Israel's neighbor - Syria, "the world's largest weapons warehouse"

..There’s no doubt that after they succeed in ousting Assad, they will open another front against ‘the crusaders... After they succeed in the first stage, they will continue onto the ‘main’ stage: the quest for the 'Bilad el Sham' — a name in Islam for the district of Syria, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. The historical Syria, the greater Syria. There are traditions from Prophet Muhammad about the importance of this specific district in the Day of Judgement, and this is a very important foundation to the motivation of al-Qaeda for using the situation in Syria to make war against Israel.”

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
12 April '13..

The terrorist organization called Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, is reported this week to have merged with the Syrian terrorists who call themselves Jabhat al-Nusra. Post-blending, the two will operate as The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [source: "Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra make it official", Christian Science Monitor, April 11, 2013]

Jabhat al-Nusra is reputed to be one of the best supplied - and therefore one of the fastest growing - of the Syrian opposition fighting groups, with much of its support believed to come from Arab states, statelets and oil-rich emirates of the Gulf. It was officially designated a terrorist organization in December 2012 by the US State Department which pointed out at the time that Jabhat al-Nusra

"has sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition while it is, in fact, an attempt by AQI to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes.”

It's a little noted but important part of the horrifying bloodbath taking place north of Israel's border: more than 65,000 dead as of this month, and March 2013 was the bloodiest month so far [source: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights]. For a sense of what this means on the ground - we mean Israeli ground - there are some remarkably frank quotes from authoritative Israelis reported in an article ["Israeli Soldiers Enter Syrian Golan Heights"] by Inna Lazareva, a British journalist based in Tel Aviv and published on the Al Monitor site two weeks ago.

(Continue)

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