Fresnozionism - Arabs commit ‘crime against humanity’ — PLO

Damage in Palestinian
refugee camp, Latakia, Syria

Fresonzionism.org
17 August '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/08/arabs-commit-crime-against-humanity-plo/




News item:

(Reuters) – An assault by Syrian security forces on a Palestinian refugee camp in the coastal city of Latakia amounts to a crime against humanity, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization said.

“The shelling is taking place using gunships and tanks on houses built from tin, on people who have no place to run to or even a shelter to hide in,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO secretary general, told Reuters. “This is a crime against humanity.”

Abed Rabbo should ask himself why these people are living in camps, in houses of tin, where erstwhile PLO ally Bashar al-Assad can shell them.

It’s not a secret that the Arab world has done its best to keep the descendents of the 1948 refugees unassimilated, as miserable as possible and as hostile to Israel as possible in order to use them as both diplomatic and military weapons against the Jewish state. And they are miserable indeed, in many cases lacking citizenship and basic rights to education, employment, etc. in their host countries.

No Israeli negotiator will agree to allow an influx of millions of hostile Arabs as part of a ‘peace’ agreement, because it would simply be the end of Israel (and probably the end of many of its Jewish inhabitants). In fact, the insistence on this is one of the reasons that I and others argue that the PA is not serious about negotiations today.

The existence of the refugees is a ‘fact on the ground’ that can’t be ignored. This, combined with ‘honor’ and the belief that if they struggle long enough they will ultimately win, has made the issue one that the Arabs will not compromise on.

Let’s look at just a couple of examples of Arab attitudes toward these Arab refugees.

The elusive Syria track

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
08 January '11

There was a minor hoopla in recent days over reports of possible stirrings between Israel and Syria, leading to speculation of a US-sponsored secret back channel to renew peace talks on the Syria track. In all likelihood, however, the leaks and the spin that emerged in the Israeli media reflect more a series of domestic battles, especially within the Israeli Left, than any actual movement on the Syria track.

The whole kerfuffle started with an unconfirmed report in World Net Daily on December 26, which claimed that the White House sent National Security Council official Dennis Ross on a secret visit to Israel and Syria the week before to discuss “specifics of a deal.” The report was followed by a similar story in the Kuwaiti Al-Rai newspaper, which repeated the claim of a secret Ross visit.

Al-Rai’s version was picked up and recycled in the Israeli press. However, days later it emerged on Israel’s Channel 10 that while a secret visit to Syria did indeed take place, it wasn’t Ross who made the trip. Rather, it was Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which suggested that the initial leak superimposed Ross on the Hoenlein trip, conflating it with the former’s upcoming visit to Israel.

The Hoenlein story was packed with speculation of a “secret mission” on behalf of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – à la Ron Lauder in 1998 – to relay messages to Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. This was assumed to be proof of a supposed old pattern of floating the Syrian option when talks with the Palestinians become stalled. Implicit in this narrative is the suspicion that Netanyahu’s people were behind the story.

However, another way to look at this mini storm in a teacup is to place it in the context of the Israeli Left.

The news in Israel is that the Labor Party is threatening to leave the coalition government. Moreover, there’s pressure within the party on Defense Minister Ehud Barak, challenging his leadership as well as pushing him to quit the coalition. Barak was also getting heat from leftist media, especially when the Haaretz daily ran a story about the Obama administration’s supposed disappointment with his inability to “deliver” Netanyahu in the talks with the Palestinians.

This allegation likely came from the Labor Party, as soon thereafter a public row erupted between Barak and a fellow Labor Party minister over the issue. Similarly, the excitement over a so-called Syrian back channel also originated with the Left. Indeed, the most enthusiastic speculation and spin about the purpose of Hoenlein’s visit ran especially in Haaretz.

(Read full "The elusive Syria track")

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Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz Play Syria, Boycott Israel

Alan A.
Harry's place
26 July 10

Syria, of course, is a dictatorship where dissidents are arrested and tortured, where no freedom of speech or assembly exists, where Kurds are massacred. The regime killed an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 civilians in its own city of Hama in 1982. Syria supports terrorist groups attacking in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and for many years Turkey. Syria has imposed an imperialist yoke on Lebanon, a country that never threatened it. Its media feature the most vicious anti-Western and antisemitic propaganda. B. Rubin The Truth About Syria

Albarn proudly boasts:

Gorillaz have become the first ever big British band to play in Damascus in Syria.

Damon Albarn, Bashy, Kano and former Clash members Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, were among those who performed a one-off show in the Syrian capital on Sunday.

Damon told Newsbeat it was something he’d wanted to do for some time: “I’m surprised that no one has ever come here before.

“For us it’s just a wonderful experience”

The tour has an important political message:

Damon told Newsbeat why he chose pollution as a theme: “I think the world is becoming like a plastic beach. It’s not a prediction, it’s something that exists now.

“We’ve got to accept that it’s got to be cool to recycle.”

Here is the Wikipedia page summarising the human rights situation in Syria:

The human rights record of the Syrian Arab Republic has been found lacking by a number of different sources.

(Read full post)

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Briefing in a Minute: The Middle East Right Now

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
24 July '10


Snippets on the latest developments and themes in the region:

--Israel will deploy Iron Dome defense against rockets, mainly from the Gaza Strip, in November.

--EU "foreign minister" Ashton and--separately--Turkey and Syria--call for complete end of any blockade on the Gaza Strip. Ha! Great minds think alike. Why shouldn't Hamas have all the weapons it wants?

--Syria bans face veils in universities. Promoting revolutionary Islamism is fine as a foreign policy campaign but we wouldn't want them to take over our country and shoot the rulers, right?

--U.S.-Israel relations are quite good, the best at any time during the current presidency, and this could be expected to continue into early 2011 at least.

--The U.S. government has upgraded the Palestinian Authority representatives in the United States to the level of a general delegation, allowing them to fly the Palestinian flag in Washington DC. If this had come after the PA accepted direct negotiations with Israel that might have been understood. But once again we see the fatal pattern: first give a unilateral concession in hope that the other side will reciprocate. Shall I list the occasions on which that approach has failed during the last 18 months? You can develop your own list. That's not the way to do foreign policy.

--The new sanctions against Iran are definitely causing some pressure on and within the country though short of stopping the nuclear campaign it should weaken Tehran's ability to carry out its policies to build up militarily and advance further in regional influence.

(Read full post)

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Missionary man in Damascus

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
23 March '10

Last week, the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Robert Ford as the new ambassador to Syria. While Ford’s confirmation still awaits a full Senate hearing, which has yet to be scheduled, the nominee’s statements painted a problematic picture of what the Obama administration’s Syria policy is premised on.

Despite repetition by administration officials that they are “under no illusions” when approaching Syria, comments made at the hearing betrayed a line of thinking focused on what the administration believes Syria’s “real interests” to be, rather than what Syria sees them to be. This was evident in the discussion of Syria’s relationship with Iran and Iraq.

The tone was set by committee chairman Senator John Kerry, a leading advocate for a new Syria policy: “I believe [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] understands that his country’s long-term interests... are not well served by aligning Syria with a revolutionary Shiite [sic] regime in Iran and its terrorist clients.” This is the driving logic behind Obama’s Syria policy: the old – and repeatedly failed – objective of prying Syria away from Iran.

Ford echoed this line in his prepared testimony: “[W]e must persuade Syria that neither Iran nor Hezbollah shares Syria’s long-term strategic interest in… peace.” Paradoxically, Ford followed this assertion by expressing uncertainty as to “whether the Syrians are truly interested in negotiating that peace agreement with Israel.”

Such reasoning betrays an inability, or an unwillingness, to understand Syrian behavior spanning over 30 years; it also misconstrues the nature of the Syrian-Iranian alliance. Tehran and Damascus’ relationship was never reactive and defensive, as is commonly held – a tactical convergence against common enemies such as Iraq. It was always based on the two states’ conception of their role in the region and their shared desire to shape events in the Middle East to their advantage.

(Read full article)
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Dithering on Damascus

Matthew RJ Brodsky
Op-Ed/JPost
22 February '10

President Barack Obama's recent decision to name a new ambassador to Syria is puzzling. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs explained, "Ambassador Ford will engage the Syrian government on how we can enhance relations, while addressing areas of ongoing concern." But the areas of "concern" with the Assad regime are deep and will not be improved or resolved by the return of an American ambassador.

There were many compelling reasons why the Bush administration withdrew its ambassador to Syria in 2005. The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was the brazen murder in Beirut of the pro-West Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri in an operation that bore all the hallmarks of a politically connected, well-funded, Syrian state-sponsored assassination.

But Hariri's assassination was just the tip of the iceberg. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Syria has financed, trained, armed, encouraged, and transported foreign jihadists to fight against both coalition forces in Iraq and the fledgling army of the new Iraqi government. The Assad regime has pursued nuclear weapons and continues to support terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah in Israel and Lebanon, and remains tactically and strategically wedded to Iran.

While the White House says that appointing a new ambassador "represents President Obama's commitment to use engagement to advance US interests by improving communication with the Syrian government and people," nothing indicates that this form of engagement will yield positive results. In fact, a year into the Obama administration, it is becoming increasingly clear that the "direct engagement" he envisioned during his presidential campaign with regimes such as Syria and Iran has produced nothing more than an increase in Syrian support for terrorism and the ongoing spinning of centrifuges in Iran.

(Read full article)
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An American Ambassador in Syria

JINSA Report #962
09 February '10

Middle East envoy George Mitchell announced on a recent visit to Syria that the United States would be returning an ambassador to Damascus. A U.S. official in Damascus told a German press agency that the ambassador, "will help change Syria's attitude in the region in order to ensure stability and security. Washington hopes that Syria will play an essential role in eliminating U.S. concerns regarding its attitude in the region."

Mr. Mitchell, according to the BBC, did not appear to expect a breakthrough with Syria (that is a relief!), but does seem to have encouraged Syria to believe the United States is willing to listen to its concerns (that is NOT a relief!).

But why? Mitchell said he had told Bashar Assad that President Obama was "determined to facilitate a truly comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace... If we are to succeed, we will need Arabs and Israelis alike to work with us... We will welcome the full co-operation of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic in this historic endeavor."

The Obama Administration, often accused of having plans too far-reaching to be realistic, is quite short-sighted when it comes to the Middle East. While peace between Arabs and Israelis alike is to be ardently wished for (and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, but that's another story) the region is much larger than Syria's interest in regaining the Golan Heights and an illegal toehold on the Sea of Galilee. Syria is fully an Iranian proxy and a fulcrum of anti-Western disturbance across the entire region.

This is, after all, the Syria that recently completed the humbling of pro-Western Lebanese president Saad Hariri, who now has Hezbollah in his cabinet and an independent Hezbollah army-supplied increasingly openly by Syria-in the south of his erstwhile country. And this is the Syria that appears to have transferred mobile surface-to-surface missiles to Hezbollah under the nose of UNIFIL. [That would be the UNIFIL whose outgoing commander told Ha'aretz that he was not empowered to talk to Hezbollah or patrol the Syria-Lebanon border to stop smuggling and didn't solve the problem of Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel, but otherwise thought he did a great job.] This is the Syria that American military sources say still harbors al Qaeda, and the Syria that supports Hamas in Gaza. This is the Syria that has improved ties with an increasingly Islamist and Iran-oriented Turkey. And the Syria that was described by a senior American official in December as having traces of highly processed Iranian plutonium at the Syrian-North Korean facility bombed by Israel two years ago.

There are two ways to look at it. Because of all that Syria does out of the conviction that its alliance with Iran (and North Korea) makes it more important in the region than would otherwise be the case, the United States should send an ambassador back to show that we take its concerns seriously. Or, conversely, the United States could support those countries who find themselves under threat from an irredentist Syria; namely Iraq, Jordan, Israel and what remains of democratic Lebanon.

The Obama Administration has chosen the former. We ask again, why?

Archive of past JINSA Reports
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