A Hamas spokesperson on Wednesday called the security cabinet's decision to declare the Gaza Strip an enemy entity a comprehensive declaration of war, for which Israel would bear the consequences. The spokesman said Hamas would work to get international backing to prevent Israel from cutting off Gaza's water, electricity and fuel supply - a step it would now be able to take if it so chose and following legal examination.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also expressed anger over Israel's decision on Wednesday, condemning the plan as "an oppressive decision."
"This oppressive decision will only strengthen the chocking embargo imposed on 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, increase their suffering and deepen their tragedy," Abbas' office said in a statement.
According to a government press release, Wednesday's unanimous decision determined:
"Hamas is a terrorist organization that has taken control of the Gaza Strip and turned it into hostile territory. This organization engages in hostile activity against the State of Israel and its citizens and bears responsibility for this activity.
"In light of the foregoing, it has been decided to adopt the recommendations that have been presented by the security establishment, including the continuation of military and counter-terrorist operations against the terrorist organizations.
"Additional sanctions will be placed on the Hamas regime in order to restrict the passage of various goods to the Gaza Strip and reduce the supply of fuel and electricity. Restrictions will also be placed on the movement of people to and from the Gaza Strip. The sanctions will be enacted following a legal examination, while taking into account both the humanitarian aspects relevant to the Gaza Strip and the intention to avoid a humanitarian crisis."
Following the decision, a UN official called the move problematic, telling Army Radio that since Gaza was still under Israeli occupation and Israel controlled all crossings in and out of the area, collective punishment of all Gaza residents would constitute a violation of international law.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak presented the plan to the cabinet on Wednesday morning. Barak reportedly told the cabinet that, at present, he favored cutting off electricity but not water to Gaza's 1.4 million residents.
Barak went on to say that he was not in favor of a large-scale military incursion into Gaza.
Meanwhile, however, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi told Army Radio on Wednesday that a ground incursion into Gaza was unavoidable.
In the meantime, Hanegbi said, there was no need to pamper them with fuel and electricity.
Cutting off electricity would be the most severe of the retaliatory measures Israel has taken recently against near-daily Kassam rocket fire from Gaza into the South. Israel hopes to force Hamas to stop the attacks because Israeli air strikes and land incursions against the rocket launchers have not been effective.
The crude rockets have killed 12 people in southern Israel in the past seven years, injured dozens more and badly disrupted daily life in the region.
Gaza's population, largely impoverished, is almost entirely dependent on Israel for the supply of electricity, water and fuel, and a cutoff would deepen their hardship. Since the Hamas takeover, Israel has closed crossings with Gaza almost entirely, allowing in only humanitarian aid.
Several ministers have expressed support for cutting off the supply of resources to the territory, but such action would draw international condemnation, and Olmert and the IDF are said to oppose it.
Rabu, 19 September 2007
Today's min-news lead-ins
Mailinfo Guysen Israel News - Wednesday 19 September 2007 Saudi Arabia has said that it will decline the invitation to the peace conference organized by Washington, if it is not assured of tangible results on the fundamental issues of the Israeli-Palestinian question. Egypt has adopted a similar position.
PM Ehud Olmert has made a request to the state committee for the participation in defense expenses for public service employees, to finance his legal expenses for his defense before the Winograd Commission.
The United States has said that it does not want the Syrian presence at the Middle East Peace Conference set for the fall in Washington. According to a White House source Syria is "a brutal and vicious regime, and a strategic ally of Iran", which also adheres to the "most primitive anti-semitic opinions".
The head of the Russian nuclear program, Sergey Kirienko, said on Tuesday that he saw no political reason likely to delay the construction of the Iranian nuclear plant. Russia will thus continue to help Iran complete its project as soon as the financial issues are settled.
According to a High Court decision given on Tuesday, the Interior Minister is authorized to strip the former MK Azmi Bishara of Israeli citizenship. Following this decision, organization Shurat Hadin has asked the Interior Minister to also remove citizenship from all MKs who visit Syria.
PM Ehud Olmert has made a request to the state committee for the participation in defense expenses for public service employees, to finance his legal expenses for his defense before the Winograd Commission.
The United States has said that it does not want the Syrian presence at the Middle East Peace Conference set for the fall in Washington. According to a White House source Syria is "a brutal and vicious regime, and a strategic ally of Iran", which also adheres to the "most primitive anti-semitic opinions".
The head of the Russian nuclear program, Sergey Kirienko, said on Tuesday that he saw no political reason likely to delay the construction of the Iranian nuclear plant. Russia will thus continue to help Iran complete its project as soon as the financial issues are settled.
According to a High Court decision given on Tuesday, the Interior Minister is authorized to strip the former MK Azmi Bishara of Israeli citizenship. Following this decision, organization Shurat Hadin has asked the Interior Minister to also remove citizenship from all MKs who visit Syria.
Extortion Continues!
The Palestinian Authority is demanding "far-reaching" concessions from Israel and the US as a precondition for attending the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, PA officials in Ramallah said Tuesday. The officials told The Jerusalem Post that PA President Mahmoud Abbas would relay these demands to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during their meeting in Ramallah on Thursday.
This is the first time the PA has set conditions for attending the conference. The latest decision reflects the PA's increasing reluctance to participate under the current circumstances.
Among the concessions that Abbas has demanded are the release of hundreds of security prisoners from Israeli jails, the removal of dozens of IDF checkpoints in the West Bank, and a halt to the construction of the security barrier and of new houses in West Bank settlements.
According to the officials in Ramallah, Abbas will also demand millions of dollars to boost his Fatah-controlled PA security forces and to help build proper government institutions.
Earlier this week, the Post revealed that the PA was considering requesting the postponement of the peace conference.
On the eve of Rice's talks with Abbas, the officials reiterated this position, saying they saw no point in holding an international conference as long as the Palestinians and Israelis had not reached a "declaration of principles" on fundamental issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of the proposed Palestinian state and the "right of return" for the refugees.
"We will inform Rice that the conference requires serious preparations - otherwise, it will fail and everything will explode in our faces," one official told the Post. "We only hope that Rice won't exert pressure on us to participate in the conference while we are still unprepared."
The official said Abbas would express his deep concern over remarks made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert earlier this week regarding the US-sponsored conference. Olmert was quoted as saying that the most he was hoping to achieve in Washington was a "joint statement," and not a declaration of principles. His remarks drew sharp criticism from Abbas's senior aides, who accused the prime minister of seeking to thwart the conference.
"Olmert is either unwilling or unable to reach an agreement over the core issues with the Palestinians due to his internal problems," said another PA official. "Olmert is politically very weak, and it's time to admit that he can't deliver. I don't even know why he has agreed to go to the conference."
Nimer Hammad, political adviser to Abbas, said it would be better for all if the US postponed the conference, which is scheduled for November. He said there was no reason for Abbas or any other Arab to attend as long as Israel was not prepared to reach a final-status agreement.•
This is the first time the PA has set conditions for attending the conference. The latest decision reflects the PA's increasing reluctance to participate under the current circumstances.
Among the concessions that Abbas has demanded are the release of hundreds of security prisoners from Israeli jails, the removal of dozens of IDF checkpoints in the West Bank, and a halt to the construction of the security barrier and of new houses in West Bank settlements.
According to the officials in Ramallah, Abbas will also demand millions of dollars to boost his Fatah-controlled PA security forces and to help build proper government institutions.
Earlier this week, the Post revealed that the PA was considering requesting the postponement of the peace conference.
On the eve of Rice's talks with Abbas, the officials reiterated this position, saying they saw no point in holding an international conference as long as the Palestinians and Israelis had not reached a "declaration of principles" on fundamental issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of the proposed Palestinian state and the "right of return" for the refugees.
"We will inform Rice that the conference requires serious preparations - otherwise, it will fail and everything will explode in our faces," one official told the Post. "We only hope that Rice won't exert pressure on us to participate in the conference while we are still unprepared."
The official said Abbas would express his deep concern over remarks made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert earlier this week regarding the US-sponsored conference. Olmert was quoted as saying that the most he was hoping to achieve in Washington was a "joint statement," and not a declaration of principles. His remarks drew sharp criticism from Abbas's senior aides, who accused the prime minister of seeking to thwart the conference.
"Olmert is either unwilling or unable to reach an agreement over the core issues with the Palestinians due to his internal problems," said another PA official. "Olmert is politically very weak, and it's time to admit that he can't deliver. I don't even know why he has agreed to go to the conference."
Nimer Hammad, political adviser to Abbas, said it would be better for all if the US postponed the conference, which is scheduled for November. He said there was no reason for Abbas or any other Arab to attend as long as Israel was not prepared to reach a final-status agreement.•
Iraq Journal Anbar Awakens, Part II
Combat operations are finished in Ramadi. The American military now acts as a peacekeeping force to protect the city from those who recently lost it and wish to return. It is not, however, completely secured yet.
"Al Qaeda lost their capital," Maj. Lee Peters said, "and the one city that was called the worst in the world. It was their Stalingrad. And they want to come back."
Click here to visit Michael J. Totten's Web site.
In July and again in August they did try to retake it and lost pitched battles on the shores of Lake Habbaniya and Donkey Island just on the outskirts. They destroyed a bridge over the Euphrates River leading into the city with a dump truck bomb.
Four other bridges in Anbar province also were destroyed in acts of revenge in the countryside by those who no longer have refuge in cities. And just last week Sheik Sattar Abu Risha, the leader of the indigenous Anbar Salvation Council that declared Al Qaeda the enemy, was assassinated by a roadside bomb near his house.
That murder can’t undo the changes in the hearts and minds of the locals. If anything, assassinating a well-respected leader who is widely seen as a savior will only further harden Anbaris against the rough men who would rule them.
"All the tribes agreed to fight Al Qaeda until the last child in Anbar," the sheik’s brother Ahmed told a Reuters reporter.
Whether Anbar province is freshly christened pro-American ground or whether the newly founded Iraqi-American alliance is merely temporary and tactical is hard to say. Whatever the case, the region is no longer a breeding ground for violent anti-American and anti-Iraqi forces.
When the Army soldiers at Blue Diamond took me on their missions I could see why so many reporters write off Ramadi as a place where nothing happens: I was sent along in a convoy of Humvees to the outskirts of the city in a palm grove to attend an adult literacy class for women.
The class was canceled at the last minute, though, so our trip to the palm grove actually was pointless. But Iraqis descended on us from their countryside houses and kept us busy, happily socializing for hours.
Click here to read Anbar Awakens, Part I.
Experiences such as this are typical for the infantrymen of the U.S. military but extraordinary for a civilian like me who isn’t accustomed to casually hanging out with Arabs in Iraq’s notorious Sunni Triangle.
I was greeted by friendly Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad every day, but the atmosphere in Ramadi was different. I am not exaggerating when I describe their attitude toward Americans as euphoric.
Grown Iraqi men hugged American soldiers and Marines.
Young men wanted me to take their pictures with their arms around American soldiers and Marines. The Americans seemed slightly bored with the idea, but the Iraqis were enthusiastic.
Children hugged State Department civilian reconstruction team leader Donna Carter.
Ramadi has changed so drastically from the terrorist-infested pit that it was as recently as April 2007 that I could hardly believe what I saw. The sheer joy on the faces of these Iraqis was unmistakable. They weren’t sullen in the least, and it was pretty obvious that they were not just pretending to be friendly or going through the hospitality motions.
"It was nothing we did," said Marine Lt. Col. Drew Crane who was visiting for the day from Fallujah. "The people here just couldn’t take it anymore."
What he said next surprised me even more than what I was seeing.
"You know what I like most about this place?" he said.
"What’s that?" I said.
"We don’t need to wear body armor or helmets," he said.
I was poleaxed. Without even realizing it, I had taken off my body armor and helmet. I took my gear off as casually as I do when I take it off after returning to the safety of the base after patrolling. We were not in the safety of the base and the wire. We were safe because we were in Ramadi.
Click here to read the full report.
"Al Qaeda lost their capital," Maj. Lee Peters said, "and the one city that was called the worst in the world. It was their Stalingrad. And they want to come back."
Click here to visit Michael J. Totten's Web site.
In July and again in August they did try to retake it and lost pitched battles on the shores of Lake Habbaniya and Donkey Island just on the outskirts. They destroyed a bridge over the Euphrates River leading into the city with a dump truck bomb.
Four other bridges in Anbar province also were destroyed in acts of revenge in the countryside by those who no longer have refuge in cities. And just last week Sheik Sattar Abu Risha, the leader of the indigenous Anbar Salvation Council that declared Al Qaeda the enemy, was assassinated by a roadside bomb near his house.
That murder can’t undo the changes in the hearts and minds of the locals. If anything, assassinating a well-respected leader who is widely seen as a savior will only further harden Anbaris against the rough men who would rule them.
"All the tribes agreed to fight Al Qaeda until the last child in Anbar," the sheik’s brother Ahmed told a Reuters reporter.
Whether Anbar province is freshly christened pro-American ground or whether the newly founded Iraqi-American alliance is merely temporary and tactical is hard to say. Whatever the case, the region is no longer a breeding ground for violent anti-American and anti-Iraqi forces.
When the Army soldiers at Blue Diamond took me on their missions I could see why so many reporters write off Ramadi as a place where nothing happens: I was sent along in a convoy of Humvees to the outskirts of the city in a palm grove to attend an adult literacy class for women.
The class was canceled at the last minute, though, so our trip to the palm grove actually was pointless. But Iraqis descended on us from their countryside houses and kept us busy, happily socializing for hours.
Click here to read Anbar Awakens, Part I.
Experiences such as this are typical for the infantrymen of the U.S. military but extraordinary for a civilian like me who isn’t accustomed to casually hanging out with Arabs in Iraq’s notorious Sunni Triangle.
I was greeted by friendly Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad every day, but the atmosphere in Ramadi was different. I am not exaggerating when I describe their attitude toward Americans as euphoric.
Grown Iraqi men hugged American soldiers and Marines.
Young men wanted me to take their pictures with their arms around American soldiers and Marines. The Americans seemed slightly bored with the idea, but the Iraqis were enthusiastic.
Children hugged State Department civilian reconstruction team leader Donna Carter.
Ramadi has changed so drastically from the terrorist-infested pit that it was as recently as April 2007 that I could hardly believe what I saw. The sheer joy on the faces of these Iraqis was unmistakable. They weren’t sullen in the least, and it was pretty obvious that they were not just pretending to be friendly or going through the hospitality motions.
"It was nothing we did," said Marine Lt. Col. Drew Crane who was visiting for the day from Fallujah. "The people here just couldn’t take it anymore."
What he said next surprised me even more than what I was seeing.
"You know what I like most about this place?" he said.
"What’s that?" I said.
"We don’t need to wear body armor or helmets," he said.
I was poleaxed. Without even realizing it, I had taken off my body armor and helmet. I took my gear off as casually as I do when I take it off after returning to the safety of the base after patrolling. We were not in the safety of the base and the wire. We were safe because we were in Ramadi.
Click here to read the full report.
'Terror leader escaped notice for over two years'
BEIRUT: The mastermind of the terror cell uncovered by the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Mohammed Rashid Ammar, was known as a glass merchant who hid the true nature of his activities for more than two years in the village of Anout in the predominantly Sunni Iqlim al-Kharroub area The ISF said it recovered weapons and explosives after raiding a house, a shop and a warehouse belonging to Ammar, including nine assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and canisters of liquid hydrogen used in manufacturing explosives.
A well informed source told The Daily Star Tuesday that trucks had been seen unloading shipments "every other day" at Ammar's property, what people assumed to be glass shipments. The ISF is testing the confiscated explosives to check if the type and batch match those used in other terrorist attacks and assassinations that have taken place over the last three years in Lebanon, including the June assassination of Future Movement MP Walid Eido.
Security sources have not released the exact quantity of explosives recovered.
An unidentified Libyan man, netted in the raids over the weekend, is believed to be the technical expert who calibrated Katyusha rockets fired at northern Israel three months ago, the source added.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Two Katyushas fell near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on June 17 this year, the first such breach of the cessation of hostilities since the summer 2006 war ended. No casualties were reported as one of the rockets hit a factory and the other struck a car.
The source said investigations are proceeding with the seven suspects detained in the raids, including four men arrested in Yareen, Ammar and the Libyan man. Security sources had released two names, Saeed M., from Mina in Tripoli, and Mohammad H. H., from the village of Katr Maya in Iqlim al-Kharroub.
Judicial sources said army intelligence would continue interrogating the seven suspects for the next week to 10 days, especially since Investigating Magistrate Ghassan Oweidat will be traveling for the next week.
Local media reported that the cell had been active in carrying out attacks and planning for attacks in parts of South Lebanon patrolled by UNIFIL.
Following the conclusion of operations in Nahr al-Bared, authorities have clamped down hard on suspected terror cells throughout Lebanon, mostly using information gleaned from detained militants. The hunt continues for terror suspects and weapons caches.
A well informed source told The Daily Star Tuesday that trucks had been seen unloading shipments "every other day" at Ammar's property, what people assumed to be glass shipments. The ISF is testing the confiscated explosives to check if the type and batch match those used in other terrorist attacks and assassinations that have taken place over the last three years in Lebanon, including the June assassination of Future Movement MP Walid Eido.
Security sources have not released the exact quantity of explosives recovered.
An unidentified Libyan man, netted in the raids over the weekend, is believed to be the technical expert who calibrated Katyusha rockets fired at northern Israel three months ago, the source added.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Two Katyushas fell near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on June 17 this year, the first such breach of the cessation of hostilities since the summer 2006 war ended. No casualties were reported as one of the rockets hit a factory and the other struck a car.
The source said investigations are proceeding with the seven suspects detained in the raids, including four men arrested in Yareen, Ammar and the Libyan man. Security sources had released two names, Saeed M., from Mina in Tripoli, and Mohammad H. H., from the village of Katr Maya in Iqlim al-Kharroub.
Judicial sources said army intelligence would continue interrogating the seven suspects for the next week to 10 days, especially since Investigating Magistrate Ghassan Oweidat will be traveling for the next week.
Local media reported that the cell had been active in carrying out attacks and planning for attacks in parts of South Lebanon patrolled by UNIFIL.
Following the conclusion of operations in Nahr al-Bared, authorities have clamped down hard on suspected terror cells throughout Lebanon, mostly using information gleaned from detained militants. The hunt continues for terror suspects and weapons caches.
Work on Security Wall Along Iraq Border to Begin Soon
Comment: Notice it is a security fence not an apartheid wall-no, it is not Israel-it is an Arab country. Double standard, but of course!Now use this information-please. JEDDAH, 18 September 2007 — Saudi Arabia will soon begin building a security wall along its border with Iraq, Interior Minister Prince Naif announced yesterday. The project is aimed at preventing the entry of terrorists and illegal aliens into the Kingdom and is estimated to cost SR4 billion.
“The contract for building the fence will be awarded soon, God willing,” the minister told reporters after meeting with the president of King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh.
In a previous statement, Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said tenders had been invited for building the barrier along the entire length of its 900-km desert border with Iraq.
The barrier is part of a package to secure the Kingdom’s 6,500 km of borders in an attempt to improve internal security and bolster its defenses against external threats.
Saudi Arabia is worried that the chaos in Iraq could cause an overspill of sectarian violence and terrorism. The Kingdom was successful in defeating Al-Qaeda militants in the country but wants to protect itself against insurgents from Iraq.
“The project will be carried out following the most modern international specifications,” Gen. Turki told Al-Riyadh Arabic daily.
The spokesman said the project would be totally or partially complete by the end of the next year. “The protection line will represent two rows of barbed wire equipped with the newest radar and infrared viewing devices,” he explained.
Five companies have been invited to offer bids. Among the companies are Saudi Binladin Group, Saudi Oger, Al-Saif Engineering and Construction Co. They have been given until Oct. 28 to submit their quotations.
Prince Naif said there was nothing new to announce about the deviant group. He was referring to Al-Qaeda militants blamed for a series of bombings and terrorist operations across the country since May 2003.
Prince Naif received Dr. Abdullah Al-Othman, president of KSU, and some of its deans and professors at his office yesterday to mark the signing of an agreement for establishing a chair at the university to conduct scientific research on intellectual security.
Prince Naif commended the university for promoting scientific research to meet the needs of society. Last April, the university announced plans to launch a major research and development program with the support of businessmen.
The agreement for setting up the chair, which is named after Prince Naif, was signed by Dr. Saaed Al-Harithy, adviser to the prince. The chair will begin its research work during this academic year (2007-8).
In a statement on the occasion, Al-Othman said his university would recruit highly qualified researchers from within the Kingdom and abroad in order to make use of their knowledge and expertise.
“The contract for building the fence will be awarded soon, God willing,” the minister told reporters after meeting with the president of King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh.
In a previous statement, Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said tenders had been invited for building the barrier along the entire length of its 900-km desert border with Iraq.
The barrier is part of a package to secure the Kingdom’s 6,500 km of borders in an attempt to improve internal security and bolster its defenses against external threats.
Saudi Arabia is worried that the chaos in Iraq could cause an overspill of sectarian violence and terrorism. The Kingdom was successful in defeating Al-Qaeda militants in the country but wants to protect itself against insurgents from Iraq.
“The project will be carried out following the most modern international specifications,” Gen. Turki told Al-Riyadh Arabic daily.
The spokesman said the project would be totally or partially complete by the end of the next year. “The protection line will represent two rows of barbed wire equipped with the newest radar and infrared viewing devices,” he explained.
Five companies have been invited to offer bids. Among the companies are Saudi Binladin Group, Saudi Oger, Al-Saif Engineering and Construction Co. They have been given until Oct. 28 to submit their quotations.
Prince Naif said there was nothing new to announce about the deviant group. He was referring to Al-Qaeda militants blamed for a series of bombings and terrorist operations across the country since May 2003.
Prince Naif received Dr. Abdullah Al-Othman, president of KSU, and some of its deans and professors at his office yesterday to mark the signing of an agreement for establishing a chair at the university to conduct scientific research on intellectual security.
Prince Naif commended the university for promoting scientific research to meet the needs of society. Last April, the university announced plans to launch a major research and development program with the support of businessmen.
The agreement for setting up the chair, which is named after Prince Naif, was signed by Dr. Saaed Al-Harithy, adviser to the prince. The chair will begin its research work during this academic year (2007-8).
In a statement on the occasion, Al-Othman said his university would recruit highly qualified researchers from within the Kingdom and abroad in order to make use of their knowledge and expertise.
Hamas to maintain truce with Israel
Hamas has said it will abide by a truce with Israel as Muslims mark the holy month of Ramadan amid fears Israel might launch a major incursion into the Gaza Strip. Taher al-Nunu, a Hamas spokesman, said: "The government confirms that it is implementing decisions of the unity government, especially the truce between the two sides."
He said Hamas had issued the statement "because we are in the middle of Ramadan and we want to give the Palestinians a chance to live in peace, reopen the crossings and end the siege". However, Israel rejected the overture, calling it "ridiculous".
No dealThe truce refers to a ceasefire between the Israeli army and fighters in Gaza that has been repeatedly broken since the middle of May, just before Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June.Miri Eisin, an Israeli government spokeswoman, said: "There is no question of striking any ceasefire deal with them [Hamas]. They are a terrorist organisation recognised as such by the international community that took power as a result of a putsch."The Israeli army said two rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza on Sunday, without causing injuries or damage.Al Jazeera exclusive
On Thursday, Hamas called on Palestinian fighters to stop firing rockets at border crossings between Gaza and Israel.The border crossings are often the targets of rocket and mortar attacks and have been largely closed since Hamas took control of Gaza three months ago.Last week, a rocket fired by Gaza fighters hit an Israeli army base, wounding scores of soldiers, most of them lightly.Following the strike, Hamas put its forces on high alert ahead of an anticipated large-scale Israeli offensive in revenge for the rocket fire and most senior Hamas officials in Gaza have kept a low profile, fearing an attack by the Israeli military.Cabinet fudgeMeanwhile, the Israeli government held its regular Sunday cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.Mike Hannah, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Jerusalem, said the meeting had created "more questions than answers".Olmert had said that Israel would release a number of Fatah prisoners for Ramadan, which has already started.
But after the meeting it was announced that no decision would now be made on the issue until at least next week.During the cabinet meeting, Olmert also raised the discussions he had held with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, ahead of planned peace talks in November.Olmert had stressed to the cabinet that he had only agreed declarations of "intent" to be discussed in the peace talks rather than "principles" with Abbas.Hannah said Palestinians would see this as "cutting short negotiations before they have really begun".
He said Hamas had issued the statement "because we are in the middle of Ramadan and we want to give the Palestinians a chance to live in peace, reopen the crossings and end the siege". However, Israel rejected the overture, calling it "ridiculous".
No dealThe truce refers to a ceasefire between the Israeli army and fighters in Gaza that has been repeatedly broken since the middle of May, just before Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June.Miri Eisin, an Israeli government spokeswoman, said: "There is no question of striking any ceasefire deal with them [Hamas]. They are a terrorist organisation recognised as such by the international community that took power as a result of a putsch."The Israeli army said two rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza on Sunday, without causing injuries or damage.Al Jazeera exclusive
On Thursday, Hamas called on Palestinian fighters to stop firing rockets at border crossings between Gaza and Israel.The border crossings are often the targets of rocket and mortar attacks and have been largely closed since Hamas took control of Gaza three months ago.Last week, a rocket fired by Gaza fighters hit an Israeli army base, wounding scores of soldiers, most of them lightly.Following the strike, Hamas put its forces on high alert ahead of an anticipated large-scale Israeli offensive in revenge for the rocket fire and most senior Hamas officials in Gaza have kept a low profile, fearing an attack by the Israeli military.Cabinet fudgeMeanwhile, the Israeli government held its regular Sunday cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.Mike Hannah, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Jerusalem, said the meeting had created "more questions than answers".Olmert had said that Israel would release a number of Fatah prisoners for Ramadan, which has already started.
But after the meeting it was announced that no decision would now be made on the issue until at least next week.During the cabinet meeting, Olmert also raised the discussions he had held with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, ahead of planned peace talks in November.Olmert had stressed to the cabinet that he had only agreed declarations of "intent" to be discussed in the peace talks rather than "principles" with Abbas.Hannah said Palestinians would see this as "cutting short negotiations before they have really begun".
Dutch company charged with illegal exports to Iran
A Dutch company and its owner have been charged with violating US embargoes by illegally exporting parachutes, aircraft parts and equipment that could be used in unmanned aerial vehicles to Iran The defendants, who allegedly bought the items from companies in Connecticut, Arizona, Florida, Kansas and New Hampshire, also have been charged with making false statements on export control documents, authorities said.
The defendants named in the recently unsealed complaint in Washington, D.C., are Aviation Services International, B.V., an aircraft parts supply company located in the Netherlands, and the company's owner, Robert Kraaipoel. Two additional Dutch companies, Delta Logistics L.V., and TPC, B.V., which are owned by Kraaipoel's son, are also listed as defendants
Comment: It is all about money-forget ethics, forget safety of citizens-so much for the West standing united!
The defendants named in the recently unsealed complaint in Washington, D.C., are Aviation Services International, B.V., an aircraft parts supply company located in the Netherlands, and the company's owner, Robert Kraaipoel. Two additional Dutch companies, Delta Logistics L.V., and TPC, B.V., which are owned by Kraaipoel's son, are also listed as defendants
Comment: It is all about money-forget ethics, forget safety of citizens-so much for the West standing united!
Tehran voices impatience with Delhi over pipeline delays
TEHRAN: Iran on Sunday expressed impatience with India over the finalizing of a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline deal via Pakistan, warning that it could go ahead with Pakistan alone if India procrastinated. Caretaker Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said New Delhi and Islamabad were still in discussions over the payment of transit fees by India to Pakistan for Iranian gas from the so-called "peace pipeline."
He said Pakistani officials were certain to come to Iran next week for talks to finalize the project, but the attendance of Indian representatives was still unconfirmed.
"Our preference is to have a tripartite negotiation. [But] the trend is moving faster with the Pakistanis," Nozari told reporters. "The Pakistanis and Indians are having discussions on the transit fees. If we believe that a serious delay has occurred with the Indians, we will go ahead with the Pakistanis."
Nozari did not elaborate over whether this could involve Iran signing the finalization for the deal with Pakistan alone.
According to state media, the Iranian envoy to the pipeline project, Hojatollah Ghanimifar, said: "We have invited the Indians for these negotiations, but so far their presence is not definite." Discussions on the $7.4-billion project started in 1994 but have been held up by technical and commercial issues.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
There have also been strong objections to the pipeline from the United States - a key friend of Pakistan and an ever closer ally of India - which is at loggerheads with Iran over its contested nuclear program.
The 2,600-kilometer pipeline from Iran's giant South Pars gas field will initially carry around 60 million standard cubic meters per day of gas.
India, which imports more than 70 percent of its energy needs, has been racing to secure new supplies of oil and gas from abroad besides ramping up production from domestic sources to sustain its scorching economic growth.
Pakistan will itself receive gas as well as transporting India's share. India will pay Pakistan for the cost of shipping its share of the gas to the Indian border.
Iran has the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia but until now has remained a relatively minor player in the global export market. - AFP
He said Pakistani officials were certain to come to Iran next week for talks to finalize the project, but the attendance of Indian representatives was still unconfirmed.
"Our preference is to have a tripartite negotiation. [But] the trend is moving faster with the Pakistanis," Nozari told reporters. "The Pakistanis and Indians are having discussions on the transit fees. If we believe that a serious delay has occurred with the Indians, we will go ahead with the Pakistanis."
Nozari did not elaborate over whether this could involve Iran signing the finalization for the deal with Pakistan alone.
According to state media, the Iranian envoy to the pipeline project, Hojatollah Ghanimifar, said: "We have invited the Indians for these negotiations, but so far their presence is not definite." Discussions on the $7.4-billion project started in 1994 but have been held up by technical and commercial issues.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
There have also been strong objections to the pipeline from the United States - a key friend of Pakistan and an ever closer ally of India - which is at loggerheads with Iran over its contested nuclear program.
The 2,600-kilometer pipeline from Iran's giant South Pars gas field will initially carry around 60 million standard cubic meters per day of gas.
India, which imports more than 70 percent of its energy needs, has been racing to secure new supplies of oil and gas from abroad besides ramping up production from domestic sources to sustain its scorching economic growth.
Pakistan will itself receive gas as well as transporting India's share. India will pay Pakistan for the cost of shipping its share of the gas to the Indian border.
Iran has the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia but until now has remained a relatively minor player in the global export market. - AFP
Selasa, 18 September 2007
Muslim advocacy groups sue FBI, DOJ over surveillance
Muslim advocacy groups sued the FBI and the Department of Justice for failing to turn over records they requested on surveillance in the Muslim-American community. The complaint filed Tuesday in US District Court in Santa Ana alleges the FBI only turned over four pages in a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the community leaders made more than a year ago. The documents were not related to surveillance.
The FOIA request sought records that described the FBI's guidelines and policies for surveillance and investigation of Muslim religious organizations. It also sought specific information about FBI inquiries targeting 11 different groups or individuals.
The lawsuit states that all the plaintiffs - who include some of the most prominent Muslim leaders in California - have reason to believe they have been investigated by the FBI in recent years. The FOIA, a federal law which can provide individuals with access to information about the operation of federal agencies, requested documents dating back to January 2001.
Comment:The next tactic has begun-unless our legal system knocks this down immediately, you can expect more of the same to follow. Watch for restraining order requests to follow-our very system is under attack. This is yet another probing attempt to see how our system will stand up. Erosion is the strategy!
The FOIA request sought records that described the FBI's guidelines and policies for surveillance and investigation of Muslim religious organizations. It also sought specific information about FBI inquiries targeting 11 different groups or individuals.
The lawsuit states that all the plaintiffs - who include some of the most prominent Muslim leaders in California - have reason to believe they have been investigated by the FBI in recent years. The FOIA, a federal law which can provide individuals with access to information about the operation of federal agencies, requested documents dating back to January 2001.
Comment:The next tactic has begun-unless our legal system knocks this down immediately, you can expect more of the same to follow. Watch for restraining order requests to follow-our very system is under attack. This is yet another probing attempt to see how our system will stand up. Erosion is the strategy!
How absurd-the UN is obsolete!
Syria voted co-chairman of UN watchdog Two weeks after Israel's alleged bombing raid in Syria, which some foreign reports said targeted North Korean nuclear material, the UN's nuclear watchdog elected Syria as deputy chairman of its General Conference on Monday.
The 51st session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened in Vienna on Monday and will run through Friday.
The Syrian news agency SANA proudly reported the election on Tuesday, adding that Syria was also successful in including "the Israeli nuclear arsenal as an item on the agenda of the conference."
The agenda for the meeting includes the item "Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat." While Iran will be a focus of the discussions, there is no item on the agenda referring to the Islamic Republic by name.
Israel's Foreign Ministry had "no public comment" on Syria's election.
But Gerald Steinberg, chairman of Bar-Ilan University's political science department and an authority on nonproliferation, said the election "reflects the absurdity of the political process inside the IAEA."
The deputy chairman has no real power and is merely a symbolic post, similar to a deputy president of the UN General Assembly or a deputy speaker of the Knesset, he said. However, Steinberg added, "this move shows how little these types of international frameworks can really do when some of the main players are also the main violators of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
Steinberg said that both Iraq and Iran have held similar positions within the IAEA in the past. He also said there was no connection between the political level and the organization's technological branches under the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, which inspect nuclear facilities.
The General Conference, made up of some 144 countries, is the least important of the IAEA's three main bodies. The other two bodies are the Board of Governors and the Secretariat.
The General Conference meets annually to approve budgets and to discuss nuclear-related issues and IAEA policy.•
The 51st session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened in Vienna on Monday and will run through Friday.
The Syrian news agency SANA proudly reported the election on Tuesday, adding that Syria was also successful in including "the Israeli nuclear arsenal as an item on the agenda of the conference."
The agenda for the meeting includes the item "Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat." While Iran will be a focus of the discussions, there is no item on the agenda referring to the Islamic Republic by name.
Israel's Foreign Ministry had "no public comment" on Syria's election.
But Gerald Steinberg, chairman of Bar-Ilan University's political science department and an authority on nonproliferation, said the election "reflects the absurdity of the political process inside the IAEA."
The deputy chairman has no real power and is merely a symbolic post, similar to a deputy president of the UN General Assembly or a deputy speaker of the Knesset, he said. However, Steinberg added, "this move shows how little these types of international frameworks can really do when some of the main players are also the main violators of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
Steinberg said that both Iraq and Iran have held similar positions within the IAEA in the past. He also said there was no connection between the political level and the organization's technological branches under the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, which inspect nuclear facilities.
The General Conference, made up of some 144 countries, is the least important of the IAEA's three main bodies. The other two bodies are the Board of Governors and the Secretariat.
The General Conference meets annually to approve budgets and to discuss nuclear-related issues and IAEA policy.•
'Dozens died in Syrian-Iranian chemical weapons experiment'
Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.
Comment: This story just keeps growing-we did something correct! Now we understand why so much silence, however, the leaks will come rapidly now-the genie is out of the bottle. According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas and VX gas.
The factory was created specifically for the purposes of altering ballistic missiles to carry chemical payloads, the magazine report claimed.
Reports of the accident were circulated at the time, however, no details were released by the Syrian government, and there were no hints of an Iranian connection.
The report comes on the heels of criticism leveled by the Syrains at the United States, accusing it of spreading "false" claims of Syrian nuclear activity and cooperation with North Korea to excuse an alleged Israeli air incursion over the country this month.
According to Global Security.org, Syria is not a signatory of either the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), - an international agreement banning the production, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons, or the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Syria began developing chemical weapons in 1973, just before the Yom Kippur War. Global Security.org cites the country as having one of the most advanced chemical weapons programs in the Middle East.
Comment: This story just keeps growing-we did something correct! Now we understand why so much silence, however, the leaks will come rapidly now-the genie is out of the bottle. According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas and VX gas.
The factory was created specifically for the purposes of altering ballistic missiles to carry chemical payloads, the magazine report claimed.
Reports of the accident were circulated at the time, however, no details were released by the Syrian government, and there were no hints of an Iranian connection.
The report comes on the heels of criticism leveled by the Syrains at the United States, accusing it of spreading "false" claims of Syrian nuclear activity and cooperation with North Korea to excuse an alleged Israeli air incursion over the country this month.
According to Global Security.org, Syria is not a signatory of either the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), - an international agreement banning the production, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons, or the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Syria began developing chemical weapons in 1973, just before the Yom Kippur War. Global Security.org cites the country as having one of the most advanced chemical weapons programs in the Middle East.
Ramon: Give parts of Jerusalem to Palestinians
Comment: The current government has lied to us by stating publicly that it has not discussed final borders, has no intention to decide upon “final principles” without conferring with the Knesset. I sat with a Knesset member last night, he is not in the Kadima party and he indicated that Olmert is moving forward with just such a plan. Olmert is using Ramon-he is the ‘test the waters” man and also the “fall guy” if these discussions go awry. Read along about the Israeli “fire sale” proposal #1 with others to follow. Best make your opinion known, now , loud and clear. Vice premier authors position paper proposing transfer of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods to Palestinian Authority
Ronny Sofer
Vice Premier Haim Ramon outlined his official political agenda on Tuesday, acknowledging that he believes Israel should cede control of the Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the Palestinians and establish joint sovereignty over the city's holy sites.
Ramon went on record with his personal viewpoint in a letter to Nir Barkat, a member of Jerusalem's municipal council on behalf of Kadima.
"The Jewish neighborhoods will be recognized as Israeli and under Israeli sovereignty. Accordingly, the Arab neighborhoods (like Shoafat) will be recognized as Palestinian. Passages between the Israeli neighborhoods will be open and secure – accordingly the same will be true for the Palestinian neighborhoods," writes Ramon.
"There will be special sovereignty over the holy sites, taking into account Israel's unique interests in overseeing them. Within this framework the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter and other holy sites in the Jerusalem vicinity will remain under Israeli rule forever."
Knesset members and cabinet ministers from Kadima recently voiced their objections to the divisive concessions proposed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Those opposing Olmert say they are concerned that he would propose withdrawing from the West Bank and handing over part of Jerusalem to the PA ahead of the upcoming peace summit in Washington.
'A danger to Jerusalem's future'
A fierce opponent of dividing Jerusalem, Barkat demanded that Ramon – as Olmert's designated man for negotiations with the PA - clarify his position.
"Recent reports have said that in your talks with the Palestinian prime minister you are working to divide Jerusalem between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Such a move would compromise Israel's sovereignty over the holy sites and the Old City as well as end in the transfer of Jerusalem neighborhoods to the Palestinians," wrote Barkat in his demand to Ramon.
"I remind you that these positions go against Kadima's guiding principles, that stress the inclusion of the sites holy to the Jewish faith and which are important national symbols – first and foremost of these is a unified Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. It is because of these principles that Kadima was given a mandate by the people of Israel.
"It is inconceivable that we would go along with actions that would endanger Jerusalem's security and Judaism's Holy of Holies."
In his response to Barkat Ramon wrote: "Kadima has raised the banner of a democratic and Jewish Israel with a solid Jewish majority. It is based on this belief that the prime minister is negotiating with President Abbas."
Ramon said he agreed with Barkat's sentiment of preserving Jerusalem's strength and added that expressing Israel's willingness to cede the Arab neighborhoods as part of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority would only contribute to that strength.
Ronny Sofer
Vice Premier Haim Ramon outlined his official political agenda on Tuesday, acknowledging that he believes Israel should cede control of the Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the Palestinians and establish joint sovereignty over the city's holy sites.
Ramon went on record with his personal viewpoint in a letter to Nir Barkat, a member of Jerusalem's municipal council on behalf of Kadima.
"The Jewish neighborhoods will be recognized as Israeli and under Israeli sovereignty. Accordingly, the Arab neighborhoods (like Shoafat) will be recognized as Palestinian. Passages between the Israeli neighborhoods will be open and secure – accordingly the same will be true for the Palestinian neighborhoods," writes Ramon.
"There will be special sovereignty over the holy sites, taking into account Israel's unique interests in overseeing them. Within this framework the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter and other holy sites in the Jerusalem vicinity will remain under Israeli rule forever."
Knesset members and cabinet ministers from Kadima recently voiced their objections to the divisive concessions proposed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Those opposing Olmert say they are concerned that he would propose withdrawing from the West Bank and handing over part of Jerusalem to the PA ahead of the upcoming peace summit in Washington.
'A danger to Jerusalem's future'
A fierce opponent of dividing Jerusalem, Barkat demanded that Ramon – as Olmert's designated man for negotiations with the PA - clarify his position.
"Recent reports have said that in your talks with the Palestinian prime minister you are working to divide Jerusalem between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Such a move would compromise Israel's sovereignty over the holy sites and the Old City as well as end in the transfer of Jerusalem neighborhoods to the Palestinians," wrote Barkat in his demand to Ramon.
"I remind you that these positions go against Kadima's guiding principles, that stress the inclusion of the sites holy to the Jewish faith and which are important national symbols – first and foremost of these is a unified Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. It is because of these principles that Kadima was given a mandate by the people of Israel.
"It is inconceivable that we would go along with actions that would endanger Jerusalem's security and Judaism's Holy of Holies."
In his response to Barkat Ramon wrote: "Kadima has raised the banner of a democratic and Jewish Israel with a solid Jewish majority. It is based on this belief that the prime minister is negotiating with President Abbas."
Ramon said he agreed with Barkat's sentiment of preserving Jerusalem's strength and added that expressing Israel's willingness to cede the Arab neighborhoods as part of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority would only contribute to that strength.
Hezbollah, Not Israel, Deserves Blame for Deaths and Injury of Lebanese Civilians During Last Summer's War
HRW has criticized Israel's conduct of its war against Hezbollah last summer arguing that Israel indiscriminately attacked civilians ("Israel Faulted in Death of Civilians in Lebanon," Washington Post, September 7, 2007 Just before Rosh Hashanah, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its latest report in which it makes the outrageous charge, according to the Washington Post, that "Israel's 'frequent failure' to distinguish between military and civilian targets during the war in Lebanon last summer was the primary reason so many Lebanese civilians were killed in the bombing campaign…" ("Israel Faulted in Death of Civilians in Lebanon," September 7, 2007).
The refutation of those charges, below, authored by AJCongress President Richard S. Gordon, is based on a thorough reading of the HRW report as well as an elucidation of a number of points in international law that are particularly important for understanding that Hezbollah, rather than Israel, should be held accountable for injury to civilians. Among other deficiencies of the HRW report, his response points out that many of the HRW assumptions and charges are contradicted by a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies in Israel last fall that was sponsored by AJCongress and which showed conclusively that it was Hezbollah's use of "human shields," that is, its placement of rocket launchers within civilian settings, that led to the death of Lebanese civilians. HRW mostly ignores the evidence in the CSS report.
AJCongress is the leading agency in American Jewish life dealing with factual errors and with distortions in interpretation of the Law of War - such as those in the HRW report - that handicap Israel (and America as well) by branding self defense a criminal act. These distortions serve as a de facto aid to the terrorists. The American Jewish Congress is a membership association of Jewish Americans, organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad, through public policy advocacy, in the courts, Congress, the executive branch and state and local governments. It also works overseas with others who are similarly engaged.
_____________________________________________________________________________________Hezbollah, Not Israel, Deserves Blame for Deaths and Injury of Lebanese Civilians During Last Summer's WarBy Richard S. GordonHuman Rights Watch (HRW) has it exactly backwards. HRW has criticized Israel's conduct of its war against Hezbollah last summer arguing that Israel indiscriminately attacked civilians ("Israel Faulted in Death of Civilians in Lebanon," Washington Post, September 7, 2007). This is not only wrong and doesn't comport with the facts, but the direct opposite is true. Hezbollah caused the death and destruction in Lebanon and should be held accountable for it. Although a constant target of indiscriminate attacks on its civilians, Israel has always held the safety and preservation of civilian lives as one of its prime concerns. Sadly, in times of war, even the most careful of operations occasionally leads to a loss of civilian lives .
Israel has always stated that such outcomes are deeply regrettable.The HRW view is premised on an incorrect reading of the law that, if generally accepted, would make it impossible for any state to defend itself against terrorists or other irregular forces, and on an incorrect understanding of the motivation and actions of both Israel and Hezbollah. First, HRW concedes, that given Hezbollah's fighter's lack of uniforms, Israel would have "had difficulty distinguishing between Hezbollah's fighters and civilians." Yet HRW faults Israel for injuring or killing civilians as it attacked areas in which Israel believed Hezbollah fighters were lodged. Second, HRW accuses Israel of relying on an assumption that all civilians had left the area (because of warnings to civilians that Israel had issued) and that Israel, therefore, felt itself free to attack anyone present in the area of combat, assuming that they must be Hezbollah. HRW argues, relying on anecdotal evidence from Hezbollah sympathizers in Lebanon, that by the time the fighting began, Hezbollah had retired, in the main, to fields and orchards outside the villages and were no longer located in civilian areas. HRW accuses Israel of missing this important change in the battlefield, asserting that Israel relied on outdated information rather than on real-time intelligence.
The consequence is that civilians rather than Hezbollah fighters ended up bearing the brunt of the Israeli counter attacks. This HRW suggestion that a state defending itself may not do so unless it has real-time intelligence of the precise position of opposing forces before it may attack is worse than unreasonable . It makes no allowance for the inevitable mistakes resulting from the fog of war. It would deny Israel or any other state the means to effectively defend itself against attack from non-state organizations, like Hezbollah. But beyond this unreasonable burden that HRW attempts to apply to what a state must do before it may attack a terrorist's military facility, most important of all, HRW is simply wrong about the pattern of Israel's military response, the method it used for identifying military targets, and the timeliness and accuracy of its intelligence.
An AJCongress-supported study completed by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies in November 2006, several months after hostilities had concluded, carefully reviewed what had occurred during the fighting. The C.S.S. report documents hundreds of declassified Top Secret documents, reports, and photographs and scores of cases, in exhaustive detail, regarding targets Israel bombed, precisely where they were located, their military character and their distance from civilian centers. What that report conclusively proves is that in virtually every case that the C.S.S. could identify, Israel correctly attacked military targets, and precisely hit the target. Yet civilians were killed because Hezbollah had situated the military target in or near a civilian area. The report demonstrates in all of the cases examined that Israel exercised care and proved accurate in selection of targets, rather than relying on an assumption that civilians had left the area, or relying on outdated intelligence. Perhaps the most convincing evidence that Hezbollah fighters remained in civilian areas during the fighting is video interviews with Hezbollah fighters compiled as part of the C.S.S. analysis.
They document that this placement was not accidental but, rather, a result of the Hezbollah view that Hezbollah is indigenous to the civilian population and that it therefore is only natural to situate its forces within the civilian population. In short, the civilian casualties were a direct consequence of the decision by Hezbollah to situate its military targets among civilians. HRW nowhere responds to the actual footage of missiles being launched from civilian areas on days when it was reporting on events elsewhere. In the case of Qana, HRW ignored photos showing arms storehouses in civilian areas. International humanitarian law is a part of the Law of War (a phrase HRW, tellingly, never uses.).
International humanitarian law attempts to mitigate the harshness of war on the civilian . But it does not—unless distorted—forbid a defender from destroying its attacker's military targets hidden among civilians. If that were the case, no state could possibly defend itself from such terrorist attack. On the other hand, there is an absolute prohibition against an attacker - in this case Hezbollah - hiding its military assets among the civilian population. Thus, once again it is Hezbollah that is culpable in any civilian casualties that occurred, not Israel. Given a correct understanding of the rights of a nation to defend itself against terrorist attack, given a correct picture of the methods employed by Israel to select military targets and to avoid injury to civilians, and given a correct understanding of how Hezbollah operated to place its assets in civilian areas, it is clear that it is Hezbollah - not Israel - which is culpable in the civilian deaths that occurred during the fighting in Lebanon. HRW has already blamed Hezbollah for its attacks against civilians in Israel. Unless HRW seeks to argue that despite having had its soldiers killed and others kidnapped and its northern cities struck by rocket attack, Israel had no right to respond militarily, it is Hezbollah which is to blame for civilian casualties in Lebanon as well.
Mr. Gordon is President of the American Jewish Congress.
The refutation of those charges, below, authored by AJCongress President Richard S. Gordon, is based on a thorough reading of the HRW report as well as an elucidation of a number of points in international law that are particularly important for understanding that Hezbollah, rather than Israel, should be held accountable for injury to civilians. Among other deficiencies of the HRW report, his response points out that many of the HRW assumptions and charges are contradicted by a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies in Israel last fall that was sponsored by AJCongress and which showed conclusively that it was Hezbollah's use of "human shields," that is, its placement of rocket launchers within civilian settings, that led to the death of Lebanese civilians. HRW mostly ignores the evidence in the CSS report.
AJCongress is the leading agency in American Jewish life dealing with factual errors and with distortions in interpretation of the Law of War - such as those in the HRW report - that handicap Israel (and America as well) by branding self defense a criminal act. These distortions serve as a de facto aid to the terrorists. The American Jewish Congress is a membership association of Jewish Americans, organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad, through public policy advocacy, in the courts, Congress, the executive branch and state and local governments. It also works overseas with others who are similarly engaged.
_____________________________________________________________________________________Hezbollah, Not Israel, Deserves Blame for Deaths and Injury of Lebanese Civilians During Last Summer's WarBy Richard S. GordonHuman Rights Watch (HRW) has it exactly backwards. HRW has criticized Israel's conduct of its war against Hezbollah last summer arguing that Israel indiscriminately attacked civilians ("Israel Faulted in Death of Civilians in Lebanon," Washington Post, September 7, 2007). This is not only wrong and doesn't comport with the facts, but the direct opposite is true. Hezbollah caused the death and destruction in Lebanon and should be held accountable for it. Although a constant target of indiscriminate attacks on its civilians, Israel has always held the safety and preservation of civilian lives as one of its prime concerns. Sadly, in times of war, even the most careful of operations occasionally leads to a loss of civilian lives .
Israel has always stated that such outcomes are deeply regrettable.The HRW view is premised on an incorrect reading of the law that, if generally accepted, would make it impossible for any state to defend itself against terrorists or other irregular forces, and on an incorrect understanding of the motivation and actions of both Israel and Hezbollah. First, HRW concedes, that given Hezbollah's fighter's lack of uniforms, Israel would have "had difficulty distinguishing between Hezbollah's fighters and civilians." Yet HRW faults Israel for injuring or killing civilians as it attacked areas in which Israel believed Hezbollah fighters were lodged. Second, HRW accuses Israel of relying on an assumption that all civilians had left the area (because of warnings to civilians that Israel had issued) and that Israel, therefore, felt itself free to attack anyone present in the area of combat, assuming that they must be Hezbollah. HRW argues, relying on anecdotal evidence from Hezbollah sympathizers in Lebanon, that by the time the fighting began, Hezbollah had retired, in the main, to fields and orchards outside the villages and were no longer located in civilian areas. HRW accuses Israel of missing this important change in the battlefield, asserting that Israel relied on outdated information rather than on real-time intelligence.
The consequence is that civilians rather than Hezbollah fighters ended up bearing the brunt of the Israeli counter attacks. This HRW suggestion that a state defending itself may not do so unless it has real-time intelligence of the precise position of opposing forces before it may attack is worse than unreasonable . It makes no allowance for the inevitable mistakes resulting from the fog of war. It would deny Israel or any other state the means to effectively defend itself against attack from non-state organizations, like Hezbollah. But beyond this unreasonable burden that HRW attempts to apply to what a state must do before it may attack a terrorist's military facility, most important of all, HRW is simply wrong about the pattern of Israel's military response, the method it used for identifying military targets, and the timeliness and accuracy of its intelligence.
An AJCongress-supported study completed by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies in November 2006, several months after hostilities had concluded, carefully reviewed what had occurred during the fighting. The C.S.S. report documents hundreds of declassified Top Secret documents, reports, and photographs and scores of cases, in exhaustive detail, regarding targets Israel bombed, precisely where they were located, their military character and their distance from civilian centers. What that report conclusively proves is that in virtually every case that the C.S.S. could identify, Israel correctly attacked military targets, and precisely hit the target. Yet civilians were killed because Hezbollah had situated the military target in or near a civilian area. The report demonstrates in all of the cases examined that Israel exercised care and proved accurate in selection of targets, rather than relying on an assumption that civilians had left the area, or relying on outdated intelligence. Perhaps the most convincing evidence that Hezbollah fighters remained in civilian areas during the fighting is video interviews with Hezbollah fighters compiled as part of the C.S.S. analysis.
They document that this placement was not accidental but, rather, a result of the Hezbollah view that Hezbollah is indigenous to the civilian population and that it therefore is only natural to situate its forces within the civilian population. In short, the civilian casualties were a direct consequence of the decision by Hezbollah to situate its military targets among civilians. HRW nowhere responds to the actual footage of missiles being launched from civilian areas on days when it was reporting on events elsewhere. In the case of Qana, HRW ignored photos showing arms storehouses in civilian areas. International humanitarian law is a part of the Law of War (a phrase HRW, tellingly, never uses.).
International humanitarian law attempts to mitigate the harshness of war on the civilian . But it does not—unless distorted—forbid a defender from destroying its attacker's military targets hidden among civilians. If that were the case, no state could possibly defend itself from such terrorist attack. On the other hand, there is an absolute prohibition against an attacker - in this case Hezbollah - hiding its military assets among the civilian population. Thus, once again it is Hezbollah that is culpable in any civilian casualties that occurred, not Israel. Given a correct understanding of the rights of a nation to defend itself against terrorist attack, given a correct picture of the methods employed by Israel to select military targets and to avoid injury to civilians, and given a correct understanding of how Hezbollah operated to place its assets in civilian areas, it is clear that it is Hezbollah - not Israel - which is culpable in the civilian deaths that occurred during the fighting in Lebanon. HRW has already blamed Hezbollah for its attacks against civilians in Israel. Unless HRW seeks to argue that despite having had its soldiers killed and others kidnapped and its northern cities struck by rocket attack, Israel had no right to respond militarily, it is Hezbollah which is to blame for civilian casualties in Lebanon as well.
Mr. Gordon is President of the American Jewish Congress.
Jimmy Carter's War Against the Jews
By
Frontpagemag.com
It was almost exactly five years ago that Jimmy Carter was awarded a Nobel Peace prize for his grandstanding attacks on his country and his president in the run-up to the Iraq war. But it is Israel, a small democratic nation amidst a sea of hostile dictatorships, that has been the object of Carter's most enduring obsessions and the target of his most unscrupulous slanders.
Our newest flash video, "Jimmy Carter's War Against the Jews," lays bare this aspect of Carter's political career in devastating detail. Based on a pamphlet by Jacob Laksin, the video powerfully refutes the lies that Carter has spread about the Jews and Israel in his many books and speeches.
Point by point, the video explodes Carter's duplicitous claims about Israeli policies and the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinian Arabs. Contrary to his cultivated image as an international peacemaker, the video shows Carter to be a world-class hypocrite, harping endlessly on Israel's supposed flaws while averting his gaze from the tyrannies that populate the Middle East, all the while pocketing generous contributions from Arab despots. It is a devastating portrait of the real Jimmy Carter. Having seen it, you will never look at the 39 th president the same way.
To see the video, Click Here.
Frontpagemag.com
It was almost exactly five years ago that Jimmy Carter was awarded a Nobel Peace prize for his grandstanding attacks on his country and his president in the run-up to the Iraq war. But it is Israel, a small democratic nation amidst a sea of hostile dictatorships, that has been the object of Carter's most enduring obsessions and the target of his most unscrupulous slanders.
Our newest flash video, "Jimmy Carter's War Against the Jews," lays bare this aspect of Carter's political career in devastating detail. Based on a pamphlet by Jacob Laksin, the video powerfully refutes the lies that Carter has spread about the Jews and Israel in his many books and speeches.
Point by point, the video explodes Carter's duplicitous claims about Israeli policies and the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinian Arabs. Contrary to his cultivated image as an international peacemaker, the video shows Carter to be a world-class hypocrite, harping endlessly on Israel's supposed flaws while averting his gaze from the tyrannies that populate the Middle East, all the while pocketing generous contributions from Arab despots. It is a devastating portrait of the real Jimmy Carter. Having seen it, you will never look at the 39 th president the same way.
To see the video, Click Here.
Female Circumcision Debated on Egyptian TV
Interviewer: It is the mother who takes her girl to be circumcised... It is the mother's decision more than the father's. Vivian Fuad, Egyptian National Council for Women: Yes, but this decision is made for the man's sake – for the sake of the future husband. The mother says: "I am doing this so I can find her a bridegroom."
Interviewer: Why? She won't be able to marry if she is not circumcised?
Vivian Fuad: In some areas people ask about this, and if the husband finds out that the woman was not circumcised, he might have her circumcised on the wedding night, or the following day.
Interviewer: Even though she's an adult by now?
Vivian Fuad: It happens.
[...]
We want doctors to regain their respect and their value. This will happen only when the medical schools teach them to counsel the family and provide it with accurate information. The doctors will regain their value only when they refuse to perform this, even when they are offered not just 50 pounds...
Interviewer: But some doctors believe in female circumcision.
Vivian Fuad: That is because they have undergone no change in medical school. In medical school, they should learn the ethics of their profession, and what they are allowed and not allowed to do.
Interviewer: I meant that they are convinced female circumcision can affect the sexual urges. Some doctors are convinced of this.
Vivian Fuad: You know why? Because in some Egyptian medical schools, they have shut down the very important departments of sexology, because they think it is shameful and forbidden and so on...
Interviewer: True. Doctors need to learn these things abroad.
[...]
Vivian Fuad: With regard to the decision of the health minister, which we are discussing – there was already an old decision on this, from 1959. That decision had no loopholes. It completely prohibited doctors from performing female circumcision in private clinics and in hospitals. In other words, this decision is not new. It's very old. No health minister anywhere in the world could possibly agree for a doctor to tarnish the honor of medicine by taking a healthy girl and cutting off a part of her body, merely in order to keep in line with traditions. Our children who go to the medical schools are the cream of the crop. We expect them to go to the rural areas and enlighten the people. Instead, they go to the rural areas and adjust themselves to the traditions, so that the people will like and trust them. In addition, it is a source of livelihood for them.
Interviewer: That's for sure. It is a source of livelihood...
Vivian Fuad: The doctor who killed Bodur charged 50 pounds. The mother borrowed the money, because she didn't have it.
[...]
The Egyptian doctor is highly respected. Government money is spent on him. Money is taken from many others to enable him to become a doctor. The primary duty of the doctors' union is to protect the honor of doctors, so that they will not do things against the ethics of their profession.
[...]
In one village in the Bani Suwef district, we teach the girls and boys to say "no" to female circumcision. We persuade them, using scientific methods and information. We do not pressure anybody. We just give them correct information, in order to convince them. One of our girl volunteers encountered a doctor who was paying house calls to circumcise the girls.
Interviewer: My God.
Vivian Fuad: The volunteer knocked on the door of one of the homes, until they let her in. The volunteer had been working with this family. She knocked on the door, and said to the mother: "After everything I have told you, why did you let this doctor in, so she could circumcise your daughter?" She wanted to discuss this with the doctor, but the doctor said to the mother: "Lock her up until I finish my work." In the drama that ensued, the girls begged the volunteer to save them. The volunteer was locked up in the kitchen until the doctor finished her work, while the girls were screaming in pain, and then they let her out. What is this degradation? How can an Egyptian doctor possibly stoop so low? People tell you such doctors accept any kind of payment. You can give her some eggs or chickens, or 20 pounds, and she will take it and go. The situation is difficult. We use the taxpayers' money to enable our children to study for free in medical schools, so they will turn out better than us, and benefit their society – not so that things will come to this.
http://www.memritv.org/subject/en/79.htm
To view this clip visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1555.htm
Interviewer: Why? She won't be able to marry if she is not circumcised?
Vivian Fuad: In some areas people ask about this, and if the husband finds out that the woman was not circumcised, he might have her circumcised on the wedding night, or the following day.
Interviewer: Even though she's an adult by now?
Vivian Fuad: It happens.
[...]
We want doctors to regain their respect and their value. This will happen only when the medical schools teach them to counsel the family and provide it with accurate information. The doctors will regain their value only when they refuse to perform this, even when they are offered not just 50 pounds...
Interviewer: But some doctors believe in female circumcision.
Vivian Fuad: That is because they have undergone no change in medical school. In medical school, they should learn the ethics of their profession, and what they are allowed and not allowed to do.
Interviewer: I meant that they are convinced female circumcision can affect the sexual urges. Some doctors are convinced of this.
Vivian Fuad: You know why? Because in some Egyptian medical schools, they have shut down the very important departments of sexology, because they think it is shameful and forbidden and so on...
Interviewer: True. Doctors need to learn these things abroad.
[...]
Vivian Fuad: With regard to the decision of the health minister, which we are discussing – there was already an old decision on this, from 1959. That decision had no loopholes. It completely prohibited doctors from performing female circumcision in private clinics and in hospitals. In other words, this decision is not new. It's very old. No health minister anywhere in the world could possibly agree for a doctor to tarnish the honor of medicine by taking a healthy girl and cutting off a part of her body, merely in order to keep in line with traditions. Our children who go to the medical schools are the cream of the crop. We expect them to go to the rural areas and enlighten the people. Instead, they go to the rural areas and adjust themselves to the traditions, so that the people will like and trust them. In addition, it is a source of livelihood for them.
Interviewer: That's for sure. It is a source of livelihood...
Vivian Fuad: The doctor who killed Bodur charged 50 pounds. The mother borrowed the money, because she didn't have it.
[...]
The Egyptian doctor is highly respected. Government money is spent on him. Money is taken from many others to enable him to become a doctor. The primary duty of the doctors' union is to protect the honor of doctors, so that they will not do things against the ethics of their profession.
[...]
In one village in the Bani Suwef district, we teach the girls and boys to say "no" to female circumcision. We persuade them, using scientific methods and information. We do not pressure anybody. We just give them correct information, in order to convince them. One of our girl volunteers encountered a doctor who was paying house calls to circumcise the girls.
Interviewer: My God.
Vivian Fuad: The volunteer knocked on the door of one of the homes, until they let her in. The volunteer had been working with this family. She knocked on the door, and said to the mother: "After everything I have told you, why did you let this doctor in, so she could circumcise your daughter?" She wanted to discuss this with the doctor, but the doctor said to the mother: "Lock her up until I finish my work." In the drama that ensued, the girls begged the volunteer to save them. The volunteer was locked up in the kitchen until the doctor finished her work, while the girls were screaming in pain, and then they let her out. What is this degradation? How can an Egyptian doctor possibly stoop so low? People tell you such doctors accept any kind of payment. You can give her some eggs or chickens, or 20 pounds, and she will take it and go. The situation is difficult. We use the taxpayers' money to enable our children to study for free in medical schools, so they will turn out better than us, and benefit their society – not so that things will come to this.
http://www.memritv.org/subject/en/79.htm
To view this clip visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1555.htm
Lets Use the enemy's strategy: one man's cartoonist is another man's social commentator
Bangladesh ban cartoon insulting Islam, orders arrest of cartoonist Bangladeshi authorities have ordered the arrest of a cartoonist after drawings that Muslims said insulted their religion were published in a national newspaper, the government said Tuesday.
The Home Ministry statement said Arifur Rahman's sketches - titled "Name" - that came out Monday in a weekly supplement of the Prothom Alo - "hurt the religious sentiments of the people."
The ministry, in a statement, added that it had ordered Rahman's arrest.
Unconfirmed media reports said police detectives had picked up Arifur Rahman from his house in the capital, Dhaka. Police would not confirm the arrest, or say what charges he faced.
Comment: It's ones perception/interpretation vs. another person's! As long as political correctness is news, reported by the media, our enemy will continue to use it against us-time to shut this tactic down!
The Home Ministry statement said Arifur Rahman's sketches - titled "Name" - that came out Monday in a weekly supplement of the Prothom Alo - "hurt the religious sentiments of the people."
The ministry, in a statement, added that it had ordered Rahman's arrest.
Unconfirmed media reports said police detectives had picked up Arifur Rahman from his house in the capital, Dhaka. Police would not confirm the arrest, or say what charges he faced.
Comment: It's ones perception/interpretation vs. another person's! As long as political correctness is news, reported by the media, our enemy will continue to use it against us-time to shut this tactic down!
Radical Islam, he said, is "driven by al Qaeda and Iran. Iran is the No. 1 perpetrator of terror in the region today
A number of retired military officers are warning the United States to forcibly deal with Iran's interference in Iraq ... they think is the underlying cause of Iraq's difficulty in establishing a functional democracy.
The retired officers, many of them supporters of the surge strategy in Iraq, said at a conference sponsored by the Iran Policy Committee last week that they see Iran as the primary threat to U.S. goals in the region.
Iran provides money, weapons, training, safe havens and ideological support to the Iraqi militants, thus, "fueling those fires from the outside," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, who co-authored "Baghdad Ablaze: How to Extinguish the Fires in Iraq."
Gen. Vallely argued Iran effectively combines ideology, politics and military operations, extending its influence not only to Iraq, but also to the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Venezuela.
Also speaking at the conference, which marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney recommended that the war on terrorism be renamed the "war on radical Islam."
Radical Islam, he said, is "driven by al Qaeda and Iran. Iran is the No. 1 perpetrator of terror in the region today. . So it is extremely important that we address Iran."
Iyad Jamal al-Deen, deputy chairman of the Iraqi parliament's Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iran as a source of sectarian tensions in Iraq.
It is not the Sunnis, Shi'ites or Kurds who want to destroy each other, but rather the politicians and their opposing religious views, he said. "Politics has to be only politics, and religion has to only be religion."
Gen. Vallely commended Gen. David H. Petraeus on his handling of the surge strategy to date, saying, "He has made a change not only in strategy but also in tactics."
"[He] is certainly taking on that Special Operations look of getting in [and] working with local populations, and that's what they're building Iraqi Special forces to do as well.
"And in some cases, some of the best units now within Iraq are Iraqi Special Operation Units," Gen. Vallely said.
Navy Capt. Chuck Nash said that an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal would likely prompt a rapid deterioration in Iraq, because Iraqis would lose any incentive to invest in their future.
"We have to stay and help chart a new course," he said.
The retired officers, many of them supporters of the surge strategy in Iraq, said at a conference sponsored by the Iran Policy Committee last week that they see Iran as the primary threat to U.S. goals in the region.
Iran provides money, weapons, training, safe havens and ideological support to the Iraqi militants, thus, "fueling those fires from the outside," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, who co-authored "Baghdad Ablaze: How to Extinguish the Fires in Iraq."
Gen. Vallely argued Iran effectively combines ideology, politics and military operations, extending its influence not only to Iraq, but also to the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Venezuela.
Also speaking at the conference, which marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney recommended that the war on terrorism be renamed the "war on radical Islam."
Radical Islam, he said, is "driven by al Qaeda and Iran. Iran is the No. 1 perpetrator of terror in the region today. . So it is extremely important that we address Iran."
Iyad Jamal al-Deen, deputy chairman of the Iraqi parliament's Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iran as a source of sectarian tensions in Iraq.
It is not the Sunnis, Shi'ites or Kurds who want to destroy each other, but rather the politicians and their opposing religious views, he said. "Politics has to be only politics, and religion has to only be religion."
Gen. Vallely commended Gen. David H. Petraeus on his handling of the surge strategy to date, saying, "He has made a change not only in strategy but also in tactics."
"[He] is certainly taking on that Special Operations look of getting in [and] working with local populations, and that's what they're building Iraqi Special forces to do as well.
"And in some cases, some of the best units now within Iraq are Iraqi Special Operation Units," Gen. Vallely said.
Navy Capt. Chuck Nash said that an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal would likely prompt a rapid deterioration in Iraq, because Iraqis would lose any incentive to invest in their future.
"We have to stay and help chart a new course," he said.
No excuses when acts are intentional, pre-planned-no excuses accepted
Armed student's motives unclear DearbornHis face painted black, Houssein Zorkot entered a park in east Dearborn Sept. 8, cocked an AK47 he had bought the same day, and then tried to flee police after they confronted him , authorities say.
Were those the actions of a confused young man or those of a potential terrorist with ill intentions?
Dearborn authorities say it's unclear what Zorkot, a 26-year-old medical student from Dearborn, was up to when he was in Hemlock Park armed with the AK47 he had purchased about 1 p.m. that day.
The FBI and police are investigating Zorkot, who appears sympathetic to Hizballah, a terrorist group. But for now, they've found no direct links between him and any terrorist organization, Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly Jr. said. Dearborn police referred all calls to the mayor.
FBI Detroit Special Agent Dawn Clenney said that the agency is assisting in the investigation.
In jail on a $1-million bond, Zorkot is expected in 19th District Court on Friday for his preliminary exam on three gun charges.
The same day he was arrested, Zorkot appears to have posted photos of soldiers on a Web site. The text reads: "The Start of My Personal Jihad (in the US)."
Authorities believe the Web site was created and operated by Zorkot, O'Reilly said.
Also on the site, Zorkot praises Hizballah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Zorkot, the son of Lebanese immigrants, also has photos of recent trips to Lebanon.
Authorities don't know whether the Web site is tied to his actions in the park, which is east of Schaefer and north of Ford Road.
"Was he really dangerous or was he acting out some fantasy? We don't know," O'Reilly said.
But, he added, "right now, there is no evidence that he had any kind of plan. ... We haven't found any established link between him and any terrorist groups."
O'Reilly said that Zorkot's parents believe their son was having a hard time fitting in.
"His parents ... have said he's a young man who's just confused right now," O'Reilly said.
Zorkot, a third-year student at Wayne State University's medical school, may have been going through difficulties at school and at Providence Hospital in Southfield, O'Reilly said.
Francine Wunder, a spokeswoman for Wayne State, confirmed that Zorkot was a medical student. Brian Taylor, a spokesman for St. John Health, of which Providence is a part of, would only say that Zorkot was preparing to study surgery.
A member of Zorkot's family refused to comment.
Contact NIRAJ WARIKOO at 248-351-2998 or nwarikoo@freepress.com.
Were those the actions of a confused young man or those of a potential terrorist with ill intentions?
Dearborn authorities say it's unclear what Zorkot, a 26-year-old medical student from Dearborn, was up to when he was in Hemlock Park armed with the AK47 he had purchased about 1 p.m. that day.
The FBI and police are investigating Zorkot, who appears sympathetic to Hizballah, a terrorist group. But for now, they've found no direct links between him and any terrorist organization, Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly Jr. said. Dearborn police referred all calls to the mayor.
FBI Detroit Special Agent Dawn Clenney said that the agency is assisting in the investigation.
In jail on a $1-million bond, Zorkot is expected in 19th District Court on Friday for his preliminary exam on three gun charges.
The same day he was arrested, Zorkot appears to have posted photos of soldiers on a Web site. The text reads: "The Start of My Personal Jihad (in the US)."
Authorities believe the Web site was created and operated by Zorkot, O'Reilly said.
Also on the site, Zorkot praises Hizballah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Zorkot, the son of Lebanese immigrants, also has photos of recent trips to Lebanon.
Authorities don't know whether the Web site is tied to his actions in the park, which is east of Schaefer and north of Ford Road.
"Was he really dangerous or was he acting out some fantasy? We don't know," O'Reilly said.
But, he added, "right now, there is no evidence that he had any kind of plan. ... We haven't found any established link between him and any terrorist groups."
O'Reilly said that Zorkot's parents believe their son was having a hard time fitting in.
"His parents ... have said he's a young man who's just confused right now," O'Reilly said.
Zorkot, a third-year student at Wayne State University's medical school, may have been going through difficulties at school and at Providence Hospital in Southfield, O'Reilly said.
Francine Wunder, a spokeswoman for Wayne State, confirmed that Zorkot was a medical student. Brian Taylor, a spokesman for St. John Health, of which Providence is a part of, would only say that Zorkot was preparing to study surgery.
A member of Zorkot's family refused to comment.
Contact NIRAJ WARIKOO at 248-351-2998 or nwarikoo@freepress.com.
A paralyzing silence
American President Lyndon Johnson called network head Frank Stanton and yelled: "Are you trying to screw us? Your boys spat on the American flag yesterday." It wasn't the soldiers who burned the huts down along with their inhabitants, nor was it the senior echelons that led the botched campaign – those who spat on the American flag were, according to Johnson, the media that reported the incident.
Forty-two years later, in Israel of 2007, it seems there are many advocates of this concept. Judging by the voices on the street, the prolonged silence on the part of top officials is being perceived as a successful patent for screwing the "hostile media:" Finally, someone has put the journalists where they belong. There are no holiday interviews, no answers to questions, no TV appearances. And the people of Zion are happy. We let them have it!
And thus, protected by the hearty support of the public, which is yet to pay the price, the political establishment is burying a host of existential topics in the all-encompassing swamp.
It refuses to explain what answer, if at all, Israel has in the face of the Qassam rockets in Sderot. It avoids making what may be the
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most obvious statement, that a conflict of this type has no crushing military answer; that perhaps an escalation in conducting targeted assassinations, as experience has shown, may exacerbate the rocket fire and increase the risk of a "strategic missile" feared by all – a missile that would, heaven forbid, hit a kindergarten; that the expectation for a solution in "one fell sweep" would have a reverse effect - see the Second Lebanon War.
The country's leaders say nothing about the security doctrine behind the colossal IDF budget, and this is taking place while an entire nation is reciting freshly baked new truths: That Israel will not operate in the south as long as there is unrest on the northern front.
And what has happened to the doctrine stipulating that the Israeli army is supposed to be capable of responding simultaneously on three fronts?
Why are we building nuclear bunker?
An entire people doesn't know why, and particularly for whom, billions are being invested in a nuclear shelter in the Jerusalem hills, what are the principles guiding the prime minister in his meetings with Mahmoud Abbas, and what exactly (or not exactly) is required in exchange for generous American support.
And we don't know how they plan to deal with the horror show staged by the parents of new IDF recruits outside the gates of the Zikim army base. Does anyone think that their prolonged silence, cunning as it may be, will indeed placate the parents of these soldiers? Will it put the minds of those who arrived at the Zikim gates at rest, including those who will come tomorrow?
No mind, however analytical, will be able to rectify the crisis of confidence that peaked with the gathering around the base's fence.
There are deeds that need not be discussed: We don't have to know what exactly happened in Syria (and whatever foreign sources have not yet told us.) However, we must hear what the prime minister, the defense minister and the IDF chief-of-staff are planning to do to prevent what happened at the Zikim army base from being repeated.
They too must realize that Thailand will not export troops to Israel, and that American money will not buy their parents. A responsible leadership talks to the nation, even if the nation doesn't want to listen.
Forty-two years later, in Israel of 2007, it seems there are many advocates of this concept. Judging by the voices on the street, the prolonged silence on the part of top officials is being perceived as a successful patent for screwing the "hostile media:" Finally, someone has put the journalists where they belong. There are no holiday interviews, no answers to questions, no TV appearances. And the people of Zion are happy. We let them have it!
And thus, protected by the hearty support of the public, which is yet to pay the price, the political establishment is burying a host of existential topics in the all-encompassing swamp.
It refuses to explain what answer, if at all, Israel has in the face of the Qassam rockets in Sderot. It avoids making what may be the
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most obvious statement, that a conflict of this type has no crushing military answer; that perhaps an escalation in conducting targeted assassinations, as experience has shown, may exacerbate the rocket fire and increase the risk of a "strategic missile" feared by all – a missile that would, heaven forbid, hit a kindergarten; that the expectation for a solution in "one fell sweep" would have a reverse effect - see the Second Lebanon War.
The country's leaders say nothing about the security doctrine behind the colossal IDF budget, and this is taking place while an entire nation is reciting freshly baked new truths: That Israel will not operate in the south as long as there is unrest on the northern front.
And what has happened to the doctrine stipulating that the Israeli army is supposed to be capable of responding simultaneously on three fronts?
Why are we building nuclear bunker?
An entire people doesn't know why, and particularly for whom, billions are being invested in a nuclear shelter in the Jerusalem hills, what are the principles guiding the prime minister in his meetings with Mahmoud Abbas, and what exactly (or not exactly) is required in exchange for generous American support.
And we don't know how they plan to deal with the horror show staged by the parents of new IDF recruits outside the gates of the Zikim army base. Does anyone think that their prolonged silence, cunning as it may be, will indeed placate the parents of these soldiers? Will it put the minds of those who arrived at the Zikim gates at rest, including those who will come tomorrow?
No mind, however analytical, will be able to rectify the crisis of confidence that peaked with the gathering around the base's fence.
There are deeds that need not be discussed: We don't have to know what exactly happened in Syria (and whatever foreign sources have not yet told us.) However, we must hear what the prime minister, the defense minister and the IDF chief-of-staff are planning to do to prevent what happened at the Zikim army base from being repeated.
They too must realize that Thailand will not export troops to Israel, and that American money will not buy their parents. A responsible leadership talks to the nation, even if the nation doesn't want to listen.
Reality: Islamic extremists' goal is worldwide domination
Don Bordenkircher
Since returning, it seems to me too many Americans work desperately hard to avoid reality about our presence in Iraq and our enemy. I want to share my reality. I've I've just returned home after serving two years as national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq. During that time I resided within a mile of Sadar City, traveled countrywide to all correctional facilities, and coordinated activities with the U.S. military and the Department of Justice. I wore armor and carried weapons every day. I talked with many prisoners, most of whom spoke English as well as you and I do. They were of every skin color and looked just like you and me.
Since returning, it seems to me too many Americans work desperately hard to avoid reality about our presence in Iraq and our enemy. I want to share my reality.
All known terrorist groups were in Iraq before the United States invaded to liberate the Iraqi people. They were harbored, trained and paid for by terrorist operations worldwide. Members of these groups told me this and I believe them.
Our enemy is the radical fundamentalist arm of the worldwide nation of Islam. They use many names but embrace the same mission. Their mission is worldwide domination by fundamentalist Islam. They will destroy or kill anyone who does not convert to their Islam. They enjoy most destroying Muslims who do not share their vision for world domination. Members of these groups told me this and I believe them.
There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The warheads were shipped to Syria and hidden in the Bekka Valley. The majority of casings are buried somewhere in the thousand miles of desert in Iraq. Prisoners told me this and I believe them.
There is not a civil war occurring in Iraq. There has always been sectarian distrust and acts of violence between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Iran currently arms, trains, advises and monetarily supports both the Sunnis and Shiites, as well as foreign terrorists in Iraq. The Kurds are functioning very well and have a serious dislike of Iran. The mission of Iran in Iraq is to destabilize the country and, when America leaves, assume control without firing a shot. Iranian, Sunni and Shiite prisoners who engaged in these activities told me this and I believe them.
America won the battle for Iraq in three weeks. Now we must, as requested by the Iraqi government, assist in their war against radical fundamentalist Islam and stabilize their government. When will U.S. troops and civilians come home from Iraq? My opinion, based on experience, is that our folks will come home when we withdraw our troops from Japan, Germany, France, Korea, Kosovo and Bosnia. Terrorist cells of radical fundamentalist Muslims are already embedded in the suburbs of America, South America and Canada. They will attack the United States when instructed. As prisoners told me, "we will kill you, your wife and babies, burn your city, and condemn you to a torment in hell, until you convert and submit to the nation of Islam. So pray and prepare."
I believe them and that is my reality.
Prior to being "national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq" Don Bordenkircher was "senior advisor to the South Vietnam Corrections System" -- 1967- 1972. He is also a former Marshall County sheriff of Moundsville, WV and police chief and two-time warden of the state penitentiary at Moundsville. He is very experienced in dealing with and understanding bad guys.
Since returning, it seems to me too many Americans work desperately hard to avoid reality about our presence in Iraq and our enemy. I want to share my reality. I've I've just returned home after serving two years as national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq. During that time I resided within a mile of Sadar City, traveled countrywide to all correctional facilities, and coordinated activities with the U.S. military and the Department of Justice. I wore armor and carried weapons every day. I talked with many prisoners, most of whom spoke English as well as you and I do. They were of every skin color and looked just like you and me.
Since returning, it seems to me too many Americans work desperately hard to avoid reality about our presence in Iraq and our enemy. I want to share my reality.
All known terrorist groups were in Iraq before the United States invaded to liberate the Iraqi people. They were harbored, trained and paid for by terrorist operations worldwide. Members of these groups told me this and I believe them.
Our enemy is the radical fundamentalist arm of the worldwide nation of Islam. They use many names but embrace the same mission. Their mission is worldwide domination by fundamentalist Islam. They will destroy or kill anyone who does not convert to their Islam. They enjoy most destroying Muslims who do not share their vision for world domination. Members of these groups told me this and I believe them.
There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The warheads were shipped to Syria and hidden in the Bekka Valley. The majority of casings are buried somewhere in the thousand miles of desert in Iraq. Prisoners told me this and I believe them.
There is not a civil war occurring in Iraq. There has always been sectarian distrust and acts of violence between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Iran currently arms, trains, advises and monetarily supports both the Sunnis and Shiites, as well as foreign terrorists in Iraq. The Kurds are functioning very well and have a serious dislike of Iran. The mission of Iran in Iraq is to destabilize the country and, when America leaves, assume control without firing a shot. Iranian, Sunni and Shiite prisoners who engaged in these activities told me this and I believe them.
America won the battle for Iraq in three weeks. Now we must, as requested by the Iraqi government, assist in their war against radical fundamentalist Islam and stabilize their government. When will U.S. troops and civilians come home from Iraq? My opinion, based on experience, is that our folks will come home when we withdraw our troops from Japan, Germany, France, Korea, Kosovo and Bosnia. Terrorist cells of radical fundamentalist Muslims are already embedded in the suburbs of America, South America and Canada. They will attack the United States when instructed. As prisoners told me, "we will kill you, your wife and babies, burn your city, and condemn you to a torment in hell, until you convert and submit to the nation of Islam. So pray and prepare."
I believe them and that is my reality.
Prior to being "national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq" Don Bordenkircher was "senior advisor to the South Vietnam Corrections System" -- 1967- 1972. He is also a former Marshall County sheriff of Moundsville, WV and police chief and two-time warden of the state penitentiary at Moundsville. He is very experienced in dealing with and understanding bad guys.
Recognizing the axis of evil
Caroline Glick
THE JERUSALEM POST
If media reports of last week's IAF raid in Syria pan out, the attack against a North-Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear facility in eastern Syria should serve as a pivotal event in the free world's understanding of the enemy it faces in the current global war. The central question now is whether this clarity will be followed by a strategic shift in the US and Israeli governments' conceptualizations of the challenges facing them in the various theaters of war and diplomacy in which they are now engaged.
What the raid exposed is that the free world faces a cohesive alliance of enemy forces that collaborate closely in their joint and separate offensives against their common foes. Whether or not it is called the axis of evil, after the IAF raid it is undeniable that its members - North Korea, Iran and Syria - collaborate closely in their joint war.
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, this is not a temporary alliance of convenience among three otherwise unrelated states. It is a strategic alignment of three regimes that have been acting in tandem on multiple levels for decades. Their collaborative operations have served two primary functions. First they cooperate in perpetuating their holds on power. This they do primarily through criminal enterprises. Second, they work together to wage war against their common foes. The second objective is advanced primarily through the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Furthermore, all three regimes view diplomatic exchanges with their enemies not as a means to solve their disagreements with them, but as a means to gain advantage by forcing US, Israeli and international concessions that legitimize their regimes and enable them to continue to conduct their war.
TIES BETWEEN the countries have been developing since the 1980s. That cooperation blossomed into a full-scale alliance during the 1990s. This is notable because the 1990s marked the period when both US and Israeli foreign policies centered on repeated attempts to appease all three governments.
In 1994, the US embraced appeasement of North Korea when it signed the Agreed Framework that maintained the economic viability of the North Korean regime in exchange for Pyongyang's pledge to end its nuclear weapons program. The US appeased Teheran by embracing the supposedly moderate government of president Muhammad Khatami, and downplayed Iran's role in terrorist bombings of US targets like the 1996 Iranian-ordered bombing of the US Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia.
Israel pursued appeasement through the Oslo peace process with the PLO, its refusal to contend effectively with the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Hizbullah forces in Lebanon, and through its conduct of intense negotiations with the Syrians toward an Israeli surrender of the strategically vital Golan Heights.
It was during the 1990s that North Korean-Iranian-Syrian criminal cooperation reached its apex. It was also during this decade that they made the greatest headway in their ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. These advances were made while all three regimes pocketed concessions made by the US and Israel, and systematically breached all their commitments to both countries and to international treaties of which they are signatories.
ONE OF the inheritances the mullahs received from the Shah of Iran after they overthrew him in 1979 was a US-supplied Intaglio currency printing press. Since at least 1989 this printing press has been used to produce so-called "super-notes."
Super-notes are highly sophisticated counterfeit US bills that are nearly undetectable. The advent of the super-notes forced the US Treasury to print new currency twice in a decade. In 1992 a Congressional Task Force concluded that the bills which proliferated in Lebanon's Hizbullah and Syrian-controlled Beka'a Valley were of Iranian and Syrian origin. In 2005, the first super-notes were intercepted in the US. They were sourced to North Korea.
According to a report Sunday in Yediot Aharonot, Iran has financed its purchase of nuclear and other materiel from North Korea through the provision of super-notes to Pyongyang. The US believes that Pyongyang itself procured a Swiss-made Intaglio press sometime in the 1990s. Intelligence services agree that Iran, Syria and North Korea collaborate closely in their currency-counterfeiting operations.
In 2003, the State Department concluded that the North Korean regime had sustained its economic viability principally through counterfeit currency operations.
IN SEPTEMBER 2005, the US launched a financial offensive against North Korea which could potentially have led to the eventual financial collapse of the regime when it labeled the Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank, an agent of North Korean money-laundering. The move followed a US investigation showing that BDA was North Korea's primary conduit for laundering counterfeit currency. The move effectively cut Pyongyang out of international financial markets, making it far more difficult for the North Koreans to sustain the regime financially.
North Korea's response to the move was to expand its nuclear and missile collaboration with Iran and Syria still further. Throughout the 1990s, the North Koreans provided Iran and Syria with ballistic missiles, and then missile technologies and assembly plants. After the BDA affair, in July and October 2006 North Korea conducted intermediate and long-range missile tests and then a nuclear test. Iranian scientists were reportedly present at all tests.
THE US responded to the North Korean provocations by intensifying its diplomatic efforts. Those efforts led to the signing of the February 13, 2007 bilateral deal between the US and North Korea, in which Pyongyang pledged to end its nuclear programs within 60 days in exchange for diplomatic acceptance by the US and economic assistance from the US and the international community. In exchange for the North Korean pledge, the US secretly agreed to unfreeze North Korean accounts at BDA and so paved the way for North Korean reentry to international financial markets.
While the deal was hailed as a diplomatic triumph, it suffered from several fatal flaws. The first flaw was that it failed to account for North Korea's pattern of breaching its agreements with the US. As former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton has pointed out, the US had no reason to believe that North Korea would honor its commitments; and, indeed, when 60 days after the deal was signed, Pyongyang had yet to shut down its nuclear installation at Yongbyon, it was clear that North Korea had maintained its practice of diplomatic perfidy.
The agreement also made no allowance for North Korea's existing nuclear arsenal or materials, and said nothing about restricting North Korea's proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies. As last week's IAF raid on the reportedly North Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear installation made clear, this oversight is full of geopolitical consequences.
IT WOULD seem that the main reason the US signed such an ill-advised deal with the North Koreans is that the State Department wished to neutralize North Korea in order to concentrate its efforts on Iran and Iraq. By so acting, the US failed to recognize the fundamental truth that last week's IAF raid exposed. Specifically, North Korea is allied with Iran and to Syria, and as a result cannot be set aside or isolated. It is impossible to confront Iran or Syria or North Korea without confronting the entire alliance. And it is impossible to appease one without strengthening all of them.
This truth has been ignored by both the US and by Israel for decades. The Israeli government continues to view Syria as an independent actor and so hopes that eventually it can be sufficiently appeased to accept the Golan Heights from Israel in exchange for a cold peace.
Israel and the US fail to understand the proxy role the Palestinians play for members of this enemy axis, and so view the establishment of a Palestinian state as a means of neutralizing the Palestinian theater rather than recognizing that such a state will serve at best as a safe haven for global terrorists, and at worst as North Korea's new nuclear client.
The US views Syria only in relation to its nefarious role in Iraq, and so misses the connection between Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Palestinian terrorists in Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, and the war the US fights in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel and the US view North Korea as an isolated Asian nuisance that has little connection to the war in the Middle East. As a result, Israel for decades has been indifferent to North Korean provocations and the US has ignored the global implications of Pyongyang's nuclear program. So too, the US fails to understand how its diplomatic weakness toward North Korea enhances Iran's position at the bargaining table and advances its nuclear weapons program.
ON THE positive side, the muted, even supportive international response to the Israeli raid makes clear that the diplomatic standing of the members of the axis is far weaker than one would have expected. If, as some have claimed, the IAF raid was a rehearsal for an Israeli or US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, then the international reaction to the IAF raid shows that such a mission will likely be met with minimal, if any, retrospective diplomatic opposition.
Yet it is far from clear that either Israel or the US understand the significance of Israel's operation in Syria. A week after the attack, the US announced its intention to give Pyongyang $25 million worth of heavy fuel oil in return for Pynogyang's good faith in their nuclear activities. Members of the IDF General Staff have recommended renewing negotiations with Syria regarding an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights. The US is permitting Iranian President Ahmadinejad to attend the UN's General Assembly meeting in New York next week even as Ahmadinejad has escalated his nuclear and anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric in recent weeks.
One can only hope that these Israeli and American moves represent simply the death throes of their clearly discredited view of their enemies as distinct and independent actors. Otherwise, the lessons exposed and the advantages gained from the IAF strike will be squandered, and the free world will be weakened as new life is given to the axis of evil.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411421462&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
THE JERUSALEM POST
If media reports of last week's IAF raid in Syria pan out, the attack against a North-Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear facility in eastern Syria should serve as a pivotal event in the free world's understanding of the enemy it faces in the current global war. The central question now is whether this clarity will be followed by a strategic shift in the US and Israeli governments' conceptualizations of the challenges facing them in the various theaters of war and diplomacy in which they are now engaged.
What the raid exposed is that the free world faces a cohesive alliance of enemy forces that collaborate closely in their joint and separate offensives against their common foes. Whether or not it is called the axis of evil, after the IAF raid it is undeniable that its members - North Korea, Iran and Syria - collaborate closely in their joint war.
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, this is not a temporary alliance of convenience among three otherwise unrelated states. It is a strategic alignment of three regimes that have been acting in tandem on multiple levels for decades. Their collaborative operations have served two primary functions. First they cooperate in perpetuating their holds on power. This they do primarily through criminal enterprises. Second, they work together to wage war against their common foes. The second objective is advanced primarily through the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Furthermore, all three regimes view diplomatic exchanges with their enemies not as a means to solve their disagreements with them, but as a means to gain advantage by forcing US, Israeli and international concessions that legitimize their regimes and enable them to continue to conduct their war.
TIES BETWEEN the countries have been developing since the 1980s. That cooperation blossomed into a full-scale alliance during the 1990s. This is notable because the 1990s marked the period when both US and Israeli foreign policies centered on repeated attempts to appease all three governments.
In 1994, the US embraced appeasement of North Korea when it signed the Agreed Framework that maintained the economic viability of the North Korean regime in exchange for Pyongyang's pledge to end its nuclear weapons program. The US appeased Teheran by embracing the supposedly moderate government of president Muhammad Khatami, and downplayed Iran's role in terrorist bombings of US targets like the 1996 Iranian-ordered bombing of the US Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia.
Israel pursued appeasement through the Oslo peace process with the PLO, its refusal to contend effectively with the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Hizbullah forces in Lebanon, and through its conduct of intense negotiations with the Syrians toward an Israeli surrender of the strategically vital Golan Heights.
It was during the 1990s that North Korean-Iranian-Syrian criminal cooperation reached its apex. It was also during this decade that they made the greatest headway in their ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. These advances were made while all three regimes pocketed concessions made by the US and Israel, and systematically breached all their commitments to both countries and to international treaties of which they are signatories.
ONE OF the inheritances the mullahs received from the Shah of Iran after they overthrew him in 1979 was a US-supplied Intaglio currency printing press. Since at least 1989 this printing press has been used to produce so-called "super-notes."
Super-notes are highly sophisticated counterfeit US bills that are nearly undetectable. The advent of the super-notes forced the US Treasury to print new currency twice in a decade. In 1992 a Congressional Task Force concluded that the bills which proliferated in Lebanon's Hizbullah and Syrian-controlled Beka'a Valley were of Iranian and Syrian origin. In 2005, the first super-notes were intercepted in the US. They were sourced to North Korea.
According to a report Sunday in Yediot Aharonot, Iran has financed its purchase of nuclear and other materiel from North Korea through the provision of super-notes to Pyongyang. The US believes that Pyongyang itself procured a Swiss-made Intaglio press sometime in the 1990s. Intelligence services agree that Iran, Syria and North Korea collaborate closely in their currency-counterfeiting operations.
In 2003, the State Department concluded that the North Korean regime had sustained its economic viability principally through counterfeit currency operations.
IN SEPTEMBER 2005, the US launched a financial offensive against North Korea which could potentially have led to the eventual financial collapse of the regime when it labeled the Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank, an agent of North Korean money-laundering. The move followed a US investigation showing that BDA was North Korea's primary conduit for laundering counterfeit currency. The move effectively cut Pyongyang out of international financial markets, making it far more difficult for the North Koreans to sustain the regime financially.
North Korea's response to the move was to expand its nuclear and missile collaboration with Iran and Syria still further. Throughout the 1990s, the North Koreans provided Iran and Syria with ballistic missiles, and then missile technologies and assembly plants. After the BDA affair, in July and October 2006 North Korea conducted intermediate and long-range missile tests and then a nuclear test. Iranian scientists were reportedly present at all tests.
THE US responded to the North Korean provocations by intensifying its diplomatic efforts. Those efforts led to the signing of the February 13, 2007 bilateral deal between the US and North Korea, in which Pyongyang pledged to end its nuclear programs within 60 days in exchange for diplomatic acceptance by the US and economic assistance from the US and the international community. In exchange for the North Korean pledge, the US secretly agreed to unfreeze North Korean accounts at BDA and so paved the way for North Korean reentry to international financial markets.
While the deal was hailed as a diplomatic triumph, it suffered from several fatal flaws. The first flaw was that it failed to account for North Korea's pattern of breaching its agreements with the US. As former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton has pointed out, the US had no reason to believe that North Korea would honor its commitments; and, indeed, when 60 days after the deal was signed, Pyongyang had yet to shut down its nuclear installation at Yongbyon, it was clear that North Korea had maintained its practice of diplomatic perfidy.
The agreement also made no allowance for North Korea's existing nuclear arsenal or materials, and said nothing about restricting North Korea's proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies. As last week's IAF raid on the reportedly North Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear installation made clear, this oversight is full of geopolitical consequences.
IT WOULD seem that the main reason the US signed such an ill-advised deal with the North Koreans is that the State Department wished to neutralize North Korea in order to concentrate its efforts on Iran and Iraq. By so acting, the US failed to recognize the fundamental truth that last week's IAF raid exposed. Specifically, North Korea is allied with Iran and to Syria, and as a result cannot be set aside or isolated. It is impossible to confront Iran or Syria or North Korea without confronting the entire alliance. And it is impossible to appease one without strengthening all of them.
This truth has been ignored by both the US and by Israel for decades. The Israeli government continues to view Syria as an independent actor and so hopes that eventually it can be sufficiently appeased to accept the Golan Heights from Israel in exchange for a cold peace.
Israel and the US fail to understand the proxy role the Palestinians play for members of this enemy axis, and so view the establishment of a Palestinian state as a means of neutralizing the Palestinian theater rather than recognizing that such a state will serve at best as a safe haven for global terrorists, and at worst as North Korea's new nuclear client.
The US views Syria only in relation to its nefarious role in Iraq, and so misses the connection between Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Palestinian terrorists in Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, and the war the US fights in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel and the US view North Korea as an isolated Asian nuisance that has little connection to the war in the Middle East. As a result, Israel for decades has been indifferent to North Korean provocations and the US has ignored the global implications of Pyongyang's nuclear program. So too, the US fails to understand how its diplomatic weakness toward North Korea enhances Iran's position at the bargaining table and advances its nuclear weapons program.
ON THE positive side, the muted, even supportive international response to the Israeli raid makes clear that the diplomatic standing of the members of the axis is far weaker than one would have expected. If, as some have claimed, the IAF raid was a rehearsal for an Israeli or US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, then the international reaction to the IAF raid shows that such a mission will likely be met with minimal, if any, retrospective diplomatic opposition.
Yet it is far from clear that either Israel or the US understand the significance of Israel's operation in Syria. A week after the attack, the US announced its intention to give Pyongyang $25 million worth of heavy fuel oil in return for Pynogyang's good faith in their nuclear activities. Members of the IDF General Staff have recommended renewing negotiations with Syria regarding an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights. The US is permitting Iranian President Ahmadinejad to attend the UN's General Assembly meeting in New York next week even as Ahmadinejad has escalated his nuclear and anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric in recent weeks.
One can only hope that these Israeli and American moves represent simply the death throes of their clearly discredited view of their enemies as distinct and independent actors. Otherwise, the lessons exposed and the advantages gained from the IAF strike will be squandered, and the free world will be weakened as new life is given to the axis of evil.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411421462&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
U.S. court dismisses Israeli bulldozing suit
Saying its role was not to criticize U.S. policy towards Israel, an American federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit on Monday charging that Caterpillar bulldozers aided killing and torture in the Palestinian territories. Relatives of 16 Palestinians and one American killed or injured by Israeli demolitions sued the heavy construction machine manufacturer. They alleged that by selling bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes, Caterpillar was responsible for war crimes, cruel and inhumane punishment and other violations.
The U.S. government paid for the bulldozers, which were transferred to the Israeli army. The army sometimes uses engineering vehicles in operations aimed at curbing Palestinian militant activity.
A lower court dismissed the suit and a San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed that decision, saying that to render a judgment on the matter would interfere with American foreign policy. "It is not the role of the courts to indirectly indict Israel for violating international law with military equipment the United States government provided and continues to provide," Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote for a three-judge panel. "The executive branch has made a policy determination that Israel should purchase Caterpillar bulldozers," the decision said. "A court could not find in favor of the plaintiffs without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, United States foreign policy toward Israel." The 9th Circuit has in some previous cases shied away from lawsuits in which American policy was in question. Because the United States executive branch paid for the Caterpillar bulldozers sent to Israel, the sale was an extension of U.S. national security decisions, the judge wrote. Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar has sold bulldozers to Israel since the Jewish state took control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the court said.
The U.S. government paid for the bulldozers, which were transferred to the Israeli army. The army sometimes uses engineering vehicles in operations aimed at curbing Palestinian militant activity.
A lower court dismissed the suit and a San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed that decision, saying that to render a judgment on the matter would interfere with American foreign policy. "It is not the role of the courts to indirectly indict Israel for violating international law with military equipment the United States government provided and continues to provide," Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote for a three-judge panel. "The executive branch has made a policy determination that Israel should purchase Caterpillar bulldozers," the decision said. "A court could not find in favor of the plaintiffs without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, United States foreign policy toward Israel." The 9th Circuit has in some previous cases shied away from lawsuits in which American policy was in question. Because the United States executive branch paid for the Caterpillar bulldozers sent to Israel, the sale was an extension of U.S. national security decisions, the judge wrote. Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar has sold bulldozers to Israel since the Jewish state took control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the court said.
Tehran bristles at dire warning from Kouchner
Comment: Bravo France-you are stepping up to the plate-it must be working if Iran is so upset!
Iran accused French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Monday of stoking a crisis after he said France must prepare for the possibility of war over Tehran's nuclear program The official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini as saying Kouchner's remarks were not in line with European Union policy.
"Using crisis-making words is against France's high historical and cultural position and is against France's civilization," Hosseini said in a statement.
Kouchner said in an interview on Sunday that France must prepare for the possibility of war against Iran over its nuclear activities. But he said he did not believe that such action was imminent. He also told RTL radio and LCI television that the world's major powers should use further sanctions to show they were serious about stopping Tehran from getting atom bombs. The minister said France had asked French firms not to bid for work in Iran.
France followed up the warning on Monday. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said tensions with Iran are now "extreme," intensifying the diplomatic storm caused by Kouchner.
"Everything must be done to avoid war," Fillon told reporters on a visit to the town of Angouleme in western France. "France's role is to lead toward a peaceful solution of a situation that would be extremely dangerous for the rest of the world.
He said Kouchner was right to say the situation was dangerous and should be taken seriously.
In a commentary on Monday, IRNA accused France of "extremism," an apparent reference to Kouchner's statement.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
"Since Sarkozy's occupation of the Elysee, a European has inhabited the same skin as the US and imitates the same bellows and dirty looks," it said, referring to new French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "The new French government thinks that the best approach in the international arena is to undermine peace and foster tension, the approach it has now adopted."
Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik also condemned Kouchner's comments.
"My colleague Kouchner is the only one who can tell you what he meant. [But] I can't comprehend why he is resorting to such martial rhetoric at this time," Plassnik said. "I am convinced that a negotiated solution can be reached. The international community must follow this path persistently and patiently."
Israel welcomed Kouchner's stance, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev saying it sent a "clear message."
Also on Monday, a top general in Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that the Iranian military has the capacity to strike the interests of the United States, the Islamic Republic's staunchest opponent in the Middle East,to a range of 2,000 kilometers.
"Today the Americans are around our country but this does not mean that they are encircling us. They are encircled themselves and are within our range," General Mohammad Hassan Koussechi told IRNA. "Today ... we have reached capacities that allow us to hit the enemy at a range of 2,000 kilometers." - Agencies
Iran accused French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Monday of stoking a crisis after he said France must prepare for the possibility of war over Tehran's nuclear program The official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini as saying Kouchner's remarks were not in line with European Union policy.
"Using crisis-making words is against France's high historical and cultural position and is against France's civilization," Hosseini said in a statement.
Kouchner said in an interview on Sunday that France must prepare for the possibility of war against Iran over its nuclear activities. But he said he did not believe that such action was imminent. He also told RTL radio and LCI television that the world's major powers should use further sanctions to show they were serious about stopping Tehran from getting atom bombs. The minister said France had asked French firms not to bid for work in Iran.
France followed up the warning on Monday. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said tensions with Iran are now "extreme," intensifying the diplomatic storm caused by Kouchner.
"Everything must be done to avoid war," Fillon told reporters on a visit to the town of Angouleme in western France. "France's role is to lead toward a peaceful solution of a situation that would be extremely dangerous for the rest of the world.
He said Kouchner was right to say the situation was dangerous and should be taken seriously.
In a commentary on Monday, IRNA accused France of "extremism," an apparent reference to Kouchner's statement.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
"Since Sarkozy's occupation of the Elysee, a European has inhabited the same skin as the US and imitates the same bellows and dirty looks," it said, referring to new French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "The new French government thinks that the best approach in the international arena is to undermine peace and foster tension, the approach it has now adopted."
Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik also condemned Kouchner's comments.
"My colleague Kouchner is the only one who can tell you what he meant. [But] I can't comprehend why he is resorting to such martial rhetoric at this time," Plassnik said. "I am convinced that a negotiated solution can be reached. The international community must follow this path persistently and patiently."
Israel welcomed Kouchner's stance, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev saying it sent a "clear message."
Also on Monday, a top general in Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that the Iranian military has the capacity to strike the interests of the United States, the Islamic Republic's staunchest opponent in the Middle East,to a range of 2,000 kilometers.
"Today the Americans are around our country but this does not mean that they are encircling us. They are encircled themselves and are within our range," General Mohammad Hassan Koussechi told IRNA. "Today ... we have reached capacities that allow us to hit the enemy at a range of 2,000 kilometers." - Agencies
Olmert is prepared to enter unconditional talks with Syria
Nearly two weeks after reports surrounding an alleged IAF incursion into Syrian skies began circulating, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Monday that Israel was prepared to hold negotiations with the Damascus The prime minister also addressed the Iranian threat, asserting that Israel "is not afraid."
"We want to make peace with everyone. If the conditions allow for it, we are ready to make peace with Syria without preconditions and without ultimatums. I have a lot of respect for the Syrian leader and for Syrian policy" said Olmert.
The prime minister was addressing Russian-language media outlets when he said that although the Syrians "have an internal problem, there is no reason to reject dialogue with the country."
Olmert said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is trying to create a psychology of fear. [He is doing] this to convince the international community to enter talks with him.
"There are exaggerations here. We are not afraid, we are worried," Olmert argued. We don't need to lose our senses," he added.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad was furious following the release of information regarding Israel's alleged incursion into his country's airspace nearly two weeks ago. According to a report, Assad has ordered that every person involved in the incident - regardless of rank or position - be investigated.
"Syrian President Bashar Assad decided to establish a committee that will investigate how classified information on the infiltration of Israeli planes was leaked to Arab media," Kuwaiti newspaper A-Siasa.
Assad ordered the commander of Syrian intelligence, Asaf Shawkat, Head of General Intelligence Directorate Ali Mamlouk, and Air force Commander Abed al-Fatah Kodsya to head a committee charged with investigating which Syrian official delivered information to the Arab media. "President Assad ordered the generals not to be negligent…and to probe everyone involved, regardless of his rank or position," said the report.
Syrian media was quick to divulge information on the apparent raid, releasing reports that Israeli Air force jets had broken the sound barrier and dropped fuel tanks over deserted areas in northern Syria, along its border with Turkey, an afternoon after the operation allegedly took place on September 7.
"We want to make peace with everyone. If the conditions allow for it, we are ready to make peace with Syria without preconditions and without ultimatums. I have a lot of respect for the Syrian leader and for Syrian policy" said Olmert.
The prime minister was addressing Russian-language media outlets when he said that although the Syrians "have an internal problem, there is no reason to reject dialogue with the country."
Olmert said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is trying to create a psychology of fear. [He is doing] this to convince the international community to enter talks with him.
"There are exaggerations here. We are not afraid, we are worried," Olmert argued. We don't need to lose our senses," he added.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad was furious following the release of information regarding Israel's alleged incursion into his country's airspace nearly two weeks ago. According to a report, Assad has ordered that every person involved in the incident - regardless of rank or position - be investigated.
"Syrian President Bashar Assad decided to establish a committee that will investigate how classified information on the infiltration of Israeli planes was leaked to Arab media," Kuwaiti newspaper A-Siasa.
Assad ordered the commander of Syrian intelligence, Asaf Shawkat, Head of General Intelligence Directorate Ali Mamlouk, and Air force Commander Abed al-Fatah Kodsya to head a committee charged with investigating which Syrian official delivered information to the Arab media. "President Assad ordered the generals not to be negligent…and to probe everyone involved, regardless of his rank or position," said the report.
Syrian media was quick to divulge information on the apparent raid, releasing reports that Israeli Air force jets had broken the sound barrier and dropped fuel tanks over deserted areas in northern Syria, along its border with Turkey, an afternoon after the operation allegedly took place on September 7.
Salaries of Hamas-affiliated PLC members cut off
Gaza – Ma'an – The Palestinian caretaker government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has cut off the salaries of 21 Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members
Gaza – Ma'an – The Palestinian caretaker government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has cut off the salaries of 21 Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members including deposed premier Isma'il Haniyeh, former foreign minister Mahmoud Zahhar, former interior minister Said Siyam, and acting PLC speaker, Ahmad Bahar. On Monday Bahar described the Ramallah-based government's move as "strange and unbelievable."Palestinian Minister of Information, Riyad Al-Maliki denied that the salaries had been permanently stopped but said that payment had been delayed.He said that the delay was in response to the incitement of some Hamas-affiliated legislators against the Palestinian government, which he claimed had reached the level of inciting violence, in some cases."We've received our salaries from the PLC for the last two months and 25 members of the Hamas bloc have not received salaries," independent PLC member, Hasan Khreisha said. PLC member, Isma'il Al-Ashqar commented, "It is not a matter of money, it is rather a kind of political blackmailing and attempt to influence the impartiality of the PLC as well as the destruction of the legal authority."PLC members receive 3000 US dollars a month in salary.
Gaza – Ma'an – The Palestinian caretaker government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has cut off the salaries of 21 Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members including deposed premier Isma'il Haniyeh, former foreign minister Mahmoud Zahhar, former interior minister Said Siyam, and acting PLC speaker, Ahmad Bahar. On Monday Bahar described the Ramallah-based government's move as "strange and unbelievable."Palestinian Minister of Information, Riyad Al-Maliki denied that the salaries had been permanently stopped but said that payment had been delayed.He said that the delay was in response to the incitement of some Hamas-affiliated legislators against the Palestinian government, which he claimed had reached the level of inciting violence, in some cases."We've received our salaries from the PLC for the last two months and 25 members of the Hamas bloc have not received salaries," independent PLC member, Hasan Khreisha said. PLC member, Isma'il Al-Ashqar commented, "It is not a matter of money, it is rather a kind of political blackmailing and attempt to influence the impartiality of the PLC as well as the destruction of the legal authority."PLC members receive 3000 US dollars a month in salary.
Iran seen as root threat in region
Rachel Kaufman
A number of retired military officers are warning the United States to forcibly deal with Iran’s interference in Iraq, which they think is the underlying cause of Iraq’s difficulty in establishing a functional democracy.
The retired officers, many of them supporters of the surge strategy in Iraq, said at a conference sponsored by the Iran Policy Committee last week that they see Iran as the primary threat to U.S. goals in the region.
Iran provides money, weapons, training, safe havens and ideological support to the Iraqi militants, thus, “fueling those fires from the outside,” said retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, who co-authored “Baghdad Ablaze: How to Extinguish the Fires in Iraq.”
Gen. Vallely argued Iran effectively combines ideology, politics and military operations, extending its influence not only to Iraq, but also to the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Venezuela.
Also speaking at the conference, which marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney recommended that the war on terrorism be renamed the “war on radical Islam.”
Radical Islam, he said, is “driven by al Qaeda and Iran. Iran is the No. 1 perpetrator of terror in the region today. … So it is extremely important that we address Iran.”
Iyad Jamal al-Deen, deputy chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iran as a source of sectarian tensions in Iraq.
It is not the Sunnis, Shi’ites or Kurds who want to destroy each other, but rather the politicians and their opposing religious views, he said. “Politics has to be only politics, and religion has to only be religion.”
Gen. Vallely commended Gen. David H. Petraeus on his handling of the surge strategy to date, saying, “He has made a change not only in strategy but also in tactics.”
“[He] is certainly taking on that Special Operations look of getting in [and] working with local populations, and that’s what they’re building Iraqi Special forces to do as well.
“And in some cases, some of the best units now within Iraq are Iraqi Special Operation Units,” Gen. Vallely said.
Navy Capt. Chuck Nash said that an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal would likely prompt a rapid deterioration in Iraq, because Iraqis would lose any incentive to invest in their future.
“We have to stay and help chart a new course,” he said.
A number of retired military officers are warning the United States to forcibly deal with Iran’s interference in Iraq, which they think is the underlying cause of Iraq’s difficulty in establishing a functional democracy.
The retired officers, many of them supporters of the surge strategy in Iraq, said at a conference sponsored by the Iran Policy Committee last week that they see Iran as the primary threat to U.S. goals in the region.
Iran provides money, weapons, training, safe havens and ideological support to the Iraqi militants, thus, “fueling those fires from the outside,” said retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, who co-authored “Baghdad Ablaze: How to Extinguish the Fires in Iraq.”
Gen. Vallely argued Iran effectively combines ideology, politics and military operations, extending its influence not only to Iraq, but also to the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Venezuela.
Also speaking at the conference, which marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney recommended that the war on terrorism be renamed the “war on radical Islam.”
Radical Islam, he said, is “driven by al Qaeda and Iran. Iran is the No. 1 perpetrator of terror in the region today. … So it is extremely important that we address Iran.”
Iyad Jamal al-Deen, deputy chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iran as a source of sectarian tensions in Iraq.
It is not the Sunnis, Shi’ites or Kurds who want to destroy each other, but rather the politicians and their opposing religious views, he said. “Politics has to be only politics, and religion has to only be religion.”
Gen. Vallely commended Gen. David H. Petraeus on his handling of the surge strategy to date, saying, “He has made a change not only in strategy but also in tactics.”
“[He] is certainly taking on that Special Operations look of getting in [and] working with local populations, and that’s what they’re building Iraqi Special forces to do as well.
“And in some cases, some of the best units now within Iraq are Iraqi Special Operation Units,” Gen. Vallely said.
Navy Capt. Chuck Nash said that an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal would likely prompt a rapid deterioration in Iraq, because Iraqis would lose any incentive to invest in their future.
“We have to stay and help chart a new course,” he said.
Senin, 17 September 2007
Who Is Really Betraying Us And Who Really Are The Traitors
By: Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
[..] We’re in the middle of the greatest threat to our safety and survival in history, and we have the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and many of our universities and colleges in the forefront of anti-Americanism, advocating a policy in Iraq and elsewhere of retreat, appease, defeat and surrender and doing everything they can to smear not only Bush and the generals but America itself.
This anti-Americanism becomes more dangerous when there is a worldwide movement - especially in Western Europe, but even in the U.S. - to appease and slowly surrender to the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism. This has been well documented by a great trilogy of books, which I have often mentioned in this column: Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn and While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within by Bruce Bawer.
You would think the calls to violence and aggression and actual bombings brought on by the Islamic extremists and terrorists would have brought on a great awakening. But it has not. It has not in Europe and it has not in America, as the antics of the Democrats demonstrate. It is as though we are sleeping through a 21st-century Pearl Harbor.
The continuation of the world’s policy of appeasing and surrendering to Islamic extremism and terrorism, despite all the warnings, has been documented in a new edition of Bruce Bawer’s book. In a new afterword to the paperback edition, he argues that both the U.S. and Europe are still asleep in the face of the clear and present threat to our safety and survival: “Since this book appeared, European freedoms have faced a series of aggressive challenges by radical Muslims - challenges that have been met mostly with appeasement and apologies, censorship, and self-censorship. During this time efforts have intensified across Europe to ban ‘Islamophobia’ - a word that has been employed with increasing frequency in attempts to silence criticism of anything whatever relating to Islam.” Bawer sees the same trend of creeping appeasement and surrender in the U.S.
He gives chapter and verse of the slow surrender of Europe. When Paris suburbs were being terrorized nightly by Muslim rioters shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” most of the media portrayed that as just a response to poverty and oppression. Bawer notes that the Christian Science Monitor reported that in many European cities Muslims had already claimed jurisdiction over many neighborhoods. Bawer says the French police “have effectively ceded control of hundreds of neighborhoods to Muslim residents.” This, he writes, is the beginning of a continent-wide turf war.
Then there was the Danish cartoon incident, involving what Bawer calls “innocuous cartoons.” But the Muslims went ballistic, and as a result there were 100 murders in the Muslim world.
The prime minister of Denmark defended the cartoons as an expression of freedom of speech and the principles on which Danish society was based. What did he get for standing up to this attempt to deny basic freedom of speech in Denmark? He was greeted with a torrent of international criticism from such bodies as the U.N. and the European Union.
Bawer writes: “For many, the Jyllands-Posten cartoons represented the powerful mocking the faith of the weak. No: what was happening was that a gang of bullies - led by a country, Saudi Arabia, where Bibles are forbidden, Christians tortured, women oppressed, Jews labeled ‘apes and pigs’ in the state-controlled media, and apostasy from Islam punished by death - was trying to compel a tiny democracy to follow theocratic rules. To succumb to this pressure would simply be to invite further pressure, and would lead to further concessions - not just by Denmark but by the entire West. The list of democratic phenomena that offend the sensibilities of many Muslims is, after all, a long one - ranging from religious liberty, sexual equality and tolerance of gay people to music, alcohol, dogs, and pork. After a few cartoons, what would be next?”
This was not an isolated incident but part of a massive trend suffocating and transforming European society for the worse and reaching our shores as well. Almost no major newspapers even in the U.S. printed the cartoons (the Philadelphia Inquirer was one rare exception), and they were not defended but were in fact denounced by Bill Clinton. The media contribution is exemplified by a 60 Minutes report painting Danish Muslims as “frightened, innocent victims of a viciously racist majority” (Bawer’s words).
The surrender to Muslim violence relating to the cartoons or to any even mild criticism of Islam was the standard reaction all over Europe. Bawer recites the case of Ayan Hirsi Ali in Holland. She was under threat of death from terrorists for criticizing terrorism and Islamic extremism. So what did the Dutch do? Her neighbors claimed that, because she was under threat, she was a danger to the neighborhood and won a court case to make her move. Then the Dutch phonied up charges against her to try to have her deported and to try to rescind her citizenship. She finally resigned from the Dutch Parliament and moved to the U.S., where she works for the American Enterprise Institute.
Even the Pope came under attack, writes Bawer, “for quoting a fourteenth-century Byzantine Emperor’s criticism of Islam.” Immediately, the Muslims erupted with rage along with the New York Times and much of the academic, media and political elite of the West. The critics at the Times and elsewhere seemed to think, writes Bawer, that “it’s foolish and immoral not to let yourself be silenced by the possibility of violence.”
No one, including the Pope, is immune from the threat of violence from Muslims and their supporters in the media, the academic world, and the political elite.
Bawer goes on documenting the surrender of the West to threats of violence and intimidation for anyone who insists on exercising the right to free speech or any other rights that should be honored and guaranteed. You have to read Bawer’s book, along with those of Steyn and Phillips, to get the full flavor and appreciate the total dimensions of what is happening to the world as we know it and want it to continue.
Bawer concludes with these words: “It is true that in the last year or two, more and more Europeans seem to recognize that Europe is self-destructing. Some have spoken up. But not enough. The process continues. And the atmosphere is increasingly ominous. I’ve grown used to seeing the truth turned on its head - the vicious aggressors depicted as innocent victims, the defenders of freedom represented as hateful and inflammatory. I’ve long argued that if we don’t cherish our liberties as passionately as the jihadists treasure their faith, we’ll lose. Benjamin Franklin’s words seem more apropos than ever: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ Alas, in Europe today millions have been brought up to prize safety and appear never to have learned what liberty means.”
If you read Bawer’s book (or those of Steyn and Phillips), you will see that the U.S. is going the way of Europe, only more slowly. And if you study the pronouncements and actions of the Democratic Party, you will see that if it attains power, especially by capturing the White House, it will accelerate the same kind of surrender to violence, intimidation, terrorism and extremism that is already far advanced in Europe.
Herb Denenberg, a former Pennsylvania insurance commissioner and professor at the Wharton School, is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering and Medicine. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
[..] We’re in the middle of the greatest threat to our safety and survival in history, and we have the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and many of our universities and colleges in the forefront of anti-Americanism, advocating a policy in Iraq and elsewhere of retreat, appease, defeat and surrender and doing everything they can to smear not only Bush and the generals but America itself.
This anti-Americanism becomes more dangerous when there is a worldwide movement - especially in Western Europe, but even in the U.S. - to appease and slowly surrender to the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism. This has been well documented by a great trilogy of books, which I have often mentioned in this column: Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn and While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within by Bruce Bawer.
You would think the calls to violence and aggression and actual bombings brought on by the Islamic extremists and terrorists would have brought on a great awakening. But it has not. It has not in Europe and it has not in America, as the antics of the Democrats demonstrate. It is as though we are sleeping through a 21st-century Pearl Harbor.
The continuation of the world’s policy of appeasing and surrendering to Islamic extremism and terrorism, despite all the warnings, has been documented in a new edition of Bruce Bawer’s book. In a new afterword to the paperback edition, he argues that both the U.S. and Europe are still asleep in the face of the clear and present threat to our safety and survival: “Since this book appeared, European freedoms have faced a series of aggressive challenges by radical Muslims - challenges that have been met mostly with appeasement and apologies, censorship, and self-censorship. During this time efforts have intensified across Europe to ban ‘Islamophobia’ - a word that has been employed with increasing frequency in attempts to silence criticism of anything whatever relating to Islam.” Bawer sees the same trend of creeping appeasement and surrender in the U.S.
He gives chapter and verse of the slow surrender of Europe. When Paris suburbs were being terrorized nightly by Muslim rioters shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” most of the media portrayed that as just a response to poverty and oppression. Bawer notes that the Christian Science Monitor reported that in many European cities Muslims had already claimed jurisdiction over many neighborhoods. Bawer says the French police “have effectively ceded control of hundreds of neighborhoods to Muslim residents.” This, he writes, is the beginning of a continent-wide turf war.
Then there was the Danish cartoon incident, involving what Bawer calls “innocuous cartoons.” But the Muslims went ballistic, and as a result there were 100 murders in the Muslim world.
The prime minister of Denmark defended the cartoons as an expression of freedom of speech and the principles on which Danish society was based. What did he get for standing up to this attempt to deny basic freedom of speech in Denmark? He was greeted with a torrent of international criticism from such bodies as the U.N. and the European Union.
Bawer writes: “For many, the Jyllands-Posten cartoons represented the powerful mocking the faith of the weak. No: what was happening was that a gang of bullies - led by a country, Saudi Arabia, where Bibles are forbidden, Christians tortured, women oppressed, Jews labeled ‘apes and pigs’ in the state-controlled media, and apostasy from Islam punished by death - was trying to compel a tiny democracy to follow theocratic rules. To succumb to this pressure would simply be to invite further pressure, and would lead to further concessions - not just by Denmark but by the entire West. The list of democratic phenomena that offend the sensibilities of many Muslims is, after all, a long one - ranging from religious liberty, sexual equality and tolerance of gay people to music, alcohol, dogs, and pork. After a few cartoons, what would be next?”
This was not an isolated incident but part of a massive trend suffocating and transforming European society for the worse and reaching our shores as well. Almost no major newspapers even in the U.S. printed the cartoons (the Philadelphia Inquirer was one rare exception), and they were not defended but were in fact denounced by Bill Clinton. The media contribution is exemplified by a 60 Minutes report painting Danish Muslims as “frightened, innocent victims of a viciously racist majority” (Bawer’s words).
The surrender to Muslim violence relating to the cartoons or to any even mild criticism of Islam was the standard reaction all over Europe. Bawer recites the case of Ayan Hirsi Ali in Holland. She was under threat of death from terrorists for criticizing terrorism and Islamic extremism. So what did the Dutch do? Her neighbors claimed that, because she was under threat, she was a danger to the neighborhood and won a court case to make her move. Then the Dutch phonied up charges against her to try to have her deported and to try to rescind her citizenship. She finally resigned from the Dutch Parliament and moved to the U.S., where she works for the American Enterprise Institute.
Even the Pope came under attack, writes Bawer, “for quoting a fourteenth-century Byzantine Emperor’s criticism of Islam.” Immediately, the Muslims erupted with rage along with the New York Times and much of the academic, media and political elite of the West. The critics at the Times and elsewhere seemed to think, writes Bawer, that “it’s foolish and immoral not to let yourself be silenced by the possibility of violence.”
No one, including the Pope, is immune from the threat of violence from Muslims and their supporters in the media, the academic world, and the political elite.
Bawer goes on documenting the surrender of the West to threats of violence and intimidation for anyone who insists on exercising the right to free speech or any other rights that should be honored and guaranteed. You have to read Bawer’s book, along with those of Steyn and Phillips, to get the full flavor and appreciate the total dimensions of what is happening to the world as we know it and want it to continue.
Bawer concludes with these words: “It is true that in the last year or two, more and more Europeans seem to recognize that Europe is self-destructing. Some have spoken up. But not enough. The process continues. And the atmosphere is increasingly ominous. I’ve grown used to seeing the truth turned on its head - the vicious aggressors depicted as innocent victims, the defenders of freedom represented as hateful and inflammatory. I’ve long argued that if we don’t cherish our liberties as passionately as the jihadists treasure their faith, we’ll lose. Benjamin Franklin’s words seem more apropos than ever: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ Alas, in Europe today millions have been brought up to prize safety and appear never to have learned what liberty means.”
If you read Bawer’s book (or those of Steyn and Phillips), you will see that the U.S. is going the way of Europe, only more slowly. And if you study the pronouncements and actions of the Democratic Party, you will see that if it attains power, especially by capturing the White House, it will accelerate the same kind of surrender to violence, intimidation, terrorism and extremism that is already far advanced in Europe.
Herb Denenberg, a former Pennsylvania insurance commissioner and professor at the Wharton School, is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering and Medicine. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
IDF demands uncut al-Dura tape
The IDF has abandoned its official silence in a seven-year-old case that has been characterized as a "blood libel" against the IDF and the State of Israel. On September 10, the deputy commander of the IDF's Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, submitted a letter to the France 2 television network's permanent correspondent in Israel, Charles Enderlin, regarding Enderlin's story from September 30, 2000, in which he televised 55 seconds of edited footage from the Netzarim junction in the central Gaza Strip purporting to show IDF forces shooting and killing 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura.
After its exclusive broadcast that day, France 2 offered the edited film free of charge to all media outlets. The footage, and the story of the purported IDF killing of al-Dura, was quickly rebroadcast around the world.
Within days, al-Dura became a symbol of the Palestinian war against Israel. His name has been repeatedly invoked by terrorists and their supporters as a justification for killing Israelis, Jews and their Western supporters.
In his letter, Am-Shalom asked for the entire unedited 27-minute film that was shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu-Rahma that day, as well as the footage filmed by Abu-Rahma on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom requested that the broadcast-quality films be sent to his office no later than September 15. France 2 has yet to hand over the requested film.
The IDF's move came against the backdrop of French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty's legal battle with France 2 regarding the network's coverage of the al-Dura affair.
Last year, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty, who runs the Internet media watchdog Web site Media Ratings, for defamation for a letter he sent out in 2004 accusing France 2 of staging the al-Dura story.
Karsenty also called for the resignations of Enderlin and of France 2's news director, Arlette Chabot, for their roles in promulgating the alleged hoax.
In October 2006 a French court decided in favor of France 2 and Enderlin, and against Karsenty.
The court acknowledged that Karsenty had submitted significant evidence indicating that the event had been staged. Still, in ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, the judges said Karsenty's accusations lacked credibility because, it claimed, he had based his accusations on a single source.
The court also stressed that "no Israeli authority, neither the army - which is nonetheless most affected, nor the Justice [Ministry] has ever accorded the slightest credit to [Karsenty's] allegations" regarding the authenticity of the France 2 report.
In his letter to Enderlin, Am-Shalom disputes the judges' assertion. "It is my duty to note," he wrote, "[that their claim] does not correspond to repeated attempts made by the IDF to receive the filmed materials, and with the conclusions of the IDF's committee of inquiry [into the purported shooting] that were widely publicized in the international and French media."
Am-Shalom has discussed at length the findings of the IDF's probe into the incident. That inquiry was ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia.
Citing Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, "The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father [Jamal al-Dura] and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction]."
Am-Shalom further notes that "Gen. Samia emphasized to me that all his attempts to receive the filmed material for the purpose of his inquiry were rejected."
The IDF is in urgent need of the footage, Am-Shalom said, because "it has been asked to comment on the ruling [against Karsenty] from October 19, 2006, on this issue, which is scheduled to be discussed in a French appellate court on September 19."
"Since we are cognizant of the fact that there have been attempts to stage media events, and since doubt has been raised along these lines regarding the story under discussion, we asked to receive the aforementioned materials in order to conclude this episode and to get to the truth," Am-Shalom said.
In the past, the IDF shied away from taking a strong public position on the al-Dura affair. At the time of the incident, then-chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz and then-prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak did not openly support Samia's inquiry or its findings.
As late as June 23, 2006, then-IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Miri Regev told Haaretz, "I cannot determine whether the IDF is or is not responsible for the killing of al-Dura."
In the aftermath of Karsenty's civil trial last year, the IDF came under considerable criticism both in Israel and from Jewish groups abroad for its silence on the issue.
While the IDF maintained official silence, independent probes by various foreign media organizations and Internet activists over the past several years have called the veracity of the France 2 report into serious question.
Those investigations demonstrated that purported IDF "attacks" against Palestinian civilians were being openly staged by Palestinian cameramen and locals at the Netzarim junction throughout the day of the alleged shooting of al-Dura.
Am-Shalom sent copies of his letter to Samia, incoming IDF Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel, the France 2 representative in Israel, the president of the network in France, and Philippe Karsenty.
After its exclusive broadcast that day, France 2 offered the edited film free of charge to all media outlets. The footage, and the story of the purported IDF killing of al-Dura, was quickly rebroadcast around the world.
Within days, al-Dura became a symbol of the Palestinian war against Israel. His name has been repeatedly invoked by terrorists and their supporters as a justification for killing Israelis, Jews and their Western supporters.
In his letter, Am-Shalom asked for the entire unedited 27-minute film that was shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu-Rahma that day, as well as the footage filmed by Abu-Rahma on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom requested that the broadcast-quality films be sent to his office no later than September 15. France 2 has yet to hand over the requested film.
The IDF's move came against the backdrop of French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty's legal battle with France 2 regarding the network's coverage of the al-Dura affair.
Last year, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty, who runs the Internet media watchdog Web site Media Ratings, for defamation for a letter he sent out in 2004 accusing France 2 of staging the al-Dura story.
Karsenty also called for the resignations of Enderlin and of France 2's news director, Arlette Chabot, for their roles in promulgating the alleged hoax.
In October 2006 a French court decided in favor of France 2 and Enderlin, and against Karsenty.
The court acknowledged that Karsenty had submitted significant evidence indicating that the event had been staged. Still, in ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, the judges said Karsenty's accusations lacked credibility because, it claimed, he had based his accusations on a single source.
The court also stressed that "no Israeli authority, neither the army - which is nonetheless most affected, nor the Justice [Ministry] has ever accorded the slightest credit to [Karsenty's] allegations" regarding the authenticity of the France 2 report.
In his letter to Enderlin, Am-Shalom disputes the judges' assertion. "It is my duty to note," he wrote, "[that their claim] does not correspond to repeated attempts made by the IDF to receive the filmed materials, and with the conclusions of the IDF's committee of inquiry [into the purported shooting] that were widely publicized in the international and French media."
Am-Shalom has discussed at length the findings of the IDF's probe into the incident. That inquiry was ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia.
Citing Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, "The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father [Jamal al-Dura] and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction]."
Am-Shalom further notes that "Gen. Samia emphasized to me that all his attempts to receive the filmed material for the purpose of his inquiry were rejected."
The IDF is in urgent need of the footage, Am-Shalom said, because "it has been asked to comment on the ruling [against Karsenty] from October 19, 2006, on this issue, which is scheduled to be discussed in a French appellate court on September 19."
"Since we are cognizant of the fact that there have been attempts to stage media events, and since doubt has been raised along these lines regarding the story under discussion, we asked to receive the aforementioned materials in order to conclude this episode and to get to the truth," Am-Shalom said.
In the past, the IDF shied away from taking a strong public position on the al-Dura affair. At the time of the incident, then-chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz and then-prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak did not openly support Samia's inquiry or its findings.
As late as June 23, 2006, then-IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Miri Regev told Haaretz, "I cannot determine whether the IDF is or is not responsible for the killing of al-Dura."
In the aftermath of Karsenty's civil trial last year, the IDF came under considerable criticism both in Israel and from Jewish groups abroad for its silence on the issue.
While the IDF maintained official silence, independent probes by various foreign media organizations and Internet activists over the past several years have called the veracity of the France 2 report into serious question.
Those investigations demonstrated that purported IDF "attacks" against Palestinian civilians were being openly staged by Palestinian cameramen and locals at the Netzarim junction throughout the day of the alleged shooting of al-Dura.
Am-Shalom sent copies of his letter to Samia, incoming IDF Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel, the France 2 representative in Israel, the president of the network in France, and Philippe Karsenty.
Kouchner: Prepare for war over Iran crisis
French foreign minister says 'world should prepare for the worst' over Iranian nuclear crisis but stresses efforts to negotiate should be pursued 'right to the end' The world should "prepare for the worst ... (which) is war" over the Iranian nuclear crisis, but seeking a solution through talks should take priority, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday.
"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," he said in an interview broadcast on television and radio.
"We must negotiate right to the end," with Iran, he said, but underlined that if Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would represent "a real danger for the whole world."
Kouchner added France had advised its large companies not to respond to tenders in Iran and repeated a call for greater pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.
Kouchner said the companies that had been contacted were free to decide what to do.
"We have already asked a certain number of our large companies to not respond to tenders, and it is a way of signaling that we are serious," Kouchner said.
"We are not banning French companies from submitting. We have advised them not to. These are private companies. But I think that it has been heard and we are not the only ones to have done this."
"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," he said in an interview broadcast on television and radio.
"We must negotiate right to the end," with Iran, he said, but underlined that if Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would represent "a real danger for the whole world."
Kouchner added France had advised its large companies not to respond to tenders in Iran and repeated a call for greater pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.
Kouchner said the companies that had been contacted were free to decide what to do.
"We have already asked a certain number of our large companies to not respond to tenders, and it is a way of signaling that we are serious," Kouchner said.
"We are not banning French companies from submitting. We have advised them not to. These are private companies. But I think that it has been heard and we are not the only ones to have done this."
Keeping quiet in order to prevent war
The foreign media continued on Sunday to reveal exciting new details of the alleged covert Israeli air strike in Syria earlier this month. AEach report added its own piece to the puzzle. One paper claimed eight jets, backed by a high-altitude intelligence-gathering plane, participated in the foray. Another said the target was an underground bunker containing radioactive nuclear materials. None of these reports were enough, however, to break Israel's vow of silence.
Since the alleged flyover, Israeli and Syrian leaders have kept mum as to what really happened over the skies of northern Syria on September 6, when Syrian air defenses allegedly opened fire on a group of Israeli F-15I bombers.
While the picture is still not completely clear, and has certainly not been confirmed by official Israeli or Syrian authorities, the story that is emerging in the foreign press is the stuff of legends.
Fighter jets, coming under air defense missiles, infiltrate an enemy country and bomb a nuclear facility that is being "lit up" for them by an elite commando unit operating behind enemy lines.
If the foreign news reports are true
, Israel has a lot to be concerned about - not only is Iran racing towards nuclear power but so is Syria.
Syria is known to have a large stockpile of chemical and biological warheads and, according to the news reports, it has forged a partnership with North Korea to possibly develop a nuclear capability as well. For years now, the Israeli public has heard that one of the consequences of Iran's success in defying the world and developing nuclear power was that other Middle Eastern countries would follow suit. This is a case example.
Syria's relationship with North Korea is nothing new. According to foreign reports, Syria possesses some 100 Scud-C missiles that it has bought from North Korea over the last 15 years.
Some Syrian and Hizbullah reports have claimed that the alleged air foray was actually a test run by Israel for the real show - Iran. While the foreign media reports clearly dismiss that possibility - pointing out that the IAF bombed a Syrian target - if the reports are true then the alleged incident does send a clear message to Iran that Israel will not hesitate to use force to stop its enemies from obtaining nuclear power. The precedent Menachem Begin set with the bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 is still in effect.
Assad has his own interests in keeping quiet. While Syria was the one to reveal the alleged IAF infiltration, the country has held back from giving any additional details of what happened over its skies that night. Assad might have had to reveal that there was an infiltration due to the large number of eyewitness accounts. No more details are being provided, however, since while Assad has struck a strategic alliance with pariah states like Iran and North Korea, he misses the days when he enjoyed close ties with France and other Western countries.
Official confirmation of the alleged bombing of a nuclear site and the partnership with North Korea would ruin the chances of those days from returning for a long, long time.
Comment: My sources indicate we did it!
Since the alleged flyover, Israeli and Syrian leaders have kept mum as to what really happened over the skies of northern Syria on September 6, when Syrian air defenses allegedly opened fire on a group of Israeli F-15I bombers.
While the picture is still not completely clear, and has certainly not been confirmed by official Israeli or Syrian authorities, the story that is emerging in the foreign press is the stuff of legends.
Fighter jets, coming under air defense missiles, infiltrate an enemy country and bomb a nuclear facility that is being "lit up" for them by an elite commando unit operating behind enemy lines.
If the foreign news reports are true
, Israel has a lot to be concerned about - not only is Iran racing towards nuclear power but so is Syria.
Syria is known to have a large stockpile of chemical and biological warheads and, according to the news reports, it has forged a partnership with North Korea to possibly develop a nuclear capability as well. For years now, the Israeli public has heard that one of the consequences of Iran's success in defying the world and developing nuclear power was that other Middle Eastern countries would follow suit. This is a case example.
Syria's relationship with North Korea is nothing new. According to foreign reports, Syria possesses some 100 Scud-C missiles that it has bought from North Korea over the last 15 years.
Some Syrian and Hizbullah reports have claimed that the alleged air foray was actually a test run by Israel for the real show - Iran. While the foreign media reports clearly dismiss that possibility - pointing out that the IAF bombed a Syrian target - if the reports are true then the alleged incident does send a clear message to Iran that Israel will not hesitate to use force to stop its enemies from obtaining nuclear power. The precedent Menachem Begin set with the bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 is still in effect.
Assad has his own interests in keeping quiet. While Syria was the one to reveal the alleged IAF infiltration, the country has held back from giving any additional details of what happened over its skies that night. Assad might have had to reveal that there was an infiltration due to the large number of eyewitness accounts. No more details are being provided, however, since while Assad has struck a strategic alliance with pariah states like Iran and North Korea, he misses the days when he enjoyed close ties with France and other Western countries.
Official confirmation of the alleged bombing of a nuclear site and the partnership with North Korea would ruin the chances of those days from returning for a long, long time.
Comment: My sources indicate we did it!
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