Between the American Devil and the Alawite Demon by Mordechai Kedar

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
Mordechai Kedar in English..
30 August '13..

(While President Obama's perceived retreat and backing away from prior commitment, has added even more uncertainty into the mixture, all of the questions below remain very much active and of concern to both the region, as well as the world. An excellent piece from Dr. Mordechai Kedar exploring some of the varied perceptions current and being discussed at this time. Yosef)

The drums of war are becoming ever louder; louder and closer. With passing hour, the Middle East inches closer to the moment of truth, when the masks will be removed, with the American attack on Asad. As of this writing, on Wednesday morning, August 28, 2013, the Arabic media are all concentrating on only one thing: the American attack on Syria, which is expected to take place within the next few days.

At this point, the Arabs and Muslims have honed their positions and clarified their attitudes, because the penetrating questions can no longer be avoided: do you support the attack on Syria, an Arab country with a Muslim majority, or object to it? Do you support Asad or the Americans? Would the Middle East be better off if Asad falls or not? Who would benefit from such an attack?

Many Arab spokesmen mention a similar attack ten and a half years ago on Saddam, another "president of mass destruction", "the Arab's liaison officer to Paradise", who was sent to the garbage heap of history in March 2003, but not before he brought upon himself and his surroundings untolled suffering. Ironically, Bashar al-Asad objected to the attack on Saddam then, because he understood that foreign intervention in the Middle East cannot have good results. Bashar may even have feared that the day might come when he himself would stand before a Western firing squad.

The comparison to the Iraqi events brings to mind the chaos that occurred in Iraq after Saddam was eliminated as well. Suicide terror that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people until now, unending conflicts between tribes, jihad organizations, militias and various ethnic sects and groups, as a result of which, Iraq has disintegrated and sunk into a swamp of blood, fire and tears.

The questions that are discussed in the Arab media regarding the anticipated attack are great in scope and important:

Will Asad survive the attack? Most of the spokesmen relate their answer to the sort of attack, its breadth and its duration: if the attack is short, focused and not drastic, then it can be assumed that Asad will survive and continue to slaughter his people by conventional means, which have caused the death of more than a hundred thousand Syrians, since the hypocritical Western world accepts these means.

On the other hand, if the attack is over a wide area, includes military and civilian targets and continues for a long time, then there is only a small chance that Asad will survive, because his army has been weakened, Hizb'Allah will take a beating and the rebel militias will do to him what the Libyan tribes did to Qadhaffi.

Will the Syrian army and the ruling group continue to be loyal to Asad, who brought this attack upon them? We can assume that there will be more defections among both the army and civilians, but this is not what would end Asad's era in power, because he can fill the slots of the defectors with other murderers.

Will the attack be limited to military targets or will it include civilian targets and civilian and economic infrastructure? Most of the Arab spokesmen tend to believe that the attack will focus - at least in the first phase - on military targets, and if the impression is created that Asad is beginning to turn defeat into victory, the attack will likely continue and widen to include governmental targets.

What will be the reaction of Asad's friends, Russia and Iran? These countries have already cautioned that they will not remain passive. Russia apparently will not respond with direct military action in order to prevent a deterioration into war between itself and the United States. Iran - on the other hand - might escalate the tension in the Gulf, and perhaps even initiate terror attacks in some oil facilities. This might cause a shock in the oil market, that would be expressed in higher prices of oil in the world.

Will Asad try to take revenge on the United States by attacking Israel? This may be, and Israel must be prepared. Moreover, there is a significant chance for an increase in attacks against United States embassies and American military installations throughout the world in revenge for the action in Syria.

Will Asad use weapons of mass destruction against Israel? We can assume that he will not, because Israel would aim its missiles at Assad's neck, to decapitate him.

In the era after Asad, will Syria disintegrate like Iraq did? At any rate, Syria already does not function as a united country: the Kurds in the northeast of the country now call their section "Western Kurdistan", and this area has generally enjoyed peace and quiet during the past two years, despite a few clashes between the Turks and the jihadists who try to enlist them against Asad.

Will Asad take revenge against its neighbors, Turkey and Jordan, for actively supporting the rebels? Maybe, if, in his final hour he launches his entire stock of missiles to take the maximum number of enemies and rivals to Hell along with him. This scenario is not totally illogical.

In the Arab world, when an attack such as the anticipated one occurs, it is accompanied by deep questions regarding the entire region: Why can't we - the Arabs and the Muslims - deal with our conflicts by ourselves? Why do we need Western forces, who are heretics, to rescue us from ourselves? Why is the job of the Arab League always to invite NATO forces to do our dirty work for us, dirty work that the Arab nation should do, but is incapable of doing?

Western analysis and the attempt at beautification of Bashar

...Thirteen years ago when he took power, Western analysts told us that Bashar Assad was going to modernize and moderate-tize Syria. He was going to bring Syria into the civilized world, and make peace with Israel. Now the same “experts” are telling us to work with the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood and the new Iranian poster boy, Rohani.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
30 August '13..

When he took office in Syria 13 years ago, at age 34, Bashar Assad was considered the great white hope of the West. He was going to modernize and moderate-tize Syria. He was going to bring Syria into the civilized world.

He was going to take an economically-bankrupt, ethnically-fractured, diplomatically-isolated, militarily-dominated, politically-corrupt and inhumanely-repressive state and make it an ally of freedom and democracy.

Or at least, that’s what most Western analysts told us.

Faced with the choice between being feared, like his old man Hafez, or being respected like, say, Bill Clinton, Bashar was sure to choose the latter, the pundits pontificated. In the Internet age, keeping an entire nation repressed and completely isolated was simply going to be impossible, they said. It was “unlikely” that the supposedly-urbane Bashar was capable of slaughtering tens of thousands of his own countrymen to maintain a totalitarian grip.

The usual cabal of Arabists was certain that Bashar was going to re-shape and down-size his military, throw-out the Palestinian terrorists, and open a dialogue with Washington. He was going to get immediately rid of Mustafa Tlass, the notorious Syrian defense minister who liked to pen anti-Semitic screeds in his spare time, and of the dour, impudent foreign minister Farouk Shaara. He would appoint peace-loving spokesmen in their stead.

Israel, Syria's Chemical Weapons and Contingency Plans

Yaakov Lappin..
JINSA Visiting Fellow..
17 July '12..

Like blurred windows into another world, cell phone video footage and hastily written messages seep through the Internet from Syria, giving outsiders a glimpse of the civil war raging in multiple locations.

The defense establishment in Israel has long ago concluded that there can be only one eventual conclusion to the 16-month struggle that has claimed up to 17,000 lives so far; The ejection of the minority Alawite dictator, Bashar al-Assad, from power at the hands of Sunni fighters.

In recent days, the battles have edged into Damascus, and are slowly making their way to the center of the Syrian capital. This, in all likelihood, marks the beginning of the end for the Assad regime.

From Israel's perspective, the earthquake now shaking Syria has several consequences, some immediate.

The most pressing issue is the fate of Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, which is the largest in the Middle East.

Assad is in possession of deadly Sarin and mustard gas compounds, as well as nerve agents, some of which have been fixed onto Scud missiles as chemical warheads, and, according to some reports, placed in specialized artillery shells.

Israel is surely utilizing all of the needed surveillance capabilities to track Syria's chemical stockpiles around the clock, without looking away for a second.

Galloway: The Despots' Collaborator

Shiraz Maher..
Gatestone Institute..
15 June '12..

Viva Palestina is a charity that was started in the UK and which has spread to several countries around the world, including the United States. Conceived by George Galloway after Operation Cast Lead, the group is ostensibly concerned with delivering aid – which, according to the Israelis, could include weapons to be used against them – to Gaza.

The charity also claims to support the promotion of peace between Palestinians and Israelis, although little has been done in this regard. On the contrary, far from promoting peace, the group has frequently provoked conflict – not least in 2010 when it supported the illegal and ill-fated flotilla led by the Mavi Marmara to enter Gaza by sea.

The sixth Viva Palestina convoy left Britain last month bound for Gaza, revealing the organizers' overwhelming obsession with Israel. Without a hint of irony, it was announced that their supposedly urgent humanitarian convoy would be passing through Syria en route to Gaza. There was no discussion, however, of aiding the tens of thousands of Syrians who have been systematically tortured, abused, or displaced in that country. The convoy is to pass straight by the thousands of Syrians who are now forced to live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan.

Hornik - Obama Adviser Wants Syrian ‘Resistance’ to Israel

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
20 March '12..

As reported on Jihad Watch this week, an adviser to President Obama has tweeted a criticism of President Bashar Assad of Syria for not being able to mount enough “resistance” to Israel. In the Arab and Middle Eastern context resistance is, of course, a codeword for terrorism and war.

The adviser is Dalia Mogahed. Yet another example of the strange company Obama has kept and continues to keep, he appointed her to serve on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. On March 10 she tweeted on her Twitter account:

It wasn’t Mogahed’s first venture in radicalism. Two years ago she advocated Sharia law on British TV, saying it provided “gender justice” even though, as Robert Spencer noted at the time, Sharia prescribes wife-beating, permits taking the vows with prepubescent girls, and discriminates against women in matters of testimony, inheritance, marriage and divorce.

Indeed, the show was hosted by a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir—banned as a terrorist organization by many countries—and included two Hizb ut-Tahrir guests who denounced Western society and called to make Sharia “the source of legislation.” Hizb ut-Tahrir’s alumni include 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab Zarqawi, killed by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2006.

Sherman - Into the Fray: Something to worry about

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
23 February '12..





Syria is not lost. Assad is Western educated and is not a religious man. He can still join a moderate grouping – Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, Haaretz, November 13, 2009

I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighborhoods, is a grim harbinger of things to come – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, February 9, 2012

Seen against the backdrop of the carnage being perpetrated across Syria by the Assad regime, the magnitude of the misjudgment made by Gabi Ashkenazi, then the IDF’s chief of staff, is enough to make any self-respecting Israeli cringe with embarrassment.

None so blind

Askhenazi is not the only senior Israeli leader to articulate an appallingly inaccurate assessment of Israel’s adversaries, but in many ways his is a particularly interesting and instructive example. After all, before his appointment as chief of staff, much of his 40-year military career was spent in the IDF’s Northern Command, including as its commander. One must, therefore, presume that a large portion of his time was devoted to evaluating the Syrian threat, and to familiarizing himself with nature of the Syrian military dictatorship.

It is alarming to learn that despite the opportunity he had to gauge the true characteristics of the Syrian leader, his appraisal was so erroneous. The fact that Bashar Assad has a “Western education” – two years of medical specialization in the UK — and “is not a religious man” was somehow taken to indicate that he “can still join a moderate grouping” is at best disturbingly shallow.

As mentioned, Ashkenazi is not alone is espousing this sort of unsubstantiated nonsense.

Weiss: Breaking - Syrian state documents 'show Assad orchestrated Nakba Day raids on Golan Heights'

Michael Weiss
The Telegraph
13 June '11

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100092061/breaking-syrian-state-documents-show-assad-orchestrated-nakba-day-raids-on-golan-heights/

I have just been forward what appear to be Syrian state documents leaked by the governor of al-Qunaitera, in south-west Syria, which suggest that the regime fully orchestrated the “Nakba Day” raids of Palestinian refugees into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on May 15.

The document (below) which bears the Syrian Republic emblem, is dated May 14, 2011 and describes an “urgent meeting” of Major General Asef Shawkat, the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Armed Forces, and the chiefs of security and military intelligence branches in the province in Al-Qunaitera, which is located at the Syrian-Israeli border. The memorandum outlines how the regime ordered the dispatching of 20 buses, each one with a passenger capacity of 47, to cross the border into Majdal-Shamms in the Golan Heights in order to precipitate a confrontation between Palestinian refugees and Israeli soldiers and UN peacekeeping forces, thereby distracting international attention from the Syrian revolution.

I quote the entire document, attributed to the “Office of the Mayor” in Al-Qunaitera province:

After an urgent meeting convened by the security committee on Saturday in the presence of the Mayor of al-Qunaitera, Major General Asef Shawkat -Deputy Chief of Staff for the Armed Forces-, and chiefs of security and military (intelligence) branches in the province, the following was decided:


All security, military, and contingent units in the province, Ain-el-Tina and the old al-Qunaitera are hereby ordered to grant permission of passage to all twenty vehicles (47 passenger capacity) with the attached plate numbers that are scheduled to arrive at ten in the morning on Sunday May 15, 2011 without being questioned or stopped until it reaches or frontier defense locations.


Permission is hereby granted allowing approaching crowds to cross the cease fire line (with Israel) towards the occupied Majdal-Shamms, and to further allow them to engage physically with each other in front of United Nations agents and offices. Furthermore, there is no objection if a few shots are fired in the air.


Captain Samer Shahin from the military intelligence division is hereby appointed to the leadership of the group assigned to break-in and infiltrate deep into the occupied Syrian Golan Heights with a specified pathway to avoid land mines.


It is essential to ensure that no one carries military identification or a weapon as they enter with a strict emphasis on the peaceful and spontaneous nature of the protest.


The provincial security committee meeting is considered in constant deliberation in coordination with the Center.


May you be the source of prosperity for the nation and the party
(signature)


Dr. Khalil Mash-hadiya
Mayor of Al-Qunaitera

The Golan border dash, combined with similar raids along the Israeli-Lebanese and Israeli-Gazan borders, killed 13 people in total and injured dozens more after Israeli troops opened fire on demonstrators who had pelted with them stones. Two hundred refugees broke through the border fence in the Golan Heights, though some, according to Israeli press accounts, were actually seeking asylum from Syrian violence, not protesting the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding.

This document – which I have good reason to believe is absolutely genuine – appears to represent the first piece of regime-created evidence that Assad has cynically tried to manipulate Western and Arabic media during three-month Syrian uprising.

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Shoval: No such thing as the better devil

Zalman Shoval
JPost
Op-Ed Contributor
01 June '11

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=223233

Syria is and will remain a dangerous, unstable country, regardless of who succeeds Assad.

Swiss bankers usually have a good sense for where the wind is blowing. So Syria’s Bashar Assad has every reason to be worried by the announcement that Swiss banks might freeze his personal accounts. Is this the beginning of the end of the 41-year Assad family regime in Syria? We may not know the answer for some time, but indications are that it will never be the same.

So is that good or bad – and does it make a difference? More or less everything in the Middle East has in recent months revolved around the so-called “Arab Spring” and the supposedly dichotomic changes in the Arab world.

Some, especially in America, view this as a great popular movement in the spirit of Jefferson and Madison, inspired by the teachings of Locke and Voltaire – while others, more realistic, like political scientist Robert Kaplan, have warned that in the Middle East, as central authority dissolves, the issue is not democracy but the threat of anarchy, and one might add autocracy or theocracy – and any or all of those developments are conceivable – certainly in Syria. Though it is a unified state, it isn’t a unified people; tribal and denominational differences far outweigh any joined identity (just as the Palestinians are basically a tribal society, boding ill for possible statehood).

One cannot, of course, discuss Syria without mentioning its central role as an agent of terror. In the US there are voices which hold that with the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the war on terror is over. This would mean, at least implicitly, that there are different sorts of terrorists, and that the criteria applied to al-Qaida or its Pakistani host do not necessarily fit Hamas or Hezbollah and their protector, Syria (there is justified anger in the US at the fact that bin Laden’s headquarters was located only a few miles from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad – but what about Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s headquarters, plumb in the middle of Damascus?) US administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have had a largely unfocused view about relations with Syria, as did quite a few Israelis – with the result that American policy was to engage rather than confront. There was a brief moment after the demise of Saddam Hussein when this could have been changed, but the Bush administration didn’t pursue it. The Obama administration naively tried to open a new chapter with Damascus – to no avail, misinterpreting the real priorities of the Assad dictatorship.

Sometimes détente works; it worked in Europe and it worked with Egypt after the Yom Kippur war – president Sadat wanted to rid himself of the Soviet Union and cast his lot with America. The eventual Egyptian-Israel peace treaty was part of that. But are there any convincing reasons to believe that Syria wants to sever its ties with Iran and cast its lot with America? Syria, which murders its citizens? Syria, which (with the help of North Korea) tried to build a nuclear reactor? Syria, which has amassed the largest missile arsenal in the world, many with chemical warheads? Syria, which refuses to loosen its stranglehold on Lebanon, and which, with Iran, is one of the world’s biggest founts of terrorism? BUT WHAT about Israel, or more to the point, the chances for peace between Syria and Israel? Conventional wisdom, which in the Middle East is often more conventional than wise, maintained that as the Assads’ regime had kept the Golan border quiet, why risk toppling it? True, it has kept it quiet – and why wouldn’t it, with the IDF sitting more or less on top of Damascus? But was the Syrian-Israeli border quiet until 1967, when the Golan was Syrian? It was nothing of the kind – in fact, it was Israel’s most dangerous border, with civilians in the north almost continuously under attack. Neither before 1967 nor after did Syria’s rulers have a real interest in peace with Israel, among other things because the state of war served as an excuse for maintaining their brutal military hold. Four Israeli prime ministers – Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak and Olmert – explored the possibility of peace with Syria, only to be disabused by Syria’s disingenuousness, including its insolent demand to keep the eastern shore of the Kinneret and the Hamat-Gader region, a part of mandatory Palestine which it had grabbed by force after the establishment of the State of Israel.

Turkey’s real or sham efforts to broker a deal between Damascus and Jerusalem look somewhat suspect in light of its behavior since then. Those who over the years urged Israel to renounce helter-skelter its claim to the Golan – supposedly in order to come to an arrangement with the Assad regime (“everyone knows what the price for peace is”) now look pretty foolish.

Syria is indeed a dangerous place, more than Libya even.

Nothing positive can be said about its present regime, but nor is there any certainty about who could or would replace it. Another army general? Extreme Sunni Muslims? Nobody knows. As for Israel, contrary to the state of affairs with Egypt, about which the concern is that a reasonably stable situation might unravel – with regards to Syria, an already bad situation can only become worse. So this is not a case of “better the devil you know” – but rather that one of the candidates – Assad or those who might replace him – might be a dangerous and questionable lot.

The writer is the former Israel Ambassador to the US and currently heads the Prime Minister's forum of US-Israel Relations.

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Gordon: A Good Day for Bashar Assad

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
16 May '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/05/16/a-good-day-for-bashar-assad/

Syrian President Bashar Assad must be crowing about the success of his Nakba Day distraction. Yesterday, thousands of Palestinian residents of Syria marked the day by mobbing the border with Israel and breaking through, forcing Israel to open fire to stop the invasion. Four people were killed and 40 wounded; the others were peacefully returned to Syria later that day.

The same scene was repeated on the Lebanese border. There 10 people were killed (though Israel says they were shot by Lebanese soldiers).

The idea that these demonstrations were spontaneous is ludicrous. Syria is currently under martial law, in the midst of a brutal government crackdown on its own people. The army is out in force all over the country. Under these conditions, there is no chance whatever that thousands of people could get all the way to and past the heavily guarded border with Israel unless the Syrian army—i.e. the government—had approved the incursion.

The same is true for Lebanon, whose south—meaning the entirety of its border with Israel—is ruthlessly and totally controlled by Syria’s loyal ally, Hezbollah. Nothing happens in south Lebanon without Hezbollah’s consent; that is why there are virtually no Palestinian attacks across that border. Hezbollah zealously enforces its monopoly on such attacks. There is thus no chance that thousands of Palestinian protesters could descend on Israel’s border without Hezbollah’s approval.

It’s not hard to figure out why Assad and his Lebanese ally would encourage these invasions. The Syrian president desperately needs a distraction from the uprising in his own country and his brutal suppression of it. His own countrymen did not take the bait; the anti-regime demonstrations continued unabated. Nevertheless, Assad knew that he could rely on the West’s useful idiots to take the bait. As Omri pointed out yesterday, journalists like the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof fell obediently into line, sending inane tweets like “Pres. Assad must be so relieved that Israel shot Syrians at the border, distracting from his own shootings of Syrians.”

In a rational world, the media might take note of two important distinctions. First, Israel was repelling a hostile mob trying to invade its borders, while Assad is shooting his own people in an effort to suppress their demands for democracy. Second, while the border incident was a one-time event, Assad has been mowing down demonstrators every day for eight weeks, with the result that the UN now puts the death toll as high as 850. Then, having noted these distinctions, the media might reach the rational conclusion: what Assad is doing is far more serious.

But in the real world, the media prefers to obsess over Israel. Assad can relax, confident that his Nakba Day diversion accomplished its purpose, and go on slaughtering his people while the West yawns.

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This Ongoing War: Behind the Syrian scenes

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War
16 May '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/05/16-may-11-behind-syrian-scenes.html


Yesterday, Catastrophe ("Nakba") Day according to Arab mythology, the world was focused on a thousand-plus Syrians bused by the Assad regime down to his country's border with Israel. Lenny Ben David writes in the JPost article referenced below that "No gathering of more than five people is tolerated in Syria, not to mention the busing of hundreds across a country under martial law." And Ron Ben-Yishai writing on the Ynet site says that in his experience "You cannot go near the Syrian side of the border without Damascus' written permission. The presence of dozens of buses, shuttling Palestinians... suggests that Sunday's infiltration incident was premeditated."

There they were "encouraged" to push forward, destroy the fence [see this amateur video], taunt the armed Israelis and then flood into a nearby Israeli town, Majd al Shams. We can think of them as human shields since that's evidently the role they were taking. Certainly the government officials (and their sanctioned buses - practically nothing moves in Assad's Syria without his sanction) that brought them there cared not one jot for whether this was smart or safe or a life-threatening thing to do.

Around noon (according to the Jerusalem Post's account), about 1,000 people on the Syrian side began marching toward the border fence and a few hundred then rammed it, trying to cross into Israel.

We know all of this because it was so relatively widely reported. Meanwhile...

Army shelling kills 7 in Syrian protest town: group At least seven Syrian civilians were killed Sunday when Syrian troops shelled the town of Tel Kelakh near the border with Lebanon to quell a pro-democracy uprising, an activists' protest group said. The town, just a few miles (km) from Lebanon's northern border, is the latest focus of an intensified crackdown by Syrian troops and tanks, sent to quell demonstrations against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. The shelling on Tel Telakh concentrated on al-Burj, Ghalioun, Souk and Mahata neighborhood, the Local Coordination Committees said in a statement, adding wounded people had little access to care because the main hospital in the town was sealed by security forces and the main road to Lebanon blocked.

This happened at about the same time. But for some mysterious reason, the photographers and reporters of the great metropolitan newspapers were - how to say this? - somewhere else. So there are no newsagency pictures, and no direct reportage.

Reuters published this picture of a mob crashing through the
Israel-Syria border yesterday [Source] - click to enlarge

Assad's impact on his country has been considerable. AFP, quoting human rights activists in Syria, says that "up to 850 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the protests started in mid-March". They're all Syrian, by the way. As are the gunmen who fired at them. And the politicians who gave the shooting orders for the ongoing bloodbath.

Lenny Ben David, as we mentioned above, has some insights in today's Jerusalem Post about the Syrian ruler and his inner thug: "Bashar Soprano of Syria". Among other little-known or unknown aspects of the Assad-inflicted Syrian catastrophe: 38,000 Syrians killed by Assad the Father's men in Hama in 1982. Children raped and tortured in Daraa by Assad the Son's thugs in the past few weeks. And Assad Enterprises up to its eyebrows in arms trafficking, drug trafficking and of course terrorism.

"Besides running Syria’s government with an iron fist, the Assad clan and its associates control Syria’s media, army, phone companies, intelligence service, tourism services and banks. They’re also involved in smuggling, the drug trade and arms dealing in and out of the region. Lebanon, a regional financial center and smuggling hub, is important for Syria’s kleptocrats, and Syrian hegemony in Lebanon is critical for the clan’s financial success. If the Assad associates are not blood relatives or from the Alawite sect, then they’re likely connected through marriage."

It's here and worth a few minutes of your reading time.

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Israel's 'Syria option' was never one

Jonathan Spyer
guardian.co.uk
30 April '11



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/30/israel-syria-option-assad-iran

Many Israelis assumed Assad's Iran alliance was not a happy one. On the contrary, that axis is ensuring the dictator's survival

One early casualty of the Syrian uprising has been the "Syrian option" favoured by an influential section of Israel's policymaking elite. The case within Israel for engagement with and potential concessions to Damascus rested on a number of assumptions.

Most centrally, Syria's strategic alliance with Iran was thought of as an uncomfortable fit for the non-Islamist rulers of Syria – so it was assumed that President Assad was looking for a way out if it. Assad's relations with allied Islamist movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas were considered similarly instrumental in nature, and hence similarly susceptible to alteration. The Israeli "Syria firsters" therefore advocated a process whereby Syria would receive territorial concessions from Israel in return for a strategic realignment away from Iran and toward the US.

These assumptions were noteworthy in that they were not only untrue, but in many ways represented the precise opposite of the truth. Syria's alignment with Iran and its backing of local paramilitary and terrorist clients are not flimsy marriages of convenience. They were and are the core of a successful regional policy. Through it, Damascus has magnified its local and regional influence, and obtained an insurance policy against paying any price for its activities.

This insurance policy is now paying dividends. Syria's alignment with the regional axis led by Iran represents Assad's best hope of survival. Indeed, western fear of Iran is the crucial factor making possible the crackdown in Syria and hence the survival of the regime.

The pro-western Arab authoritarian rulers, Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, were forced aside by a combination of internal and subsequent western pressure. Non-aligned, isolated Muammar Gaddafi now finds himself fighting in Libya against a coalition of local rebels and western air power.

Assad, by contrast, who is aligned with the coalition of anti-western states and movements led by Iran, is currently facing only nominal and minimal western pressure. This is despite the fact that he appears to be engaged in the energetic slaughter of his own people.

Kedar: Possible Scenarios for Syrias Future

Mordechai Kedar
IMRA
30 April '11

"As long as the regime has military and police forces at its disposal, it will not attempt to drag Israel into battle because Israel is liable to strike hard, in particular disabling its helicopters and preventing it from operating against the masses. Nevertheless, in the event of a total collapse of the governmental apparatus, someone in the Syrian regime might think along the lines of “Let me die with the Israelis” and launch nasty weapons in Israel's direction. In such a case, it will be difficult for Israel to respond effectively for there will be no one to deter and punish. Israel must be prepared for such a scenario, and especially keep its eyes and ears open in light of the weapons of mass destruction in Syrian hands."

Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation)
Bar-Ilan University

Middle Eastern Insights
No. 7, 29 April, 2011

To the Last Syrian
Mordechai Kedar

The sights and sounds emanating from Syria indicate that the sides, both the regime and its opponents, have reached a stage in which they feel desperate and will not waive their demands, regardless of the price to be paid. From the public’s perspective, the threshold of demands rises as more time passes and casualties grow: if, when the protests began, they called for repeal of the emergency law, they now see the regime as the enemy of the people and insist upon its downfall. Knocking down statues of Assad – father and son – and tearing down their portraits has become routine, and the masses do this with obvious enthusiasm.

The turbulent bloodbath is becoming more complex: the one hundred murdered today are the one hundred funerals of tomorrow, each a protest in which more will be killed, and similarly thereafter, with emotions becoming increasingly heated as regime violence intensifies.

Fear is dissipating on both sides: the people are no longer afraid to mass in the streets and – in contrast – the authorities are no longer reluctant to concentrate massive fire at the crowds. The breaches in the ranks of the regime are becoming more widespread: The Mufti of Syria resigned three weeks ago; members of Parliament quit during a live broadcast on Al-Jazeera last week; the editor of a major newspaper was sacked after sharply criticizing the government; senior officers are shedding their uniforms in a sign of protest; soldiers are deserting the army and taking their personal weapons with them; prominent public personalities are openly expressing disapproval of the conduct of the security forces, which received a green light to open fire at demonstrators.

As the circle of Bashar’s supporters becomes smaller, their siege mentality and cruelty will increase. They no longer fight for the regime but to keep their heads from rolling. The blood of the protesters will be washed away by that of the regime’s fighters, if they are caught in uniform. The loyalists are prepared to fight to the last Syrian.

The city of Hama is the symbol of the 1982 uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was crushed with much cruelty and the murder of thousands. The dispatch of troops to Dar’a at the beginning of last week points to the possibility that it will serve as the symbol of the 2011 uprising. The question is how many more thousands have to be killed in Syria before the world begins to take action as in Libya.

To the government of Israel I would propose parachuting medicines into Syrian cities using unmanned drones. This would be an excellent investment for the future.

Bechor: A Middle Eastern lesson

Guy Bechor
Israel Opinion/Ynet
26 April '11

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060830,00.html

Op-ed: Arab brutality shows what would have happened to Mideast’s Jews without IDF protection

Here’s one of Aesop’s fables: One day, the wolves sent a delegation to the sheep and asked to make eternal peace with them. “The dogs are at fault for the conflict between us,” the wolves told the sheep. “They are the source of dispute. They bark at us, threaten us, and provoke us. Banish the dogs and there will be nothing to prevent eternal friendship and peace between us.” The foolish sheep believed this and banished the dogs. And so, without the protection the dogs used to offer, the sheep became easy prey for the wolves.

Now that the world is horrified by the brutality of the Syrian regime of terror, which mercilessly butchers its own citizens, we can see what would have happened to Jews in the Middle East without their own protective force, the IDF.

In this era, lies, hypocrisy and illusions reign supreme. Many people among us and in the world believe in eternal Mideastern peace, democracy and wonderful friendship among nations, and in the repeated propaganda whereby Israel is Goliath and the Arabs are David. Yet then came reality and proved them wrong.

As we recall, Tom Friedman already reprimanded Israel for failing to understand the new “era of freedom” in the Middle East; the same sentiments were uttered by other naïve Jews, a species that did not show great survival instincts over the history of European Jewry.

When one observes the fate of the Christians in the Middle East, one realizes what would have happened to the Jews had they been defeated, heaven forbid, or remained without protection. Christians are being butchered in states that experienced “democratic change” such as Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia; their churches are being burned, they’re prompted to escape, and their property is looted.

The Christians were misfortunate enough not to establish a state with a clear Christian identity, unlike the Jews. Naively, the Christians believed in partnership with other ethnicities, and now they’re paying the price – in Lebanon, where they’re becoming extinct, in the Palestinian Authority, and very soon in Syria as well.

Targeting the IDF

This is the oh-so-transparent reason why hostile elements wish to undermine Israel’s national Jewish identity. Their desire to establish “a state of all its citizens” – a bi-national or multi-national state – aims to expunge the state’s Jewish identity, thus slowly eliminating the Jewish presence around here.

Now, the great significance of Jewish nationalism, that is, Zionism, also becomes clear, after so many already slammed it or argued that its time has passed. It’s a pity that some Jews still believe these dangerous notions.

This is also the reason why outside elements – and to my regret domestic elements as well – try to weaken the IDF via needless commissions of inquiry, incitement and criticism, propaganda, and an effort to taint the army’s moral prestige. This is the reason while arrest warrants for IDF officers are issued worldwide. The main aim here is to weaken and destroy the only defensive force that protects Jews in the Middle East.

Yet when we see the real Middle East rising up and butchering its own people in Syria, it serves as a live history lesson for all of us. Truth does not shy away and it proves who the menace in this region is, and who is being threatened with extermination; who the murderer is, and who the victims are. Suddenly, the Arab propaganda that the world has been hearing for dozens of years is fading away. It has no power in the face of truth and history.

In the face of the massacre in the Syrian town of Deraa on Monday, a continuation of the glorious tradition of the Assad family, always keep in mind the fable about the sheep, which became an easy pretty because of their lethal naiveté. There is nothing new about the brutality and foolishness of nations; Aesop wrote about it in the Sixth Century (B.C.E.) already. It is us, Jews, who particularly need to remind ourselves of this.

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“Let Israel Come”

John Steele Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
25 April '11

(Understanding who the real enemy is in a totalitarian society can be a painful, but good first step. YH)

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/04/25/let-israel-come/

The AP and other news organizations are reporting that Syria’s Assad government has taken out the mailed fist and has slammed into Daraa with tanks, snipers, and thousands of troops. This, of course, is all too reminiscent of the Hama massacre in 1982, when Hafez al-Assad’s ordered his brother, Rifaat al-Assad to lay that city waste to suppress a rebellion centered there. Somewhere between ten and forty thousand Syrians died and the city looked like Berlin in 1945 .

The AP report has a remarkable quote:

“Let Obama come and take Syria. Let Israel come and take Syria. Let the Jews come,” shouted one Daraa resident over the phone. ”Anything is better than Bashar Assad,” he said, playing on Syria’s hatred for Israel to highlight how much town residents despise their leader.

If that’s what people in the streets of Syria are saying, I suspect the days of the Assad regime are numbered, however many tanks and soldiers they deploy.

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What About Syria? Israel Straight Talk

Avi Abelow
Israel Straight Talk
IST #50
17 April '11

Why does the US support the civilian rebellion in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia but yet support the dictator Bashar Assad in Syria? Recently Senator John Kerry said straight out what the US had to do with regards to Syria - strengthen ties. We here at Israel Straight Talk believe this is wrong, hypocritical and dangerous for the US and the Western World.



Share this video if you agree. Visit us on http://www.facebook.com/israelstraighttalk and let us know what you think. All comments and questions are welcome.

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Where are the penitents?

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
08 April '11

http://www.sarahhonig.com/?p=820

“The weakening of the regime in Damascus illustrates how Israel squandered an opportunity because of the failure of talks with Syria.”
From Haaretz’s March 28 editorial.

As Haaretz illustrates, those who should rue their foolishness still keep beating the breasts of political opponents. This regardless of the fact that no open-minded observer can deny that all warnings by the “lunatic Right” (the least unkind epithet hurled at us) had come true.

In the wake of the Osloite recklessness, we’ve been inexorably sliding into an abyss of international defamation and physical vulnerability unequaled anywhere.

Incremental concessions haven’t improved our image nor won us popularity and understanding abroad. They merely cost us any residue of legitimacy and burdened us with the onus for more giveaways (because our illegitimacy entitles us to nothing).

We vacated every last inch of south Lebanon and Gaza only to see Hezbollah and Hamas respectively grab power and amass rocket arsenals with which to occasionally attack our population centers. Nonetheless, we increasingly hesitate to defend ourselves because our self-defense has also been delegitimized. Loss of deterrent boosts enemy impudence.

This hasn’t been lost on the con men from Ramallah who headline the Palestinian Authority, which, despite its inherent inviability and unreliability, stars as the world’s darling.

In his own none-too-endearing manner, even Syria’s Bashar Assad had, for most of his time in power, managed to hold on to his unofficial but very useful fan club. It was no accident President Barack Obama returned the US ambassador to ostracized Syria after a five-year absence. Somehow rapport with the bad-boy bully was supposed to help the US extricate itself from Iraq. That, at least, was what the Harvard-honed logic of America’s commander-in-chief dictated. Obama’s sweet illusion was remarkably not soured by the fact that Iran’s alliance meant far more to Assad than Washington’s nebulous goodwill.

Obama and Assad Both Tripped Up by Focus on Israel

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
01 April '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/04/01/obama-and-assad-both-tripped-up-by-focus-on-israel/

Bashar Assad and Barack Obama don’t have much else in common, but as recent events have shown, both have labored under the delusion that an obsession with Israel could solve their problems.

Earlier this week, Syrian dictator Assad addressed his country in the wake of violent protests in which his security forces had killed dozens. But rather than play the Arab reformer — the pose that this British-trained opthamologist has often assumed during his decade as Syria’s strong man — Assad showed that he was his father’s son. Like the murderous Hafez Assad who slaughtered tens of thousands of his opponents during thirty years in power, Bashar didn’t back down. Instead, he claimed that dissent against his regime was the result of a foreign conspiracy designed to bring down Syria and “enforce an Israeli agenda.”

But on Friday, protesters ignored the charge that they were Israeli agents and again took to the streets of Syria’s cities. Assad’s thugs were there too with, as the New York Times reported, “tear gas, electrified batons, clubs and bullets.”

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this latest turn of events.


First, as in other Arab countries, the citizens of this so-called “confrontation state” were not deflected from their demands for freedom by Assad’s attempt to brand all dissent as somehow inspired by Israel. Even in Syria, a country where hatred of Israel has been deeply inculcated by the educational system and popular culture, the practice of using the war against the Jews to stifle all dissent against the Assads’ minority Alawite regime may no longer be true. If so, it would call into question not only the false notion that Israel is the source of all the Arabs’ troubles and grievances but also the legitimacy of a government that has no other policy than war with Israel.

Second, the illusion that “engagement” — to use the Obama administration’s way of describing its attempts to appease dictatorships like Syria and Iran — was essential to reviving the Middle East peace process ought now to be finished.

Since he took office, Obama has acted as if the only real problem in the Middle East was Israel and its democratically elected government. For two years, Obama’s foreign policy team has been promising to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran. They swore that Assad’s decision to accept a land-for-peace deal with Israel would transform the region.

These false assumptions have now been exploded. Assad never had any interest in peace or abandoning Iran. He is, in fact, showing the sincerest admiration for Iran by slavishly following its own pattern of brutally suppressing dissent. Obama’s team ignored the danger signs about Syria and its role in putting Hezbollah into power in Lebanon. And why? They were focused exclusively on Israel and committed to picking fights with the Netanyahu government over Jews’ building in Jerusalem. No wonder the administration has been caught flat-footed by the Arab Spring.

Obama now finds himself half-heartedly pursuing regime change in Libya, and may soon be prodded to do something about Syria. Like Assad, the president assumed that Israel could solve all his Middle East problems. Instead, Obama has discovered that what is really needed is the sort of democracy promotion he used to dismiss as a discredited relic of the Bush administration. As Assad futilely waves the bloody shirt of the Arab-Israeli conflict to save his sinking regime, Obama, who is reportedly mulling another campaign of pressure on Israel later this year, might want to re-think some his own shattered policy assumptions.

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Does Israel Really Prefer Assad?

Pesach Benson
Honest Reporting/Backspin

http://honestreporting.com/does-israel-really-prefer-assad/


The problem:

You’re an Israeli government official watching the Syrian uprising. Bashar Assad, the devil you know next door, is in big, big, trouble.

And as Syria burns, reporters from the Associated Press or Washington Post want to hear your take.

Sure, you enjoy watching Assad squirm. You might even want to rub it in — after all, you work the Mideast’s only stable democracy. You’re entitled to be a little smug. But you know that perception of Israeli support for the protesters can only discredit the populist uprising.

On the other hand, you don’t know what kind of government might emerge — who does? If you’re not careful, you’ll be perceived as supporting Assad (ugh). Initially supporting Mubarak two months ago only put Israel on the wrong side of history; fortunately, Sharansky came through in the clutch, articulating why opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t anti-democratic.

The solution:


Don’t say any more than necessary, because you’re either too low or too high on the policy-making totem pole to make waves. Then, grit your teeth as you read the unavoidable headlines:

I agree with Michael Totten on regime change, even though Assad’s the devil we’re used to:

Even if, under a worst-case scenario, Damascus under new management continues to support Hamas and Hezbollah, maintains the alliance with Iran’s Islamic Republic, continues oppressing the people of Syria, and keeps “resistance” against Israel the state’s ideological raison d’etre, the situation could not be much worse than it already is. Let us hope, then, that the Syrian people can finally be rid of him.


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Caroline Glick: The Syrian Spring

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
28 March '11

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/03/the-syrian-spring.php

Amidst the many dangers posed by the political conflagration now engulfing the Arab world, we are presented with a unique opportunity in Syria. In Egypt, the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak has empowered the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sunni jihadist movement which spawned al-Qaeda and Hamas is expected to emerge as the strongest political force after the parliamentary elections in September.

Just a month after they demanded Mubarak's ouster, an acute case of buyer's remorse is now plaguing his Western detractors. As the Brotherhood's stature rises higher by the day, Western media outlets as diverse as The New York Times and Commentary Magazine are belatedly admitting that Mubarak was better than the available alternatives.

Likewise in Libya, even as US-led NATO forces continue to bomb Muammar Gaddafi's loyalists, there is a growing recognition that the NATO-supported rebels are not exactly the French Resistance. Last Friday's Daily Telegraph report confirming that al-Qaeda-affiliated veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are now counted among the rebels the US is supporting against Gaddafi, struck a deep blow to public support for the war.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates's admission Sunday that Gaddafi posed no threat to the US and that its military intervention against Gaddafi does not serve any vital interest similarly served to sour the American public on the war effort.

After al-Qaeda's participation in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion was revealed, the strongest argument for maintaining support for the rebels became the dubious claim that a US failure to back the al-Qaeda penetrated rebellion will convince the non-al-Qaeda rebels to join the terrorist organization. But of course, this is a losing argument. If supporting al-Qaeda is an acceptable default position for the rebels, then how can it be argued that they will be an improvement over Gaddafi?

THE ANTI-REGIME protests in Syria are a welcome departure from the grim choices posed by Egypt and Libya because supporting the protesters in Syria is actually a good idea.

Assad is an unadulterated rogue. He is an illicit nuclear proliferator. Israel's reported bombing of Assad's North Korean-built, Iranian-financed nuclear reactor at Deir al-Zour in September 2007 did not end Assad's nuclear adventures. Not only has he refused repeated requests from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the site, commercial satellite imagery has exposed four other illicit nuclear sites in the country. The latest one, reportedly for the production of uranium yellowcake tetroflouride at Marj as Sultan near Damascus, was exposed last month by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

Assad has a large stockpile of chemical weapons including Sarin gas and blister agents. In February 2009 Jane's Intelligence Review reported that the Syrians were working intensively to expand their chemical arsenal. Based on commercial satellite imagery, Jane's' analysts concluded that Syria was expending significant efforts to update its chemical weapons facilities. Analysts claimed that Syria began its work upgrading its chemical weapons program in 2005 largely as a result of Saddam Hussein's reported transfer of his chemical weapons arsenal to Syria ahead of the US-led invasion in 2003.

The Jane's report also claimed that Assad's men had built new missile bays for specially adapted Scud missiles equipped to carry chemical warheads at the updated chemical weapons sites.

As for missiles, with North Korean, Iranian, Russian, Chinese and other third-party assistance, Syria has developed a massive arsenal of ballistic missile and advanced artillery capable of hitting every spot in Israel and wreaking havoc on IDF troop formations and bases.

Beyond its burgeoning unconventional arsenals, Assad is a major sponsor of terrorism. He has allowed Syria to be used as a transit point for al-Qaeda terrorists en route to Iraq. Assad's Syria is second only to Iran's ayatollahs in its sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders live in Damascus. As Hezbollah terror commander Imad Mughniyeh's assassination in Damascus in February 2008 exposed, the Syrian capital serves as Hezbollah's operational hub. The group's logistical bases are located in Syria.