WarSclerotic

War With Iran: Iran is Now Rearming Hamas, and That Could Lead the US Into Deeper Conflict.

The Gaza Operation: Less a War than an Anti-Iran Coup.

The eight-day Gaza duel between Israel and Hamas was the showcase.  Behind it, a coup went forward, masterminded by at least three intelligence wizards: Israel’s Mossad Direct Tamir Pardo, Turkish National Intelligence Organization – MIT chief, Hakan Fidan and the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Jassim al Thani, who also heads the emirate’s intelligence service.  The CIA was in close touch.

Their aim was to abort the military ties Tehran was cultivating with Hamas before the Gaza Strip is grabbed as Iran’s springboard to Cairo. To this end, wave upon wave of multiple missile assaults on Israel were provoked.
The coup action was designed as Part One of US President Barack Obama’s overall plan, which is to harness the Arab Spring to key US objectives. His partners were – and are – Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Obama’s next stop is Syria where matters are coming to a head on several fronts.

The plan, if Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense worked, was to chart a new future for the radical Hamas terrorists by their transformation into the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people for which they still need some grooming and more than a touch of the airbrush.

Hamas has the advantage of being the most popular boy on the Palestinian block, which is why the Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has avoided an election for six years.
In the short term, the Israeli miniwar was meant as a vivid lesson for Tehran about the fate awaiting its Arab allies. Hizballah is advised to watch what happened to Hamas before its leader Hassan Nasrallah looses tens of thousands of rockets with which Iran filled its armory against Israel.

For these objectives, Israeli ground action was not necessary at any stage of the Gaza operation.

Its opening shot was a bull’s eye, eliminating Hamas’s military commander, the pro-Tehran Ahmed Jabari and Iran’s kingpin in Gaza.
Iron Dome stole the show by knocking out most of the 1,000 missiles launched from Gaza before they hit town centers. Israel lost six dead. Many of the injured were shock victims.
So was the coup strategy played out in Gaza a success?
Time will tell; Israel has meanwhile begun easing its land and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip. Turkey and Qatar are committed to major investments in the Gaza economy to make it more prosperous than the rival West Bank.  And the US and Egypt have undertaken a joint effort to stem the flow of Iranian arms to Gaza through the smuggling routes of Sinai.

A million things could go wrong along the way. However, the same coalition has meanwhile shifted it sights from Gaza to Syria. NATO is about to post Patriots with American crews on the Turkish-Syrian border and the rebels are finally beginning to hem Assad’s military resources in.

Is Hamas Really a ‘Surrogate’ of Iran? – Robert Wright – The Atlantic.

(Robert Wright is one of radical Islam’s most distinguished apologists. – JW )

Is Hamas a puppet of the Iranian regime? An affirmative answer to this question is, from the point of view of Bibi Netanyahu, a dual-use rhetorical technology: (1) It helps justify the recent bombardment of Gaza (since one goal of the operation was to deplete an Iranian-supplied missile stock that Iran could in theory activate against Israel in the event of war). (2) It helps justify Netanyahu’s uncompromising stance toward Iran (since, the more pervasively threatening Iran seems to Israelis, the easier it is to convince them that the Iranian regime is beyond the reach of negotiation).

The Hamas-as-Iranian-puppet narrative gets help from American media. Consider, for example, this week’s New York Times piece by David Sanger and Thom Shanker asking what the recent Israel-Gaza conflict tells us about how a possible war with Iran might play out. Referring to Netanyahu and President Obama, Sanger and Shanker write:

And one key to their war-gaming has been cutting off Iran’s ability to slip next-generation missiles into the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, where they could be launched by Iran’s surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, during any crisis over sanctions or an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The confident assertion that Hamas is an Iranian “surrogate”–a claim Sanger and Shanker never get around to substantiating–is oddly out of touch with recent developments in the region.

It’s certainly true that Hamas had, and still has, lots of Iranian-supplied missiles, the product of a close relationship that goes back years. But this past year has seen developments that changed the relationship.

First, Hamas ended its relationship with the Syrian regime and moved its leadership out of Syria–a move that not only strained relations with Syrian ally Iran but may have deeply altered them. In March, a Hamas official said Hamas would not serve as Iran’s retaliatory surrogate in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran and would not get involved in an Israel-Iran war.

Second, the sudden slack in Hamas’s relationship with Iran seems to have been taken up by Qatar, which is now bankrolling Hamas, and, in a different way, by Egypt, which is closer to Hamas under President Morsi than it was under Hosni Mubarek. This shift in Hamas’s source of support–from Iran and Syria toward Qatar and Egypt–could prove constructive in the long run, since both Qatar and Egypt are members of the global establishment and seem to want to stay that way.

None of this means Hamas’s relationship with Iran is over. Indeed, with Hamas now basking in the glow of what it’s calling a victory over Israel, gratitude for the missiles Iran sent to Gaza is on conspicuous display. Still, Hamas’s behavior during the conflict with Israel may say more about its relationship with Iran than any niceties emanating from Gaza afterwards. On this point it’s worth reading Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli academic of Iranian descent who teaches a course on Iranian politics. His take:

Apart from supplying weapons, Iran did not have any other influence. If it did, and Hamas was acting as its proxy, the latter would not have agreed to a cease-fire and instead done everything to force Israel to launch a land invasion in Gaza. Such an outcome would have many benefits for Iran and, in fact, this is what Iran’s military and political leaders wanted. They wanted to see Israel stuck in a quagmire in Gaza, with its economy and diplomatic standing suffering heavily while its relations with Egypt reached breaking point. Unfortunately for the Iranian regime, it did not get its wish precisely because Hamas is not its proxy, nor does it have any political influence over Hamas. Otherwise, the story would have been different.

The Hamas-as-Iran’s-surrogate motif has dramatic appeal, and journalists, like the rest of us, like drama. But dramatization often means simplification. And when the prospect of war is real–as it was with Iraq in 2002, as it is with Iran now–journalists have a particular responsibility to resist incendiary oversimplification.

Israel snuffs out Hamas’ missiles – Washington Times.

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials are hailing their military operation against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip as a strategic success in neutralizing one of three potential threats should Israel need to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in coming months.

“Operation Pillar of Defense” destroyed nearly all of Gaza’s rocket arsenal and proved the efficacy of the Iron Dome defense system against short-range missiles, Israeli officials told reporters in a military briefing Thursday.

Israel’s weeklong military operation and Hamas‘ rocket attacks ended Nov. 21 under a cease-fire brokered in part by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

One of the principal aims of the operation was to destroy the arsenal of short- and medium-range rockets capable of striking the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, about 40 miles from Gaza, Israeli officials said.

On Nov. 14, the first day of the attack, the Israeli military destroyed almost all of the rockets in the possession of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the other main Islamic terrorist group in Gaza.

Gaza’s rocket arsenal was one leg of a three-pronged threat that could deter Israel from attacking on Iran’s nuclear sites. The other two are Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon that has a larger rocket arsenal than Hamas‘, and Iran itself, which has ballistic missiles.

Hezbollah did not join Hamas and Islamic Jihad in firing on Israel this month, but has said that it would join in any future attacks on Israel.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has said it has given Hamas the technology to build longer range missiles.

According to the Israeli Defense Force, more than 1,000 rockets were fired from Gaza during the seven-day military operation, most of which fell in unpopulated areas. Iron Dome intercepted at least 359 (about 85 percent of) incoming missiles determined to be a threat against a populated area.

Israeli officials praised the missile defense system, which uses cameras and radar to detect a rocket or mortar launch, and track the shell’s flight path from a distance as far as 45 miles away.

Iron Dome then transmits data about the shell’s trajectory to a fire-control system that determines whether the rocket poses a threat to a populated area, and ignores missiles that are projected to hit unpopulated areas.

If an incoming rocket does pose a threat, Iron Dome launches an interceptor missile that uses its built-in radar to help it close in on the target and destroy it over a safe area.

Israeli officials also said their new medium-range missile defense system, called “David’s Sling,” has passed operational tests. The system is designed to intercept missiles as far as 180 miles away.

For months, Israeli officials openly have mulled attacking Iran’s nuclear program, which the Jewish state and Western nations have said is geared toward building an atomic weapon.

Iran has denied the accusations about its atomic program, saying its nuclear research aims only at peaceful ends. However, it has refused to allow international inspectors to examine its nuclear facilities.

By eliminating the Gaza threat, Israel cleared one of its flanks. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, although belligerent toward Israel in tone, has been careful not to provoke Israel into an attack.

Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of Israel, had remained relatively quiet since Israel’s incursion into Gaza in January 2009.

However in the past six months, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have entered into increasingly frequent cycles of violence with Israel — firing rockets and being struck by Israeli air attacks.

After attacks increased in southern Israel, the Israeli military retaliated. It launched more than 1,500 airstrikes in the eight-day conflict with Hamas, which killed more than 160 Palestinians.

Israeli officials said most of those killed were terrorists, although civilians also died in the air raids.

Six Israelis were killed in Hamas rocket attacks during the conflict.

In drawing up target lists, the Israeli planners avoided civilian areas in order not to provoke Egypt into an overreaction, including possible renunciation of its peace treaty with Israel.

“We did not aim to eliminate their capacity to fire rockets entirely,” a senior military figure told an Israeli journalist. “We intended to cause them not to resume firing.”

Israeli officials said that the militants did not yet realize the extent of the damage caused to their infrastructure.

“As the days pass and the dust settles, the other side will realize the price it paid for its actions,” Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel’s chief of the military staff.

Israel preceded its attack by assassinating the Hamas military commander, Ahmed Jaabari.

The destruction of his car in the center of Gaza City by a rocket fired from an aircraft, was followed almost immediately by the first wave of the Israeli air attack.

Public opinion polls show the Israeli public was disappointed that the attack did not bring Hamas to its knees. The army command said that was never the intention.

The Israeli political leadership appears to be abandoning earlier threats of destroying Hamas because there is no alternative leadership in the Gaza Strip

Hungary: Far-right leader demands lists of Jews – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( Straight out of the annals of the third Reich.  – JW )

Far-right politician urges government to draw up lists of Jews who pose ‘national security risk’, stirring outrage among Jewish leaders

Reuters

A Hungarian far-right politician urged the government to draw up lists of Jews who pose a “national security risk”, stirring outrage among Jewish leaders who saw echoes of fascist policies that led to the Holocaust.

Marton Gyongyosi, leader of Hungary’s third-strongest political party Jobbik, said the list was necessary because of heightened tensions following the brief conflict in Gaza and should include members of parliament.

Opponents have condemned frequent anti-Semitic slurs and tough rhetoric against the Roma minority by Gyongyosi’s party as populist point scoring ahead of elections in 2014.

But Jobbik has never called publicly for lists of Jews.

“I am a Holocaust survivor,” said Gusztav Zoltai, executive director of the Hungarian Jewish Congregations’ Association. “For people like me this generates raw fear, even though it is clear that this only serves political ends. This is the shame of Europe, the shame of the world.”

Between 500,000 and 600,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, according to the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest. According to some accounts, one in three Jews killed in Auschwitz were Hungarian nationals.

Gyongyosi’s call came after Foreign Ministry State Secretary Zsolt Nemeth said Budapest favoured a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as benefiting both Israelis with Hungarian ancestry, Hungarian Jews and Palestinians in Hungary.

Gyongyosi told Parliament: “I know how many people with Hungarian ancestry live in Israel, and how many Israeli Jews live in Hungary,” according to a video posted on Jobbik’s website late on Monday.

“I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian Parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary.”

Apology

The government released a terse condemnation of the remarks.

“The government strictly rejects extremist, racist, anti-Semitic voices of any kind and does everything to suppress such voices,” the government spokesman’s office said.

Gyongyosi sought to play down his comments on Tuesday, saying he was referring to citizens with dual Israeli-Hungarian citizenship.

“I apologize to my Jewish compatriots for my declarations that could be misunderstood,” he said on Jobbik’s website.

Jobbik’s anti-Semitic discourse often evokes a centuries-old blood libel – the accusation that Jews used Christians’ blood in religious rituals.

“Jobbik has moved from representing medieval superstition (of the blood libel) to openly Nazi ideologies,” wrote Slomo Koves, chief rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation.

Jobbik registered as a political party in 2003, and gained increasing influence as it radicalized gradually, vilifying Jews and the country’s 700,000 Roma.

The group gained notoriety after founding the Hungarian Guard, an unarmed vigilante group reminiscent of World War Two-era far-right groups. It entered Parliament at the 2010 elections and holds 44 of 386 seats.

Hungary has been among European states worst hit by the recent economic crisis and the center-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has struggled to exit recession.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams’ blog “Pressure Points.”

The success of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system is one of the great stories to emerge from the Gaza Strip conflict, but its importance may still have been underestimated.

First, even enthusiasts tend to exaggerate Iron Dome’s variable costs. It is often said that Hamas can make rockets and mortars very cheaply, while each interceptor rocket fired by Iron Dome costs as much as $50,000. But a recent column in the Jerusalem Post points out that such figures include the system’s development costs to date. Procurement of future interceptors will cost far less and economies of scale will soon be reflected. The per unit cost may fall to $5,000 or far less.

Meanwhile, the estimated cost to Iran and Hamas of the Fajr rockets they fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv often does not include the cost of smuggling them from Iran to Sudan to Egypt to Gaza, including all the expenses and bribes along the way.

Second, Iron Dome is only one part of Israel’s fast-developing missile defenses. Iron Dome itself is constantly being improved as new generations of radars come into use. Another system entirely, David’s Sling, was tested successfully last week in the Negev Desert. An article in Defense News reported this:

“Known here as Magic Wand, the [David’s Sling weapon system] is planned as the second layer in Israel’s multitiered national missile defense network, tasked with intercepting threats eluding Israel’s first layer — the Iron Dome — as well as ballistic missiles leaking through the protective envelope of the U.S.-Israel Arrow. Future plans call for expanding the capabilities into a full multi-role system, capable of intercepting not only rockets and missiles, but aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles.”

Preventing attacks on Israel by Iranian weapons is a central goal of the Israeli government and involves more than defensive systems. That is why Israel in January 2009 appears to have attacked a truck caravan of Iranian weapons traversing Sudan and headed for Gaza, and why on Oct. 23 a warehouse full of Iranian weapons was destroyed in Khartoum. By way of background, the website Now Lebanon tells the story of a “comprehensive network seeking to provide Palestinians with all kinds of weapons,” and involving Iran, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime. That story mentions two individuals involved in this network, Syrian general and Special Presidential Adviser for Arms Procurement and Strategic Weapons Muhammad Suleiman, and Imad Mughniyah, who was the leader of Hezbollah’s terrorist operations. Both men are now dead. Both assassinations have been attributed in the press to Israel, and if that is right, it is further evidence of Israel’s determination to prevent Hamas from acquiring advanced weaponry that can threaten Israel’s major population centers.

I can remember analyses and stories five or 10 years ago speculating that because of the missile and rocket threat, Israel would soon find it impossible to defend itself, but it seems that technology may be able to defeat terror. For the U.S., which maintains scores of military bases overseas and in dangerous locations, that is good news, indeed.

Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.

via Israel Hayom | Technology and terror.

Stop the Re-Arming Of the Gaza Terrorists.

President Obama pushed Israel into accepting a ceasefire arrangement with Hamas, which was engineered by Hamas’s Muslim Brotherhood patron, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel is supposed to negotiate, through Egyptian intermediaries, an easing of border restrictions between Gaza and Israel. This would be the same Egyptian government that had sent its prime minister to Gaza to express solidarity with Hamas during the fighting.  Hamas, on the other hand, is not required to give up its remaining stockpile of Iranian-supplied weapons, nor to commit to cease all further imports of Iranian missiles or missile parts.  In short, the ceasefire is a sham. Only a Gaza Strip without re-armed terrorists can truly stop the fire in the long run.

Obama reportedly praised Morsi for his pragmatism in putting ideology aside in order to get the ceasefire deal done.  Morsi wasted no time in exploiting the glow of praise radiating so brightly from Obama and the international community for his role in bringing about the ceasefire. He issued an edict the next day exempting all his decisions from judicial review and giving himself the power to do pretty much anything he deemed necessary to keep the “revolution” alive.

Morsi was able to get Hamas to agree to a ceasefire because he knows that Hamas will simply follow the path of Hezbollah, which has used its own ceasefire with Israel in Lebanon to re-arm itself to the teeth with sophisticated weapons it obtains from Iran and Syria. Morsi no doubt followed the time-honored Islamist tradition of lying in the service of Islam, known as taqiyya, regarding any representations he may have made on Hamas’s behalf to Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the negotiations.

How was Obama able to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire before the military operation had achieved all of its objectives?  According to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Netanyahu might well have succumbed to threats by the Obama administration that it would cut off or delay shipments of vital parts for F-16s and other military assets unless Israel acceded.

There is also an unconfirmed report by DEBKAfile that Obama secured Netanyahu’s agreement to the ceasefire after he “personally pledged to start deploying US troops in Egyptian Sinai” within a week. This follows another DEBKAfile report of a U.S. project to construct electronic security fences along the Suez Canal and northern Sinai. The kicker, however, is that Morsi has to consent to the fences and the entry of U.S. forces into Sinai to take action against Iranian arms smuggling networks.

Meanwhile, Hamas is wasting no time. The rocket firings may have ceased for the time being, but not the re-arming. Israeli spy satellites have reportedly detected rockets and other weapons being loaded into a cargo vessel at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, which is the location of the main base of the Iranian Navy.  Israeli intelligence officials believe that the vessel will be following a well-established sea route from Bandar Abbas to the Port of Sudan, from which arms are then smuggled through Sudan and Egypt via the Sinai Peninsula to Gaza.

Iran uses Sudan regularly as part of its terrorist arming campaign, leveraging a defense pact the two countries signed in 2008.

An arms factory in Sudan, reportedly used by Iran to manufacture arms for transit to Hamas, exploded last month as a result of what may have been an Israeli air strike.  But the Iranian-Sudanese terrorist arms venture continues on.  Libya has become another source of weapons smuggled to Gaza.  An Iranian Navy ship, carrying weapons, was allowed by Egyptian authorities to pass through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean last August – in other words, by the same government that is supposed to help maintain the ceasefire between Iran’s client Hamas and Israel.

Israel should not ease any current land and sea restrictions without ironclad, enforceable measures to stop all terrorist re-arming in its tracks. Enforceable does not mean by UN peacekeeping troops.  They have proved to be worthless in stopping the smuggling of arms across the Syrian border to Hezbollah, as was called for in Security Council Resolution 1701.

However, assuming that the DEBKAfile report is true and Morsi somehow consents to a limited U.S. troop presence in the Sinai to snuff out the smuggling operations – a questionable assumption –  that is only a start. Moreover, the United States should not have to act alone. If European countries and Turkey, as well as the United States – all members of NATO – want Israel to ease the land and sea restrictions, then NATO needs to step up.  This means committing the resources required to inspect all cargo before it enters Gaza from whatever location, and to interdict all arms and weapons components wherever they are found, before they reach Hamas.  If this includes intercepting Iranian ships, which are believed to be carrying arms shipments, before they reach Sudan and other transit points, so be it. NATO would be simply enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1747, which prohibits Iran from supplying, selling, or transferring directly or indirectly “any arms or related material.”

President Obama also needs to significantly increase the U.S. government’s financial support for Israel’s anti-missile defense systems, including Iron Dome (for short-range rockets),  David’s Sling (for medium- to long-range rockets) and Arrow (for long-range conventional ballistic missiles and high-altitude nuclear warheads). These defense systems are based on Israeli-developed technology, which has proven to be far superior to U.S. technology in this area.  Our financial investment in its success will not only help our ally Israel defend itself, but will provide us with highly effective systems for our own use against the terrorists who mean to do us harm.

The United States has budgeted approximately $2 billion for these systems’ development, manufacture and deployment in Israel since 2006.  The Obama administration needs to up the ante and provide Israel with the money needed to allow the rapid manufacture and deployment of enough of these systems to protect every civilian population center in Israel against short, medium and long-range missile attack from any direction.

In the final analysis, these tactical measures are necessary but not sufficient to deal with the source of the threat not only to Israel, but to all Western democracies. The Islamist regime in Iran will have to be confronted, sooner rather than later.  As Winston Churchill once said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.”

Mowing the lawn – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Learning from its mistakes, for Operation Pillar of Defense the IDF set itself modest, achievable military goals. The first, tactical, was to deplete Hamas’ stores of rockets and weapons systems.

The second, strategic, was to recreate a comprehensive deterrence capability that would cause terrorists in the coastal enclave to hesitate before renewing rocket salvoes against Israel’s south.

According to the IDF, during the course of the eight-day operation, Israel targeted:

• 30 senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists
• 19 high-level command centers
• 980 underground rocket launchers
• 140 smuggling tunnels
• 66 tunnels used for terrorist operations
• 42 operation rooms and bases owned by Hamas
• 26 weapons manufacturing and storage facilities

To add a little bit of context, the IDF launched far more airstrikes in Gaza during the first few days of Operation Pillar of Defense than during the same initial period of Operation Cast Lead of 2008-2009. The recent operation decimated Hamas’ and other terrorist organizations’ stores of Qassam rockets and mortars, while all but completely obliterating their Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles.

On the diplomatic front, if Israel secures Egyptian cooperation over weapons smuggling into Gaza, Hamas could find it exceedingly difficult to resupply and rearm. These represent incontestable tactical scores for the IDF, and could be considered, ipso facto, justification for Operation Pillar of Defense.

Rocket damage in Ashdod (Photo: Ido Erez)

Which leads us to the IDF’s deterrence capabilities: The IDF displayed the effectiveness of its budding UAV program, dubbed “Canopy of Fire,” or hupat esh in Hebrew. The program is comprised of constant aerial surveillance of terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Buzzing drones flying kilometers above the enclave use high-resolution cameras to monitor individual terrorists conducting military operations, at times allowing the IAF to conduct rapid pinpoint strikes against the operatives. The program is increasingly successful, and will eventually threaten terrorists’ ability to fire rockets into Israel without being targeted by an IAF strike.

Of course, the success of the operation will ultimately be judged in the coming weeks and months based on the stability of the ceasefire deal. If Israel has in fact managed to renegotiate the “rules of the game” to prohibit rocket fire on Israel’s south, the operation will be deemed a success.

But be clear, there are very few within the IDF, if any, who believe that Operation Pillar of Defense is a long-term solution to Palestinian rocket fire. Most expect the ceasefire to break down eventually, as Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, within “nine days, nine weeks, or more.”

Far from being a regional game-changer, the operation was viewed as a tactical necessity, one which has frustrated the increasingly brazen terrorist attacks emanating from Gaza, and which will have to be repeated in weeks, months, or years down the line.

It is viewed as both a sequel to Operation Cast Lead and a prequel to what will invariably be the next IDF operation in the Strip, and the next, until a diplomatic solution can be found.

In IDF slang, the process is known as “mowing the lawn.” Only time will tell when the weeds will grow back.

Yoni holds a BA degree in Psychology with a minor in Political Science, from the University of British Columbia. He is currently working as a journalist in Israel, and his expertise lies in policy, conflict and Middle East affairs. Yoni was called up for reserve duty in the IDF’s Strategic Division at the start of Operation Pillar of Defense.

US-led NATO intervention begins in Syria war. Patriots in Turkey.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 27, 2012, 9:47 AM (GMT+02:00)

Patriot anti-missile batteries for Turkey

Tuesday, Nov. 27, the Middle East military spotlight swung around from Gaza to the Syrian war with steps for the start of US and NATO intervention in that conflict. Without spelling this out, a game changer began unfolding when a joint Turkish-NATO team began making a site survey  for the deployment of Patriot Air and Missile Defense Systems, manned by American military teams. The team, said the statement from Ankara, will assess where to station the missiles and how many would be needed. It reiterated that the system is “for defensive purposes” and not for a “no-fly zone or offensive operations,” but just for use “against an air or missile threat from Syria.”
However, the Patriots in combination with already installed elements of the missile shield, will command an area beyond the Turkish-Syrian border – all of northern Syria up to and including the embattled towns of Aleppo and Homs, debkafile’s military sources report.
Their presence will impede the operations of Assad’s most effective and lethal means of war against the rebels in that region – air force bombardment.
The positioning of US anti-missile missiles in Turkey coincides with the rebels’ success in destroying the Assad regime’s key air and radar stations in southern Syria and along the Jordanian border. The two thrusts add up to a coordinated military effort in northern and southern Syria to seize control of the skies in both regions from Assad’s control and push his forces back into central Syria.
A part of the US-Turkish plan affects Israel. Monday, debkafile reported exclusively that in a resounding blow to Bashar Assad’s ability to fight external enemies, Syrian rebels had destroyed the Assad regime’s most important electronic warning radar station facing Israel – M-1 – Monday, Nov. 26.

This Russian-built station monitored Israeli warplanes’ takeoff and landing activities at air bases in the Negev and Hatzerim in the south and tracked them up to the Syrian border. The facility was designed to guide Syrian missiles targeting any point on the Israeli map, in sync with air defense facilities south of Damascus and on the Golan Heights. The radar’s range also covered naval movements in Mediterranean waters off the shores of Israel and Lebanon.
Western military sources told debkafile that the destruction of this vital facility has blinded the two eyes which Syrian air, air defense and missile forces had trained on Israel. It has therefore crippled, though not completely dismantled, Bashar Assad’s ability to got to war against Israel, Jordan or Saudi Arabia.
M-1 radar also swept all parts of Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia where the important Tabuk air base is situated. Deployed there in addition to the Saudi Air Force are French fighter-bombers ready to go to war against Syria.
M-1 also relayed current data on Israeli military movements to Hizballah and would have been a vital source of intelligence in a potential Lebanese Shiites offensive against the Jewish state.
The Syrian ruler and his spokesmen have frequently threatened since the eruption of the popular insurrection that if Assad had his back to the wall, the entire Middle East would go up in flames, especially Israel.

In the last two days, the Syrian rebels have made additional gains: They were able to capture areas abutting on the Jordanian border, excepting only the Ramtha border crossing. They also seized the Marj al-Sultan military air field southeast of Damascus and adjoining Syrian Army 4th Brigade bases.
Most of the men of the 82nd Infantry Brigade guarding M-1 were killed in the fighting, fled or were taken prisoner.
Our military sources notes that after M-1, the Assad regime still retains two key radar stations: M-2 in Shanshar south of Homs, which covers central and northern Syria; and M-3 near Latakia which keeps an eye on the northern region up to the Turkish border and the eastern Mediterranean up to Cyprus.
All three radar stations were linked to the Syrian general staff, air force, air defense, missile and navy operations rooms and fed them the essential real-time intelligence data needed for decision-making at the highest level. However, the loss of M-1 seriously hampers the Syria army’s capacity to take on Israel or Jordan.

Israeli-Americans sue Clinton over PA aid money – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Group claims State Department ignored transparency requirements attached to US aid to Palestinians, allowed money to fund terrorist organizations

Adi Gold

Dual US-Israeli citizens filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the State Department claiming that the US administration provided the Palestinian Authority with billions of dollars in aid moneywhich were used to fund terrorist groups such as Hamas instead of supporting humanitarian causes, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

According to the lawsuit, the State Department ignored congressional safeguards and transparency requirements attached to US aid to the Palestinian Authority.

The White House, it was claimed, did not comply with the regulations and reporting obligations governing presidential waivers which facilitate emergency funding to the Palestinians.

Evidence collected by the plaintiffs indicates that the PA directly funds terrorist organizations and that some PA officials also serve organizations which the US considers terrorist groups.

The plaintiffs’ attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center said that the US government did not adhere to the law and harmed US citizens.

“Once handed over, US funding of the PA and UNRWA is difficult to trace and the State Department has been lax in requiring the Palestinians to utilize bank accounts and other transfer methods that ensure transparency,” she said.

“Elements of the US Government, particularly the State Department and USAID, are breaking the law and must cease all funding of the PA immediately. US aid to the Palestinians is killing innocent people,” she added.