WarSclerotic

Out of the ashes, to the height of self-sufficiency.

  ‘The IDF is strong, ready, and a deterrent to our enemies,” the IDF’s new chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz told his troops in a Holocaust Remembrance Day message this week. “It is capable of thwarting any enemy that rises up to try to kill us.”

Indeed it is. And one would rather, by far, be on Israel’s side than that of its enemies in any looming conflict.

But as the 63rd anniversary of our independence arrives, even as Gallup’s global pollsters find our people to be the seventh- most contented on the planet, the threats to Israel are multiplying, in a region where, given the whirlwinds of turmoil, utter instability has become the new norm.

And making those very real threats still more galling is the deepening sense we have here that our enemies are somehow indulged, tolerated, differentiated from the enemies of others – and that we are often expected, uniquely, to suffer their onslaughts rather than confront them. Thus, to take the most recent glaring example of such immoral discrimination, the free world this week rejoices, understandably, at the elimination of mass-murdering Islamist terror chieftain Osama bin Laden while, simultaneously, the free world legitimizes, incomprehensibly, the Palestinian Authority’s partnership with the mass-murdering Islamist terrorists of Hamas. Incomprehensibly, that is, unless different standards are applied when evaluating the enemies of the Jews…

Great big, indomitable America quite rightly asks and is asked no moral questions about the targeted killing of suicide-bomb patron bin Laden and the continued fight against al-Qaida. Tiny, vulnerable, besieged Israel is first castigated by the UN and purportedly responsible world powers for the “unlawful,” “extrajudicial execution” of suicide-bomb patron Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and now encouraged to learn to live with Hamas.

Jerusalem Post reader Joel Kutner, in a letter to the editor this week, suggested pointedly that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “commit to memory” sections of President Barack Obama’s speech announcing the elimination of bin Laden. The president declared: “As a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are.”

Any and every Israeli leader could and would say precisely the same about this country. And any and every Israeli leader should have the right to have such sentiments instinctively endorsed by any moral listener.

BENNY GANTZ, of course, wasn’t meant to be the chief of staff at all. That most challenging of roles was to have been filled by Yoav Galant. Gantz had risen as high as deputy, but narrowly missed out on the top spot, and was beginning to reconcile himself to a life out of uniform when the emergency summons came.

Born in Israel to a mother who was barely alive when she was liberated from Bergen- Belsen, Gantz emblemizes the near-miraculous revival of the Jewish nation after the Holocaust: The survivor’s child is now chief protector of the insistently surviving nation.

Standing tall and straight, Gantz nonetheless carries a perpetual air of concern. He exudes confidence and gravitas but also, in the furrows of his forehead and the lines around his eyes, shows the burden of responsibility. All the way through to his gut, he knows the evil that humankind is capable of doing to the Jews. He knows that it now falls to him, more than anyone else, to ensure that “never again,” rather than becoming an empty slogan, remains an ironclad fact.

And the Jewish state’s enemies are shifting, changing, multiplying, strengthening.

LOW, LOW down the international news agenda and the international diplomatic agenda, but at the very top of Gantz’s and Israel’s list of concerns, is Iran. Sanctions are having an impact, though not a crippling one. Viruses and other curious phenomena have affected the nuclear program, but not stopped it. And Iran’s march to the bomb, it is important to note in this era of regime change, is supported not only by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the clerics who empower him, but also by the “reformist” opposition, the “Greens,” who seek to replace him.

While world attention is focused elsewhere, Iran moves relentlessly closer to its goal. It has broadly mastered the technology and, should it decide to make an all-out push for the bomb, it could build a device in less than 24 months, perhaps even less than 12. If nothing changes in the near future, that “break out” period will shorten inexorably – as the Iranians’ mastery of the technological processes grows. Three years from now, it is believed, therefore, Iran would be able to make a dash for the bomb in a matter of months. Few analysts believe Iran would be so foolish as to initiate that final push unless or until it is certain it can reach its destination. The clock is ticking.

If the nature of the Iranian threat is all too familiar, Gantz has also taken office amidst the rise of all manner of unfamiliar challenges – including regional revolutions and recalibrations that even Israel’s vaunted intelligence services did not see coming. Egypt’s ouster of Hosni Mubarak? Nobody foresaw that. The Fatah-Hamas “reconciliation” accord? A bolt from the blue.

Day after day, the shifting flux of Egyptian affairs prompts new challenges. Yes, Israel empathizes with a population that wanted to be rid of its autocratic leadership. But, yes too, Israel worries that the push for freedom will be subverted – that the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood could exploit an overhasty election process, just as Hamas profited in Gaza and the West Bank in 2006. And, yes again, as the Egyptian natural gas pipeline is repeatedly sabotaged, and the terms of that deal questioned; as wouldbe presidents express varying levels of hostility to the Israel- Egypt peace treaty; and as a sense of kinship with the people of Gaza flourishes, there is concern that the protesting Egyptian public, which was emphatically not focused on Israel in the infancy of its revolt, will seek out a familiar scapegoat amid its frustrations at the slow and problematic nature of change.

For Gantz and the IDF, the immediate practical consequence is that Egypt is “in play.” Remote from a collapsed central control, Sinai is becoming an anarchic zone of arms smuggling and terror planning. And the new Palestinian-unity-brokering Egypt shows every sign of removing itself from the battle against Hamas. An open Egypt-Gaza border might free Israel of some of its obligations to the people of Gaza, but it would also fatally undermine the IDF’s efforts to prevent arms smuggling into the Strip. Those rockets and other weapons systems too large to smuggle through the tunnels might soon be able to cross overland. No need, then, for “aid” flotillas; no possibility of a naval blockade intercepting the arms flow.

The new chief of staff was a young soldier when president Anwar Sadat flew to Israel in 1977 to launch the peace process. Gantz knows full well that when he was fighting with the IDF in west Beirut in 1982, not a single Egyptian soldier interrupted the tranquility of the newly peaceful border. In utterly unpredictable May 2011, by contrast, there is simply no telling what kind of response from Egypt would follow an outbreak of conflict on another front. There is no telling, that is, whether today’s Egypt, a country with which Israel had wanted to believe relations were normalized, might soon decide to ally itself with an enemy of Israel, or worse.

While questions about Egypt’s orientation abound, for the IDF there can be no waiting for answers. The new, unpredictable Egypt requires an allocation of resources, equipment and manpower to a frontier that, relatively speaking, was deemed quiet and essentially unthreatening just a few short months ago.

THE MOST likely flashpoint for conflict in the foreseeable future, however, remains the North. Here, too, of course, instability is the new norm. Bashar Assad’s mini-replication of his father’s 1982-style assault on his own people may be sufficient to put down public opposition. Alternatively, Syria may have a new leadership in months. Or it may be turning into another Libyanstyle failed state.

A collapsing Syria might weaken the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah- Hamas axis of evil, but it might also enable Iran to widen its influence. Syria under the Assads has been implacably hostile to Israel, has tried to develop nuclear weapons, and has amassed a vast range of dangerous armaments on our northern doorstep, but it has also acted with a kind of rationality and predictability. A war with Assad’s Syria would be hard but straightforward; the IDF has the capacity to set the nation back 50 or 100 years. A Syria without effective sovereign control, with its weaponry falling into unpredictable hands, would present all manner of fresh problems. For an insight, just look at Lebanon.

As the 2006 Second Lebanon War brought home, conclusively defeating an amorphous terrorist organization, embedded in the very heart of a civilian populace, in a state incapable of exercising sovereignty, is a near-impossible task. Watched closely by Israel for years, Hezbollah has developed in directions best-suited to outflanking and undercutting the IDF’s military advantages and superiorities. And, as underlined by Israel’s recent release of intelligence materials showing Hezbollah’s deployment in the villages of south Lebanon, it has only deepened its devilish intertwinement with the civilian population in the past five years.

In innumerable homes on the other side of our northern border, residents can point to their living room and, right through the doorway, their missile room. And the missiles, 40,000 or more of them, have ranges from eight kilometers to hundreds of kilometers. No other non-state actor – and Hezbollah is still not quite a state actor – has that kind of weapons capability. Certainly not the unlamented bin Laden’s al-Qaida.

For all its cunning, Hezbollah is not beyond reach; it certainly does have centers of power that the IDF can get to. But it poses a mounting danger.

UNDERSTANDABLY, MILITARY chiefs are guarded when describing the strides various enemy states, Hezbollah, Hamas and others are making, day by day, in reducing Israel’s military edge. But if you look at the components of fire power – range, numbers, diversity, accuracy, depth and devastation – their capacities are improving in all.

There are new nonconventional threats. New terror concerns. Threats to IDF communications systems. The potential for the mighty to be humbled via cyber-warfare and other asymmetrical innovations means that even the supremacy of Israel’s air capabilities, though unchallenged in any conventional sense, can no longer be taken for granted.

And then there are the Palestinians – led, now, by an alliance of the purportedly moderate and the avowedly extreme. First, we argued among ourselves as to whether Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority was genuinely prepared to accept the compromises necessary for a viable accord that would keep our state militarily and demographically secure alongside theirs. Then we worried that, even if Abbas did vindicate Netanyahu’s declared confidence in him as a “partner,” he might be swept away amid the regional turmoil. Now we see overt betrayal in his embrace of the Islamists – the ruthless extremists who killed their own people in seizing control of Gaza and have every intention of doing the same to ours.

And we hear the international community, including, risibly, even the United States, suggesting that this empty “reconciliation” – which Hamas will breach at its convenience – might somehow be constructive. Hamas, whose prime minister declares insistently that it will never recognize “illegitimate” Israel because the Jews have no right to sovereignty here. Hamas, whose charter urges adherents to “kill the Jews” to hasten the day of judgment. Hamas, which condemned the US’s “criminal” elimination of the “Muslim warrior” bin Laden. The new Palestinian alliance cannot possibly “advance the cause of the peace,” to quote the White House Chief of Staff William Daley. What it can do, what it does, is give Iran a stronger foothold alongside us and reduce, at a stroke, Israel’s capacity to loosen its security grip in the West Bank.

THE PHYSICAL threats – in a region that, as we turn 63, is moving further away from acceptance of Israel’s fundamental right to exist – range from a single attacker all the way through to weapons of mass destruction. From knife to nuke, and everything in between.

Gantz’s task, in his first weeks and months in unexpected office, is to assess each potential front, each potential threat, and decide how the IDF can and should prevail: What will constitute victory on today’s muddled battlefield, and which resources does he require to achieve it? The chief of staff is no longer simply the first warrior. He must oversee the legal implications of any battle he fights, and prepare the media ground as well.

He is also first protector of the home front – in a climate where, for some time now, the IDF has been making clear that the next major conflict will likely be the first in which Israel’s civilian fatalities will outstrip the IDF casualties.

The Iron Dome missile defense system – successful, astoundingly, on eight of the nine occasions when it was fired during the recent Gaza flare-up – is no panacea, but it is a considerable boost. No other nation currently boasts the defenses that Israel offers its civilians. Then again, no other nation is attacked the way we are.

Ultimately, no war can be won simply with defensive capabilities. Yet the better the home front defense, and the safer the IDF knows the people of Israel to be, the more options Gantz has for offense.

Doubtless, in the weeks and months ahead, we will hear the defense establishment lobbying for extra money to meet the expanding range of threats. What Gantz needs more than money, though, is people – good people.

He needs to minimize the draft-dodging. He needs backing from government to institute national service for all Israelis, including non-Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, with the IDF empowered to choose the personnel it feels it must have to keep this country safe. He needs to hold on to the best and the brightest in uniform for longer, with the resources, for example, to retain hi-tech specialists for whom the financial benefits of the private sector are so compelling.

And he needs to shape the IDF in his image – an army committed to victory, achieved with integrity, founded on the moral rock of our inalienable right to be here.

IN TODAY’S often morally misguided world, it is very difficult to be recognized as both strong and just. Usually, however absurdly in some cases, it is the weak who are automatically regarded as having justice on their side.

As it turns 63, the Jewish nation sometimes feels as though it is back, not in 1948, without a friend in the neighborhood, but a few years earlier still, with barely a friend in the world. But in life-saving contrast to those dark years, we have revived our homeland, and it flourishes.

We are and will continue to be both strong and just. We have built a vibrant, diverse, declaredly contented society. And with an army now headed by a general who emblemizes that rise from the ashes to the height of self-sufficiency, “we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are.”

Clinton: ‘Assad must respond to demands of his people’.

  Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government must address the demands of the people for change, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday after renewed protests in Syria.

“The Syrian government must respond to the Syrian people’s call for change,” Clinton said in a statement. “It must realize that violence and intimidation will not answer their call.”

Clinton’s comments come as Syrian army units stormed into the city of Banias with tanks overnight, attacking Sunni districts that had defied Assad’s autocratic rule, a human rights campaigner said on Saturday.

The units entered the coastal city, a majority of whose residents are Sunni Muslims, from three directions, advancing into Sunni districts but not Alawite neighborhoods, said the campaigner. Most communications with Banias have been cut but the campaigner was able to contact some residents, he said.

Reacting to the killing of 30 protesters by Syrian security forces earlier Friday, the United States threatened to take new steps against the Assad’s regime unless it stopped killing and harassing its people.

Rights campaigners said the dead were among thousands of protesters who demonstrated after Friday prayers in cities across the country, from Banias on the Mediterranean coast to Qamishly in the Kurdish east.

The European Union agreed to impose sanctions in response to Assad’s violent crackdown on protesters, which rights campaigners say has killed more than 580 people.

“The United States believes that Syria’s deplorable actions toward its people warrant a strong international response,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

“Absent significant change in the Syrian government’s current approach, including an end to the government’s killing of protesters … the United States and its international partners will take additional steps to make clear our strong opposition to the Syrian government’s treatment of its people.”

The United States imposed sanctions of its own last week against some figures in the Syrian government.

Friday’s bloodiest confrontation was in the city of Homs where 15 protesters were killed, activist Ammar Qurabi said.

State television said an army officer and four police were killed in Homs by a “criminal gang”, though another activist, Wissam Tarif, said witnesses told him nine soldiers defected in Homs to the protesters and may have clashed with other troops.

Four protesters were killed in Deir al-Zor, said a local tribal leader from the region which produces most of Syria’s 380,000 barrels per day of oil. They were the first deaths reported there in seven weeks of nationwide unrest.

International criticism has mounted against Assad, who has gone on the offensive to maintain his family’s four-decade grip on power in the country of 20 million and crush demonstrators demanding freedom.

European Union governments agreed on Friday to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions on up to 14 Syrian officials responsible for the violent repression.

Officials blame “armed terrorist groups” for the violence, give a lower death toll and say half the fatalities have been soldiers and police. They say demonstrators are few in number and do not represent the majority of Syrians.

Assad himself was not targeted by the sanctions, which follow last week’s EU agreement in principle to impose an arms embargo on Syria. The measures will be approved on Monday if no member state objects.

Assad’s security forces and troops, which stormed the city of Deraa last week, have prevented demonstrators establishing a platform such as Egypt’s Tahrir Square by blocking access to the capital Damascus. But every week protesters have used Friday prayers to launch fresh marches.

“The people want the overthrow of the regime,” shouted 2,000 demonstrators in the Damascus suburb of Saqba.

Footage released on the Internet and aired on Al Jazeera television showed protesters in several towns and cities echoing the same calls for freedom and change of leadership.

In Hama, where Assad’s father brutally suppressed an armed Islamist uprising in 1982, a rights activist said security forces shot dead six demonstrators.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a protester was killed in Latakia and three were wounded.

Despite the harsh crackdown, protesters appear determined to maintain demands for an end to years of repression, arrests without trial and corruption by the ruling elite.

“The Syrian people will not back down after the country’s budding youths were killed in their hundreds,” said Montaha al-Atrash of the Syrian human rights organisation Sawasiah.

Opposition leader Riad Seif, who helped initiate a peaceful movement seeking political freedoms and democracy 10 years ago, was arrested at one of Friday’s protests, his daughter said.

On Thursday authorities arrested prominent Damascene preacher Mouaz al-Khatib, a major figure in the uprising, rights campaigners said on Friday.

A Western diplomat said 7,000 people had been arrested since the demonstrations broke out on March 18 in Deraa.

Last week, Assad ordered the army into Deraa, cradle of the uprising that began with demands for greater freedom and an end to corruption and is now pressing for his removal.

An ultra-loyalist division led by his brother Maher shelled and machinegunned Deraa’s old quarter on Saturday, residents said. The United States condemned the assault as “barbaric”.

Syrian authorities said on Thursday the army had begun to leave Deraa, but residents described a city still under siege.

Human Rights Watch cited figures from Syrian rights groups saying 350 people had been killed there.

‘Khamenei tells Ahmadinejad: Reinstate intelligence chief or resign’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state affairs, issues ultimatum after vetoing President Ahmadinejad’s decision last month to dismiss Heydar Moslehi; according to website Ayandeh the president is yet to respond.

By DPA

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an ultimatum over the reinstatement of the country’s intelligence chief, a local website reported Friday.

Khamenei, who, according to the constitution, has the final say on all state affairs, vetoed Ahmadinejad’s decision last month to dismiss Heydar Moslehi.

	Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a live television program in Tehran, March 21, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

The website Ayandeh quoted presidential advisor, Morteza Aqa-Tehrani, saying that in a meeting this week between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, the ayatollah has pushed the president to either accept Moslehi or resign.

Ahmadinejad has not yet responded with a final decision on the supreme leader’s ultimatum, Agha-Tehrani added.

The Ayandeh report is yet to be confirmed by official or local media.

Khamenei firmly supported Ahmadinejad following his 2009 re-election, a vote that was overshadowed by allegations of election fraud.

Local media has speculated that the dispute between the supreme leader and the president runs deeper than the disagreement over the dismissal of the intelligence chief.

Some have speculated that the main issue that president and religious leader have butted heads about is Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei.

Mashaei is said to oppose the clergy-dominated framework of the Islamic republic’s establishment, preferring a more nationalistic approach in running the country.

Ahmadinejad has thrown firm support behind Mashaei, causing clergy circles to accuse the president of trying to undermine the Islamic character and principles of the country’s ruling system.

Syria tanks storm Sunni district of Banias as protests persist – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Army enters the coastal city, a majority of whose residents are Sunni Muslims, advancing into Sunni districts but not Alawite neighborhoods; Assad belongs to the minority Alawite sect.

By Reuters

Syrian army units stormed into the city of Banias with tanks overnight, attacking Sunni districts that had defied President Bashar Assad’s autocratic rule, a human rights campaigner said on Saturday.

The units entered the coastal city, a majority of whose residents are Sunni Muslims, from three directions, advancing into Sunni districts but not Alawite neighbourhoods, said the
campaigner. Most communications with Banias have been cut but the campaigner was able to contact some residents, he said.

	Syrian ethnic Kurds demonstrate after Friday prayers in the Syrian town of Qamishli May 6, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

Assad belongs to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, and Alawites occupy most senior positions in the army and security apparatus.

“Residents are reporting the sound of heavy gunfire and seeing Syrian navy boats off the Banias coast. Sunni and mixed neighbourhoods are totally besieged now,” said the rights
campaigner, who did not want to be identified.

A protest leader said earlier this week that Syrian forces and gunmen loyal to Assad had moved on Tuesday into areas of central Banias that had been under the control of pro-democracy demonstrators for weeks.

The coastal city has witnessed some of the most persistent demonstrations since an uprising erupted in the southern city of Deraa seven weeks ago demanding political freedom and an end to corruption.

Mostly Sunni districts of Banias have been under the control of demonstrators since Assad loyalists, known as “al-shabbiha”, fired at residents from speeding cars on April 10, after a large demonstration that demanded the “overthrow of the regime.”

Six civilians were killed that day, according to residents and human rights campaigners.

Authorities described Banias as a “centre of Salafist terrorism” and said armed groups had killed soldiers near the city. Civic leaders in Banias issued a statement denying the
accusation and saying the authorities were trying to spread fear among the Alawites.

“They are targeting Sunnis. I regret to say that the propaganda that Assad is spreading that the Alawites will not survive if he is toppled is receiving an audience among our
Alawite neighbours, although the demonstrations have been for freedom and unity, regardless of sect,” Protest leader Anas Shughri said earlier this week.

The United States and its international partners said on Friday that they will take “additional steps” against the Syrian government unless it stops killing and harassing its people.

“Tthe Syrian people, like people everywhere, have the inherent right to exercise their universal freedoms, including peaceful assembly, expression, and speech. The Syrian government must respond to the Syrian people’s call for change. It must realize that violence and intimidation will not answer their call,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

Bin Laden Is Dead But the Real Terror Threat From Iran Grows Stronger Every Day – FoxNews.com.

Ahmadinjead allies arrested on suspicion of sorcery.

  Allies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were arrested this week for being “magicians” and invoking spirits, Iranian website reported on Wednesday.

Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as well as other people close to the Iranian president were accused of invoking djinns.

One of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, was called “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds,” Iranian news site Ayandeh reported.

Ahmadinejad has many critics on the right who accuse him of seeking more power for himself at the expense of other state bodies such as parliament.

Many conservative clerics have also criticized Rahim-Mashaie, his closest aide, for promoting an “Iranian school” of Islam, which they consider a dangerous nationalistic stance.

Ahmadinejad’s close relationship with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – the senior cleric who has the last word in the Islamic Republic’s affairs – was strained two weeks ago, according to some analysts, over the president’s attempt to sack his intelligence minister, a move vetoed by the supreme leader.

Since then Ahmadinejad has missed two cabinet meetings – something some foreign analysts said was akin to a boycott.

Ahmadinejad attended his first cabinet meeting for more than a week on Sunday, dismissing rumors of a damaging split with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, news agencies reported.

Speculation began to circulate that Ahmadinejad no longer enjoyed the unqualified support of Khamenei, something the government denied. Khamenei had endorsed his re-election in June 2009 in a vote the opposition said was rigged.

Ahead of Sunday’s cabinet meeting, the head of national broadcaster IRIB told news agencies that Ahmadinejad would express his allegiance to Khamenei.

The jostling for influence is happening less than one year before a parliamentary election set to be a battle among fellow conservatives. Leading reformist candidates are unlikely to be allowed to stand if they are deemed too close to the opposition “Green” movement, which the establishment considers to be part of a foreign-backed conspiracy to overthrow the Islamic system.

Opposition leaders deny any such thing.

Pakistan: US strike kills 8; protests erupt over bin Laden.

  ISLAMABAD – US drone aircraft fired missiles into a house in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on Friday, killing at least eight suspected terrorists just as Islamists protested against the killing of Osama bin Laden.

It was the first drone strike since US special forces killed the al-Qaida leader on May 2 not far from Islamabad, further straining ties between the strategic allies.

About 1,500 Islamists demonstrated against bin Laden’s killing, saying more figures like him would arise to wage holy war against the United States.

Predominantly Muslim Pakistan has yet to see any major backlash after US forces killed bin Laden early on Monday in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

But his death has angered Islamists, with one major hardline political party calling on the government to end its support for the US war on terror.

“Jihad (holy war) against America will not stop with the death of Osama,” Fazal Mohammad Baraich, a cleric, said amid shouts of “Down with America” at a demonstration near the city of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province in the southwest.

“Osama bin Laden is a shaheed (martyr). The blood of Osama will give birth to thousands of other Osamas.”

Some protesters burned American flags.

Anti-American sentiment runs high in Pakistan, despite billions of dollars in aid for the nuclear-armed, impoverished country.

Pakistan’s religious parties have not traditionally done well at the ballot box, but they wield considerable influence on the streets of a country where Islam is becoming more radicalized.

The Pakistani government said bin Laden’s death was a milestone in the fight against terror although it objected to the raid on him as a violation of its sovereignty.

Suspicion that some Pakistani security forces might have known bin Laden was hiding in the country has threatened to strain ties between the allies.

Pakistan has denied any knowledge of the al-Qaida leader’s whereabouts and the army threatened on Thursday to cut intelligence and military cooperation with the United States if it mounted more attacks.

Pakistani cooperation is seen as crucial for efforts to end the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

via Al-Qaida confirms death of Osama bin Laden – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

In an internet statement posted on militant websites, al-Qaida terrorist group says bin Laden’s blood ‘will not be wasted’ and that it will continue to attack Americans and their allies.

By The Associated Press

Al-Qaida has issued its first confirmation of Osama bin Laden’s death in an Internet statement posted on militant websites.

	Osama bin Laden during a 1998 press conference in Afghanistan.
	Photo by: AP

Friday’s statement by the terror network says bin Laden’s blood “will not be wasted” and it will continue attacking Americans and their allies.

Bin Laden was killed Monday by U.S. commandos during a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.

Also on Friday, U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles into a house in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, killing at least eight suspected militants .

The Associated Press: Activist: 6 killed in Syria by security forces.

BEIRUT (AP) — A human rights activist says Syrian security forces have killed six people during widespread protests on Friday.

Thousands of protesters held rallies in major areas across the country, including the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs.

The activist said five people were killed Friday in the central city of Homs and one in Hama. He asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals by the government. He is a senior member of a human rights group that compiles death toll figures in Syria.

The protesters turned out despite a bloody crackdown on the seven-week-old uprising against President Bashar Assad’s autocratic regime.

More than 565 civilians and 100 soldiers have been killed since thee uprising began in March, according to rights groups.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian security forces opened fire on hundreds of protesters on the outskirts of the capital Friday as thousands of people joined demonstrations across the country calling for an end to President Bashar Assad’s regime, witnesses and activists said.

It was not immediately clear if there were casualties.

Undaunted by a bloody crackdown on the seven-week-old uprising, protesters held rallies in major areas including the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs, the central city of Homs, Banias on the coast and Qamishli in the northeast.

“The people want to topple the regime!” protesters shouted, echoing the cries heard during the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Witnesses also reported some of the tightest security seen since the protests began in mid-March. In the Damascus suburb of Douma, scene of intense protests over recent weeks, security forces cordoned off the area to prevent anyone from entering or leaving.

A witness near Douma said he saw a train carrying about 15 army tanks heading north Thursday evening toward the central province of Homs, another site of recent violence.

Another activist in Damascus said hundreds of people marched in the central neighborhood of Midan. In the coastal town of Banias, witnesses said more than 5,000 people carrying olive branches and Syrian flags also were calling for regime change.

They were among several demonstrations and marches planned for Friday, the main day of protests in the Arab world, for what activists were calling a “Day of Defiance.”

More than 565 civilians and 100 soldiers have been killed since an anti-regime uprising, inspired by revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, began in March, according to rights groups.

The activists said security forces set up checkpoints and closed some areas that experienced protests in recent weeks.

In the southern city of Daraa, where the army announced the end to an 11-day military operation Thursday, residents said troops were still in the streets, causing some would-be demonstrators to be wary of taking part in a planned protest Friday.

“There’s a tank stationed at each corner in Daraa. There is no way people can hold a protest today,” a resident said by telephone. “It means more killing. Daraa is taking a break. We don’t want to see more killing or face tank guns.”

The activists spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said a medical team reached Daraa on Thursday with trucks carrying humanitarian goods and medical supplies. The ICRC’s head of delegation in Damascus, Marianne Gasser, said helping people in Daraa is a priority “because it is the city that has been hardest hit by the ongoing violence.”

The ICRC had appealed to Syrian authorities earlier in the week to allow it to access to Daraa after being unable to reach the city previously while it was under siege by security forces.

Assad is determined to crush the revolt that has now become the gravest challenge to his family’s 40-year dynasty. He has tried a combination of brute force, intimidation and promises of reform to quell the unrest, but his attempts have failed so far.

Security forces have repeatedly opened fire on protesters during rallies around the country in the past week and last Friday at least 65 people were killed, according to rights groups.

The mounting death toll — and the siege in Daraa — has only served to embolden protesters who are now demanding nothing less than the end of Assad’s regime. There also has been growing international condemnation of the government’s tactics.

Syria blames the unrest on a foreign conspiracy and “terrorist groups” that it says have taken advantage of protests.

The uprising in Syria was sparked by the arrest of teenagers who scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in Daraa. Protests spread quickly across the nation of some 23 million people.

Assad inherited power from his father in 2000.

Where is Obama’s support of Syrian democracy? – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.

Despite Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights, the Obama administration still hopes that Assad will agree to a Syrian-Israeli peace deal [GALLO/GETTY]

As Bashar al-Assad reverts to his family pedigree and continues what has become a brutal, methodical, and systematic crackdown on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, it seems hard to account for the Obama administration’s rhetorical gentleness toward him.

Consider: The Syrian regime of Assad pere et fils has been an implacable enemy of Israel since its Baathist inception 40 years ago, and has long played host to an alphabet soup of anti-Israel Palestinian resistance groups branded as terrorists by the US. Indeed, the Assad regime has been a charter member of the US government’s small and exclusive list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979. And even if many of the groups harboured by Syria have long since faded, the Syrian government has maintained its credentials by hosting, as it continues to do, the external leadership of Hamas.

As if that were not enough, Syria has long served as the critical logistical lynch-pin in what Washington sees as its unholy tri-partite alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, facilitating the movement of missiles and other weaponry from the former to the latter, and leveraging its relationship with the extremist Shia movement in order to exercise an “illegitimate” influence in Lebanon and to marginalise those Lebanese actors most favourable to the West.

When US troop losses in Iraq were at their height, Assad’s Syria was alternately accused of passively tolerating or actively facilitating the movement of the foreign extremists. These extremists were responsible for a disproportionate amount of al-Qaeda sponsored violence there, and perhaps a majority of the suicide bombers responsible for many thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties.

Nor is Washington’s perception of the Syrian threat limited to the conventional sphere. Having long warned of Syria’s efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons and the missile systems to deliver them, American concerns were heightened yet further. Indeed, in September 2007 Israel destroyed a mysterious site alleged to house a North Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear reactor.

With all of this as background and prologue, one asks, how is it that the Obama White House still treats Bashar al-Assad’s latest outrages with such equanimity? By contrast, though hardly eager at the outset to see Tunisia’s Ben Ali or Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak consigned to the dust-bin of history, the administration was comparatively quick to call for them to step down in the face of far less brutal repression than what we see now in Daraa, Banyas and Douma. No sooner had Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi begun to do what Bashar has been doing for some time than the Obama administration decreed him no longer legitimate, and openly demanded his ouster.

Those close to the American president have made no such pronouncements in the case of Assad. Yes, they have deplored his brutal tactics, but have neither openly questioned the legitimacy of his government, nor called upon him to step down. And under circumstances where the administration would be expected to quickly implement what few sanctions remain to be exercised against Syria, and to do so with an air of self-congratulation, the Americans, as of this writing, are still “exploring” such options. Indeed, it was only days ago that Secretary of State Clinton was combining cease-and-desist calls against Syrian repression with a public description of Assad as a “reformer”.

Obama’s reasoning

This is not to suggest that the US, alone or with others, can or should take the types of action in Syria which the international community has taken in Libya. Without putting too fine a point on it, both the military and regional political circumstances do not support such a course. But even absent doing anything truly effective, it’s not as though this administration is shy about making purely rhetorical pronouncements which it is transparently unable or unwilling to translate into action. Obama ultimately showed no such compunction in demanding an end to Israeli settlement construction. He also saw no contradiction in stating that Gaddafi’s downfall was an aim of US policy, while making clear that he did not feel it necessary for the US to take the concerted action necessary to achieve such a result.

In light of all this, the current US attitude toward Bashar al-Assad’s regime remains mystifying. It is a case of the dog which didn’t bark – which excites speculation as to why.

My personal theory is that the Obama administration’s almost pathetic effort to leave a door open to future dealings with a Syrian regime which may well, in the end, survive the current popular uprising is a mark of the political desperation with which it views its failed efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

At the outset, this administration operated on the sensible notion that further demonising Syria would not be helpful in achieving administration goals in the region, and that relentless, implacable hostility should give way to some form of constructive engagement. The administration also reportedly believed that a Syrian-Israeli peace deal, in addition to its intrinsic merit, would serve to break up the entente with Iran and Hezbollah and, by weakening Hamas, would help to promote a settlement of the Palestinian question, as well.

Thus, as dubious as the administration’s aspirations for the Assad regime might have been previously, they are even more so now. It is hard to see how a shaky Syrian regime, having lost legitimacy both regionally and in the eyes of its own people can make a peace with Israel which would survive itself. And even to the extent it would still be both able and willing to do so now, it is harder still to see how this would usefully contribute to an Israeli-Palestinian deal – or, for that matter, to a reliable change in policy which would seriously address the US obsession with Hezbollah.

Syria-Israel peace deal

The only explanation appears to be that the Obama administration still holds out the hope, however unlikely, that Bashar al-Assad could yet agree to a Syrian-Israeli peace deal which would serve to compensate for its utter failure to achieve Israeli peace with the Palestinians.

But if this is the case, the Obama people should think again. For those in the region, justice for the Palestinians is the central concern vis-à-vis Israel – not recovery of the Golan. A just settlement of the Palestinian issue is the key to a broader regional peace, and to whatever hopes one might harbour for Israel’s long-term ability to establish an accepted place for itself in a region which may soon evolve along a path which would otherwise make it far more conducive to a constructive relationship with Israel than has been the case in decades past.

In 1988, Meron Benvenisti, the Israeli political scientist, politician, journalist and activist wrote a highly insightful article concerning the first intifada. In it, he pointed out that the uprising in the occupied territories had brought home a central reality which Israeli politicians had tried for decades to deny or to ignore. In attempting to reach peace deals with regional states and in thinking and speaking of an Arab-Israeli, rather than an Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he said, Israelis had attempted to deceive themselves about the essential nature of the problem.

Inescapably, he said, the core issue was the Palestinians. Absent agreement with them, peace with the surrounding states, even if it could be achieved, would serve the Israelis little. The nature of its future relations with the Palestinians, he said, was the central – indeed, the existential – question for Israel.

Thus, in the end, it matters little what rhetoric or what marginal policy tools the Obama administration employs with regard to the current uprising in Syria. But if their current actions betray an attempt to wilfully ignore the central issue of justice for Palestinians, they are making a big mistake.

Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He was Director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center from 2004 to 2006.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.