After two tries, US Secretary of State John Kerry finally turned President Barack Obama away from his four-year insistence that Bashar Assad must go, as a precondition for a settlement of the Syrian conflict. Tuesday, night, Dec. 15, the Secretary announced in Moscow: “The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change.”
After Kerry’s first try, Obama still stuck to his guns. He said in Manilla on Nov.19 that he didn’t believe the civil war in Syria “will end while the dictator remains in power.”
Almost a month went by and then, Tuesday night, after a day of dickering with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov culminating in a joint conference with Putin at the Kremlin, Kerry confirmed this evolution in US policy. The focus now, he said, is “not on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad.” Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which “Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria.”
Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which “Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria.”
This statement brought Washington in line with Moscow’s demand for the Syrian president’s future to be determined by his own people.
This statement brought Washington in line with Moscow’s demand for the Syrian president’s future to be determined by his own people.
On this demand, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is even more obdurate than Putin.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources wonder about the measure of freedom the Syrian people can expect while it is clamped firmly in a military vice by Russia, Iran and Hizballah. However, this was of no immediate concern to the big power players. Washington’s surrender to the Russian and Iranian line on Assad’s future was offered in the short-term hope of progress at the major international conference on the Syrian question taking place in New York Friday.
Another major US concession – this one to Tehran – was scarcely noticed.
Earlier Tuesday, the UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation board in Vienna closed its investigation into whether Iran sought atomic weapons, opting to back the international deal with Tehran rather than dwell on Iran’s past activities.
This motif of going forward toward the future rather than dwelling on the past was a repeat of the argument for keeping Assad in power. It provided an alibi for letting Tehran get away with the suspicion of testing a nuclear detonation at its Parchin military complex, without forfeiting sanctions relief, by the simple device of denying access to UN nuclear agency monitors to confirm those suspicions.
In a single day, the Obama administration handed out certificates of legitimacy to the Syrian dictator, who is responsible for more than a quarter of a million deaths, and to Iran’s advances toward a nuclear weapon.
These epic US policy reversals carried three major messages:
1. The Obama administration has lined up behind Putin’s Middle East objectives which hinge on keeping Bashar Assad in power.
2. Washington endorses Russia’s massive military intervention in Syria, although as recently as last month Obama condemned it as doomed to failure.
3. The US now stands behind Iran – not just on the Syrian question – but also on the existence of an Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah alliance, based on a solid land bridge from Iran and the Gulf up to the Mediterranean coast under Russian military and political protection and influence.
Even more surprising were the sentiments heard this week in Jerusalem.
Our military and intelligence sources cite officials urging the government to accept the American policy turnaround. In some military circles, senior voices were heard commenting favorably on Assad’s new prospects of survival in power, or advising Israel to jump aboard the evolving setup rather than obstructing it.
Those same “experts” long claimed that Assad’s days were numbered. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.
Israel was forced to yield on the Iranian nuclear program, but its acceptance of the permanence of Assad and the indefinite presence in Syria of his sponsors, Iran and Hizballah, will come at a high price for Israel in the next conflict.
The Obama administration is waging a quiet effort on Capitol Hill to restore U.S. taxpayer funding for a United Nations organization that has long been accused of having an anti-Israel bias, according to State Department funding requests obtained by theWashington Free Beacon.
The State Department earlier this month petitioned Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), a member of the Senate’s appropriations committee, to consider restoring funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.
Taxpayer funding to the organization was cut in 2011 after UNESCO accepted Palestine as a member state, a move that violated U.S. law barring the funding of any U.N. group that skirts the peace process by prematurely admitting Palestine as a full member nation.
The cutoff in U.S. contributions, which totaled around $80 million annually, brought UNESCO to the brink of financial collapse and sparked further consideration of actions deemed by critics to be anti-Israel in nature.
In its petition to Leahy, the State Department asks for a funding waiver in the 2016 appropriations bill that would allow the U.S. government to restart yearly payments of $76 million to UNESCO. The administration also is seeking authority to give the organization up to $160 million to help erase outstanding debts.
Julia Frifield, assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the State Department, claims in the letter that Secretary of State John Kerry got the okay to restart funding from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel.
“U.S. leadership in UNESCO is critical in combating anti-Israel bias, as was seen at the most recent Executive Board meeting in October where the United States was able to walk back the most odious elements of a resolution related to Temple Mount and secure more ‘no’ votes than is usual on such resolutions,” Frifield wrote, referring to recent efforts by UNESCO to reclassify Jerusalem’s Western Wall as a Muslim holy site.
Denying U.S. funds “is weakening our role at UNESCO” and has “hampered our ability to safeguard both U.S. and Israeli interests,” the letter states.
The effort to start funding the organization has sparked opposition among some lawmakers who say this could be seen as an effort to reward bad behavior.
“The proposed language would undermine over two decades of U.S. policy against funding U.N. organizations that admit the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or other non-state actors as members,” Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) wrote in a recent letter to the Senate and House leaders.
“The proposed language also creates a deeply troubling precedent,” according to the lawmakers. “U.N. organizations, which seek to follow UNESCO’s example and grant membership to non-state actors, may be encouraged to do so believing that the United States would eventually create another exception for them and restore withheld U.S. funding.”
Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R., Fla.) also took the House floor last week to denounce the administration’s effort to restart funding for UNESCO.
Kerry, she claimed, pressured the Israeli government into backing down from its support for the funding cutoff.
“Secretary Kerry has been pressuring the Israeli government to relent in its opposition to U.S. funding for UNESCO,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “It’s a shame Secretary Kerry isn’t using the full weight of his office” to hold the Palestinian government “accountable for their incitement violence and continued efforts to delegitimize and isolate the Jewish state at the U.N., while pursuing unilateral state recognition.”
Ros-Lehtinen insisted that U.S. law mandates that the administration continue withholding funding for UNESCO.
Ahead of his visit to the White House on Wednesday, President Reuven Rivlin published an op-ed in The Washington Post titled, “What Israel should do to lay the groundwork for peace.”
As its title suggests, the piece is a blueprint for measures Rivlin thinks the Jewish state should take to make life better for all the people involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even in the absence of a “current viable solution.”
Referring to this as the “tragedy that envelops us all” — rather than a perpetual war waged by the Palestinian Authority against the Jewish state — Rivlin writes that though “there is no diplomatic process underway, and no indication of imminent negotiations,” Israel is “duty-bound to recognize where and how we can take effective action to improve the prospect that we will be able to live together.”
He fails to point out that every time we Israelis do this, we have to spend our days and nights trying to “take effective action” to stay alive, with all the missiles, bombs, guns, knives, Molotov cocktails and rocks being flung our way.
But this doesn’t matter, of course, because Rivlin’s real aim was to “lay the groundwork for peace” with U.S. President Barack Obama. Indeed, our state’s figurehead was determined to get a pat on the head by the dangerous lame duck in Washington with enough remaining power to continue to wreak havoc on the world through the very same attitude expressed in Rivlin’s article.
And it worked, as praise from the Hebrew press indicates.
Yes, the anti-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu media in Israel stressed that Rivlin was greeted with more warmth from Obama than Netanyahu ever received. The two presidents even lit Hanukkah candles together.
Well, that particular bonding moment gave Rivlin the perfect opportunity to engage in cringeworthy behavior. He actually likened Obama to the “shamash” in the menorah, the “leader with which you light the other candles. You have been lighting the candles for seven years to show your people and the world the right way — we’re sure that the eighth candle you will light next year will show the world how to walk in light.”
If Rivlin was hinting at the light from Islamist rocket-launches and nuclear fission, he might have been on to something. But, of course, he was not. Their nauseating display was designed to reiterate that Muslims are peace-loving victims of a few rotten apples and to perpetuate the myth that financial strain is behind terrorism.
Rivlin actually says this in his piece: “It is worth understanding that the Israeli right has long ignored the eastern part of [Jerusalem] for reasons of internal political differences, while the left has equally neglected investing in the need for infrastructure to serve the 300,000 Palestinians of the city as part of an ideology of political separation from the Palestinians. … Does anyone think that dealing with the sewage, roads, schools and medical centers of eastern Jerusalem can or should wait until the end of the conflict? Is there anyone who thinks the consequences of these economic disparities in the city will stop at genuine or fictitious political borders?”
Obama couldn’t have agreed more.
The official White House “readout” about Rivlin’s visit said, “The leaders discussed their mutual concern about the ongoing violence in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israel, and the importance of Israeli and Palestinian leaders taking steps to reduce violence and restore calm through both action and rhetoric.”
It is bad enough that the president of the United States holds Israel responsible for the daily attempted slaughter of — and genocidal pronouncements against — Jews by Palestinian perpetrators. But for the Israeli president to accept and spread this vile fallacy is appalling beyond belief. It is certainly a far cry from the Hanukkah miracle we were supposed to be celebrating.
(This is one of the best articles I have read on the subject. — DM)
Donald Trump, U.S. presidential candidate. Photo taken Dec. 3, 2015.
With the country, and now, slowly parts of the rest of the world, in a state of outrage over presidential candidate Donald Trump’s controversial statement to cut off immigration and visits by foreign Muslims to the U.S., it is worth noting that Trump is not the first major figure to suggest that a certain class of humans be barred from entry into a country.
Of the following examples, however, there are two significant differences between Trump’s call and that of all the others. See if you can come up with the two differences by the end of this article.
First, what did Trump actually call for? Did he, as some claim, call for all Muslim Americans to leave? No. What he did call for was a halt to Muslim immigration and tourists into the U.S.
TRUMP’S CALL FOR A BAN
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” a campaign press release said.
The ban Trump is seeking is based on what he called “the hatred [which] is beyond comprehension.” It is his view that his proposed ban should remain in place “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Trump called for the ban on Muslim entry into the U.S. in the wake of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino last week by two previously unknown radicalized Muslims who entered the U.S., Syed Farook and his wife, Nashfeen Malik. While few Americans ever met Malik, Farook was accepted as a “normal,” “average American,” and the two were understood to be “living the American dream,” until the moment they began blasting Farook’s co-workers and associates to death in a bloody rampage which claimed the lives of 14 and injured many more on Dec. 2, 2105.
Trump made what has become known as his “No Muslim” speech on Dec. 7, first in a written statement, which was followed up by a press conference, a video of which is at the end of this article.
REACTION TO TRUMP’S CALL FOR A BAN
Trump has been excoriated – or at least held at a distance with disgust – by leadership in the Democratic and Republican parties, by worldwide media, by colleagues and competitors. An aide to U.S. President Obama suggested Trump is “not qualified” to run for president. He has been attacked by Americans, by a Nobel Prize winner (Egypt’s El Baradei), by hundreds of thousands of Brits, and even by Israelis.
As reported earlier in the JewishPress.com, several Opposition Knesset Members and at least one coalition MK signed a letter demanding that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cancel a scheduled Dec. 28 meeting with Donald Trump during the Republican presidential candidate’s planned visit. Zionist Union MK Omer Bar Lev called Trump a racist, and Arab member of Knesset Ahmed Tibi called the presidential contender a Nazi.
Another Arab MK who is a member of the Meretz party, Esawi Frej, said “Trump is not just a racist; he is a man who poses a threat to the free world. A man who through racist incitement tries to gain the post of US president. A man whose presence in the public sphere is based on racism.”
EXAMPLES OF OTHER NATIONAL OR RELIGIOUS BANS
Daniel Greenfield immediately recalled and posted an article in FrontPage, reminding Americans that then-President Jimmy Carter, during the Iranian Hostage crisis banned the entry of Iranians into the United States. On April 7, 1980, Carter announced U.S. sanctions against Iran, which included the invalidation of
all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly.
Imagine that. Arguably one of the most liberal U.S. Presidents ever issued a blanket ban on an entire class of people, because some of them had brutalized Americans.
And guess what? There was no huge outcry over Carter’s ban. No demands that Carter be banned from entry into, say, Britain. Nor did any subsequent American administration ever issue a censure deeming Carter having been unworthy of holding the office of President of the United States, something that the Obama administration has said about Trump because of his proposed ban. QUOTE
So, there is a fairly recent precedent for banning an entire class of people in the United States.
Greenfield isn’t the only one on the ball, and America isn’t the only place where national/religious bans are accepted without much pushback, let alone hysteria.
Yair Rosenberg, an American journalist, pointed out on Twitter what should already be an obvious fact, and one for which there has been little public criticism, at least none that has risen to the level of eliciting the ire of major political parties, religious groups or public figures.
Rosenberg pointed out that there are currently 16 countries in the world which completely ban the entry of Israelis. No one is permitted to enter the following nations with an Israeli passport: Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Please, choke back any response that consists of something along the lines of: “well, those are Arab or Muslim countries, we expect more of a U.S. presidential candidate.” Anyone who considers acceptable because “to be expected” the blanket banning of Israelis by any nation, yet is outraged to action by The Donald must be prepared to be called a hypocrite.
And just to point out the extent of the mass hypocrisy regarding national or religious entry bans Rosenberg also pointed out that five of these 16 Arab/Muslim nations which bar Israelis from entering are currently “members of the United Nations Human Rights Council. No Punchline.” *Drop mic.*
UNBORN NATION FOR WHICH US, UK AND OTHERS SEEK TO BE MIDWIFE CATEGORICALLY REJECTS JEWS
But there is yet another, even more straightforward way to reveal the hypocrisy of those hysterically denouncing Trump’s suggestion of a temporary ban on Muslim entry into the United States.
This is the already declared position of Mahmoud Abbas, the acting president of the Palestinian Authority, who has unequivocally announced that there will be no Jews – not one, not ever – in the nation he hopes will arise: Palestine.
The precondition of a Judenrein nation has never been rejected as racist, xenophobic, undemocratic, discriminatory or anything else at all either by this American administration which has struggled for the past seven years to help birth Palestine, nor any previous ones. Nor has any other nation or national leader or self-declared human rights activist, civil rights activist or other do-gooders challenged that precondition to statehood.
This point was made first by Israeli Kay Wilson. Wilson tweetedearly Wednesday morning, in response to the Trump brouhaha, that she hoped the next will be “when the whole world” is “outraged by Abbas” who has said there will be “no Jews in Palestine.”
Wilson is particularly attuned to the hatefulness and incitement of the Palestinian Authority. In late 2010, she and a friend were stabbed repeatedly and left to die by two Palestinian Arabs who tried to murder them both, just because they were Jews. As it turned out, Wilson’s friend, Kristine Luken, who died from the assault, was a Christian. Wilson was stabbed with a machete 13 times. She was stabbed with such ferocity, that 30 of Wilson’s bones were shattered in the attack.
When asked by the JewishPress.com why she was claiming the Trump detractors were being hypocritical, Wilson, who, despite her trauma is a funny and loving person, laid out her response.
Wilson said that Jews being upset by Trump’s statement was not particularly surprising because “speaking up for our neighbour is both a calling and a conviction – born out of our task as Jews – to be ‘our brothers keeper.’”
What outraged Wilson, however, was what she described as planted “amongst this ruckus of goodwill” was “a concoction of hypocrisy and double standards of the international community towards the Jewish people.”
This is because although the PA’s Abbas has always made it clear, openly and repeatedly, that any future Palestinian state will be“Jew-free.”
From the time Abbas took over as leader of the Palestinian Authority, Wilson pointed out, “he made it clear that ANY future state under his jurisdiction will be “Jew-free.” But, she bemoans, “there has not been one politician, one spokesman, one foreign dignitary or one non-Jewish community that has EVER had the courage, the moral fortitude or just the plain common decency to speak out.
“There have been no op-eds, 24/7 news coverage, street protests or even tweets about this form of racism. And there have never been any public protests from the Muslim community to ‘be my brothers keeper,’” said Wilson.
So what are the two differences between Trump’s ban and all the others? The first is obvious, the lack of outrage. The utter lack of concern by the entire world that Israelis are barred from entry into other countries simply because they are from the only Jewish State in the world. The other? Trump is a businessman, he is not in any position of power, at least not yet. The other bans were all made by people who were or are in positions of leadership, equipped to, or already enforcing such a ban.
A Palestinian stone-thrower looks on as he stands in front of a fire during clashes with IDF troops in the West Bank village of Duma. (photo credit:REUTERS)
Most academics today are too politically correct to admit it – and too busy boycotting democratic Israel. But when future historians connect the dots to explain the origins of al-Qaida, Islamic State and today’s scourge of Islamist terrorism, the pattern will be undeniable. Yasser Arafat was the grandfather of Osama bin Laden and all modern terrorists. Moreover, Western appeasement of Palestinian terrorism – cravenly displayed at Munich – proved that claiming “terrorism doesn’t pay” is delusional: terrorism works thanks to Western weakness. Violence put the Palestinians on the international agenda and cast them as the ultimate oppressed Third Worlders to many totalitarian leftists – who today exaggerate Palestinians’ suffering, importance and impotence.
******************
Last Tuesday, two widows of the Israeli Olympians murdered at Munich in 1972 revealed that the eight Palestinian terrorists beat the hostages who survived their initial assault. The attackers also shot Yossef Romano when he resisted, then castrated him. These horrifying details, sandwiched between the Paris massacre and the San Bernadino bloodbath, amid the latest wave of Palestinian violence, reinforced a fact that terrorist- deniers and Palestinian apologists deny: The world’s tolerance for Palestinian terrorism, starting in the 1970s, made it the gateway crime to Islamist terrorism – understanding a gateway crime as both evil and trailblazing, normalizing. As one friend cleverly noted: “ The suicide vest found in the garbage bin in Paris might as well have had ‘Made in Palestine’ stitched on it. Guess that’s a label the European Union lets into the continent.”
Most academics today are too politically correct to admit it – and too busy boycotting democratic Israel. But when future historians connect the dots to explain the origins of al-Qaida, Islamic State and today’s scourge of Islamist terrorism, the pattern will be undeniable. Yasser Arafat was the grandfather of Osama bin Laden and all modern terrorists. Moreover, Western appeasement of Palestinian terrorism – cravenly displayed at Munich – proved that claiming “terrorism doesn’t pay” is delusional: terrorism works thanks to Western weakness. Violence put the Palestinians on the international agenda and cast them as the ultimate oppressed Third Worlders to many totalitarian leftists – who today exaggerate Palestinians’ suffering, importance and impotence.
In September 1972, the International Olympic Committee president, Avery Brundage, became the sniveling symbol of Western appeasement. More protective of his games than the kidnapped athletes, he allowed the Olympics to continue for 10 hours as the Palestinians tortured the Israelis. Then, after the terrorists murdered the hostages and one German policeman during Germany’s botched rescue attempt, Brundage insisted the games continue after a short 24-hour pause. One Los Angeles Times columnist wrote: “It’s almost like having a dance at Dachau.”
The Olympic Committee has never commemorated the murdered Israelis with a moment of silence (although one is planned for 2016), hoping not to “politicize” the games, meaning anger Arabs and Muslims.
Barely two months after this debacle, West Germany used a false hijacking ruse to free the three surviving terrorists. In return, the PLO promised not to attack Germany. In 1999, one terrorist, Jamal al-Gashey, boasted: “I am proud of what I did at Munich because it helped the Palestinian cause enormously. Before Munich the world had no idea about our struggle, but on that day the name of Palestine was repeated all over the world.” In September 1970, Palestinian terrorists hijacked planes and destroyed them in Jordan, but Munich became their big international premier.
Six months after Munich, on March 1, 1973, America – under a supposedly tough Republican Richard Nixon – caved despite losing two diplomats in a Palestinian raid against the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. The two Americans, Cleo Noel and George Curtis Moore, along with a Belgian diplomat Guy Eid, were the only hostages murdered – after Yasser Arafat sent the terrorists a coded radio message, asking: “Why are you waiting? The people’s blood in the Cold River cries for vengeance.” “Cold River” was the pre-arranged code for “kill them.”
The Sudanese soon freed all eight terrorists and the Americans never hunted down these killers. Less than two years later, in November, 1974, Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly. Two decades after that, this unrepentant murderer of Americans would win the Nobel Peace, be the most frequent foreign guest Bill Clinton hosted at the White House and bring his people to the brink of a peace treaty and their own state, only to lead them back to terrorism, delegitimization and cries to exterminate the Jewish state.
The Palestinians chose well in targeting Israel, especially during the 1970s. Directing terrorism against the Jewish state triggered decades of blaming the victims and excusing the perpetrators. The anti-Semitic hostility so many Westerners have toward Israel, the Jew among the nations, reinforced the growing post-Sixties culture of Western guilt, self-abnegation, appeasement and enabling of violent enemies – as long as they could define themselves as people of color. Radicals cast democratic Israel, forced to defend itself, as an imperial force not an embattled state, while casting Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters not pathological killers.
Rather than noting how few peoples suffering far more turn terrorist, rather than wondering why Palestinians targeted innocent women, children, elders, Blame Israel Firsters assumed that Palestinians’ cruelty somehow reflected Israeli cruelty. Israel must be very guilty of intense oppression to merit such hatred, the politically correct assumed, rather than scrutinizing the Palestinian death cult that fed off anti-Semitism and Islamic fundamentalism.
Arafat’s success and the West’s limp response helped weaponize an exclusivist, bigoted, triumphalist Islamist ideology, inspiring al-Qaida, Islamic State and others.
Even today, President Barack Obama hesitates to label terrorism terrorism and dodges the phrase “radical Islamism” – even when a jihadist major shot up Fort Hood in 2009 or a San Bernardino shooter posted an IS manifesto. True, Obama has hunted some terrorists aggressively, but his ideological confusion has emboldened terrorists – and reflects this broader international muddle in facing evil.
If I were Palestinian or Muslim, I would be ashamed. So far, the great Palestinian contribution to civilization has been terrorism; “Palestinian” as a modifier most frequently appears before the word “terrorism” – 32 million times, a Google search shows. The phrase “Islamic terrorism” appears 201 million times. Don’t they want to be known for constructive contributions? Without a robust internal critique, among Palestinians, among Muslims, terrorism will continue. Golda Meir’s aphorism needs updating. Yes, Palestinians must love their children more than they hate our own before peace comes. And Palestinians must also become terrified of being considered terrorists.
On Wednesday, Dec. 2, Russia started transferring dozens of advanced T-90 tanks to Syria, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report. They were moved immediately to two Syrian army fronts fighting rebel forces at the two most important cities, Aleppo and Damascus, and are expected to be sent to beef up the combined Syria, Iranian, Hizballah army poised to recover Palmyra from the Islamic State.
The shipment to the capital was delivered into the hands of the 4th armored division, Syria’s republican guard commanded by Gen. Ali Maher Assad, the younger brother of President Bashar Assad.
The attack on Palmyra in country infested by ISIS forces was scheduled to have begun two weeks ago but was delayed for the arrival of the heavy Russian tanks, among other reasons.
The T-90 weighs 46.5 tons and has a range of 375 kilometers, with an average speed of 45 km per hour under battle conditions or 65 km per hour on roads. It has three layers of defensive systems: composite armor plates on the turret; Kontact-5 third-generation explosive reactive armor on its front, sides, and turret that reduces penetration by kinetic energy bombs; and the “Shtora,” or curtain, an electro-optical active protection system that enables the tank to jam the systems of antitank missiles.
The T-90 also has 12 smoke mortars, a 125 mm cannon and AT-11 Sniper guided antitank missiles. The tank has proven itself in battle in recent years in Russia’s wars in Georgia and Chechnya against forces not unlike the Syrian rebels.
Until last week, Russia kept only a few T-90 tanks in Syria, mainly to protect its military bases around Latakia.
The new shipment, say Western military sources which are monitoring Russian movements, will eventually replace a large part of the Syrian army’s fleet of around 500 operational tanks, mostly T-72s – at least half of which are positioned to defend the capital.
But the pace of delivery will be dictated above all by the time needed for Russian instructors to retrain Syrian tank crews from scratch in the use of T-90s in battle conditions.
It should be noted meanwhile that, while the Syrian rebels have antitank missiles able to take out the T-72, they do not have advanced missiles capable of stopping the much heavier, reactively armed T-90. But the Islamic State does, having captured US-made antitank missiles from the Iraqi armored divisions put to flight in June 2014. Some of those advanced missiles may be presumed to have been passed to ISIS forces in Syria.
For now, the Russian general staff shows no sign of preparing for a wide-scale operation against ISIS in Syria, so the newly-delivered T-90s are not immediately threatened from that quarter.
As far as Israel is concerned, the main worry is that Russian instructors will also be assigned to train Iranian and Hizballah tank crews in the use of the advanced T-90. Once they get hold of these tanks, they will be able to attain their objective of beefing up the Iranian-Hizballah front against Israeli defenses from southern Syria and the Syrian Golan.
Israeli finds cause for concern in the constant expansion of the Russian military presence and involvement in Syria. Preparations for a very long stay are signified by new developments every few days. A permanent Russian military presence in Syria would give Iran and Hizballah cover for a standing military buildup in Syria. This would confront Israel’s vital strategic interests with a major challenge.
Moscow may be giving Hizballah and Iran an umbrella for achieving their longstanding design to displace the Syrian rebels with Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah forces and deploy them along Israel’s Golan border.
**********************
On the outside, Israel is all smiles and full of praise for way the coordination with Moscow is working for averting clashes between its air force and Russian warplanes over Syria. This goodwill was conspicuous in the compliments Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin traded when they met on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit Monday, Nov. 30.
But the first disquieting sign appeared Tuesday, Dec. 1. Senior Russian and Israeli officers were due to meet in Tel Avid to discuss strengthening the cooperation between the two army commands. But no word from Moscow or Jerusalem indicated whether the meeting had taken place.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that this week, the show of optimism is giving way to an uneasy sensation in the offices of the prime minister, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady. They suspect an ulterior motive behind Russia’s military movements in southern Syria, especially its air strikes against Syrian rebels, just across from Israel’s Golan border.
In particular, Moscow may be giving Hizballah and Iran an umbrella for achieving their longstanding design to displace the Syrian rebels with Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah forces and deploy them along Israel’s Golan border.
This suspicion gained ground when Tuesday, Dec. 1, the day after the Putin-Netanyahu encounter, the combined Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah units expanded their thrust from the southern Syrian town of Deraa to the Golan town of Quneitra, within sight of Israel’s defense positions.
All that day, heavy battles raged over the rebel-held line of hills running from a point just south of Quneitra to the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian border junction. The combined force was supported by Russian air strikes and heavy tanks and artillery, seen for the first time in this war arena.
When the fighting resumed Wednesday, the IDF placed its Golan units on high alert and an extra-vigilant eye was trained on this battle.
The Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah side is gaining a distinct advantage from the deep feud dividing rebel ranks. The Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian Nusra Front forces are tearing into each other with suicide bombers and explosive cars. Tuesday, an ISIS-rigged bomb car blew up at Nusra headquarters near Quneitra (see photo).
But this also means that an Islamic State force has come dangerously close to the Israeli border.
However, even more perils are in store if Bashar Assad’s army backed by Iran, Hizballah and Russia manages to capture the hills opposite the Golan:
1. Two years of unrelenting Israeli military and intelligence efforts to keep Hizballah and Iranian forces away from its Golan border will have gone to naught.
2. Hizballah will open the door for Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers to set up a command center right up to the Israeli border.
3. Israel’s steadfast policy and military action to prevent advanced Iranian weapons reaching Hizballah in Lebanon via Syria will be superseded. On the Golan, Hizballah will have gained direct access to any weapons it wants directly from Syria and be able to deploy them at far shorter distances from Israeli targets than from their firing positions in Lebanon.
4. Vladimir Putin attaches extreme importance to recovering southern Syria from the rebel forces backed by the US and Israel, because he regards the threat to the Assad regime as great from the south as it is from the north or the center.
5. Israel faces a grave dilemma between keeping up its “honeymoon” with Moscow by giving way on its essential security interests, or taking the bull by the horns and keeping the enemy at bay, whatever the cost to the understanding reached with Putin.
Officials in Jerusalem point out that the threat to Golan peaked just hours after the Russian leader met the prime minister in Paris. Putin is conducting a hands-on policy on Syria and keeps close track of the slightest occurrence on the battlefield. He must have been perfectly aware of the state of play on the Golan when he met Netanyahu, but nonetheless kept it out of their conversation.
Some accomplishments you really shouldn’t take pride in. Like being deranged psychos in a death cult who have lost touch with all normal human emotions. You really shouldn’t take pride in that. But try telling that to the psycho death cult.
The Palestinian Authority Minister of Women’s Affairs, Haifa Al-Agha, who is herself a woman, recently praised Palestinian women pointing out their “uniqueness” compared to all the other women of the world because they rejoice upon the news of the death of their sons:
“[PA] Minister of Women’s Affairs Haifa Al-Agha… noted the Palestinian woman’s uniqueness, which differentiates her from the women of the world, as [only] she receives the news of her son’s Martyrdom with cries of joy.”
That thing about them loving their kids more than they love killing your kids, is not happening any time soon.
But there’s some bad news for Haifa Al-Agha, aside from being a horrible monster whose emotions are twisted into something only a serial killer would recognize, what she claims is a unique attribute of “Palestinian” women isn’t.
Because…
1. There are no Palestinians
2. This type of behavior is fairly typical of Islamic responses to their kids dying for the Jihad around the world.
The PLO has helped create an artificial national identity for Muslims in certain parts of the Middle East as “Palestinians” based around their terrorism, but it’s just the Islamic theology of terror that celebrates murderers as martyrs and teaches parents to long for the deaths of their children as long as they die while killing non-Muslims.
In Erdogan’s usual Sunni supremacist language, he accused the victims of jihad rather than the jihadists.
“New tragedies will be inevitable,” Erdogan said, “if the rising racism in Europe and other countries is not stopped.” Yet Erdogan willingly ignores the rising racism, xenophobia, and anti-western, jihadist sentiments that increasingly command the hearts and minds of his fellow Turks.
How should Erdogan fight Islamic terror — something he does not believe exists? One of Erdogan’s famous remarks is, “there is no Islamic terror.” But he thinks that “just like fascism,” Zionism is a crime against humanity.
It is so funny that the free world cannot see that its ally in fighting the jihadists is another jihadist.
Racism is bad, no doubt. But it cannot be the reason why jihadists kill “infidels,” including fellow Muslims in Muslim lands. Sadly, the free world feels compelled to partner with the wrong country in its fight against Islamic terror.
The host of this year’s G-20 summit, which came right after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, was Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In his usual Sunni supremacist language, he accused the victims of jihad rather than the jihadists. “New tragedies will be inevitable,” he said, “if the rising racism in Europe and other countries is not stopped. Racism, coupled with enmity against Islam, is the greatest disaster, the greatest threat.”
Yet Erdogan willingly ignores the rising racism, xenophobia, and anti-western, jihadist sentiments that increasingly command the hearts and minds of his fellow Turks. A quick look at a few sports games and fan behavior in recent weeks would reveal much about the Turkish mind and heart.
On October 13, three days after a twin suicide bomb attack in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, killed more than 100 Kurds and pro-Kurdish, leftist and secular Turks, the central Anatolian province of Konya, a hotbed of political Islam in Turkey, hosted a Euro 2016 football qualifier between Turkey and Iceland. Before the kick-off, both teams stood for a moment of silence to protest the bomb attack — a typical gesture to respect the victims. Sadly, the moment of silence was marred by whistles and jeers: apparently the football fans of Konya were protesting the victims, not their jihadist killers.
Anyone under the impression that the whole world stands in solidarity with Paris should think again. Hundreds of Turkish fans booed and chanted “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is greater” in Arabic) during a moment of silence for the Paris attack victims before a Turkey-Greece soccer friendly. Once again, the Turks were exhibiting solidarity with the terrorists, not their “infidel” victims.
More recently, on Nov. 21, Turkish police had to deploy 1,500 policemen so that Turkish fans could not harm the visiting Israeli women’s national basketball team. One thousand five hundred police officers at a women’s basketball game! Despite that, Turkish fans threw objects at Israeli players as they were singing Israel’s national anthem. Fans also booed the Israeli players while others applauded the fans who threw the objects.
Unsurprisingly, Turkish fans waved Palestinian flags. Israeli women basketball players were barred from leaving their hotel other than for training and the game.
None of that is surprising although, at least in theory, Turkey is a candidate state for membership in the European Union. A new study by Pew Research Center revealed that 8% of Turks have a favorable opinion of the Islamic State (IS), higher than in the Palestinian territories, where support for IS stands at 6%, and only one point lower than in Pakistan. Nineteen percent of Turks “do not know” if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of IS — which means 27% of Turks do not have an unfavorable opinion of the jihadist killing machine. That makes more than 21 million people! Of the countries polled, Lebanon boasted a 100% unfavourable opinion of IS and Jordan, 94%. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, 4% reported a favourable opinion of IS, half of Turkey’s.
This is Erdogan’s “neo-Ottoman” and increasingly Islamist Turkey. After the Paris attacks, this author saw tweets that called the victims “animal carcass;” that said “now the infidels will lose their sleep out of fear;” and others that congratulated the terrorists “who shouted Allah-u aqbar.”
Meanwhile, and so funny, the free world cannot see that its ally to fight the jihadists is another jihadist. How should Erdogan fight Islamic terror – something he does not believe exists? One of Erdogan’s famous remarks is, “there is no Islamic terror.” But he thinks that “just like fascism,” Zionism is a crime against humanity.
Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meeting with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and Ismail Haniyeh on June 18, 2013, in Ankara, Turkey. One of Erdogan’s famous remarks is, “there is no Islamic terror.” (Image source: Turkey Prime Minister’s Press Office)
There is a Turkish saying that could perhaps describe the free world’s alliance with Erdogan’s Turkey against jihadist terror: “Kuzuyu kurda emanet etmek” (“to trust the wolf with the sheep”).
2746772 11/26/2015 An S-400 air defence missile system is deployed for a combat duty at the Hmeymim airbase to provide security of the Russian air group’s flights in Syria. Dmitriy Vinogradov/Sputnik
The deployment of the highly advanced Russian S-400 anti-air missiles at the Khmeimin base, Russia’s military enclave in Syria near Latakia, combined with Russia electronic jamming and other electronic warfare equipment, has effectively transformed most of Syria into a no-fly zone under Russian control.
Moscow deployed the missiles last Wednesday, Nov. 25, the day after Turkish warplanes downed a Russian Su-24. Since then, the US and Turkey have suspended their air strikes over Syria, including bombardments of Islamic State targets. The attacks on ISIS in Iraq continue without interruption. Turkey is now extra-careful to avoid flights anywhere near the Syrian border.
Both the US and Turkey are obviously wary of risking their planes being shot down by the S-400, so long as Russian-Turkish tensions run high over the Su-24 incident.
Friday, a US-led coalition spokesperson denied that the absence of anti-IS coalition air strikes had anything to do with the S-400 deployment in Syria. He said “The fluctuation or absence of strikes in Syria reflects the ebb and flow of battle.”
However, DEBKAfile’s military sources confirm that neither the US, Turkey or Israel have any real experience in contending with the Russian S-400, which uses multiple missile variants to shoot down stealth aircraft, UAVs, cruise missiles and sub-strategic ballistic missiles. Its operational range for aerodynamic targets is about 250 km and for ballistic targets 60 km. The S-400 can engage up to 36 targets simultaneously.
Thei range covers at least three-quarters of Syrian territory, a huge part of Turkey, all of Lebanon, Cyprus and half of Israel.
Since the downing of their warplane, the Russians have put in place additionally new electronic warfare multifunctional systems both airborne and on the ground to disrupt Turkish flights and forces, Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinksy revealed Friday. Turkey has countered by installing the KORAL electronic jamming system along its southern border with Syria.
An electronic battlefield has spread over northern Syria and southern Turkey, with the Russian and Turks endeavoring to jam each other’s radar and disrupt their missiles. In this, the Russians have the advantage.
With the Americans, Russians and Turks locked in a contest over Syria, and the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of action restricted by objective conditions, some comments made at week’s end by Israeli military and security officials sounded beside the point.
Thursday, Nov. 26, a senior Air Force officer remarked that Israel is being careful to avoid friction with Russia, despite that country’s expanding military presence in Syria. “Russia is now a central player and can’t be ignored. But we each go our own way, according to our own interests,” the officer noted.
“Our policy is not to attack or down any Russian plane. Russia is not our enemy.”
The officer said that Israeli and Russian officers maintain telephone contact. “We don’t notify or ask for anything; we just do our jobs,” he said.
According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, this is not a true picture. Israel does get in touch with the Russians when their planes get too close to Israeli aircraft. There was no need to state that Israeli won’t shoot down Russian planes, as though this was self-evident, because in the current volatile situation, circumstances may change in a trice. Is it in Israel’s interest to fly into air space loaded with electronic warfare waves? But what if Russian warplanes come over the Golan as part of a blitz to destroy Syrian rebels in southern Syria, some of which are backed by Israel?
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments