There is a widespread expectation that the Iraq Survey Group, whose report is expected soon, will propose to run up the white flag in Iraq by pulling out and inviting Iran and Syria to broker a ’peace’. Since these rogue states are behind the war in Iraq, this would of course be tantamount to total surrender to the enemy, with unconscionable consequences in easing the path to the nuclear holocaust being so assiduously prepared by Iran.

President Bush appears to be flagging up that he has no intention of pulling out US troops before the job is done. The Washington Post reports him saying:

‘This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.’

But now it seems that the ISG may have even worse horrors in store. It is being suggested that it will propose throwing Israel to the wolves for good measure. What has Israel got to do with the war in Iraq? Nothing, of course, except in the paranoid discourse of the Israel-haters and peddlers of the ‘Jewish conspiracy stretching from Washington to Jerusalem’ calumny, or in the imagination of King Abdullah of Jordan, for whom ‘Palestine is the core’ of the war in Iraq. Ah yes, of course, as the western intelligentsia never cease proclaiming, it’s all the fault of the Jews. Sunnis slaughtering Shia in Iraq? Yup, it’s all Israel’s fault. Blame Israel for everything — King Abdullah knows his words will resonate in Britain and Europe, and within the Beltway, too — where the ancient sport of scapegoating the Jews has resurfaced to become the intelligentsia’s fashionable pastime of choice.

Now, according to this report in the New York Sun, the ISG wants to use Israel as the ritual sacrifice to ‘entice’ Iran and Syria to a regional conference on Iraq. Israel would be pressured to make ‘concessions’ to provide the leverage by which Iran and Syria could be persuaded to stabilise Iraq. These concessions — such as the return of the Golan — can only amount to the weakening or destruction of Israel’s defences against an enemy that wishes to exterminate it. In other words, not only is the ISG apparently proposing abject surrender by inviting those who have been behind the carnage on Iraq to be handed it as a prize for murderous aggression, but it is also said to be proposing to throw these jackals the bloody carcass of Israel to excite their interest in such total victory still further. It’s what might be called killing two birds with one stone: use the surrender in Iraq to destroy Israel too.

The malevolence here is beyond grotesque. But look at who is suggesting that the ISG should propose this evil course of action: Raymond Close, former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. At the American Thinker, Ed Lasky records Close’s vicious attitude to Israel and the Jews:

Anyone familiar with the ways of Washington (as Baker surely must be) would be aware that Close has a very checkered past regarding his opinion of our ally Israel, and has made comments regarding American Jews that can be characterized as anti—Semitic… He seems, in fact, to be a proponent of the view that American Jews have been instrumental in leading us into the Iraq War and that support for Israel is not in our national interest.

Even more alarming, given that Close is a key adviser to the ISG, is this further information in the New York Sun report:

In 1977, on the day of his retirement from the CIA, while still in Jedda, Mr. Close began working with Saudi Arabia’s then intelligence chief, Kamal Adham, according to one of his former bosses at the agency’s directorate of operations. ‘On the day he retired from the CIA, Ray walked across the street and joined Kamal Adham in a business relationship,’ Duane Clarridge said yesterday in an interview. ‘To many officers in the CIA this seemed untoward because as a government official, he had an official relationship with Kamal Adham. Now he was in a commercial relationship which over the years reportedly made Close a very wealthy man.’ Mr. Adham later went on to play a key role in the BCCI banking scandal, where the bank was accused of bribing senior government officials in a variety of countries as well as graft. Mr. Close’s son, Kenneth, is a registered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia.

The doctrine on display here of the so-called ‘realist’ school of realpolitik, to be applied to both Iraq and to Israel, appears to be that those who attempt to destroy a country are to be handed it as a reward to enable them to finish the job. This reflects the corruption of thinking around the issue of Israel that has poisoned the minds of so many in the west: the assumption that Israel, the target and victim of a war of annihilation that has now gone on for more than half a century, is responsible for the plight of those who are still trying to annihilate it and must therefore give them what they want rather than defend itself against them– for which acts of defence Israel, rather than its genocidal attackers, will be excoriated, vilified and delegitimised. Monstrous, monstrous. And whatever Bush’s response to the ISG report, if it lives down to its advance billing its mere publication will have the further effect of providing yet more ammunition for those in the west who are intent upon destroying Israel, demoralising the west and undermining both America and the defence of the free world.