Below is my latest commentary for the World Net Daily web site, concerning the release this week of the Iraq Study Group report and its serious implications for Israel.

I wish all my Jewish subscribers a very happy Hanukkah, and to all my Christian readers a wonderful Christmas, and to everyone a blessed 2007.

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ISRAEL ON THE ALTER AGAIN
By David Dolan

Nearly four years ago, George W. Bush and Tony Blair led a small international coalition into Iraq with the goal of toppling Saddam Hussein's notorious regime and replacing it with a Western-style democracy. I wrote then about my strong misgivings over this dramatic action, despite the fact that I was as eager as anyone who suffered Saddam's nightly 1991 Scud attacks upon Israel to see the evil dictator removed from power.

I noted that Israeli security experts were hardly unanamous in expressing enthusiasm over the US-led military campaign.  Several told me privately they were convinced that the coalition was focusing on a relatively small player in the regional terrorist-WMD equation, which would probably end up allowing more threatening actors like Iran and Syria off the hook.

Haifa's mayor Yonah Yahav told me during a TV interview just one week before the war began that Israeli leaders were certain that Saddam had already passed whatever mass destruction weapons he possessed into Syria.  Decimated in the Gulf War, the Arab leader posed a relatively small threat to regional stability, Yahav argued, and was unlikely to prove to be a major backer of Osama bin Laden whose radical Muslim views he feared.

Yahav added that it was Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah forces busy building an empire in nearby Lebanon that kept Israeli leaders on edge, fueled as they were by Islamic extremist passions that Saddam simply did not display.

As a resident of the turbulant Middle East for over two decades, it seemed abundantely obvious to me that Bush and Blair had practicaly no chance to oversee the formation of a stable democracy in despotic, faction-torn Iraq.  Instead, I wrote that the country would likely end up resembling Lebanon with its deeply divided ethnic-religious communites and frequent upheavals, fueled by anti-democratic neighbors like Syria and Iran.

In fact, it seemed so apparent to me that the expensive war and hopeless rebuilding effort would end in a Vietnam style retreat for US and British forces that I told some friends I actually wondered if the two leaders were not either willing or unknowing cogs in some grand conspiracy to ultimately weaken both nuclear-armed powers.

Although I am not usually into such conspiracy theories, I found it nearly impossible to believe that these two experienced politicians, or at least some of thier top advisors, could not forsee the ultimate futility of thier stated lofty goal to create the first stable Arab democracy in the heart of the autocratic Muslim Middle East.  Anyway, the whole affair was a clear diversion from their main declared ambition to thwart Al Qaida's open threats to carry out further mega-attacks against the "Crusader" West.

With President Bush finally admitting that the plan is hardly unfolding as he had publicly anticipated, along comes his daddy's former Secretary of State to tell us how to fix things.  The proposed Baker commission solutions involve further sacrificing the security of the only REAL democracy and stable pro-Western ally in the Middle East--tiny Israel.  This was another outcome I also feared and anticipated when the war began in March 2003.

You see, the Jewish-run state is somehow the main spark for the radical Islamic violence that is gripping much of the world, and must therefore be forced to allow a Palestinian state to rise within miles of Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (if not inside part of the holy city).  That such a state would surely be dominated by Al Qaida's militant twin Sunni brother Hamas, and would therefore strengthen the world jihad movement, is apparently of little concern to Jim Baker and company.

Next Israel must abandon the green Golan Heights--source of much of Israel's fresh water--to the vile Assad regime that is busy oppressing its Syrian citizens and attempting to retake full control over Lebanon via its Hezbollah proxies.

When Israel is further truncated to the point of emasulation, then the Muslim world will apparently settle down and peace will blossom like a rose both in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

No wonder that Aaron Klein reported on WND that various regional terrorist groups are rejoicing over the Iraq Study Group report.

Thankfully, the American President has already expressed a healthy skepticism over the proposition that sucking up to the extremist regimes ruling Syria and Iran is the way forward.  Didn't an earlier leader named Chamberlain already try that tact--with horrific results?

Even as Iraq burns, Western politicians had better keep their eyes on the most ominous threat the world if facing today--Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program, along with Hezbulloh's designs to take full control over Lebanon and Al Qaida's machinations to topple moderate regimes in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  For whatever happens in Iraq, it is now becoming abundantly clear that the entire Middle East is on the brink of a massive eruption that could ultimately make World War II look like a mere warmup excercise.
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DAVID DOLAN is a Jerusalem-based author and journalist who has lived and worked in Israel since 1980.