WarSclerotic

Of course Hamas killed the baby – JPost – Magazine – Opinion.

Photo by: Courtesy

The recent disclosure that Omar Misharawi, the baby son of BBC photographer Jihad Misharawi, was actually killed by an errant Hamas rocket rather than by an Israeli missile, should have absolutely no moral implications.  Of course the baby was killed by Hamas.  He would have been killed by Hamas even if the missile that ended his life had been fired by Israel.  Hamas is totally and wholly responsible for this death, as it is responsible for every civilian death in Gaza and in Israel. It is Hamas that always begins the battle by firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Generally Israel does not respond. When it does, its rockets occasionally kill Palestinian civilians.  That’s because Hamas wants Palestinians civilians, especially babies, to be killed by Israelis rockets.  They want Palestinian babies to be killed precisely so that they can display the kind of photographs that were shown around the world: a grieving father holding his dead baby, presumably killed by an Israeli rocket. For years, I have called this Hamas’ “dead baby strategy.”  The recent United Nations finding simply confirms the reality of this cynical strategy.

The errant rocket that killed Omar Misharawi was fired by Hamas terrorists from a densely populated civilian area adjacent to the home of the BBC photographer Jihad Misharawi.  Hamas selects such locations for firing its rockets precisely so that Israel will respond by firing into civilian areas and killing Palestinian civilians. They regard such dead civilians as “shahids”, or martyrs for the cause.  It is better for Hamas’ publicity campaign if the rocket that kills the Palestinian baby was fired by the Israeli Defense Forces, but even if the rocket was fired by Hamas terrorists, Hamas will claim that the lethal rocket was fired by Israel.  Often the evidence is inconclusive, though the forensic evidence in this case points clearly to a Hamas rocket.

The important point is that it doesn’t really matter who actually fired the rocket that killed the baby.  The baby was killed by Hamas as part of a calculated strategy designed to point the emotional finger of moral blame at the IDF for doing what every democracy would do:  namely, defend its civilians from rocket attacks by targeting those who are firing the rockets, even if they are firing them from civilian areas.  As US President Barack Obama said when he visited Sderot shortly before going into office:

Babies like Omar Misharawi will continue to die in Gaza and in Israel so long as the world media continues to serve as facilitators of Hamas’ dead baby strategy.  Every time a picture of a dead Palestinian baby being held by his grieving parents appears on television or on the front pages of newspapers around the world, Hamas wins.  And when Hamas wins, they continue with their deadly strategy.  The media, therefore, is complicit in the death of Omar Misharawi as it is in the deaths of other civilians who are victims of Hamas’ dead baby strategy.  Pictures of dead babies in the arms of their grieving fathers are irresistible to the media.  That won’t change.  What should change is the caption.  Every time a dead Palestinian baby is shown, the caption should explain the strategy that led to his or her death:  namely that Hamas deliberately fires its rockets from areas in which babies live and into which Israel must fire if it is to stop its own babies from being killed.

It may sound heartless to claim that Hamas wants its own babies to be killed as part of its strategy of demonizing Israel.  But there is no escaping the reality and truth of this phenomenon.  Indeed it has been admitted by Hamas leaders such as Fathi Hammad:

Of course these Hamas leaders don’t desire their own death.  They build shelters for themselves and for the terrorists who fire the rockets at Israeli civilians.  As soon as these rockets are fired from crowded civilian areas, the terrorist scurry into below-ground shelters, leaving babies, women and other civilians in the path of Israeli rockets that target the rocket launchers.  This isn’t martyrdom by the leaders and terrorists.  It is cowardice.  That too is part of the dead baby strategy: make martyrs of babies, while the leaders and terrorists hide in shelters.  In Israel, it is precisely the opposite; shelters are for civilians; soldiers put themselves in harm’s way.  That’s why illustration above so aptly sums it all up.

US drone escapes attack over Hormuz. Syria threatens to bomb Lebanon. Russian marines dock in Beirut.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 14, 2013, 10:52 PM (GMT+02:00)

Russian warships dock in Beirut

 

Middle East tensions are spiraling sharply six days before US President Barack Obama lands in the Middle East. Thursday night, March 14, an Iranian fighter jet tried to bring down a US Predator drone flying over Oman, i.e. the Straits of Hormuz – only to be warned off by flares from its US fighter escort.

This was not the first time a US drone was threatened by Iranian aircraft over the Persian Gulf, but in reporting the incident, the Pentagon revealed that the drones flying in the neighborhood of Iranian shores are now escorted by US jet fighters.
A couple of hours earlier that evening, debkafile received an exclusive report from its military sources that the Syrian high command had just issued an ultimatum, on the orders of Bashar Assad, demanding that the Lebanese government put an immediate stop to the passage of armed Sunni fighters from Lebanon into Syria, else the Syrian Air Force would strike the Lebanese intruders’ convoys and also their home bases.  Damascus claimed they were coming to fight the government alongside the al Qaeda-linked Jabrat al-Nusra.

Their incursion threatened to engender a major spillover of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon.
The danger of hostilities inching close to the Syrian port of Tartus, where Moscow maintains a naval base, decided the Russian Navy to instruct three warships carrying 700 marines to Tartus to change course and put in at Beirut instead.

Three Reasons Obama is Traveling to Israel – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.

President Obama heads next week to Israel, with a side trip to the West Bank and an overnight visit to Jordan. He will not be going to oversee peace negotiations, nor will he be bringing a specific peace plan with him. Instead, he’s going to reintroduce himself to the region. Specifically, he’s going to speak directly to the Israeli people, over the head, if necessary, of the prime minister, with whom he generally sees not eye-to-eye.

(Which is not to say their relationship is all contention: On the matter of Iran, Obama was actually quite appreciative last September when Netanyahu suggested, at the United Nations, that he would cease contemplating a preventive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities until well after the American election. In a phone call shortly after that speech, Obama thanked Netanyahu for giving him “time and space” on the nuclear issue. On the matter of settlements, and the continued occupation of much of the West Bank, Obama has repeatedly expressed his frustration with what he might term — and I would term — Netanyahu’s myopia on the subject).

There are several reasons Obama is going now to Israel:
1) The president is said to have grown tired, during the campaign last year, of hearing the question, “Why haven’t you visited Israel yet?” Of course, many presidents did not visit Israel while president, and some had gone late in their term. Obama is held to a bit of a double-standard on this question — it was a Republican strategy to suggest to Jewish voters, in particular, that he was hostile to the Jewish state — and he has seemed annoyed, at times, when his commitment to Israel is questioned. Late last year, after he won reelection, he suggested, in a White House meeting, that he make Israel an early stop in his 2nd-term foreign travels, in part to quiet this meme.

2) During the first term, Administration thinking held that there was no point in sending the President to meet with Israelis and Palestinians on their home turf unless there was real progress in negotiations. Last year, this thinking shifted: Visiting the region while it was relatively quiet, without carrying a specific political agenda, grew to seem like a smart idea, in particular because many Israelis had grown suspicious of his intentions and would therefore benefit from direct exposure to the man, rather than his caricature. The caricature developed in part  because they were told by the Sheldon Adelsons of the world (and more subtly, by Netanyahu himself) not to trust him. This also happened because the President had created the impression, in his famous Cairo speech to the Muslim world in 2009, that he didn’t fully understand the rationale for Israel’s existence.  In my Bloomberg View column this week, I discuss this speech, the fallout from which illustrates, if nothing else, how complicated it is for a president to navigate the Middle East:

In the speech he gave there, which the White House titled, “A New Beginning,” Obama made a powerful statement in support of the Palestinian cause: “The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable,” he said. “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”

Notably, he didn’t avoid the touchy subject of the U.S. bond with Israel, which he called “unbreakable.” He said this knowing that such a statement would not fill his Muslim audience with joy. “Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust,” Obama said, by way of explaining U.S. support for the Jewish state. “Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant and it is hateful.”

Obama’s statement came at a moment when many Israelis believed he was preparing to dismantle the special relationship between his country and theirs. His aides hoped his words would serve to allay Jewish fears of a new president whose middle name is Hussein.

It didn’t work as planned. Why, you ask? Why would a moving declaration of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust — and a robust denunciation of Holocaust denial — alienate Israelis, and many of their friends in the U.S.? Well, welcome to the Middle East, where every tribe and creed has its own code, and mastery of these codes doesn’t come easy….

How did Obama leave this impression? At home, this view was cultivated partly by cynical Republicans who have been eager to turn support for Israel into a partisan issue.

With Israelis, it’s more complicated. The Cairo speech had a chilling effect because, to Israelis, the Holocaust alone doesn’t justify the existence of their state. “The Holocaust doesn’t explain why we’re here,” said Yossi Klein Halevii, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “The Holocaust explains why we fight as fiercely as we do to stay here, but it doesn’t explain our rootedness.”

In Cairo, Halevi said, Obama failed to acknowledge “Jewish indigenousness in the region,” the idea that history — the uninterrupted Jewish presence in the lands of ancient Israel for more than 3,000 years — justifies the modern Jewish claim to a state there. “In Cairo, Obama was asking the Arab world to feel sorry for the Jews,” he said, “and by doing so, he inadvertently played into the hands of those whose response is, ‘Well, if there was a Holocaust, let the Germans pay for it, not the Arabs.’ That’s a reasonable response if you don’t believe that Jews are from here.”

The absence of Zionist thought in the speech was unhelpful, though not thematically inexplicable (after all, it was a speech meant to woo Muslims, not Jews). But Obama is clearly acquainted with the ideas that energized Jewish nationalism. During his first campaign for president, in 2008, I spoke to him at length about the Middle East, and he told me of learning Israel’s story early in life, from a Jewish camp counselor who explained to him the “idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home.” Obama went on, “There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted.”

3) One other reason he’s going, of course, is Iran. There’s nothing like a face-to-face with Netanyahu to keep the prime minister onboard with Administration strategy. President Obama will reiterate to the prime minister something the prime minister doesn’t quite believe: That the U.S. has Israel’s back, as Obama has said repeatedly. Netanyahu will press the president specifics: At what point, he will ask, does Obama give up and move to consider a military solution to the Iranian nuclear program. Obama will argue that there is still plenty of time. They will not leave their meeting agreeing on all points, of course, but there’s a greater chance Netanyahu will remain patient if Obama makes the case for patience in person, and on Netanyahu’s turf. Netanyahu frets that Obama doesn’t understand Israel’s true security situation, and that he doesn’t have a feel for Jewish history (we saw this worry evince itself most dramatically in Netanyahu’s stunning, and stunningly inappropriate, Oval Office lecture).

The conventional wisdom about this trip is that it won’t accomplish much. But the upside potential for this trip is great: Israelis will be seeing someone who is actually a friend, and this will allow the friend, over time, to speak bluntly with Israelis about the direction of their country; and Netanyahu will get invaluable face-time with the only person who could truly, and semi-permanently, confront what the prime minister believes to be the most serious threat Israel faces.

I’ll have more later on the Palestinian and Jordanian portions of the trip. But suffice it to say that another reason for this trip is that the President really wants to see Petra. And who can blame him?

Obama: Iran ‘year or so’ away from nuclear bomb | JPost | Israel News.

‘Iran believes chance of attack on nuke facilities is low’ | JPost | Israel News.

Report: Iran test-fires short-range missiles – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Nazeat-10, Fajr-5 missiles fired during military exercise in central Iran, Fars news agency reports

Associated Press

The Iranian military has test-fired several short-range missiles, including the type Palestinian terror group Hamas used to attack Tel Aviv last November, the semi-official Fars news agency said.

According to Thursday’s report, the missiles were tested during an army exercise in central Iran. It said the missiles fired were Nazeat-10 and Fajr-5.

During weeks of fighting in November, Gaza’s Hamas rulers fired Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets that came close to Israel‘s heartland, including the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time.

Later, Iran admitted supplying Hamas with the technology to produce Fajr-5. The missile has a range of 75 kilometers, or 45 miles. The range of the Nazeat-10 missiles is about 100 kilometers, or 62 miles.

Iran regularly holds maneuver to test and promote its military power.

Peacekeepers on Golan to end patrols, leave posts | The Times of Israel.

UN forces reassessing mission in wake of kidnappings and pullout of several countries as Syrian civil war seeps into DMZ

UN peacekeepers monitor the Syrian side of the border from an Israeli army post at Mount Bental near Kibbutz Merom Golan in the Golan Heights in July 2012. (Photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)

The UN peacekeeping force on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights said late Wednesday it would drastically cut back activity, fearing more kidnappings like one last week that saw 21 Filipino blue hats grabbed by rebels.

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, which has guarded the demilitarized buffer zone between Israel and Syria since 1974, will stop patrols and shut down a number of observation posts, a senior UN diplomat told Agence France-Presse.

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It was reported last week that the peacekeepers have already stopped all night patrols.

A number of countries have begun reassessing sending unarmed peacekeepers to the region, which has seen fighting as part of Syria’s ongoing civil war. Last week, 21 peacekeepers from the force were kidnapped by Syrian rebels, who held them for four days.

The soldiers’ ordeal highlighted the risks run by the peacekeepers, who carry only sidearms, by serving in the war-torn area.

Last month, UNDOF reported a member of its team missing from the area, identified by The Times of Israel as Canadian Carl Campeau. The UN and Canadian Embassy have not confirmed the missing man’s identity.

On Wednesday, Croatia’s parliament approved the withdrawal of some 100 peacekeeping troops from the Golan Heights amid fears they could be targeted by Syrian government troops fighting the rebels.

Croatian Defense Minister Ante Kotromanovic said the pullout would start “very soon” but refused to specify the date for security reasons.

The withdrawal, which had been proposed by the country’s president, follows reports claiming that Syrian rebels trying to topple Bashar Assad have been armed with Croatian weapons — including machine guns, rifles and anti-tank grenades — in an operation approved by the United States and sponsored by some Arab countries.

Croatian officials have denied the reports and said they have jeopardized the safety of Croatian soldiers serving in UNDOF.

Japan and Canada have also pulled their troops from the area, citing fears troops could wind up in the midst of the fighting.

“There is a risk they will all leave. And if they all leave then the mission is in definite crisis,” a senior UN diplomat told AFP.

The peacekeeping force was put in place as a bulwark against acts of aggressions between Israel and Syria following the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

“Symbolically, it is very important that UNDOF is there,” the diplomat told AFP. “Because the last thing we want is for the Syrian crisis to spill over into Israel in a dramatic way and start flare-ups and new conflict in the Golan Heights,

The IDF has urged the remaining three UNDOF member-nations — Austria, India and the Philippines — not to abandon the 40-year mission, Channel 2 reported Friday night. New Delhi has said it has no plans to pull out, but Manila is reportedly reassessing its mission.

Earlier in the week Austrian foreign minister Michael Spindelegger rapped both Syria and Israel and hinted at the withdrawal of the country’s troops from the international peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights if the two nations are unable to better secure the border area.

In a letter to the United Nations, the minister explicitly mentions Israel, demanding the UN address Jerusalem with “very clear words” and threaten it with “consequences.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to make new recommendations regarding UNDOF to the security council next week.

“The mission is having to assess the way it works so that the troops are safe and the most critical roles are carried out,” UN spokesperson Keiren Dwyer told the news agency.

Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel staff and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Italy FM: Nuclear Iran will change rules of Mideast game – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Terzi tells Herzliya Conference a nuclear Iran would ‘be free to raise and lower the volume of regional tension’

Ynetnews

“With a nuclear Iran, the rules of the Middle Eastern game would not only change overnight; they would change irreversibly,” visiting Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata said Wednesday.

Speaking at the 2013 Herzliya Conference, Italy’s top diplomat said that even if Iran acted rationally with nuclear weapons they would pose an unacceptable global threat.

“Under its own nuclear umbrella, Tehran would be free to raise and lower the volume of regional tension as best suits its national interest,” he said.

“In the end, however ‘regional’ the trigger, a nuclear crisis will always have a global impact. Should Tehran acquire nuclear capabilities, others would follow and the Middle East – the very doorstep of Europe – would enter this new regional nuclear race,” Terzi warned.

Iran’s Ahmadinejad at nuclear plant (Photo: AP)

Addressing the ongoing bloodshed in Syria, the Italian FM told the conference: “We can no longer afford delays in our action. No example is better than Syria to remind us that the (Bashar) Assad regime and its allies do not necessarily act under similar constraints.

“We are witnessing the emergence of fast-rising economic and military powers, in different regions, which pursue their interest with the power of a state and the flexibility of a non-state actor. These are decades of asymmetric diplomacy,” he said.

Terzi concluded by pointing to Israel as a regional stabilizer stating that “Israel not only lies at their geographical center. It is also at their frontline. As the dust settles, and room grows for new ideas, Israel will be the first and foremost engine of a new path towards a more secure and peaceful Middle East.”

Iran steps up weapons lifeline to Syria’s Assad: diplomats – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Iran has significantly stepped up military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in recent months. (Reuters)

Iran has significantly stepped up military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in recent months, solidifying its position alongside Russia asthe government’s lifeline in an increasingly sectarian civilwar, Western diplomats said.

Iranian weapons continue to pour into Syria from Iraq butalso increasingly along other routes, including via Turkey and Lebanon, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo on Iran, Western officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Iraqi and Turkish officials denied the allegations.

Iran’s acceleration of support for Assad suggests the Syrian war is entering a new phase in which Iran may be trying to end the battlefield stale mate by redoubling its commitment to Assadand offering Syria’s increasingly isolated government a crucial lifeline, the envoys said.

It also highlights the growing sectarian nature of the conflict, diplomats say, with Iranian arms flowing to theShi’ite militant group Hezbollah. That group is increasingly active on the ground in Syria in support of Assad’s forces, envoys say.

The Syrian conflict started out two years ago as apro-democracy movement. Some 70,000 people have been killed and more than 1 million refugees have fled the violence.

A Western intelligence report seen by Reuters in September said Iran was using civilian aircraft to fly military personnel and large quantities of weapons across Iraqi airspace to aid Assad. Iraq denied that report but later made apoint of inspecting an Iran-bound flight that it said had noarms on board.

Much of the weaponry going to Syria now, diplomats say,continues to be shipped to Iran through Iraqi airspace and overland through Iraq, despite Baghdad’s repeated promises to put a stop to Iranian arms supplies to Assad in violation of a U.N. arms embargo on Tehran over its nuclear program.

“The Iranians really are supporting massively the regime,” a senior Western diplomat said this week. “They have been increasing their support for the last three, four months through Iraq’s airspace and now trucks. And the Iraqis really are looking the other way.”

“They (Iran) are playing now a crucial role,” the senior diplomat said, adding that Hezbollah was “hardly hiding the support it’s giving to the (Syrian) regime.”

He added that the Syrian civil war was becoming “more and more sectarian,” with Sunnis – an increasing number of whom come from Iraq – battling Shi’ites and members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Ali al-Moussawi, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s media adviser, strongly denied the allegations, saying on Wednesday: “No, such a thing never happened. Weapons did not and will not be transferred from Iran to Syria through Iraq, whether by landor by air.”

Russia, diplomats said, also remained a key arms supplier for Assad. Unlike Iran, neither Syria nor Russia is subject to a U.N. ban on arms trade and are therefore not in violation of any U.N. rules when conducting weapons commerce. But accepting Iranian arms would be a violation of the U.N. Iran sanctions.

Assad’s ally Russia criticizes U.S., European and Gulf Arab governments for their aid to Syrian rebels seeking to topple Assad.

Russia has said repeatedly that its military support for Syria includes anti-missile air defense systems but no attack weapons such as helicopters.

Moscow says it is not wedded to Assad but that the rebels and government should talk and Assad’s departure should not be a condition for a deal as the opposition and its supportersinsist. Along with China, it has used its Security Council vetoto block punitive U.N. measures against Syria’s government.

Arms and supplies via Turkey and Lebanon?

Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s U.N. mission, responded to a request for a comment by saying, “We believe Syria does not need any military help from Iran.”

“Unfortunately the situation in Syria and the whole Middle East region is becoming more and more delicate and risky because of foreign interference and funneling of arms to the extremist groups,” he said, repeating that Tehran wanted to end the conflict through dialogue between the government and opposition.

Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The diplomats cited by Reuters made clear that the principal delivery route for arms to Syria still went through Iraq, despite the existence of alternative supply channels such asTurkish airspace. They also said that Iran Air and Mahan Airwere well-known violators of the Iranian arms embargo.

Iran Air and Mahan Air were both mentioned in the intelligence report on Iranian arms shipments to Syria seen by Reuters in September. The U.S. Treasury Department has blacklisted Iran Air, Mahan Air and Yas Air for supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

One Western diplomat cited intelligence reports from his country that a new avenue for sending arms to Syria went on occasion through Turkish airspace to Beirut and from there toSyria by truck. There was no suggestion, he said, that Turkish officials were aware of the illicit arms shipments.

Once in Syria, he said, the arms were distributed to government forces and allied militia, including Hezbollah.

“The equipment being transferred by both companies (Iran and Mahan Air) … ranges from communications equipment to lightarms and advanced strategic weapons, some of which are beingused devastatingly by Hezbollah and the Syrian regime against the Syrian people,” said the Western intelligence report.

“The more sophisticated gear includes parts for various hardware such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), shore-to-seamissiles and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles (SSMs),” the report said. “Other weapons are being used by Syrian security forces, pro-Assad shabbiha militiamen, and Lebanese Hezbollah.”

There are about 5 tons of arms per flight, which areoccurring on a near weekly basis, hidden in the bottom of theplanes’ fuselages, the report said, adding that arms cargo wasremoved separately after civilian cargo was unloaded.

Other Western officials confirmed the findings in thereport.

A Turkish diplomatic source denied the allegation. “This isa very sensitive matter for Turkey, and we are very certain that this is baseless,” the source told Reuters.

Turkey has intercepted Iranian arms shipments in the past and reported them to the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions committee. Ankara’s aggressive campaign to stamp out Iranian arms smuggling via its airspace, Western diplomats say, was whatled Iran to begin using Iraqi airspace instead.

Lebanon’s U.N. ambassador, Nawaf Salam, said he was not in a position to comment. An official at Beirut’s airport who requested anonymity rejected the allegations of clandestine Iranian shipments going to Syria via Beirut airport.

Lebanon has had a complicated relationship with neighboring Syria. Its population is deeply divided over the conflict. U.N.chief Ban Ki-moon last week urged Lebanon, which is hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, to remain neutral.

Al Qaeda’s Nusra fights to seize Syrian Golan in time for Obama visit.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 13, 2013, 10:16 PM (GMT+02:00)

One of Syrian military tunnels uncovered on Golan