly during his first term in Washington (1990-1993), it was immediately apparent that Ambassador Shoval was bringing a markedly favorable presence to Israel's embassy.

US President Barack Obama's sentiments notwithstanding, nuclear arms are not per se destabilizing or "warmongering." They are not necessarily anti-peace. Rather, in certain identifiably volatile circumstances, nuclear weapons can actually be indispensable to the avoidance of catastrophic war.

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” wrote the poet W.B. Yeats, “and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Now, assembled in almost two hundred armed tribal camps politely called nation-states, all peoples – not only the people of Israel – coexist insecurely on a plainly anarchic planet. The core origins of this anarchy lie in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which put a codified end to the Thirty Years War.

We have seen that, among other purposes, Israel needs nuclear weapons to undertake and/or to support various forms of preemption.

The French dramatist and diplomat, Jean Giraudoux, inquires in one of his plays (Sodome et Gomorrhe): "C'est beau, n'est-ce pas, la fin dumonde?" ("It is beautiful, isn't it, the end of the world?")

In the Jewish tradition, the principle of a Higher Law is not only well established; it is the very foundation of all legal order.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert now gives guns to Arab terrorists while planning to surrender more of his country's essential heartland. The apparent rationale of Israeli arms to Fatah is to diminish the contending power of Hamas. Inevitably, these same weapons will be used to murder individual Jews. Surely they will do absolutely nothing to help Israel.

Israel must continue to base its policies toward both Iran and 'Palestine' upon an utterly candid and unvarnished awareness of threats to Jewish life.

Israel, in the fashion of every nation, positively shrinks from annihilation. How could it be otherwise?

Historically, viewed against the background of extensive and unapologetic terrorist perfidy in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has been innocent of any alleged disproportionality. All combatants, including all insurgents in Gaza and Lebanon, are bound to comply with the law of war of international law.

In calculating the Iranian threat to national survival, Israeli strategists will have to consider both enemy capabilities and enemy intentions. Yet, because such threat components are never entirely discrete, but rather interdependent, interpenetrating and interactive, these strategists will have to look closely at all pertinent relationships.

The Memorial Wall at Yad Vashem - the Wall of Holocaust and Heroism - has four sections, ranging from the Shoah to Rebirth. Magnificently designed by Naftali Bezem, it takes us movingly from an inferno in which the Holy is utterly profaned to the divine sanctuary of new Jewish generations. But these generations, symbolized by the countenance of a lion, must still shed endless tears.

By now, Eliot Spitzer is no longer on the front pages, but America's recent fascination with the former New York governor and high-end prostitution did reveal a great deal.

It would be unreasonable for Israel to draw any comfort from an argument that Iranian intentions are effectively harmless. Rather, such intentions could impact capabilities decisively over time. Backed by appropriate nuclear weapons, preemption options must somehow remain open and viable to Israel, augmented, of course, by appropriate and complementary plans for cyber-defense and cyber-warfare.

Medieval maps typically portrayed Jerusalem at the center of the world. From the standpoint of nuclear strategy and world peace, such a portrayal has exceptional validity today. Confronted with relentlessly genocidal state and non-state enemies, some of which energetically seek weapons of mass destruction, Israel must now quickly fashion a coherent and pragmatic strategic doctrine. Recognizing this urgent requirement, the Project Daniel Group undertook to prepare its unprecedented Final Report to the Prime Minister.

Jewish Law is democratic in the sense that it belongs to all of the people, a principle reflected in the Talmudic position that each individual can approach G-d in prayer without priestly intercessions.

We Jews have experienced so much pain in our long and arduous history that the pain of Islamic terrorism seems to be just another episode of indescribable suffering. To an extent, this is certainly true. For the moment, we must endure, and - in the end - we shall prevail. So it has been before; so it will be again.

Israel has elected a new prime minister. From the start - and even before he begins to consider assorted specific issues for negotiation with other governments and organizations - he will have to determine whether any form of diplomacy is actually indicated. Although, on the surface, such advice may appear distinctly odd or foolish at best, there will be clear benefits to Israel of proceeding diplomatically only after first cultivating genuine understanding.

The following Keynote Address was delivered by Professor Beres to the Intelligence Summit in St. Petersburg on March 5, 2007. It is published here for the very first time in its original form. These formal remarks presented by our own Strategic and Military Affairs analyst to very senior members of the military and intelligence communities (U.S., Israeli and certain others) remain starkly relevant and timely.

Now that Israel is again being pressured to follow a self-destructive "Road Map," a 23rd Arab state called Palestine is again in the process of being born. One serious but largely unforeseen effect of this grotesque birth (one in which only a gravedigger could wield the forceps) is greatly diminished "strategic depth" for Israel. Consequently there is a heightened probability of both conventional and unconventional war.