Trump: I am the Law and Order candidate, email scandal shows Clinton is deceitful and incompetent, Washington Free Beacon via YouTube, July 11, 2016
Facebook charged with aiding terror in billion dollar lawsuit Relatives of Israeli-Americans killed by Arab terror sue over social media giant’s failure to remove pro-terror incitement.
Arutz Sheva Staff, 11/07/16 11:30
Source: Facebook charged with aiding terror in billion dollar lawsuit – Defense/Security – News –
The families of five Americans and Israeli-Americans killed or wounded by Arab terrorists in Israel have filed suit against the social media giant Facebook, claiming one billion dollars in damages over the website’s failure to rein in on rampant pro-terror incitement.
The lawsuit, filed by the Shurat Hadin organization on behalf of the five families, contends that Facebook knowingly provided services to terrorists – including the Hamas organization – to spread anti-Israel incitement.
Citing the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which forbids all American corporations from providing any and all aid to terror groups or their leaders, the five families filed the suit Monday morning in a federal court in New York.
Shurat Hadin, a Tel Aviv-based law center, tracks anti-Israeli incitement and targets terror organizations and their backers in legal cases around the world.
The plaintiffs in the case claim the social media site is liable under the 1992 ATA for terror attacks carried out by the Hamas terror organization, which the suit notes has active accounts with Facebook and uses the website as a platform to spread its propaganda and incitement to violence.
The families behind the suit include the relatives of Taylor Force, an American Army veteran who was murdered in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in 2016; the family of Menachem Mendel Rivkin, who was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack in Givat Zeev in 2016; relatives of Richard Leikin, a 76-year old man who was shot and killed by a terrorist on a bus in Jerusalem in 2015; the family of Chaya Zisel Braun, the baby murdered by a Hamas terrorist in Jerusalem in 2014, and relatives of Yaakov Naftali Frankel, one of the three youths kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 2014.
While Monday’s lawsuit is the largest such claim made against Facebook, it is not the first suit faced by the social media giant in connection to terrorism.
Last month the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year old California college student who was murdered in last year’s ISIS attack in Paris, sued Facebook, Twitter, and Google for providing what they called “material support” for the ISIS terror group.
The claim, which was filed in a federal court in California, was immediately rejected by all three defendants cited in the suit.
Facebook claims the company works “aggressively to remove” terrorist content “as soon as we become aware of it.”
Did Justice Ginsburg Just Violate Judicial Ethics in Her Criticism of Donald Trump?, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, July 11, 2016
(Reason #5,684 to vote for Trump: If he is elected Ginsburg may leave the country. — DM)
Ginsburg did violation judicial ethics but it doesn’t matter. For just nine jurists, judicial ethics remains a purely advisory set of rules that are often honored in the breach.
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I have long been a critic of the Supreme Court justices engaging in public appearances where they hold forth on contemporary issues and even pending matters before the Court. I have been particularly critical of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Associated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who clearly relished appearances before ideologically supportive groups. I have called this trend the “rise of the celebrity justice.” Now, Justice Ginsburg has started another firestorm over public comments where she joked that she would move to New Zealand if Donald Trump is elected. Canon 5 of the judicial ethical rules expressly prohibits “make speeches for a political organization or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office.” The problem is that the Court has long maintained that ethical codes are not enforceable against its members as opposed to every other jurist in the country. This absurd position has continued because Congress has failed to act, something that I have previously criticized. Ginsburg’s statements this week reflects the continued sense of impunity enjoyed by justices who violate the core maxim that “no man shall be the judge of his own case.” The justices are the judges of their own ethical cases and they show vividly why that is a dangerous and corrupting power.
Ginsburg left no question as to her opposition to Donald Trump. She stated “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.” She then added a reference to something that her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, said: “‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
The sense of impunity reflected in Ginsburg interview was equally evident in her criticism of the GOP for failing to act on President Obama’s nominee to the Court and her defense of Obama’s right to get things done in his final year. She also clearly endorsed the qualification of nominee Judge Merrick B. Garland.
In my view it was a reckless and highly unethical exchange for any jurist. It undermined the integrity of the Court and demonstrates the lunacy of a Court that maintains that justices must be their own judges of ethical misconduct. In the past, justices have dismissed ethical rules like they are pesky matters for lesser jurists. Various justices have ruled in cases where they have clear financial interests. Many justices have embraced the celebrity status by appearing before a type of ideological base where they throw red meat to ecstatic liberal or conservative groups. It has to end. Congress has to act.
So the answer to the question above is that Ginsburg did violation judicial ethics but it doesn’t matter. For just nine jurists, judicial ethics remains a purely advisory set of rules that are often honored in the breach.
Forensic Psychiatrist: Fascinating Insights Into Orlando Shooting, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, July 11, 2016
Noor Salman and Omar Mateen (Photo: Video screenshot)
Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist renowned for his work both in cutting-edge legal cases and research on criminal evil, explained to Clarion Project that important questions about the wife of Omar Mateen, who attacked a gay club in Florida, remain unanswered.
He also explained how political correctness and the difficulties in discussing Islamism are undermining our ability to combat the ideology.
You can read our previous interview with Dr. Welner here. Below is the latest interview between Clarion Project’s National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro and Dr. Welner :
1. Clarion Project: What’s the significance of Omar Mateen’s wife’s role in Mateen’s actions based on what we currently know?
Dr. Welner: Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, was aware of his objectives to carry out a mass casualty attack, and she could have easily engaged his or her own support system to stop him from doing so.
Mrs. Salman accompanied Mateen during a visit to Disneyworld that caught the attention of Disney security in April. Salman knew Mateen was purchasing offensive weaponry. And not just any gun, but an assault weapon (MCX Sig Sauer) far more expensive than needed for a mass killing – even as Mateen was quite underemployed.
Ms. Salman did not stand in the way of her husband’s activities that would “martyr” himself, knowing that her child would be fatherless and she would be without financial support. Or is there more?
The San Bernadino killers, who long planned the mass killing yet bore a child together, was the watershed of ISIS in America. ISIS has redefined Islamic feminism by embedding women in vital support roles in terror (martyrdom), recruitment and facilitation.
That Mateen was willing to leave a child behind and Salman accepting of same is an idea unthinkable to Americans and to terrorism in America. But it is a mindset indoctrinated in Palestinian life.
Salman, born of Palestinian parents and raised with traditional Islamic restrictions, was first wed in an arranged marriage with a man from the West Bank. She divorced her first husband. Yet she stayed with Mateen, who long claimed aspirations to be a martyr.
Salman did more than stay with Mateen, she admittedly participated with him in preparations for his eventual attack, including driving him to Pulse to case the nightclub. She thus actively supported her husband’s efforts, even she had family living nearby where she could separate herself. She agreed, with Mateen, to sign over the deed to their house two months before the attack on the Pulse nightclub.
Facilitators, collaborators, and handlers are the unseen support of Islamist suicide terror – especially in the Palestinian theater. How did Mateen get the resources for an MCX Sig Sauer? How did he pay for the upscale accommodations of his overseas travel? How does his wife anticipate supporting herself financially in the face of the attack – and having divested herself of her home?
Did he expect to survive, as had the San Bernadino attackers? And what then would have happened? How is it that we do not even know the identity of her first husband’s family? How is it that there is no public discussion about Mateen’s mosque or the influences who inspired him?
2. Clarion Project: When Mateen had outbursts of extremism at work, such as declarations of support for terrorist groups, he blamed it on anti-Muslim discrimination by his colleagues, basically saying that Islamophobia causes Islamic terrorism. Is this just a standard deflection tactic or is there more involved with Islamists’ incessant use of the Islamophobia card?
Dr. Welner: The American dialogue about the Islamist supremacist movement and, in fact, all of Islam is not based in fact. This is because public impressions and the nature of the dialogue we have are carefully controlled by at least three sources of influence:
1) Unregulated and below-the-radar financial influence on American lawmakers by countries ruled by sharia law,
2) intellectuals and other American media and thought-leader proxies funded by dogmatic Saudi Arabia and Qatari deep pockets. These funding resources, whose assets tie back to their respective governments, export the spread of sharia as a neoconservative would aim to export democracy. Funding now heavily influences university education, think tanks and media and promotes impression management by respected academia deliberately dissimulates and whitewashes Islamist terrorism and its broader goals, and
3) CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, who have been ceded standing by the press to speak for Muslims in America despite a legacy of apologia and of actively teaching the Muslim community to impede law enforcement’s investigations of terror inquiries.
Islamic supremacist advocates and, more importantly, the organizations empowered to speak for Islam are very sensitive to American public opinion and the buttons to push among social activists.
At a time that enhanced interrogations and waterboarding came under scrutiny in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, for example, al-Qaeda was teaching its conscripts to assert that they were tortured when they went into custody.
They could rely upon an academia-media complex that grasped at any opportunity to attack a Republican president through the safe space of declared “social justice.” Al-Qaeda exploited these willing opinion soldiers to fuel public sentiment against Guantanamo Bay and to delegitimize the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The Islamic supremacists have also cynically co-opted national sensitivities on other fronts. Recognizing the mainstream news media’s identification with black grievances against the police, the Islamists have successfully fused the idea of blacks targeted for their skin color to advance the notion that Muslims are victimized as a direct result of discussion of the centrality of Islam to Islamic supremacist terror incidents.
President Obama, has been the highest authority to subscribe to this false canard. The President has famously disassociated Islamic supremacist terrorism from Islam, often with servile platitudes that embellish Islam’s history in America or submissive deference to “The Prophet.”
The administration has promoted a CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) program that emphasizes the purported risks of “right wing terrorist” groups in America. While the facts demonstrate otherwise, an imposed groupthink has rooted out teaching and training from among law enforcement that engages the Islamist threat with any appreciation for its urgency and current relevance.
References to Islamic terror have been literally erased, right down to “Allah” being airbrushed from transcripts of the Mateen 911 calls.
Political correctness extinguishes any criticism of Islam or its intolerance to alternative lifestyles. This includes speech laws in many otherwise free countries that equate criticism of Islam with hate speech, laws which are enforced particularly as they relate to Islam.
With freedom controlled, even where expression is normally free, the public submits. The psychological intimidation by legal repercussion extends what is accomplished by terror or, if not, by threat of terror.
The consequences have filtered all the way through American life, as they have in Europe. A migrant gang sex assault in Idaho of a small child is suppressed by the local authorities. Nidal Hassan’s advocacy of martyrdom is not sufficient to remove him from active military duty, and when he later embarks on a mass shooting of the troops to whom he was to apply a Hippocratic Oath, the military – which answers to the Commander-in-Chief – insists that it is a work accident.
Unquestionably dangerous prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay, only to return to attack and kill American servicemen and Ankara airport-goers alike.
Surveillance programs that would monitor mosques in which attendees are particularly poisoned to support terrorism shut down, despite court support of their legality and police respect for their effectiveness.
Americans who cared about their country reported concerns about Mateen to entrusted law enforcement agencies, only to have investigations shut down. All of these systemic errors feed back to the active thought control and stifling of free thinking about efforts of the Islamic supremacist movement to gain submission of non-believers.
The first of those affected are Muslims themselves, because open-mindedness is crushed by sharia advocacy as opposed to pluralism advocacy among Muslims.
The only solution is a nonviolent but defiant revolt of free speech that demands that leaders and the news and information media stop lying to our free society about terrorism and its origins.
Only from that point can collaboration then begin between the general public and Muslims who are invested in a pluralistic America to undertake a constructive anti-terror policy that wins the war that we are now losing.
____________________
(We are currently) not losing by terror, but by the success of our Machiavellian enemy (who has been able to) buy the influence of those who do not appreciate that non-violent war is more destructive than terrorism and who exploit our inherent empathic nature as Americans as the first step on the road to submission.
Obama and Company Decline to Speak Honestly about Dallas, Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, July 11, 2016
Before he received his just reward, Micah Johnson left no doubt about why he had gone on his killing spree in Dallas. Johnson wanted to kill white people, especially white officers, he told the police officers who were closing in on him.
Clearly, Johnson hated white people. He was driven by racism.
Johnson’s statement wasn’t good enough for President Obama, though. According to Obama, it is “very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.”
Nonsense. One might discuss the origins of Johnson’s intense hatred for whites and whether mental illness contributed, as Obama seemed to suggest. But Johnson’s motive is clear. It’s as clear as Dylann Roof’s motive for killing blacks in Charleston, South Carolina — a motive no one had trouble untangling.
By making such a foolish statement, Obama loses credibility. He creates the impression that he’s glossing over obvious black racism, which ought to disqualify him from being taken seriously when he talks about race relations, and will disqualify him in the view of many whites. (This may be why the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be reporting Obama’s statement.)
Not to be outdone, Jeh Johnson, Obama’s head of DHS, stated today that “it’s still relatively early” to conclude that Micah Johnson’s shooting were a hate crime. CBS’s John Dickerson asked:
You said there’s no link to a terrorist organization here, but the shooting in Dallas was by any definition terrorism and a hate crime, wasn’t it.
Johnson replied:
Well, there’s still an investigation being conducted by the Dallas police department and the FBI supported by many resources from the local government and the federal government. So it’s still relatively early.
What does Johnson think will occur in the investigation to show that Johnson didn’t commit a hate crime? Will the “many resources” of the government put the killer back together again so he can take back his acknowledgment that he wanted to kill whites?
Jeh Johnson isn’t stupid and neither is President Obama. They deny the obvious because they are unwilling to speak honestly about race when black racism is involved.
I won’t try to untangle the motives behind this dishonesty. I do know this: racially motivated dishonesty by national leaders won’t improve race relations; it will only make them worse.
Refugee Activists Worry Anti-Rape Laws Will Hurt Muslim Migrants, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 11, 2016
(Please see also, Germany’s New “No Means No” Rape Law. — DM)
This is one of those clarifying moments that show what the left really stands for. The left claims to fight for women. It claims to want gay rights. And yet Muslims come first. They always come first.
After mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, the German Parliament voted Thursday in favor of a stricter sexual-assault law that also could ease deportation rules for refugees convicted of sex-related offenses.
The changes appear aimed at two overlapping targets: closing legal loopholes over sexual assaults amid complaints that German codes are too lax and addressing mounting public backlash after the country absorbed the bulk of the wave of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and beyond last year.
But some lawmakers and activists oppose linking the two issues, claiming it could further stigmatize refugees and others as German public opinion increasingly turns against them.
Further stigmatize them… after the mass rapes that they carried out in which 2,000 men assaulted 1,200 women. This was the sexual assault equivalent of 9/11.
The parliamentary vote came on the same day that a court in Cologne sentenced two men in the New Year’s Eve assaults. Iraqi national Hussein A., 21, and Algerian Hassan T., 26, were handed suspended one-year sentences. They were the first suspects to be convicted over the assaults. Both had arrived in Germany in the past two years, a court spokesman said.
They got off with a slap on the wrist. But let’s not stigmatize them.
Bernward Ostrop, an expert on asylum law at the Berlin office of the Catholic charity Caritas, said Germany’s new sex assault law would most probably not make the country safer and was instead meant to send a message to voters. “We already have very good possibilities to deport persons who have committed crimes,” Ostrop said.
Yes, that would be why Hassan and Hussein got suspended one-year sentences.
Opposition politicians and activists have argued that amending the law to make it easier to deport foreign nationals guilty of sexual offenses could create the impression that foreigners are more likely to commit such crimes, stoking tensions further.
I wonder what could possibly create that impression?
A. The fact that it’s true
B. The fact that it’s true
or
C. The time that 2,000 Muslims sexually assault 1,200 women in one day
Halina Wawzyniak, a lawmaker from the Left Party, said that she was generally in favor of stronger sexual-assault laws but that sex assaults and immigration should not be linked.
Wawzyniak said she feared that the new law could lead to “disproportionate” sanctions for relatively minor offenses by asylum seekers and that they could face a “double punishment” by being deported.
This is the left. Remember that. They pretend to be feminists, but they put Muslim rapists over female victims.
Defense Intel Head: I Was Sacked for Calling Out Radical Islam, Clarion Project, July 11, 2016
Retired General Michael Flynn
After a distinguished career spanning more than three decades in the military, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was sacked in 2014 as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
When he asked the director of national intelligence James Clapper, who came to deliver the news to him, if his forced retirement had anything to do with his leadership of the agency, the answer was “no.”
“I knew then it had more to do with the stand I took on radical Islamism and the expansion of al Qaeda and its associated movements,” Flynn wrote in a first-person account published by theNew York Post. The account specifically calls out how the “intel system (has become) way too politicized.”
Flynn, who is reportedly one of the names surfacing as a running mate for Donald Trump, outlined his strategy for defeating America’s “global enemy,” who he defines as an alliance of secular dictatorships (North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela) with Iran and other radical Muslim countries and organizations such as the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Of the alliance, he says, “That’s a formidable coalition, and nobody should be shocked to discover that we are losing the war.”
However, Flynn believes the enemy can be defeated. He says they must be fought on both the battlefield and politically, especially through combating jihadist doctrines.
“On military battlefields, we have defeated radical Islamic forces every time we have seriously gone after them, from Iraq to Afghanistan,” he says. “Their current strength is not a reflection of their ability to overwhelm our armed forces, but rather the consequence of our mistaken and untimely withdrawal after demolishing them …
But defeat on the battlefield is not enough, according to Flynn. It is a known tenet of groups like the Islamic State that they view their battlefield successes as a nod of approval from Allah.
Flynn explains this doctrine, saying, “Defeat on battlefields does great damage to their claim to be acting as agents of divine will. After defeating al Qaeda in Iraq, we should have challenged the Islamic world and asked: ‘How did we win? Did Allah change sides?’ We need to denounce them as false prophets, as we insist on the superiority of our own political vision. “
In terms of the secular dictatorships that Islamists are allied with, the same strategy applies. “Is North Korea some sort of success story?” he asks. “Does anyone this side of a university seminar think the Cuban people prefer the Castro’s tyranny to real freedom?”
Flynn worked more than 33 years in Army intelligence, including coordinating on-the-ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. His colleagues included General Stanley McChrystal, General David Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen.
His book about the subject, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, is due to be released Tuesday.
Obama Admin Brushes Off Intel Iran Is Buying Nuke, Missile Materials. Washington Free Beacon,
(Please see also, German intel report charges Iran seeking illegal nuke, missile tech. — DM)
A missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran / AP
The administration’s response stands in sharp contrast to comments made by many lawmakers who view the German intelligence as proof that Iran is in violation of international accords.
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The Obama administration is brushing aside new German intelligence reports indicating that Iran has accelerated its efforts to procure key nuclear materials, despite promises to end this behavior as part of last summer’s nuclear accord, according to comments by a U.S. official provided to the Free Beacon.
Germany’s internal intelligence agency concluded in a recent report that sources have witnessed “extensive Iranian attempts” to procure illicit materials, “especially goods that can be used in the field of nuclear technology,” according to the report. The report appears to show that Iran is not upholding its most critical commitments under the nuclear deal.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear this week that the intelligence shows “Iran continued unabated to develop its rocket program in conflict with the relevant provisions of the UN Security Council,” particularly one Security Council resolution that bars Iran from pursuing ballistic missile technology.
The intelligence report and subsequent warnings were met with a tepid response from the Obama administration, which declined to comment on the intelligence and told the Free Beacon that it continues to view Iran as complying with the nuclear accord.
The administration’s response stands in sharp contrast to that of leading GOP lawmakers, who told the Free Beacon that the White House is intentionally ignoring Iran’s bad behavior.
“We believe that Iran is continuing to meet its [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] commitments,” a State Department official authorized only to speak on background told the Free Beacon.
When pressed to explain how this comported with Germany’s warnings, the official said the administration “would refer you to German authorities for any comment about reports attributed to them.”
The administration official would not take a stance on indications that Iran’s procurement activity—which has increased nearly twofold since the nuclear deal—could violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which bans such activity.
“As for UNSCR 2231, we have spoken previously about how Iran’s reported missile launches are clearly inconsistent with the resolution,” the source said when asked if the new intelligence shows that Iran’s behavior constitutes a violation of the resolution.
A CIA official declined to comment on Germany’s findings and whether they comport with U.S. intelligence assessments.
The administration’s response stands in sharp contrast to comments made by many lawmakers who view the German intelligence as proof that Iran is in violation of international accords.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), the House majority leader, told the Free Beacon that the administration is ignoring mounting evidence of Iran’s illicit actions.
“The Obama Administration can’t ignore the sheer weight of evidence showing Iran isn’t upholding its side of the bargain,” McCarthy said. “From illicit procurement for its nuclear program to testing ballistic missiles, Iran is showing that it had no intention of ever following international agreements, even ones that granted them enormous concessions.”
“The administration’s decision to continue implementing the deal and ignore Iran’s actions isn’t just delusional, it’s dangerous,” he added. “Iran must be stopped, which is why we need the sanctions legislation we are voting on this week.”
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House intelligence committee, also said Iran’s behavior indicates that it is not faithfully abiding by the nuclear deal.
“The latest German intelligence report on Iran’s efforts to secure nuclear and missile technology and material is extremely troubling,” Pompeo said. “While the Obama administration deletes public videos and alters transcripts related to the nuclear deal, at least our allies are speaking out on the threat from Iran’s nuclear program.”
The German intelligence report’s “naming of more than 1,000 associates of Iranian-backed terrorist groups that are living in Germany should serve as a wake-up call to the U.S. and other European countries who are prefer to ignore Tehran’s active support for entities like Hezbollah and Hamas,” Pompeo said.
One source intimately familiar with the administration’s thinking on Iran told the Free Beacon that Iran’s illicit activity has forced U.S. officials to walk back certain claims made about how the deal would reform Tehran.
“The administration isn’t even sure what to say any more. Sometimes they say that the nuclear deal is so weak Iran can’t violate it even if it illegally imports nuclear technology,” said one senior congressional adviser who works closely on the Iran portfolio. “Other times they say the nuclear deal is really strong, and they just ignore what even they admit are violations, like when Iran accumulated more heavy water than allowed a few months ago.”
Germany’s disclosure is the latest in a series of revelations that appear to show Iran stretching the limits of last summer’s nuclear deal.
The issue of ballistic missile technology has emerged as an issue of concern on Capitol Hill in light of the administration’s refusal to describe Iran’s ballistic missile tests as violations of UNSCR 2231.
MILO YIANNOPOULOS GAY CONSERVATIVE @ ORLANDO TERRORIST ATTACK SITE
Published on Jul 8, 2016
Breitbart Senior Editor and rising star Milo Yiannopoulos speaks on the ISIS Terrorist attack at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, FL.
The covert dimension of Israeli-Egyptian ties, DEBKAfile, July 10, 2016

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, on July 10, 2016, during a visit to Israel for the first time in nearly a decade. Foreign Minister Shoukry came to meet Netanyahu to support the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Photo by Hadas Parush/Flash90
The Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry’s visit to Israel Sunday, July 10 and the two conversations he held with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that day underscored the intensified ties between the two governments and their leaders, President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi and the prime minister. The Palestinian issue rated a mention in passing, mostly as useful camouflage to disguise the real business under discussion. This, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources reveal, revolved around a fresh update on the Syrian war and most of all on the sudden reversal of Syria’s Bashar Assad’s fortunes from wanted war criminal, whose head the US and its president Barack Obama demanded, to the master of a regime and army which is suddenly in the highest demand – even by Obama – as the only reliable military force capable of pursuing the war on jihadi terror, especially ISIS.
This astonishing reversal came to the fore in the last week of June. While putting the final touches on his reconciliation pact with Israel after six years of discord, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan sent his intelligence chiefs on a clandestine mission to meet Assad’s aides and test the ground for burying the hatchet with him too.
This move was not taken into account by Netanyahu. Erdogan acted on the quiet, while in the midst of yet another maneuver, this one advanced talks for mending relations with the Egyptian president with the help of Algerian mediators who are flitting between Ankara and Cairo, DEBKAfile’s sources report.
While taking briefings from his foreign minister on the talks in Jerusalem, El-Sisi tried to assess whether Erdogan’s feelers to Assad would ripen into a deal between them If so, the Turkish leader was perfectly capable of jumping aboard the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah lineup on the Shiite side of the Middle East map and ditching the moves led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE for a counter-alignment of Sunni nations.
The answer to this question will determine whether Iran’s position in Syria is strengthened or weakened.
Egypt and Israel share a strong common interest in this answer.
Meanwhile the balance of military strength in the region underwent a radical change with the delivery to the Egyptian Navy of its first helicopter carrier, an advanced Mistral-class vessel made in France and paid for by Saudi Arabia to the tune of half a billion dollars.
The second carrier is due later this year.
These acquisitions substantially upgrade Egypt’s military capabilities as the only power operating in the region in possession of helicopter carriers except Russia.
The highly versatile French amphibious assault ship, equipped with state-of the-art radar navigation and missile defense systems, can carry 16 helicopters plus a battalion of 40 Leclerc tanks and 450 soldiers. This makes the Egyptian navy the primary sea and air arm for defending the shores of the Sinai Peninsula, Suez Canal, the Gulf of Suez, the Red Sea and the approaches to the Gulf of Aqaba – not just against Islamist terrorists but also Iranian expansion.
Since the Saudi, Egyptian and Emirate governments are in close military and intelligence sync for combating the two threats, the Egyptian foreign minister had plenty of urgent business to discuss with Netanyahu.
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