WarSclerotic

Pro-Iranian Jihad Islami aimed four rockets at Israel from S. Lebanon. Two caused damage.

Grad rocket hits northern Israel

The four rockets striking  northern Israel from South Lebanon Thursday, Aug. 22, turned out to have been Grad 120mm rockets launched by the Jihad Islami from the Palestinian Burj Al-Shamali refugee camp near Tyre. This emerged after a stream of muddled and conflicting communiqués came from the IDF spokesman.

The Jihad Islami takes its orders from Tehran and the Lebanese Hizballah. One of the rockets was intercepted by Iron Dome. None caused casualties, except for three shock victims, but they did cause damage to buildings and vehicles in Kibbutz Gesher Haziv and another unidentified location near the coastal town of Acre. The fourth rocket landed on vacant ground.
Witnesses in Nahariya, Acre, Shlomi and the affected sites, all reported that the rocket explosions were heard before the siren alerts were sounded. They asked why Iron Dome had intercepted only one rocket – not the other three.
The general impression conveyed by this incident to debkafile’s military experts is that the rocket attack caught IDF unawares, notwithstanding the constant harping on the dangers to Israel’s borders emanating from the upheavals in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Even after endless military exercises and mock alerts, Iran, Hizballah and its Palestinian pawn were able to land a surprise attack on northern Israel.
They appear to have timed it for the UN Security Council meeting scheduled for Thursday night to approve the extension of the UNIFIL mandate for Lebanon. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has labeled Syria “Iran’s test site.” He forgot to mention Lebanon.

Iran and Hizballah want UNIFIL peacekeepers out of Lebanon because their act as a buffer between their forces and the IDF and an obstacle to their latest plans for igniting the Lebanese-Israeli border.

debkafile reported immediately after the attack:

Residents of northern Israel – from the coastal towns in the West to Upper Galilee – have been ordered to go into shelters after sirens alerted the region to four rockets fired from South Lebanon. After returning fire, the IDF closed Israeli air space over Galilee. Three rockets landed around Nahariya, Acre and Shlomi and further east near Kiryat Shemona. A fourth was intercepted by an Iron Dome battery. The rockets were launched in two volleys from the Tyre and Kleia regions of South Lebanon, according to Lebanese sources. No injuries are reported. Police are scouring the area for the fallen ordnance.

IAF carries out airstrike on target near Beirut | JPost | Israel News.

Assad butchers his people with nerve gas while Obama weasels and the MSM makes excuses for him. – YouTube.

From “Morning Joe” 8/22/13

It makes me ashamed to be an American.  SICKENING !

Newly Released Nixon Tapes Reveal More Anti-Semitism, Threat of ‘Worst Thing That Happened to Jews in American History’ | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.

( Does anybody think Obama is any better than Nixon when it comes to “the Jews?” – JW )

Nixon said of his senior Jewish advisers including Henry Kissinger, pictured above right, that they shared a common Jewish inferiority complex and worked hard to compensate.

New tape recordings released Wednesday by the Nixon Presidential Library revealed more deeply rooted anti-Semitism from the disgraced president, the UK Daily Mail and The Atlantic, reported, after reviewing the recordings.

The anti-Semitic remarks made in conversations and phone calls from 1973 were captured on a secret recording system that President Richard M. Nixon used, which, ultimately, provided evidence in the Watergate scandal, in which his operatives broke into a political competitor’s office in the Watergate Hotel to spy during a campaign.

The final installment of those tapes — 340 hours — was made public by the National Archives and Records Administration, along with more than 140,000 pages of text documents. Seven hundred hours remain sealed for national security reasons, The Daily Mail said.

The Atlantic highlighted a phone call with Jewish Assistant for National Security Affairs and head of the National Security Council at the time, Henry Kissinger, made on April 19, 1973, about an upcoming U.S.-Soviet summit, to which Nixon thought Jewish groups might object.

On the tapes, Nixon said, “Let me say, Henry, it’s gonna be the worst thing that happened to Jews in American history. If they torpedo this summit — and it might go down for other reasons — I’m gonna put the blame on them, and I’m going to do it publicly at 9 o’clock at night before 80 million people.” (“I agree completely,” Kissinger responded. “They brought it on themselves.”) Nixon continued: “I won’t mind one goddamn but to have a little anti-Semitism if it’s on that issue. They put the Jewish interest above America’s interest and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.”

In another instance, Nixon and press secretary Ronald Ziegler were talking about a comment made by Nixon aide and lawyer Leonard Garment, and Nixon yelled, ”Goddamn his Jewish soul!”

In a June 13, 1973 conversation with secretary Rose Mary Woods, Nixon discussed the entertainment at an upcoming event, listing entertainers Johnny Mann and Debbie Reynolds, then Nixon asks about Danny Kaye, “and not because of his ideology.” Woods replies, “Well they were going to try to get him but…” Nixon interrupts, asking “He’s Jewish?” Woods ignores him, continuing, “I don’t know what happened whether—” Nixon interjects again: “He’s Jewish.” Woods explains, “They had to check him out with the Russians.”

In an April 18, 1973 phone call with Spiro Agnew, Nixon claimed that Jews were holding American foreign policy “hostage to Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.”

“Some of the Jews picket can raise hell, but the American people are not going to let them destroy our foreign policy — never!” he added.

In a June 14, 1973 Oval Office meeting with Anne Armstrong, counselor to the president, he gave some guidance on his preference for appointees: “No Jews. We are adamant when I say no Jews. … But I mean don’t say anything don’t let anybody know we didn’t [audio unclear] Jewish. But Mexicans are important. Italians, Eastern Europeans. That sort of thing.”

Faced with impeachment and a possible criminal indictment, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974 — a year after the tapes end — and returned to his native California, where he was pardoned a month later by his successor, President Gerald Ford.

Rocket narrowly misses dozens of Holocaust survivors | The Times of Israel.

Elderly people in facility in Acre area heard warning sirens but could not reach bomb shelters in time; missile fell nearby, damaged several homes

Damage from a rocket that fell near Nahariya, Thursday, August 22, 2013 (photo credit: Channel 2)

Dozens of elderly Holocaust survivors, in a facility in the Acre area, came very close to being hit by one of the four Katyusha rockets fired into Israel from southern Lebanon on Thursday afternoon.

The survivors, who live in a facility comprising several buildings in the area, heard sirens wailing ahead of the rocket attack, but were unable to reach bomb shelters before the rocket struck.

The rocket, one of two that landed in residential areas, fell a short distance from their facility, causing damage to “four or five homes” and two cars in the immediate area, Channel 2 News reported on Thursday night.

Fragments of a second rocket landed in Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, also causing damage to property.

Personnel from UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, came to the kibbutz on Thursday evening to document the rocket’s impact.

UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army were reported to have opened an investigation into the rocket attack. Four rocket launchers were said to have been found in or near a Palestinian refugee camp in the Tyre area of southern Lebanon, from where they were fired south at the Nahariya and Acre areas in northern Israel.

One rocket, apparently heading for a residential area, was intercepted by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery — the first time Iron Dome has been successfully employed to down incoming missiles in the north. The battery was deployed in the area three weeks ago, amid concerns over spillover from the Syrian civil war to Lebanon, and thence to Israel.

A moment of truth in Damascus and Washington | David Rohde – Reuters.

The harrowing images emerging from Syria — from this hysterical young girl to these rows of corpses — should be a turning point in a conflict that has killed 100,000 people. The deaths, if proven, demonstrate either the depravity of Bashar al-Assad — or the rebels fighting him.

But the Obama administration has spent so much time distancing itself and Americans from acting in Syria that a serious U.S. reaction is politically impossible in Washington. And instead of learning its lesson — and respecting Syria’s dead — the White House is repeating its destructive pattern of issuing empty threats.

Hours after the images appeared, National Security Adviser Susan Rice demanded on Twitter that the Syrian government “allow the UN access to the attack site to investigate” and vowed that “those responsible will be held accountable.”

Deputy White House Spokesman Josh Earnest called the use of chemical weapons, if proven, “completely unacceptable” and also said those responsible “will be held accountable.”

Yet it was unclear how, exactly, the administration will hold anyone accountable in Syria. For the last two years, American military action has been off the table. And the White House’s decision in June to give light weapons to the Syrian rebels is likely to have little immediate impact.

In a previously planned letter to Congress, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, argued on Wednesday that Syria’s opposition remains too divided to run the country.

“Syria today is not about choosing between two sides,” Dempsey wrote, “but rather about choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. Today, they are not.”

Dempsey said American air strikes could destroy the Syrian air force and shift the balance of power in the country but it  “cannot resolve the underlying and historic ethnic, religious and tribal issues that are fueling this conflict.” The chairman, in essence, was repeating the argument the White House has made for inaction over the last two years.

If a massive chemical attack is proven, however, this should be a watershed moment. Clearly, there are no easy solutions to ending the conflict in Syria and American ground troops should not be deployed. But if the Syrian government is found to be responsible, the administration and its European allies should consider carrying out air strikes that would punish Assad’s military. And if the Syrian opposition carried out an attack on its own people, all Western support to the rebels should end.

The conflict is growing worse, not better. It is inflaming sectarian tensions across the region and destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq. Earlier this month, CIA officials said that Syria’s mix of al Qaeda-aligned militants and chemical weapons is the single largest security threat the United States faces.

Americans understandably want to avert their eyes from Syria and the Middle East, with 1,000 dead in Egypt and car bombs routinely killing dozens in Iraq. But a mass chemical attack is chillingly different.

International law and human decency bars the use of chemical weapons. If 500 to 1,300 people died as rebels allege, the killings in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta would be the worst chemical attack in thirty years. If there was ever an incident that crossed President Barack Obama’s  chemical weapons “red line,” this it.

On Thursday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that the West would have to respond militarily if evidence confirms a government attack.

“There would have to be reaction with force in Syria from the international community,” Fabius said, but he cautioned, “there is no question of sending troops on the ground.”

Enormous questions surround what happened. Israeli officials said on the Thursday that their intelligence assessment was that a chemical attack had occurred but they did not know the perpetrators.

The timing is also odd. The deaths occurred three days after the arrival of a 20-member United Nations chemical weapons inspection team that the Syrian government had blocked for months. And it unfolded a mere fifteen minute drive from where the U.N. team was staying. As Patrick Cockburn rightly noted in the Independent, both sides are also fighting a propaganda war.

Depending on who carried it out, the attack signifies vastly different things. Assad could be boldly defying a West that he is convinced will not respond. Rebels could have carried out the attack in a scurrilous attempt to spark an intervention.  And the images, of course, could be fake.

In what has now become a predictable pattern, Syrian officials immediately denied any role in the deaths and Russian officials called the attack a “pre-planned provocation” by the rebels.

“All this looks like an attempt at all costs to create a pretext for demanding that the U.N. Security Council side with opponents of the regime,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Wednesday evening, American and European officials tried to get the U.N. Security Council to enact a resolution calling for an immediate investigation by the U.N. team. As Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch reported, Russian and Chinese leaders gutted it behind closed doors.

“The 15-nation council issued a milder statement that made no reference to today’s alleged chemical weapons attack,” Lynch wrote Wednesday night. “Instead, the council merely expressed ‘a strong concern’ about ‘the allegations [of chemical weapons use] and the general sense there must be clarity on what happened.’”

With each passing hour, the Obama administration’s vows of accountability appeared more and more meaningless. In the days ahead, the White House will have limited control of whether or not U.N. inspectors gain access to the site of the attacks. But it will have total control of its messaging.

If Obama does not plan to act militarily, his aides should stop vowing to hold the guilty accountable. If we plan to do nothing, let’s stop making false promises. That is more honest to Americans, Syrians and Damascus’ newest dead.

BBC News – Obama’s thick red line on Syria.

( As usual the US MSM is following Obama’s lead from behind.  Not ONE of the major news organizations has the Syrian use of chemical weapons as even a third story. I’m so ashamed of my birth country, I feel like cryiig.  – JW )

A year ago President Barack Obama gave a speech saying that if the Assad regime used chemical weapons, that would cross a red line and change his calculations.

Has that red line now been crossed?

The simple answer is that we don’t yet know.

While a White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, has said the US is “appalled” by “horrifying” reports from Syria, it doesn’t seem Mr Obama is inclined to pronounce.

Mr Earnest called on the Assad government to cooperate with the UN inspectors in full.

But asked if reporters would hear from the president while he is on a bus tour about lowering the cost of higher education, he said, “as we’re weighing these domestic policy decisions, and as we’re weighing these foreign policy decisions, the president puts the interest of the United States of America first.

“And I think the fact that we are doing this bus tour is an indication that the president has his priorities straight”

I think that means no, the president does not want to talk about Syria.

We’ve lost another opportunity to find out more about the administration’s approach.

The president’s main military adviser has cancelled a planned news conference. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey was due to answer questions at the foreign press centre.

Perhaps he’s had to call it off because he is busy planning what happens next in Syria.

Perhaps not.

‘Many sides’

He seemed pretty clear in a recent letter to a congressman that military action was undesirable.

“Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides,” Gen Dempsey said.

“It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favour. Today, they are not.”

But President Obama clearly has a problem, and will be accused of inaction and dithering.

Senator John McCain says Mr Obama blurred his own red lines earlier in the summer by not responding militarily to reports of attacks and so encouraged this latest incident.

Sen McCain has just issued another statement:

“Our friends and enemies alike, both in the Middle East and across the world, are questioning whether America has the will and the capacity to do what it says.

“This dangerous development impacts the national security interests of the United States and our closest allies, and if we continue to sit by passively while Assad continues to use chemical weapons against his own people, we only provide encouragement to other brutal governments in their use of harsh measures against their own people.

“It is time for the United States to come to the assistance of the Syrian people.”

No American outrage

Our own Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen is forthright that this is a critical moment and Iran will be watching careful to see if Mr Obama sticks to his threat of military action.

But my strong feeling is that Mr Obama will not rush to action.

His whole philosophy warns him against intervention in the Middle East. Domestic politics suggest Americans don’t want to get involved.

Getting embroiled would rather undermine his boast to be the president who brought the troops home.

Then there is Gen Dempsey’s point – whom would the West support if it did take action, and would that further its overall interests?

There may be a tipping point when moral outrage grows too strong.

I would again caution that while that may be the mood in the UK and France, it is not here. The fears on Capitol Hill are not reflecting any sense of fury in America.

I am certain there are plans for the discreet use of special forces to secure chemical weapons – but it is not clear what the trigger would be.

In either case, Mr Obama is likely to insist on going the full UN route to gather the maximum possible support for any action – and that means waiting for the inspector’s report on earlier incidents at the very least.

I could be very wrong. The bombers could be in the air by this afternoon.

But at the moment all Mr Obama plans for today is a talk about the cost of college education and “a better deal for the middle classes”.

I suspect his red line is very thick indeed.

PM: Iran watching carefully how world responds to Syrian chemical weapons atrocities | JPost | Israel News.

( “Iran is using Syria as a testing ground and carefully watching how the world responds to Damascus’ use of chemical weapons against its own people.”  – JW )

Syria Chemical Attack Bodes Ill for Israel – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Rabbi Ronsky (left), during his time as IDF Chief Rabbi

Flash 90

Rabbi Avihai Ronsky, former IDF Chief Rabbi and current head of the Itamar Yeshiva (religious academy), said Thursday that Israelis needed to be especially concerned about the events in Syria – because they portend a possible future scenario for Israelis.

On his Facebook page, Rabbi Ronsky wrote that the hundreds killed by the Syrian army in a chemical weapons attack Wednesday sent a grim message to Israelis. Hundreds die, he said, “and the world remains silent. Hundreds of people – supposedly born in the image of G-d – die before us from chemical poisoning, and the world remains silent.”

One day soon, he said, those chemical weapons could be aimed at Israel, too. “And the world will remain silent – very silent – when those weapons are aimed at us,” he wrote.

Rabbi Ronsky quoted Rabbi Yosef Soloveitchik, who wrote that “we cannot rely on the sense of justice of the liberal world. They live abroad, far away from us,” Rabbi Rontzky wrote.

“They will not lose even one night’s sleep if they witnessed such things happening to us. They will act exactly as they did when Jews were slaughtered in Europe.”

The only solution, he said, was to “prepare ourselves, our families, our communities, and our nation for an ongoing struggle against our enemies, without expecting any help from the international community. They will ‘investigate’ the tragedy, but inside they will be happy over what befalls us.”

Preparations, he said, need to be taken militarily, of course, but also on a personal basis.

“We must understand the situation and accept it, dealing with it without the visual bribery of mirages of ‘peace talks’ to distract us.” Such talks, he said, “make our leaders ‘sleepy,’ blinding them to what is really happening.”

And although Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seems to be attacking his opponents, said Rabbi Ronsky, the use of chemical weapons “may just be a ‘war exercise’ that Assad is undertaking” to see how well the weapons work, in preparation for their use against Israel. “That’s something for us to think about,” he added.

US: Syria chemical attack ‘clearly by the government’ | The Times of Israel.

( Maintain phasers on “weasel”…! – JW )

American officials warily considering their options as apparent major use of chemical weapons marks dramatic escalation in Syria conflict

This citizen journalism image provided by the Local Committee of Arbeen which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows dead bodies of Syrian citizens in Arbeen, near Damascus, on Wednesday. (photo credit: AP/Local Committee of Arbeen)

The United States believes the apparent chemical weapons attack that killed over 1,000 people in the western suburbs of Damascus on Wednesday was “clearly” carried out by the Assad regime.

“There are strong indications there was a chemical weapons attack—clearly by the government,” a senior Obama administration official told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “But we do need to do our due diligence and get all the facts and determine what steps need to be taken.”

On Wednesday, Syrian anti-Assad activists accused the government of carrying out a toxic gas attack in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, killing at least 1,000 people including children. The claims coincided with a visit by a UN chemical weapons team to three previous sites of alleged attacks. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government rejected the accusations.

The comments by the US official, who was not named by the Journal, appear to mark an escalation from the initial response by US officials.

“The United States is deeply concerned by reports that hundreds of Syrian civilians have been killed in an attack by Syrian government forces, including by the use of chemical weapons,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said shortly after the accusations were made on Wednesday. “We are working urgently to gather additional information,” Earnest said, adding that Washington has asked for UN investigators to be granted access to the area of the fighting. He made no mention of possible consequences if chemical weapons use is confirmed.

Syrian and Russian officials both denied the attack was launched by the Assad government, insisting that rebels were responsible for the deaths and the report.

“These claims are categorically false and completely baseless and are part of the filthy media war waged by some countries against Syria,” a spokesman for Syria’s armed forces said, according to the Journal.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich, “all of this really looks like an attempt, at any cost, to create a reason to produce demands for the UN Security Council to side with the regime’s opponents and undermine the chances of convening the Geneva conference,” a reference to a planned peace conference between the sides in Geneva.

For the United States, the death toll and painful images again put a spotlight on US President Barack Obama’s pledge almost exactly a year ago to respond forcefully to any chemical weapons use by the Assad government. Since then, the administration has said it has confirmed that Syrian forces have committed such attacks, and the US has ordered a lethal aid package of small arms to be sent to some rebel groups, though it’s unclear if any weapons have been delivered.

Yet up to now, Obama has refused all options of direct US military intervention in a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a letter this week to a congressman that the administration is opposed to even limited action in Syria because it believes rebels fighting the Assad government wouldn’t support American interests if they seized power.

Dempsey said the US military is clearly capable of taking out Assad’s air force and shifting the balance of the war toward the armed opposition. But such an approach would plunge the US into the war without offering any strategy for ending what has become a sectarian fight, he said.

Dempsey, in his letter, said, “Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides,” In the Aug. 19 letter to Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat, he said, “It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. Today, they are not.”

Despite Dempsey’s assessment of the forces fighting Assad, Obama recognized the Syrian opposition coalition as “the legitimate representative” of the Syrian people more than eight months ago. And Secretary of State John Kerry has repeatedly backed the moderate vision promoted by Salim Idris, the rebel military chief.

But the more than 50 distinct rebel groups fighting to end the Assad family’s four-decade dynasty range wildly in political beliefs and not all are interested in Western support.

Obama has stated that he doesn’t want to be drawn into another Mideast conflict after a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and polling suggests he has the public’s support on that.