BLAIR: SAY GOODBYE TO ISRAEL'S BEST (FLAWED) FRIEND IN EUROPE

The Free World's Achilles Heel By Caroline B. Glick (JWR)

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe. And he's not a very good friend.

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Blair was instrumental in convincing US President George W. Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous — view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else, into one of the cognitive foundations of the US war on Islamic terror. This foundation was first enunciated at Bush's address Sept. 20 before the joint session of Congress where he identified "every terrorist with global reach" — that is every terrorist that isn't part of the Palestinian Authority — as enemies of the US.

Later, Blair was a principal force behind Bush's move to abandon the guidelines for dealing with the Palestinians that he enunciated in his speech on June 24, 2002. In that address, Bush stipulated that the Palestinians needed to transform themselves from a society that supported terror into one that combated terror in order to receive US support for Palestinian statehood. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad to Coalition forces in April 2003, Blair convinced Bush to accept the Road Map plan for Palestinian statehood. The Road Map, which effectively locks in US support for Palestinian statehood irrespective of Palestinian terrorism and radicalism, represented a practical abandonment of the positions that Bush set out in his June 24, 2002 address.

During his visit to the region this week, keeping with his studied habit, Blair ignored the fact that the Iranian-backed Hamas government was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority by a large majority of Palestinians. He ignored the fact that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's has voiced support for the abduction and continued captivity of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit and for the continuation of the terror war against Israel. He ignored the fact that rather than working to overthrow the Hamas government, Abbas has begged Hamas to allow Fatah to join their government. To this end, Abbas has accepted Hamas's policy guidelines that reject recognizing Israel's right to exist and commit all Palestinians to unite in their war against Israel. Ignoring all these inconvenient facts, Blair called on the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to renew negotiations with Abbas on the basis of the Road Map.

And yet, for all this, Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe today. He is Israel's best friend because, as opposed to all his colleagues in both Britain and the EU, Blair at least recognizes that the global jihad is a threat to the free world and that the cost of not fighting the forces of jihad will be the loss of our freedom.

Soon Israel's closest European friend will exit the world stage after being effectively sacked by his own Labor party last week. British political commentators say that chances are slim that Blair will manage to hold the reins of power as a lame duck for the next twelve months as he pledged. More likely, he will leave 10 Downing Street in a matter of months.

The two men most likely to succeed Blair — Chancellor Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron — will be more similar in their attitudes towards Israel and the US to French President Jacques Chirac than to Blair. This is the case first and foremost because that is what the British people expect of them. .....