Nahum Goldmann was a leading Zionist. He was a founder of the World Jewish Congress and its president from 1951 to 1978, and was also president of the World Zionist Organization from 1956 to 1968 Excerpt: The meaning and the historical mission of our time can be summed up in one: its task is to reorganize cultural mankind, to put a new social system in place of the one that has prevailed until now... All adjustments and reordering now consist of two things: in the destruction of the old order and the reconstruction of the new. First of all, all border posts, regulatory barriers and labels of the previous system must be removed and all elements of the system that are to be reorganized must be disassembled as such, on an equal footing with one another. Only then can the second, the reorganization of these elements, be started. Thus, the first task of our time is destruction: all social stratifications and social formations created by the old system must be destroyed, individuals must be torn out of their ancestral milieus; no tradition may be considered sacred any longer; old age is regarded only as a sign of illness; the slogan is: what was, must go. The forces that carry out this negative task of our time are: in the economic-social field capitalism, in the political-spiritual field democracy.

The massive intelligence failures that resulted in the september 11th attacks have left many people wondering how this could have happened. As we have seen in the current war in iraq, whether it be our futile search for weapons of mass destruction or our inability to discern the complex political and social dynamics of the region, our intelligence has proven to be almost entirely inaccu­rate. What possible course of events could have led to such a series of intelligence failures and placed the united states in the near­ impossible predicament we find ourselves in today? Prelude to Terror will explain the historical context underlying how things went so wrong and why our government has been unwilling to do what is necessary to reform the system that has failed so badly.