JN-974.
Jerusalem News.
6 December 2011, 10 Kislev 5712
Contents:
1. Clarification of the Europe, Syria-Turkey Situation.
Who Kills the Syrians? A Globalized Network of Considerations Enables the on-going Butchering of
Thousands of Syrians
by Mordechai Kedar
2. Former General: We'll Have to Bulldoze Gaza.
Former IDF Major General Yoav Galant says Israel's negligence vis-a-vis Gaza will eventually force it to undertake a major ground offensive.
By Gavriel Queenann
3. Our World: An ally no more.
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
4. Reply to Hillary:
Distraction Tactics of the Rich and Hateful by Yair Davidiy.
5. Australia expands Iran sanctions amid nuclear concerns.
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Members of the Fogel Family from Itamar; Murdered (March 11, 2011) by Arab Terrorists for being Jewish .  |
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1. Clarification of the Syria-Turkey Situation.
Who Kills the Syrians?
A Globalized Network of Considerations Enables the on-going Butchering of
Thousands of Syrians
by Mordechai Kedar
From: imra@netvision.net.il
The Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation)
Bar-Ilan University
Middle Eastern Insights
No. 13, 2 December, 2011
Extracts:
Source: Originally Published in "Makor Rishon", a Hebrew Language weekly
newspaper. Translated from Hebrew to English by Sally.
The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the
Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel.
This article also appears in the blog Middle East and Terrorism.
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.
com/2011/11/israel-in-increasingly
-islamist-middle.html
The horrible events that have been occurring in Syria for the past nine months raise a worrying question: Why isn't the world getting involved in what's going on there? Why did NATO interfere in Libya to bring about the fall of the Qadhafi regime but in Syria the slaughter continues without the world lifting a finger? Is the Libyan "black liquid" really more valuable in the eyes of the world than the Syrian "red liquid"?
Today we will try to concentrate on the complex system of relationships between those countries that have a say about Syrian affairs; a "system" that paralyzes every international action to rescue the citizens of Syria, after about 4000 of them have been murdered by the regime, and many thousands more have been arrested and their fate is still unknown.
The whole world clearly knows that Syria is very important to Iran, and indeed Syria is the Iranian Trojan horse inside the Arab world; it is the logistical backbone of Hizballah in Lebanon, so the fall of the Syrian regime will end the Syrian support for Hizballah and bring an end to the "exporting of the revolution to Lebanon". Iran has cautioned the whole world that external interference in Syria will be considered by Iran as an attack upon itself, which will result in acts of reprisals against Israel and Turkey. Turkey is involved up to Erdogan's ears in the events in Syria (see below), but why Israel? What has Israel done to Syria that would justify an Iranian attack? Iran has the answers to these questions.
Turkey is constantly stirring up matters in Syria. Not one day passes without it's leaders - and contrary to Asad, they are legitimate leaders - announcing that he (Asad) must resign and leave office, and the Turks are hosting thousands of Syrian refugees in their country. Recently, there have been scattered reports that Turkey has established a training camp within its territory for the Syrian citizens and soldiers who deserted their posts, in order to turn them into guerilla units under the title of "The Free Syrian Army". Turkey arms and equips them, and these are the ones who are attacking military camps, intelligence headquarters and buses of the Syrian army. The number of Syrian soldiers that these guerilla units have killed and wounded is estimated to be in the hundreds, and as a result, they have caused the Syrian army to take defensive positions in their own camps.
Turkey threatens to take over several kilometers in the North of Syria along its border with Turkey, to serve as a protected buffer zone where Syrian citizens will be able to find shelter from the Syrian army. In response, Iran threatens Turkey that it will attack "NATO positions" in Turkey if Turkey will attack Syria. This warning amounts to no less than a threat of war between Iran and Turkey.
Iran's reaction to the fall of the Asad regime may not be limited only to Turkey and Israel, but may include the Gulf. Why not? If the Iranians see that Europe is also involved in the overthrow of the Syrian regime, they may announce that there's one naval mine - only one - in the Straights of Hormuz. This announcement would be enough - even if it wasn't actually so - to raise the price of oil drastically in the world, and the sputtering economy of Europe will suffer a hard blow. Iran can very easily harm oil installations in the countries of the Gulf without even deploying the army; It would be enough to pay a few Shi'ites in Saudi Arabia to do to the oil and gas pipes in their country what the Bedouin are doing in Sinai, to the pipe that brings gas to Israel and Jordan.
Europe and The United States might react to the Iranian action and the deterioration into war between Iran and NATO may follow quickly. The result of this war would be - among other things - cessation of the export of Iranian oil to China, and a dramatic rise in the price of oil in the world. China has invested many billions in the petrochemical and other industries in Iran, and a NATO war on Iran may bring about regime change in Iran. The new regime might renege on the agreements that the Ayatollahs' regime have made with China, which might cause all of those investments to go down the drain. This is the reason for China's support of Iran and Syria.
Russia supports Syria too, because it too has invested many billions in Syria and Iran, and worries about these investments. But Russia has an additional, much larger fear: the fall of the regime in Syria, and the war that may break out in the Gulf as a result of that, might cause great damage to the Chinese economy, which is already suffering a slowdown as a result of the world-wide economic slowdown. High unemployment in China will cause many millions of unemployed Chinese to join the millions of Chinese who are flooding into Russia today in search of work. If there is anything that the Russian leaders fear, it is to be swallowed up demographically by the Chinese, which has been happening in recent years at a rapid rate, mainly because of the demographic decrease of the Russians.
Russia has military and intelligence bases in Syria, and the only ports in the Mediterranean Sea in which Russian warships anchor on an ongoing basis are the Syrian ports, Latakia, Tartus and Banias. The toppling of the Asad regime by NATO might bring to power a Western-leaning regime, and Russia will lose its special privileges in Syria.
However, it is important to bear in mind that Europe is also invested economically in Iran: thousands of European companies, mainly in Germany, France and Italy, are up to their necks in investments of many billions in Iranian industry, and not just in oil, so a European attack on Syria might have the same effect on these investments as the attack on Iraq did eight years ago: flush them down the drain, and the European economy will suffer a hard blow as a result.
The fall of the Syrian regime may influence Israel as well. On one hand, it will result in the partitioning of Syria into a number of countries: Kurdish in the North, 'Alawite in the West, Druze in the South, Bedouin in the East and two more in Damascus and Aleppo, which have never had great love between them.
Iran, which is worried about what's going on in Syria, is increasing the pressure on Iraq, which has the majority of Shi'ites, to take on the role of Iran's Trojan horse inside the Arab nation, especially after the U.S. army completes its withdrawal in another month. There are signs lately that this is Iran's intention, mainly because of the series of visits in Iraq of Vice President of the U.S., Joe Biden, which is meant to stabilize a pro-American government that will reject Iranian pressures. The U.S. wants to retain bases in Iraq, which will serve as sources of intelligence in case of war with Iran, but the Iraqi government objects. This objection increases the American fear of an Iranian takeover of Iraq, because this would be an additional step in Iran's overall goal to take over the rest of the Gulf countries, with Saudi Arabia heading the list.
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2. Former General: We'll Have to Bulldoze Gaza
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/
News/News.aspx/150428
Former IDF Major General Yoav Galant says Israel's negligence vis-a-vis Gaza will eventually force it to undertake a major ground offensive.
By Gavriel Queenann
First Publish: 12/5/2011, 10:30 PM
Extracts:
Major General Yoav Galant (Ret.) said Monday Israel's refusal to take decisive action in Gaza will only serve to force Israel to make a massive incursion into the Hamas-run enclave.
Galant told attendees of a speech at Tel Aviv University that Israel's concerted efforts to dismantle against terror infrastructures in Judea and Samaria caused terror levels to plummet, while Gaza terrorists were being allowed to thrive and build.
"A lack of action, negligence by military officials, has resulted in a situation in the West Bank where we took care to tend the lawn, but in Gaza - since we didn't - thorns grew into tree trunks."
"In the end we'll have to go in with bulldozers," Galant added.
Galant, a former contender for IDF chief of staff, added that Gaza is "something belonging to the Islamic bloc. That's a reality no one knows how to solve."
Galant joins former IDF chiefs of staff Shaul Mofaz, Moshe Yaalon, Dan Halutz, and Gabi Ashkenazi in calling for major operations to root out Gaza's terror infrastructure. Minister of Internal Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch has also publicly called for a Gaza incursion.
Israel's strategic paradigm of airstrikes-for-rockets has largely been seen as maintaining the poor security situation of its Gaza belt communities - which have had over 12,000 rockets fired at them from Gaza since 2001.
Iran has long used terror factions like Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Syria and Lebanon as proxies against Israel - and pro-Western elements in Lebanon.
3. Our World: An ally no more
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
12/05/2011 23:47
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/
Columnists/Article.aspx?id=248256
Extracts:
Instead of warning Egypt against breaking its treaty with the Jewish state, US officials chose to criticize Israel instead.
With vote tallies in for Egypt's first round of parliamentary elections in it is abundantly clear that Egypt is on the fast track to becoming a totalitarian Islamic state. The first round of voting took place in Egypt's most liberal, cosmopolitan cities. And still the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists received more than 60 percent of the vote. Run-off elections for 52 seats will by all estimates increase their representation.
And then in the months to come, Egyptian voters in the far more Islamist Nile Delta and Sinai will undoubtedly provide the forces of jihadist Islam with an even greater margin of victory.
Until the US-supported overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt served as the anchor of the US alliance system in the Arab world. The Egyptian military is US-armed, US-trained and US-financed.
The Suez Canal is among the most vital waterways in the world for the US Navy and the global economy.
Speaking at the annual policy conclave in Washington sponsored by the leftist Brookings Institute's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hammered Israel, the only real ally the US has left in the Middle East after Mubarak's fall. Clinton felt it necessary "in the name of democracy" to embrace the positions of Israel's radical Left against the majority of Israelis.
The same Secretary of State that has heralded negotiations with the violent, fanatical misogynists of the Taliban; who has extolled Saudi Arabia where women are given ten lashes for driving, and whose State Department trained female-hating Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the lead-up to the current elections in Egypt accused Israel of repressing women's rights. The only state in the region where women are given full rights and legal protections became the focus of Clinton?s righteous feminist wrath.
In the IDF, as in the rest of the country, religious coercion is forbidden. Jewish law prohibits men from listening to women's voices in song. And recently, when a group of religious soldiers were presented with an IDF band that featured female vocalists, keeping faith with their Orthodox observance, they walked out of the auditorium. The vocalists were not barred from singing. They were not mistreated. They were simply not listened to.
And as far as Clinton is concerned, this is proof that women in Israel are under attack. Barred by law from forcing their soldiers from spurning their religious obligations, IDF commanders were guilty of crimes against democracy for allowing the troops to exit the hall.
But Clinton didn't end her diatribe with the IDF's supposed war against women. She continued her onslaught by proclaiming that Israel is taking a knife to democracy by permitting its legislators to legislate laws that she doesn't like. The legislative initiatives that provoked the ire of the US Secretary of State are the bills now under discussion which seek to curtail the ability to foreign governments to subvert Israel's elected government by funding non-representative, anti-Israel political NGOs like B'Tselem and Peace Now.
In attacking Israel in the way she did, Clinton showed that she holds Israel to a unique standard of behavior. Whereas fellow Western democracies are within their rights when they undertake initiatives like banning Islamic headdresses from the public square, Israel is a criminal state for affording Jewish soldiers freedom of religion. Whereas the Taliban, who enslave women and girls in the most unspeakable fashion are worthy interlocutors, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which supports universal female genital mutilation is moderate, Israel is an enemy of democracy for seeking to preserve the government's ability to adopt policies that advance the country's interests.
4. Reply to Hillary:
Distraction Tactics of the Rich and Hateful by Yair Davidiy.
Recently a few religious soldiers walked out of a group celebration because a choir of girl soldiers were singing.
See:
Security and Defense: Marching out of tune
By YAAKOV KATZ
http://www.jpost.com/Features/
FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=246939
How and why and in what circumstances Jewish Law forbids listening to women singing, and whether or not it is compatible with Scripture is a matter for discussion elsewhere.
The point is that Ultra-Orthodox and many Orthodox consider it forbidden.
Religious soldiers today are the backbone of the IDF. They comprise a near-majority in front-line units and amongst the officer corps.
Not everyone is pleased with this. There are those who would like to change it. In the past left-wing ideologists and fanatical adherents of secularism controlled the armed forces.
Ben-Gurion referred to the IDF as the crucible of the nation. Service in the army was used as an opportunity to re-create Israelis along lines the powers-that-be considered desirable.
Young people from religious families entered the Army as observant and very frequently emerged as non-religious. Nowadays things have changed in some ways but the previous mentality often still prevails.
The really Ultra-Orthodox (as distinct from the National Religious) usually do not serve in the Army for several reasons. There are however exceptions and their numbers are growing. The majority of Ultra-Orthodox however do not serve and probably never will.
