WarSclerotic

Israel Hayom | Sudan threatens Israel after Khartoum arms factory hit.

Sudanese information minister: Four Israeli aircraft evaded our radars and hit Yarmouk Military Complex before dawn, setting off huge explosions and fire that killed two people • Sudanese opposition: Weapons factory belonged to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard • Israel: No comment • U.S. Embassy in Khartoum reportedly closed just after the attack.

Syria’s war spills into Lebanon – The Washington Post.

By Editorial Board, Thursday, October 25, 1:36 AM

DURING A visit to Washington in late August, Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, the intelligence chief of Lebanon’s internal security forces, offered a grim assessment of the civil war raging in neighboring Syria and its likely impact on the region. Dictator Bashar al-Assad, he told us, still had a chance to outlast the rebellion against him, though “it will take a couple of years and more than 100,000 killed.” For the Assad regime, he added, “one of the solutions of the Syrian conflict is to move it outside Syria. He survives by making it a regional conflict.”

A little more than seven weeks later, Mr. Hassan was dead, killed in an Oct. 19 car bombing in Beirut that has taken Lebanon to the brink of its own sectarian war. Most Lebanese not allied with the Hezbollah movement agree with former prime minister Saad Hariri that “it is clear as day” who sponsored the assassination. In short, Mr. Assad is attempting to implement the very strategy that Mr. Hassan spoke of.

The intelligence chief was a key member of the pro-Western group that governed Lebanon for several years after the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” forced Syria to end 30 years of military occupation — and he had been fighting to prevent Mr. Assad from meddling in his country. In August, he exposed a plot by a former Lebanese cabinet minister with close ties to Mr. Assad who had conspired to smuggle explosives into the country for a series of bombings. He was pressing Lebanon’s weak prime minister, Najib Mikati, to order the disarmament of a pro-Syrian militia that had provoked clashes in northern Lebanon.

But Mr. Mikati is constrained by Hezbollah, a Syrian client that is the strongest force in the current government. “Mikati won’t move” against Syria’s provocations, Mr. Hassan told us, “unless Assad is dead or outside the country.”

Mr. Hassan proved all too prescient. Mr. Mikati has done little to respond to the bombing — the worst such attack in Lebanon in four years — other than to deploy the army to quell incipient sectarian clashes. He has refused to resign, a step that could open the way to the formation of a government that does not include Hezbollah. In this, remarkably, he had the support of the Obama administration, whose first response to the attack was to dispatch the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon to join her Russian and Chinese colleagues in meeting the president to appeal for “stability” in the country.

The State Department subsequently softened that stance, saying that it would support a “process leading to a new government.” But in Lebanon as well as Syria, the Obama administration is pursuing the shortsighted policy of seeking to restrain anti-Assad forces. That strategy has had no effect in either country other than to empower U.S. enemies and jihadist groups, whose foreign sponsors are showering them with weapons and cash.

Mr. Hassan warned us that the prolongation of the fighting in Syria would lead “to sectarian war and a destroyed civil society.” He added: “The [Syrian] Army will disintegrate, and after its collapse there will be chaos.” By refusing to arm or protect secular and liberal forces, the Obama administration is helping to ensure that outcome.

© The Washington Post Company

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Photo: Illustrative photo: Reuters and Marc Israel Sellem

Report: US embassy in Sudan closed shortly after blasts – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Sources in Khartoum say closure indicates US had prior of strike on arms facility, allegedly launched by Israel. Top Defense Ministry official: Sudan is a dangerous terrorist state

Roi Kais

The US embassy in Khartoum closed its gates on Wednesday, shortly after a weapons facility just south of the Sudanese capital was attacked, the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported.

Sudan claims Israel was behind the attack on the ‘Yarmouk’ arms factory. Analysts say Sudan is used as an arms smuggling route to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip via neighboring Egypt.

According to Al-Hayat’s report, published Thursday, the American embassy in Khartoum stopped providing consular services in September after it was attacked by rioters who were protesting against the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims.”

The report said sources in Khartoum speculated that the embassy closing indicates that the US had prior knowledge of the strike on the weapons facility in the city, allegedly mounted by Israel.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said it opposes any attack that violates Sudan’s sovereignty, and that it will cooperate with the authorities in Khartoum in the investigation into the strike.

Israel refused to comment on Sudan’s accusations.

Following the attack, which left two people dead, Sudanese Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman said his country “reserves the right to strike back at Israel.”

Sudan has accused the Jewish state of launching similar attacks in the past.

A top Israeli defense official said Thursday that Sudan is a “dangerous terrorist state,” although Israel has refused to directly comment on the claim it was responsible for the attack.

“Sudan is a dangerous terrorist state. To know exactly what happened (there), it will take some time to understand,” Amos Gilad told Israel’s army radio.

Asked directly whether Israel was involved in the attack, Gilad, who serves as director of policy and political-military affairs at the Defense Ministry, refused to reply directly.

The Israeli air force, he noted, was “one of the most prestigious in the world, a fact which had been proved many times in the past.”

Residents living near the Yarmouk factory told AFP an aircraft or missile had flown over the facility shortly before the plant exploded in flames.

An AFP reporter several kilometers away saw two or three fires flaring across a wide area, with thick smoke and intermittent flashes of white light bursting above the state-owned factory.

Sudan took its case to the UN Security Council, where its envoy Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman called on the council to condemn Israel.

“We reject such aggression and expect your esteemed council to condemn this attack because it is a blatant violation of the concept of peace and security” and the UN charter, the ambassador said.

The envoy also accused Israel of arming rebels and helping to transport rebel leaders in Sudan’s Darfur states, and said Israel was “jeopardizing peace and security in the entire region.”

In 1998, Human Rights Watch said a coalition of opposition groups had alleged that Sudan stored chemical weapons for Iraq at the Yarmouk facility. Government officials strenuously denied the charge at the time.

In August of that year, US cruise missiles struck the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in North Khartoum, which Washington alleged was linked to chemical weapons production.

Evidence for that claim later proved questionable.

The sprawling Yarmouk facility is surrounded by barbed wire and set back about two kilometers (one mile) from the main road, so signs of damage were not visible later Wednesday when an AFP reporter visited.

But state-linked media said 65 houses in the area had been “affected.”

The Yarmouk factory made “traditional weapons”, Information Minister Osman said.

“The attack destroyed part of the compound infrastructure, killed two people inside and injured another who is in serious condition,” he said.

There have been other mysterious blasts in Sudan – and allegations of Israeli involvement.

In April last year, Sudan said it had irrefutable evidence that Israeli attack helicopters carried out a missile and machine-gun strike on a car south of Port Sudan.

Last year’s attack mirrored a similar strike by foreign aircraft on a truck convoy reportedly laden with weapons in eastern Sudan in January 2009.

Khartoum is seeking the removal of US sanctions imposed in 1997 over its alleged support for international terrorism, its human rights record and other concerns.

Jerusalem Post – Breaking News.

Obama vs. Romney: on enlightenment and decency – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

The information that appears on many American news pages and news websites systematically stands up for one candidate and tarnishes the other

By Ari Shavit | Oct.25, 2012 | 3:27 AM | 2

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during the third and final presidential debate. Photo by AFP

Mitt Romney is no Abe Lincoln. True, he’s very tall, but he is not a singular personality of historic proportions. But Romney is also no Sarah Palin. He is not an extreme right-wing Tea Partyist who wants to turn America into a religious, reactionary and unenlightened nation. Romney perpetuates the way of moderate, sane Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford and John McCain. He is an American from times past, whose achievements as governor of (liberal ) Massachusetts were quite impressive, and whose positions on America and the world are quite reasonable.

But people who receive their information from mainstream American media cannot know this. People who get their information from the establishment American media read reports over and over again, and see pictures over and over, which make Romney look ridiculous. So the boxing match now underway between Romney and Obama is taking place on a slanted floor. Very slanted. People who still believe in a fair and professional media should feel uncomfortable about this slant.

Let’s be precise: There is no problem with columnists in the New York Times and the Washington Post making mincemeat out of Romney. One of our jobs as columnists is to make mincemeat out of politicians whom we view as dangerous. Neither is there a problem with major media outlets embracing and supporting President Barack Obama. The media has the right to an agenda and to promote the agenda in which it believes.

There is no doubt about it: America’s leading media organs and journalists are the most impressive in the world. But information is information is information. The flow of that information must be free and fair. And so it is difficult to watch how, in the critical period of an election campaign, the information that appears on many American news pages and news websites systematically stands up for one candidate and tarnishes the other. It is difficult to watch the moderator of a fateful televised debate clearly tip the scale against one of the candidates. It is difficult to watch the president of the Federal Reserve Bank allow himself to interfere in the election campaign by implementing a dubious monetary expansion. It is difficult to watch the way decency is repeatedly sacrificed in the name of enlightenment.

One can understand the liberals feeling that a war is being waged over their homeland. I share that sentiment. One can justify the deep sense of anxiety over the return of Republican conservatism. I share that anxiety. But it hurts to see how the polarization, which has torn American society asunder, is now impairing the quality of American public discourse. It hurts to see how such discourse in America has donned a visceral and aggressive face, which resembles political discourse in Israel.

This state of affairs recalls forgotten memories in Israel. In 1996, the mainstream Israeli media completely discounted Benjamin Netanyahu and negated the possibility that he would win the elections. In 1999, the mainstream Israeli media feted Ehud Barak and almost completely ignored the aggressive bands that worked on his behalf throughout the country. In 2006 and 2009, most of the media in Israel supported Kadima and therefore did not ask tough questions of its leaders.

In all of these campaigns, the continual slants stemmed from high-minded motives: the desire to reach peace, to protect progress and to make Israel a place worth living in. But do these motives outrank the good old value of fairness? Do they justify a lack of professionalism? In the name of enlightenment, should information be filtered and slanted, and can the basic rules of democracy be eroded?

The 2013 election campaign is an opportunity for the Israeli media to learn from the American failure of 2012, and the Israeli failures of 1996, 1999,, 2006 and 2009. The time has come to show that of all places, this is the place where political boxers face off on a level floor.

Sudan Accuses Israel Of Attack On Iran Missile Factory, Says Will Show Proof To UN Security Council – YouTube.

Did Israel Attack Sudan? – YouTube.