It’s a paraphrase: For delicate statements, top officials prefer indirection and written words. It offers wiggle room and reduces tensions. Asked whether he disputed the Post report, Panetta inscrutably stated: “No, I’m just not commenting. What I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else.” (Contrast this episode with Barack Obama talking about drones in front of the cameras, an indiscretion that won him trouble, including a lawsuit from the ACLU.)

It might be disinformation: In the mirror world of nuclear diplomacy, we on the outside have almost no way of discerning wheat from chaff. Panetta could be sending a signal to Tehran as opposed to telling the truth. The same applies to other news, be it assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists or sales of ordnance to Israel. Wait a decade to learn what’s really happening now.

Tehran is determined: Iran’s supreme guide, Ali Khamene’i, again confirmed that nothing and no one will impede his regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, announcing that “Sanctions will not have any impact on our determination to continue our nuclear course.” I believe him. Just as the North Korean regime allowed its subject population to starve in the pursuit of nukes, so will the Iranians pay whatever the price.

Israel is also determined: The Israeli leadership looks back to the Holocaust and feels the weight of its responsibility. Commenting on those top-ranking military personnel who disagree with him and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about the Iranian nuclear danger, Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak commented that “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.”

U.S. presidential elections: Were the Israelis to attack Iran, Obama’s response could have major electoral implications. Were he to approve or (especially) join in the attack, he would scramble the elections to his advantage. Were he to condemn the Israelis, however, he would likely pay a price.

In a recent article (“Egypt’s Sham Election,” Dec. 6) we argued that just as Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in the past “tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money,” so do Mohamed Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) “still play this tired old game.”

We offered three proofs for this assertion: (1) local electoral deceits; (2) the SCAF offer of a “deal” to the Islamists; and (3) the military having subsidized Islamist political parties. Seven weeks later, various signs point to fraud on a far grander scale.

The Free Egyptians Party, Egypt’s leading classic liberal political party, announced on Jan. 10 that it had filed more than 500 complaints about Lower House elections “but no legal action was taken” in response. The party pulled out of forthcoming Upper House elections because “violators are awarded with electoral gains and those abiding by the laws are punished” and called for their cancelation.

Mohamed ElBaradei, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) withdrew his candidacy for president on Jan. 14 because of his perception of rigged elections: “My conscience,” he announced, “does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a real democratic system.”

Six parliamentary candidates filed official complaints against a range of officials and demanded that the elections be annulled and redone, reports the newspaper El-Badil in its Jan. 10 edition. One of the candidates, a Wafd Party candidate named Ibrahim Kamel, explained how he acquired government documents indicating that fewer than 40 million Egyptians were eligible to vote, while the current elections included 52 million voters, implying 12 million fraudulent ballots. This increase was achieved, he said, by taking the names and identification numbers of legitimate voters and duplicating them between 2 and 32 times in other electoral precincts.

Mamdouh Hamza, head of the Egyptian National Council, an NGO, confirmed this tampering to El-Badil, dubbing it “the biggest crime of fraud in Egyptian history.” He demanded that the Lower House elections be redone from scratch.

In contrast, the victorious Islamists, who despise democracy, made little effort to conceal their electoral success through fraud. Some of them went so far as proudly and unapologetically to assert that it’s their Islamic duty to be dishonest. Tal’at Zahran, a leading Salafi, called the democratic system “infidel,” “criminal,” and “out of the Elders of Zion.” He cynically observed that “it is our duty to forge elections; God will reward us for this.”

Revealingly, Zahran also praised Tantawi: “Just as we gave Mubarak the bay’a [Islamic oath of loyalty], we now support SCAF. If Tantawi decides to stay in power, we will support him until the day he dies.” Reports indicate that Islamists and the military are working smoothly together on such key matters as military autonomy and amending the 1971 constitution. Their cooperation makes sense, for Islamists seek Muslim unity so as to focus full attention on the infidel enemy (especially Jews and Christians).

With so much evidence of fraud at hand, it bewilders us that Western politicians, journalists, and scholars continue to see the shoddy results of the just-concluded Egyptian elections as a valid expression of popular will. Where are the cynical journalists casting doubt on the Salafis coming from nowhere to win 28 percent of the vote? Why do hard-boiled analysts, who see right through rigged elections in Russia and Syria, fall for “the biggest crime of fraud in Egyptian history”? Perhaps because they give Cairo a break on account of it having cooperated with Western powers for nearly 40 years; or perhaps because Tantawi rigs more convincingly.

Given SCAF’s explicit disdain for the election results, we are also surprised that analysts expect these significantly to bear on the country’s future. In fact, SCAF manipulated the recent elections for its own benefit; Islamists are pawns in this drama, not kings. We are witnessing not an ideological revolution but a military officer corps staying dominant to enjoy the sweet fruits of tyranny.

Israel has two major reasons to fear this uncontrolled immigration. First, it presents a security danger. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet security service, noted in 2005 that of 225 Israeli Arabs involved in terror against Israel, 25 of them, or 11 percent, had legally entered Israel through the family unification provision. They went on to kill 19 Israelis and wound 83; most notoriously, Shadi Tubasi suicide-bombed Haifa’s Matza Restaurant in 2002 on behalf of Hamas, killing 15.

Second, it serves as a stealth form of Palestinian “right of return,” thereby undermining the Jewish nature of Israel. Those 137,000 new citizens constitute about 2 percent of Israel’s population, not a small number. Yuval Steinitz, now the finance minister, in 2003 discerned in PA encouragement for family reunification “a deliberate strategy” to increase the number of Palestinians in Israel and undermine its Jewish character. Ahmed Qurei, a top Palestinian negotiator, later confirmed this fear: “If Israel continues to reject our propositions regarding the borders [of a Palestinian state], we might demand Israeli citizenship.”

In response to these two dangers, Israel’s parliament in July 2003 passed the “Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law.” The law bans Palestinian family members from automatically gaining Israeli residency or citizenship, with temporary and limited exemptions requiring the interior minister to certify that they “identify with Israel” or are otherwise helpful. In the face of severe criticism, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon affirmed in 2005 that “The State of Israel has every right to maintain and protect its Jewish character, even if that means that this would impact on its citizenship policy.”

Only 33 of 3,000 applications for exemptions, according to Sawsan Zaher, an attorney who challenged the law, have been approved. Israel is hardly alone in adopting stringent requirements for family reunification: Denmark, for example, has had such rules in place for a decade, excluding (among others) an Israeli husband from the country, with the Netherlands and Austria following suit.

Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court, by a 6-5 vote, upheld this landmark law, making it permanent. While recognizing the rights of a person to marry, the court denied that this implies a right of residency. As the president-designate of the court, Asher Dan Grunis, wrote in the majority opinion, “Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide.”

This pattern of Palestinian emigration toward Jews goes back almost to 1882, when European Jews began their aliyah (Hebrew for “ascent,” meaning immigration to the land of Israel). In 1939, for example, Winston Churchill noted how Jewish immigration to Palestine had stimulated a like Arab immigration: “So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased.”

In brief, you didn’t have to be Jewish to benefit from the Zionists’ high standard of living and law-abiding society. One student of this subject, Joan Peters, estimates that a dual Jewish and Arab immigration “of at least equal proportions” took place between 1893 and 1948. Nothing surprising here: other modern Europeans who settled in underpopulated areas (think Australia or Africa) also created societies that attracted indigenous peoples.

This pattern of Palestinian aliyah has continued since Israel’s birth. Anti-Zionist they may be, but economic migrants, political dissidents, homosexuals, informants, and just ordinary folk vote with their feet, preferring the Middle East’s outstandingly modern and liberal state to the PA’s or Hamas’ hell holes. And note how few Israeli Arabs move to the West Bank or Gaza to live with a spouse, though no legal obstacles prevent them from doing so.

The Supreme Court’s decision has momentous long-term implications. As Eli Hazan writes in Israel Hayom, “The court ruled de jure but also de facto that the state of Israel is a Jewish state, and thus settled a years-long debate.” The closing of the back-door “right of return” secures Israel’s Zionist identity and future.

This unusual development results from an unusual story.

Today’s Sudan took shape in the nineteenth century when the Ottoman Empire controlled its northern regions and tried to conquer the southern ones. The British, ruling out of Cairo, established the outlines of the modern state in 1898 and for the next fifty years ruled separately the Muslim north and Christian-animist south. In 1948, however, succumbing to northern pressure, the British merged the two administrations in Khartoum under northern control, making Muslims dominant in Sudan and Arabic its official language.

Accordingly, independence in 1956 brought civil war, as southerners battled to fend off Muslim hegemony. Fortunately for them, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s “periphery strategy” translated into Israeli support for non-Arabs in the Middle East, including the southern Sudanese. The government of Israel served through the first Sudanese civil war, lasting until 1972, as their primary source of moral backing, diplomatic help, and armaments.

Mr. Kiir acknowledged this contribution in Jerusalem, noting that “Israel has always supported the South Sudanese people. Without you, we would not have arisen. You struggled alongside us in order to allow the establishment of South Sudan.” In reply, Mr. Peres recalled his presence in the early 1960s in Paris, when then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and he initiated Israel’s first-ever link with southern Sudanese leaders.

Sudan’s civil war continued intermittently from 1956 until 2005. Over time, Muslim northerners became increasingly vicious toward their southern co-nationals, culminating in the 1980-90s with massacres, chattel slavery, and genocide. Given Africa’s many tragedies, such problems might not have made an impression on compassion-weary Westerners except for an extraordinary effort led by two modern-day American abolitionists.

Starting in the mid-1990s, John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International redeemed tens of thousands of slaves in Sudan while Charles Jacobs of the American Anti-Slavery Group led a “Sudan Campaign” in the United States that brought together a wide coalition of organizations. As all Americans abhor slavery, the abolitionists formed a unique alliance of Left and Right, including Barney Frank and Sam Brownback, the Congressional Black Caucus and Pat Robertson, black pastors and white Evangelicals. In contrast, Louis Farrakhan was exposed and embarrassed by his attempts to deny slavery’s existence in Sudan.

The abolitionist effort culminated in 2005 when the George W. Bush administration pressured Khartoum in 2005 to sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war and gave southerners a chance to vote for independence. They enthusiastically did so in January 2011, when 98 percent voted for secession from Sudan, leading to the formation of the Republic of South Sudan six months later, an event hailed by Mr. Peres as “a milestone in the history of the Middle East.”.

Israel’s long-term investment has paid off. South Sudan fits into a renewed periphery strategy that includes Cyprus, Kurds, Berbers, and, perhaps one day, a post-Islamist Iran. South Sudan offers access to natural resources, especially oil. Its role in Nile River water negotiations offers leverage vis-à-vis Egypt. Beyond practical benefits, the new republic represents an inspiring example of a non-Muslim population resisting Islamic imperialism through its integrity, persistence, and dedication. In this sense, the birth of South Sudan echoes that of Israel.

If Kiir’s Jerusalem visit is truly to mark a milestone, South Sudan must travel the long path from dirt-poor, international protectorate with feeble institutions to modernity and genuine independence. This path requires the leadership not to exploit the new state’s resources nor dream of creating a “New Sudan” by conquering Khartoum, but to lay the foundations for successful statehood.

For the Israelis and other Westerners, this means both helping with agriculture, health, and education and urging Juba to stay focused on defense and development while avoiding wars of choice. A successful South Sudan could eventually become a regional power and a stalwart ally not just of Israel but of the West.

Remarkably for a learned institution, its doors were open to the public to meander and imbibe, though few did. During my three-year residency in Cairo in the 1970s, it served as a place of refuge, when the city was too much with me, as well as a regular destination for my foreign visitors. I treasured this little-known gem for its library of 200,000 volumes focused on Egypt, its symbol as the capstone of Orientalist learning in Egypt, its evocation of a different and better era, and the quietude it offered in a city with few such oases.

And now the barbarians came and destroyed it with a Molotov Cocktail. The walls still stand but the building is gutted, its invaluable contents burnt.

Comments: (1) This attack brings to mind a host of prior acts of destruction of historical monuments in Egypt, including the medieval defacement of the Sphinx and the Cairo arson of 1952. Outside Egypt, assaults coming right to mind include the Muslim destruction of Hindu temples in India, the Turkish destruction of churches in northern Cyprus, the Palestinian sacking of the Tomb of Joseph, the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha, the Iraqi pillaging of museums, libraries, and archives, the Saudi destruction of antiquities in Mecca, and the Malaysia destruction of an historic Hindu temple. This barbarism, in other words, fits into a larger pattern. What is it about Muslims and history? As this listing suggests, too many of them hate not only what is non-Islamic but even their own heritage.

(2) The former minister of state for antiquities affairs, Zahi Hawass, campaigned for the return of the country’s treasures. I vote against that. Better they be safe where they are than exposed to the fury of modern-day Egyptians, especially given that Egypt’s mufti recently ruled against the private display of statues, a possible first step toward a state-sanctioned destruction of Egyptian antiquities. In addition, observers rightly worry that the imcomparable Egyptian Museum may be targeted next.

Similarly, the end of the entente has just taken place. The decision by the Israelis to cancel a $141 million military deal signed with Turkey in 2008, out of concern that the Turks might deliver the state-of-the-art aerial intelligence system based on electro-optic sensors to enemies of Israel.

Comment: It’s deeply unfortunate that the vagaries of Turkey’s electoral politics permitted an Islamist party to dominate the country in 2002 – but at least the Israelis (and French) recognize this development, unlike the Americans, who persist in thinking all is well.

First a look back: Iran’s mullahs already has had one opportunity to affect American politics, in 1980. Their seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran for 444 days haunted President Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign and – thanks to such developments as yellow ribbons, a “Rose Garden” strategy, a failed rescue operation, and ABC’s America Held Hostage program – contributed to his defeat. Ayatollah Khomeini rebuffed Carter’s hopes for an “October surprise” release of the hostages and twisted the knife one final time by freeing them exactly as Ronald Reagan took the presidential oath.

Today, Iran has two potential roles in Obama’s reelection campaign, as disrupter in Iraq or as target of U.S. attacks. Let’s look at each of them:

Who lost Iraq? Although George W. Bush’s administration signed the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, stipulating that “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011,” Obama’s decision against keeping a residual force in Iraq made the troop withdrawal his choice and his burden. This puts him at risk: should things go badly in Iraq in 2012, he, not Bush, would take the blame. Iran’s supreme guide, Ali Khamene’i, in other words, can make Obama’s life miserable.

Khamene’i has many options: He can exert more control over those many Iraqi leaders who are Shiite Islamists with a pro-Iranian outlook, some of whom even lived in exile in Iran. For example, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fits this mold. The Iranians can also influence Iraqi politics via the country’s intelligence services, which they have already substantially penetrated. Or, they can move Iranian troops at will into Iraq, those tens of thousands of U.S. troops now gone from Iraq’s eastern border, and engage in mischief of their choosing. Finally, they can support proxies like Muqtada al-Sadr or dispatch terrorist agents.

In 1980, the Iranians manipulated the American political process with hostages; in 2012, Iraq is their plaything. Should Iran’s rulers decide to make trouble before Nov. 6, the Republican candidate will blame Obama for “losing Iraq.” Given Obama’s long opposition to the war, that will sting.

(Alternatively, the Iranians can shift gears and make good on their threat to close the Straits of Hormuz to imperil the 17 percent of world oil that goes through that waterway, thereby creating global economic instability.)

Mullahs chose to harm a weakened Democrat in 1980 and could do so again; or, they could decide that Obama is more to their liking and desist. The key point is, the troop withdrawal hands them extra options. Obama may well rue not having kept them there until after the elections, which would have allowed him plausibly to claim, “I did my best.”

Bomb Iranian nukes? Almost two years ago, when Obama still held a threadbare popular plurality among Americans of +3 percent, I suggested that a U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities “would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene” to his benefit. With one action, he could both protect the United States from a dangerous enemy and redraw the election contest. “It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.”

As Obama’s popularity has sunk to -4.4 percent and the elections loom less than a year away, his incentive to bomb Iran has substantially increased, a point publicly discussed by a colorful range of figures, both American (Sarah Palin, Pat Buchanan, Dick Cheney, Ron Paul, Elliott Abrams, George Friedman, David Broder, Donald Trump) and not (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro). Healthcare, employment, and the debt offer the president little solace, the Left is disappointed, and the independent vote is up for grabs. Current skirmishes over sanctions and drones could be mere distraction; an attack on Iranian facilities would presumably take place in the first half of 2012, not too self-evidently close to the U.S. elections.

In conclusion: Khamene’i and Obama can both make trouble for the other. If they do, Iran and Iraq would play outsized roles in the presidential contest, continuing in their unique thirty-year role as the tar babies of American politics.

Three observations on that slap: First, it brings to mind the famous fly-whisk incident (French: le coup d eventail) in neighboring Algeria on April 29, 1827, when the dey of Algiers (the Ottoman ruler of the region), Hussein ben Hassan, struck the French consul, Pierre Deval, with his fly whisk. The French government exploited this episode to go on to conquer the whole of Algeria over the next three years, and stayed for 132 more years. Granted that the fly-whisk was a manufactured incident and the slap a year ago was a real one – still the resemblance is striking.

Second, the slap confirms the butterfly effect – the idea going back to a 1972 academic paper by Edward Lorenz, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” that a miniscule, remote act can have momentous and unpredictable consequences.

Third, the events of the past year should put forever to rest the notion that Muslims are fatalistic. As I put it in 1983 about pre-modern life: “Although Muslim subjects were often referred to by the Arabic term ra’iya (tended flock), indicating their passivity, it would be more apt to see them as cattle which, normally placid and complacent, sometimes turned against authorities and stampeded them. Rejection of the [traditional order] happened rarely, usually at moments of extreme crisis, but often enough to keep Muslim rulers apprehensive.” Indeed, those rules should not underestimate the volatility of their masses.

Everyone from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: no Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as “Palestinian” until 1920, when, in rapid order this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine.

For details, see a long article of mine from 1989 on the topic or a short one from 2000.

This stunning result prompts two questions: Is this a legitimate or rigged outcome? Are Islamists about to dominate Egypt?

Legitimate or rigged? No one took seriously Soviet elections with their inevitable 99-percent returns for the Communists; and while the process and outcome of the Egyptian elections are less blatant, they deserve similar skepticism. The game is more subtle, but it’s still a game, and here is how it’s played:

The Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1928) and the military dictatorship (ruling Egypt since 1952) have a parallel ideology and a long history that makes them simultaneously rivals and allies. Over the decades, they off-and-on cooperated in an autocratic system bound by Islamic law (Shari’a) and in oppressing liberal, secular elements.

In this spirit, Anwar El-Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and now Mohamed Tantawi tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money. For example, when George W. Bush pressured Mubarak to permit more political participation, the latter responded by having 88 Muslim Brotherhood members elected to parliament, thereby warning Washington that democracy = an Islamist takeover. The apparent weakness of non-Islamists scared the West from further insisting on a transition to political participation. But a close look at the 2005 elections finds that the regime helped the Islamists gain its 20 percent of the seats.

Today, Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) still play this tired old game. Note the various methods: (1) Reports of electoral fraud have emerged, for example in Helwan. (2) SCAF has, according to the prominent Islamist Safwat Hijazi, offered a “deal” to the Islamists: it shares power with them on condition that they turn a blind eye to its corruption.

(3) The military has subsidized both the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi political parties during the recent parliamentary elections. Marc Ginsburg reports on a SCAF slush fund totaling millions of dollars in “the form of ‘walk around’ money, clothing and food giveaways” that enabled hundreds of local chapters of Islamist political organizations to buy votes. Ginsburg tells of a SCAF emissary who “met secretly with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist oriented political movements last April to establish local political ‘action committee’ bank accounts to funnel an underground supply chain of financial and commodity support.”

Other Middle Eastern dictators, such as the Yemeni president and Palestinian Authority chairman, also play this double game, pretending to be anti-Islamist moderates and Western allies while, in fact, being toughs who cooperate with Islamists and repress true moderates. Even anti-Western tyrants like Assad of Syria and Qaddafi of Libya play the same opportunistic game in times of need, portraying massive uprisings against them as Islamist movements. (Recall how Qaddafi blamed the Libyan insurrection on Al-Qaeda lacing teenagers’ coffee with hallucinatory pills.)

Dominate Egypt? If the military colludes with Islamists to remain in power, obviously it, and not Islamists retains ultimate control. This is the key point that conventional analysts miss: the recent election results allow the military to keep power. As aspiring Egyptian politician Mohamed ElBaradei correctly notes, “it is all in the hands of SCAF right now.”

True, if Islamists control the parliament (not a sure thing; the military could yet decide to reduce their percentage in future rounds of an unusually complex voting procedure open to abuse), they acquire certain privileges and move the country further toward the Shari’a – as far, anyway, as SCAF permits. This maintains the long-term trend of Islamization underway since the military seized power in 1952.

What about Western policy? First, press SCAF to build the civil society that must precede real democracy, so that the modern and moderate civilians in Egypt have a chance to express themselves.

Second, instantly cease all economic aid to Cairo. It is unacceptable that Western taxpayers pay, even indirectly, for Islamizing Egypt. Resume funding only when the government allows secular Muslims, liberals, and Copts, among others, freely to express and organize themselves.

Third, oppose both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis. Less extreme or more, Islamists of every description are our worst enemies.

Cynthia Farahat contributed to this piece.