As the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research celebrates its fourteenth anniversary late-August Fundraiser, it is a somber moment for Israel and the Jewish people. CIJR was founded in 1988, during the first "intifada", by a small, determined band of academics and laymen, to respond to the negative media assault on Israel. Today the Institute is a unique, independent, and internationally known and respected pro-Israel research organization. And its initial goals--truth-telling about the embattled Jewish state and Jewish issues to the media, students, and the Jewish and non-Jewish communities--are even more important than ever.

Israel's situation today is in some ways worse than it was in 1988. The Gulf War came and went, yet Saddam Hussein remains in power, probably closer to nuclear capability (he already has chemical and biological capacity) than he was before 1991. And the "peace process", already dying well before 2000, has now been definitively dead for two years, since Yasser Arafat rejected then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's radically extreme Camp David (and Taba) peace offers. Not even deigning to make a counter-offer, Arafat unleashed, and sustains, the current Palestinian terror-war against Israel.

Homicide bombers, rocket attacks, and Kalachnikovs (many supplied by Israel!) have replaced the first intifada's stones and concrete blocks. Over 500 Jews (29 since July 22nd alone) and 1,500 Palestinians, have so far died in an ongoing war of attrition. The media generally, but above all in Europe, seem to have learned nothing from either the first, or the current, Palestinian assaults. Jewish groups are still protesting CNN and BBC coverage of Israel, campuses have become hostile to Jews and to Israel, and Europe is witnessing a wave of anti-Semitic expression and attacks unparalleled since the Nazi accession to power in Germany in the 1930s.

On the other hand, the terrible, tragic events of September 11, 2001 and the new George W. Bush Administration's global war against terrorism, beginning with the attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, have constituted a new reality. The Islamicist-supporting Saudi Arabians have come under long-overdue scrutiny, and Pakistan is, however reluctantly, cooperating in the drive to root out Al-Qaeda terrorism. America and Israel are today partners in the war against terror, with the Bush administration recently turning away from an earlier "Arafat stays-Palestinian state first, then peace" policy towards the more realistic current "Arafat leaves-democratic Palestinian state first, then peace".

The much-bruited American "regime-change" attack against Iraq, which may well change the political the map of the Middle East, seems clearly in the cards, if not immediately imminent. Even the Russians, under Putin, are cooperating, abandoning Iraq and upping oil production to offset Iraqi interruption and possible Saudi and Gulf State embargoes if, and when, war comes.

It has become clear that the Palestinian terror attacks are the product of a deeply disturbed culture of death, expressed in the popular cult of "suicide"-martyrs and issuing from a deep-seated, irrational hatred of Jews. They express a fanatical and essentially genocidal intent, one echoed in the mass media of the Arab countries. This intent--given chemical, biological, and potentially nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles--constitutes a radical, and pressing, danger not only to Israel but also to the West, to Europe and the United States.

A sovereign Palestinian state is, under current circumstances, not in the offing. But while Arafat alone cannot destroy Israel, he is causing grievous harm, and could trigger a radical deterioration of the situation leading to a dangerous regional conflict.

Under such circumstances, our unflagging support for Israel, the miraculous expression of a reborn Jewish People after 2,000 years of exile and the tragedy of the Holocaust, remains crucial. We here at CIJR are proud to play our part in assuring this support. Please make a generous (and tax-deductible) contribution, so that our work--with the community, with students, and in the media--can continue. Please help.