Reply #10: It gets uglier! Thanks Walt for digging this up! more PNAC for the DLC

[Tinoire]

Yuck. Aide to Alan Keyes. Close to Ralph Reed.

From an edition called "Rewarding Palestinian terrorism"


The Front Line in the War on Terror
It's Israel now, not Afghanistan.
by Marshall Wittmann
04/08/2002, Volume 007, Issue 29

THE FRONT LINES in the war against terror are no longer in the mountains of Afghanistan, but rather in the streets of Israel. Since America was attacked in September, both friends and adversaries of Israel have attempted to deny the link between America's war on terror and the dispute in the Middle East. After all, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were more focused on removing American influence from the Islamic world than promoting the Palestinian cause. But increasingly, there appears to be a real nexus--call it an axis--between al Qaeda and its sister terrorist networks, the key Israel-hating and terrorist-sponsoring regimes of the Middle East, and Arafat's Palestinian Authority and its instruments. The assault on Israeli civilians is now the cutting edge of the axis of evil.

(snip)

Of course, we should not be surprised by the alliance of the anti-Israel Islamists. Early on, bin Laden signaled that his enemies were the "Crusaders and the Jews." The captured arms shipment of the

Karine A confirmed the link between the Palestinian Authority and Iran. Yet the Bush administration has resisted calling attention to this Middle East anti-Israel terror axis, fearing to alienate the so-called moderate Arabs. To assuage Muslim opinion, the president even endorsed a Palestinian state. Hamas and Hezbollah were not initially placed on the list of terrorist organizations for financial crackdowns, and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades were only recently named. Other Arafat-controlled organizations are still in the clear.

The expressions of joy in the "Palestinian street" over the attacks on New York and the Pentagon were an early signal that the Palestinians were likely to aid bin Laden's terrorist war. If the foreign policy sophisticates in Washington did not understand the link between the Palestinian cause and al Qaeda, the Arab masses were not confused.

(snip)

More important, the Palestinian organizations, including Arafat's own groups, escalated their campaign of blood and terror against Israeli civilians. While the Bush administration has displayed moral clarity in the U.S. war against the Taliban, the American response to the Israeli defense has often tended in the direction of flaccid moral equivalence decrying the "cycle of violence." Absent in the American response to Palestinian terror has been the determined resolve that the United States has shown in Afghanistan. While America hurled missiles against the Taliban, the Bush administration urged Israelis to enter the peace process with their own terrorists.

(snip)

http://theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/070keieb.asp

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Marshall Wittmann

Marshall Wittmann surprises many people. Right now, the 42-year-old is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. Previous to that he worked as the chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill for the Christian Coalition. Which is interesting, because Wittmann is Jewish.

When asked “what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?” Wittmann explains that there is no discord between Judaism and conservative politics, or even between Judaism and Christian activism. “I certainly don’t think there is a conflict. The two faiths share a God, a Bible, a common heritage, and many of the same perspectives on life.” Wittmann has been drawn to work with Christian conservatives by agreement with their social and political positions, for instance on family issues. He is not alone, he says, pointing out that conservative Jews and evangelical Christians are uniting behind common causes more and more. “In New York City, for instance, there were very clear alliances between religious Christians and Jews over school board elections a couple of years ago. I see pockets of coalition developing around the country.”

Asked whether he fears having Christian values forced on him, he says this is a misunderstanding of what religious conservatives are up to. “Religious conservatives are often said to want to impose their values upon others. But in reality, I find, what most are trying to do is simply to prevent the values of others from being imposed upon them.” Their struggle is a defensive one to preserve their views in the face of aggressive efforts to drive all religious perspectives out of public life, he suggests. Wittmann cites the reaction in New York City against attempts to teach homosexual rights to kindergarten and other grade school children as an example of such a defensive backlash.

Wittmann is troubled by the stereotypes of religious people that regularly appear in the media. “Somehow it seems to be considered fair game to attack religious conservatives.” He notes that religious leftists have been involved in politics for many years, in causes “ranging from civil rights to the anti-war movement, and it never seemed to be an issue with the mainstream media. But when religious conservatives became active more recently, there was lots of criticism.” Wittmann thinks that the coverage of religious conservatives is improving, though not yet balanced. “In major part because of what politically happened in 1994, the media is being forced to take religious conservatives more seriously.”

(snip)

Nov/Dec 1995 issue
The American Enterprise Online – taemag.org
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.16454/article_detail.asp
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Coalition Legislative Affairs Director Marshall Wittmann (seated). Wittmann and Reed orchestrated the Coalition's distribution of some 33 million pieces of campaign literature, most of it through churches, and galvanized the grassroots. Coalition exit polls showed that religious conservatives accounted for one-third of all votes cast.