Tom Gross adds:

The rebels do appear to be getting hold of more arms from elsewhere. For example, this video from Friday (June 21) appears to show a Chinese-made HJ-8 2nd generation anti-tank guided missile system being used by Syrian rebels.

 

ARTICLES

OBAMA IS LEARNING VERY LATE THAT, FOR A SUPERPOWER, INACTION IS A FORM OF ACTION

America sidelined, barely relevant
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
June 20, 2013

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-america-sidelined-barely-relevant/2013/06/20/be08cdec-d9cf-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html

The war in Syria, started by locals, is now a regional conflict, the meeting ground of two warring blocs. On one side, the radical Shiite bloc led by Iran, which overflies Iraq to supply Bashar al-Assad and sends Hezbollah to fight for him. Behind them lies Russia, which has stationed ships offshore, provided the regime with tons of weaponry and essentially claimed Syria as a Russian protectorate.

And on the other side are the Sunni Gulf states terrified of Iranian hegemony (territorial and soon nuclear); non-Arab Turkey, now convulsed by an internal uprising; and fragile Jordan, dragged in by geography.

And behind them? No one. It’s the Spanish Civil War except that only one side – the fascists – showed up. The natural ally of what began as a spontaneous, secular, liberationist uprising in Syria was the United States. For two years, it did nothing.

President Obama’s dodge was his chemical-weapons “red line.” In a conflict requiring serious statecraft, Obama chose to practice forensics instead, earnestly agonizing over whether reported poison gas attacks reached the evidentiary standards of “CSI: Miami.”

Obama talked “chain of custody,” while Iran and Russia, hardly believing their luck, reached for regional dominance – the ayatollahs solidifying their “Shiite crescent,” Vladimir Putin seizing the opportunity to dislodge America as regional hegemon, a position the United States achieved four decades ago under Henry Kissinger.

And when finally forced to admit that his red line had been crossed – a “game changer,” Obama had gravely warned – what did he do? Promise the rebels small arms and ammunition.

That’s it? It’s meaningless: The rebels are already receiving small arms from the Gulf states.

Compounding the halfheartedness, Obama transmitted his new “calculus” through his deputy national security adviser. Deputy, mind you. Obama gave 39 (or was it 42?) speeches on health-care reform. How many on the regional war in Syria, in which he has now involved the United States, however uselessly? Zero.

Serious policymaking would dictate that we either do something that will alter the course of the war, or do nothing. Instead, Obama has chosen to do just enough to give the appearance of having done something.

But it gets worse. Despite his commitment to steadfast inaction, Obama has been forced by events to send F-16s, Patriot missiles and a headquarters unit of the 1st Armored Division (indicating preparation for a possible “larger force,” explains The Washington Post) – to Jordan.

America’s most reliable Arab ally needs protection. It is threatened not just by a flood of refugees but also by the rise of Iran’s radical Shiite bloc with ambitions far beyond Syria, beyond even Jordan and Lebanon to Yemen, where, it was reported just Wednesday, Iran is arming and training separatists.

Obama has thus been forced back into the very vacuum he created – but at a distinct disadvantage. We are now scrambling to put together some kind of presence in Jordan as a defensive counterweight to the Iran-Hezbollah-Russia bloc.

The tragedy is that we once had a counterweight and Obama threw it away. Obama still thinks the total evacuation of Iraq is a foreign policy triumph. In fact, his inability – unwillingness? – to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would have left behind a small but powerful residual force in Iraq is precisely what compels him today to re-create in Jordan a pale facsimile of that regional presence.

Whatever the wisdom of the Iraq war in the first place, when Obama came to office in January 2009 the war was won. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been routed. Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite government had taken down the Sadr Shiite extremists from Basra all the way north to Baghdad. Casualties were at a wartime low; the civil war essentially over.

We had a golden opportunity to reap the rewards of this too-bloody war by establishing a strategic relationship with an Iraq that was still under American sway. Iraqi airspace, for example, was under U.S. control as we prepared to advise and rebuild Iraq’s nonexistent air force.

With our evacuation, however, Iraqi airspace today effectively belongs to Iran – over which it is flying weapons, troops and advisers to turn the tide in Syria. The U.S. air bases, the vast military equipment, the intelligence sources available in Iraq were all abandoned. Gratis. Now we’re trying to hold the line in Jordan.

Obama is learning very late that, for a superpower, inaction is a form of action. You can abdicate, but you really can’t hide. History will find you. It has now found Obama.

 

SYRIA’S ISLAMISTS SEIZE CONTROL AS MODERATES DITHER

Special Report: Syria’s Islamists seize control as moderates dither
By Oliver Holmes and Alexander Dziadosz
Reuters
June 19, 2013

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) - As the Syrian civil war got under way, a former electrician who calls himself Sheikh Omar built up a brigade of rebel fighters. In two years of struggle against President Bashar al-Assad, they came to number 2,000 men, he said, here in the northern city of Aleppo. Then, virtually overnight, they collapsed.

Omar’s group, Ghurabaa al-Sham, wasn’t defeated by the government. It was dismantled by a rival band of revolutionaries - hardline Islamists.

The Islamists moved against them at the beginning of May. After three days of sporadic clashes Omar’s more moderate fighters, accused by the Islamists of looting, caved in and dispersed, according to local residents. Omar said the end came swiftly.

The Islamists confiscated the brigade’s weapons, ammunition and cars, Omar said. “They considered this war loot. Maybe they think we are competitors,” he said. “We have no idea about their goals. What we have built in two years disappeared in a single day.”

The group was effectively marginalized in the struggle to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Around 100 fighters are all that remain of his force, Omar said.

It’s a pattern repeated elsewhere in the country. During a 10-day journey through rebel-held territory in Syria, Reuters journalists found that radical Islamist units are sidelining more moderate groups that do not share the Islamists’ goal of establishing a supreme religious leadership in the country.

The moderates, often underfunded, fragmented and chaotic, appear no match for Islamist units, which include fighters from organizations designated “terrorist” by the United States.

The Islamist ascendancy has amplified the sectarian nature of the war between Sunni Muslim rebels and the Shi’ite supporters of Assad. It also presents a barrier to the original democratic aims of the revolt and calls into question whether the United States, which announced practical support for the rebels last week, can ensure supplies of weapons go only to groups friendly to the West.

World powers fear weapons could reach hardline Islamist groups that wish to create an Islamic mini-state within a crescent of rebel-held territory from the Mediterranean in the west to the desert border with Iraq.

That prospect is also alarming for many in Syria, from minority Christians, Alawites and Shi’ites to tolerant Sunni Muslims, who are concerned that this alliance would try to impose Taliban-style rule.

REPROBATES AND OUTLAWS

Syria’s war began with peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 and turned into an armed rebellion a few months later following a deadly crackdown. Most of the rebel groups in Syria were formed locally and have little coordination with others. The country is dotted with bands made up of army defectors, farmers, engineers and even former criminals.

Many pledge allegiance to the notion of a unified Free Syrian Army (FSA). But on the ground there is little evidence to suggest the FSA actually exists as a body at all.

Sheikh Omar told the story of his brigade while sitting in a cramped room at his headquarters, a small one-storey building surrounded by olive tree fields in Aleppo province. Wrapped around his chest he wore a leather bandolier that held two pistols, grips pointing outwards, ready to be drawn by crossing his arms.

He said he was from a poor background in rural Aleppo province. When he and a handful of others had started a rebel group to oppose Assad, fear had made it hard to recruit. The rich and law-abiding were scared. Only outlaws and reprobates would join him at first.

“We were looking for good people. But who was willing to work for me and help me? Those who used to go to bars, to fight with people and steal. Those are the people who allied with me and fought against the regime.” As he spoke some of his remaining fighters tried to interject; he silenced them, saying he wanted to be honest.

LOOTING

Ghurabaa al-Sham started with modest aims, Omar said. They would enter small police stations and negotiate a handover of weapons in return for free passage out of the area for the police.

But their numbers grew to 2,000 men, he said, and they fought battles to take border posts with Turkey and were one of the first rebel brigades to move into Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city with 2.5 million inhabitants.

More than half of the city fell to the rebels, but Assad’s army pushed back, fighting street by street for months. A stalemate ensued. Very little progress has been made from either side for almost a year.

Where the government forces did cede ground, Aleppo’s residents did not welcome the rebels with open arms. Most fighters were poor rural people from the countryside and the residents of Aleppo say they stole. Omar acknowledged this happened.

“Our members in Aleppo were stealing openly. Others stole everything and were taking Syria’s goods to sell outside the country. I was against any bad action committed by Ghurabaa al-Sham. However, things happened and opinion turned against us,” he said as his men squirmed in their seats, uncomfortable with his words.

Ghurabaa al-Sham was not the only group to take the law into its own hands. In Salqin, a town in Idlib province bordering Turkey, fighters from a rebel brigade called the Falcons of Salqin have set up checkpoints at the entrances to the town.

Abu Naim Jamjoom, deputy commander of the brigade, said the rebels take a cut of any produce - food, fuel or other merchandise - that enters Salqin. The goods are distributed to the town’s residents, he said, but some rebel groups steal this “tax” for themselves.

Part of the problem is that the rebel groups are poorly equipped and badly coordinated. Jamjoom said he had 45 men with guns and two homemade mortar launchers but was desperately low on ammunition. “Everything we have has been looted from the regime,” he said, echoing the response of most rebel commanders when asked if they have received any outside support.

Jamjoom, who wore a blue camouflaged outfit and kept a grenade in his left pocket, said he had registered his group with the Supreme Military Council, a body set up by the U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition of opposition groups to help coordinate rebel units.

“We haven’t received any help from the military council,” Jamjoom said, drinking sweet tea on the balcony of his headquarters, the house of a pro-Assad dignitary who had fled the area. “We have to depend on ourselves. I am my own mother, you could say.”

He tugged at his uniform. “I bought this myself, with my money,” he said. He also said his group buys weapons from other brigades, “from those who have extra.” Weapons trading by rebel groups raises the risk that arms supplied by Western powers may fall into the hands of Islamist groups.

Western officials say military aid will be channeled through the Supreme Military Council. A Western security source told Reuters the council is trying to gain credibility, but as yet it has little or no authority.

Meanwhile, Jamjoom and his men were largely staying around Salqin, low on ammunition and low on energy. Inside the mansion they have commandeered, rebels lazed about on the gaudy fake-gold furniture in a room full of books, including religious texts and a copy of “The Oxford Companion to English Literature.”

ISLAMIST ARBITERS

The Islamists are more energetic and better organized. The main two hardline groups to emerge in Syria are Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda offshoot that has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings, including several in Damascus in which civilians were killed.

But Islamist fighters, dressed in black cotton with long Sunni-style beards, have developed a reputation for being principled. Dozens of residents living in areas of rebel-held territory across northern Syria told Reuters the same thing, whether they agreed with the politics of Jabhat al-Nusra or not: the Islamists do not steal.

Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who researches Islamic militants, said the main reason groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham have become popular is because of the social provisions they supply. “They are fair arbiters and not corrupt.”

In Aleppo four Islamist brigades, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, have taken over the role of government and are providing civilians with day-to-day necessities. They have also created a court based on Islamic religious laws, or sharia.

The Aleppans call it “the Authority” and it governs anything from crimes of murder and rape to business disputes and distributing bread and water around the city. The power of such courts is growing, Authority members and rebels said, and is enforced by a body called the “Revolutionary Military Police.”

At the police’s headquarters, a five-storey building surrounded with sandbags, a large placard outside read: “Syrian Islamic Liberation Front.” It referred to a union of several Islamist brigades, forged in October 2012, which seeks to bring together disparate fighting groups. Its Islamist emphasis has already alienated some other fighters.

The head of the Aleppo branch of the Revolutionary Military Police, Abu Ahmed Rahman, comes from Liwa al-Tawhid, the largest rebel force in Aleppo. Ostensibly al-Tawhid has pledged its support for the U.S.-recognized Syrian National Coalition, but its role in the Authority alongside Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra shows an alliance with more radical groups.

As Rahman sat at a large desk on the ground floor, people rushed in and out, asking him to stamp and sign documents. He said that the worst problem the police had encountered so far was with Ghurabaa al-Sham, who had clashed with a sub-division of Liwa al-Tahwid for control of Aleppo’s industrial city, a complex of factories and office blocks sprawling over 4,000 hectares on the north-east outskirts of the city.

“Ghurabaa al-Sham fighters were annoying people, looting,” he said. The industrial area offered plenty of plunder. Residents of Aleppo said rebels found machinery and equipment in the factories that could be sold in Turkey.

Rahman said the Authority summoned Ghurabaa al-Sham to a hearing but they didn’t show up. “Then all the brigades went to get them. Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel units,” he said.

Abu Baraa, an employee at the Authority, said: “We gathered a lot of people with guns and everything. We went to the industrial city and we arrested everyone who was there. Then we did the interrogation. Those who did not steal were set free, and the others were put in prison.

“Before this Sharia Authority, every brigade did whatever it wanted. Now they have to ask for everything. We are in charge now, God willing. We are the supervisors. If you do something wrong, you will be punished.”

A POWER STRUGGLE

Members of Ghurabaa al-Sham gave a different version of events and have a different world view. “Why is the Sharia Authority allowed to control us? We didn’t elect them,” said Abdul-Fatah al-Sakhouri, who works in the media center for Ghurabaa al-Sham, an old taxi station in Aleppo where he and some other fighters upload videos of battles against the Syrian army onto YouTube.

Al-Sakhouri, previously a mathematics teacher, said the head of the Ghurabaa al-Sham unit in the industrial city had gone to the Authority to sort out the dispute. “Commander Hassan Jazera was there for three hours and then left. It shows that they didn’t arrest him and there were no real charges against us,” he said.

The dispute, Ghurabaa al-Sham fighters said, was really about power. They said their brigade, made up of fighters ranging from Islamists to secularists but all in favor of a civilian state, was not part of the Islamist alliance formed between Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Tawhid.

Another member of Ghurbaa al-Sham, who called himself Omar, said the Islamist alliance wanted to weaken his group because it disagrees with Islamist ideology and seeks democracy.

Illustrating his fear of Islamist cultural restrictions, Omar said he was a fan of the American heavy metal band Metallica and pulled out a mobile phone to show a Metallica music video. The 24-year-old said Syrian businessmen once promised millions of dollars to bring Metallica to Aleppo but, in the end, the government rejected the plan.

“Jabhat al-Nusra wouldn’t want this either,” he said.

So far the Islamist groups have been the ones to attract outside support, mostly from private Sunni Muslim backers in Saudi Arabia, according to fighters in Syria.

With the help of battle-hardened Sunni Iraqis, these groups have been able to gain recruits. “They had military capabilities. They are actually organized and have command and control,” said Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

As moderate rebel groups dithered, so did their backers outside the country. Bickering among the political opposition, a collection of political exiles who have spent many years outside Syria, also presented a problem for the United States about whether there would be a coherent transition to a new government if Assad fell.

But most importantly, Western powers fear that if weapons are delivered to Syrian rebels, there would be few guarantees they would not end up with radical Islamist groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, who might one day use them against Western interests.

The moderates are losing ground. In many parts of rebel-held Aleppo, the red, black and green revolutionary flag which represents more moderate elements has been replaced with the black Islamic flag. Small shops selling black headbands, conservative clothing and black balaclavas have popped up around the city and their business is booming.

Reuters met several Islamist fighters who had left more moderate rebel brigades for hardline groups. One member of Ahrar al-Sham, who would only speak on condition of anonymity, said: “I used to be with the Free Syrian Army but they were always thinking about what they wanted to do in future. I wanted to fight oppression now.”

 

SYRIA’S ENDGAME: PROSPECTS DIM, OPTIONS NARROW

Syria’s Endgame: Prospects Dim, Options Narrow
By Michael J. Totten
World Affairs Journal
July/August 2013

“We Arabs,” the late Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi once said to me in Beirut, “are not a warring people. We are a feuding people.” That’s generally true. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict looks far more like a Northern Ireland–style feud than a real war of the sort that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. The same goes for the chronic yet sporadic clashes in parts of Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon.

The civil war in Syria, though, is different. It is an existential fight to the death. It’s a real war with a real body count that already exceeds the butcher’s bill from the Bosnian war. What could have been a bloody but short Libyan-style revolution to oust the tyrant Bashar al-Assad has instead metastasized into a grotesque sectarian war between the Sunni Muslim majority and the ruling Alawite minority. And what could have been a major blow for the West in its cold war against Iran – Syria is Iran’s only state-sized ally in the Middle East – has instead morphed in part into a protracted red-on-red fight between an anti-American state sponsor of terrorism and the anti-American jihadists of Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra Front), the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, which is fighting alongside the Free Syrian Army against Assad.

It’s not always true that the devil we know beats the devil we don’t. Last summer I wrote in these pages that the United States should back the Free Syrian Army against Assad’s government. What, I asked at the time, were we worried about? “That Syria will become a state sponsor of terrorism? That it will be hostile to the US and to Israel? That it will be a repressive dictatorship that jails and murders thousands of people? That it will be an ally of Iran, our principal enemy in the region? Syria is already all of those things.”

Jabhat al-Nusra, which the United States recently designated a terrorist organization, didn’t exist at the time. Then, the fight was between the Free Syrian Army and what was left of the regular Syrian army. The United States could have armed, funded, and trained the FSA and done its best to ensure that assistance flowed only to the opposition’s moderate and secular factions, thereby drastically increasing the odds that whatever order emerges after regime change would be friendly or at least not actively hostile to the West.

Instead, as we stood back and allowed a vacuum to occur, governments on the Arabian Peninsula got involved in Syria and backed their own proxies. And they’re giving money and guns to bearded jihadists instead of to secular and moderate forces. “In the absence of Western involvement,” says Eli Khoury, co-founder of the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation, “that’s how it works. Washington shouldn’t make the mistake of dropping its support for liberals, moderates, and minorities in the Middle East. Because what you’re going to get instead, if you do, is something you are really going to hate. You’ll have one, two, or even three additional Irans. Where is that going to take everybody?”

It’s not too late to arm politically and religiously moderate Syrians opposed to the government, but it’s getting close. Jabhat al-Nusra is not part of the Free Syrian Army. They’re separate organizations. But as they’ve long said in the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The FSA and Jabhat al-Nusra are currently fighting shoulder-to-shoulder, but the alliance is temporary. They’ll fight each other when Assad falls. Think of it like the United States teaming up with the Soviet Union to fight Nazi Germany, only to face each other in a cold war for the next four and a half decades.

But if FSA fighters had been armed, funded, trained, and politically backed by the United States from the very beginning, they would have had no need to work with al-Nusra. The war could have been finished by now. Al-Nusra would have had no time to grow. Syria would not have become a magnet attracting freelance jihadists from all over the region who are always on the lookout for times and places like this to show their stuff.

But that’s not what happened. We failed to clinch with the Free Syrian Army. Now we face a much greater likelihood that the new Syria will be ruled, or at the very least severely destabilized, by Islamist fanatics with guns. The Obama administration recently announced that it will increase aid to Syrian rebels, but it’s still not clear if weapons and ammunition will be part of the package. At least for now, the US appears to remain more or less on the sidelines while prospects continue to dim.

Assad is doing everything he can to turn the revolution into a sectarian war between Sunnis and Alawites. He needs this war to be an existential fight to the death to keep his allies on his side. His family, his clan, and nearly all his loyalists in the army, the intelligence agencies, and on the streets are at least nominal Alawites, a heterodox religious minority that makes up only twelve or so percent of Syria’s population, who for a thousand years have been considered infidels by Sunnis.

The Sunnis, by contrast – along with the substantial Syrian Christian, Kurdish, and Druze minorities – have been ruled by the Assad family’s totalitarian Soviet-style regime for decades. There isn’t room enough in the country for everyone anymore. Members and supporters of the Free Syrian Army will be jailed, murdered, and tortured to death if they lose. And the Alawites – even the powerless innocents who have nothing to do with the government – fear being driven from the country or at least persecuted should the Sunnis seize power and go on a bloody revenge binge.

Transforming a revolution into a sectarian war is Assad’s internal strategy. His external strategy from the very beginning was to make the rest of the world think he’s fighting an anti-terrorist war.

Ever since former US President George W. Bush pulled the trigger on Iraq, Assad has feared that he’s next. (That’s why he did his worst to destabilize post–Saddam Hussein Iraq by sending al-Qaeda terrorists over the border to blow up Americans and murder Iraqis.) And since current US President Barack Obama helped topple Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, Assad had every reason to believe that he’sstill next once the uprising against him began. So he tried to frame the Syrian revolution as a war between a secular reformist government and al-Qaeda before the Free Syrian Army – let alone Jabhat al-Nusra – even existed, before the opposition had fired even one single shot, when Assad’s own armed forces massacred peaceful protesters who asked for nothing more than reform. He even staged scenes on television to look like terrorist attacks because that’s what he needed.

“It’s exactly the same thing the Syrian regime did in Lebanon,” says Chatham House scholar Nadim Shehadi. “It’s a mind game. If you want to beat Assad, you have to disassociate yourself from his make-believe reality just as he has disassociated himself from everyone else’s. Listen to his speeches. They have no bearing on the real world. None at all. But people believe him. That’s the mind game. TheWashington Post wrote that he’s strong because they listened to his speech and he sounded strong. There are idiot journalists in the West who will go to Aleppo, meet a guy with a beard who says he’s going to start an emirate, and they’ll put it in a headline.”

The trouble, of course, is that jihadists really are active in Syria now. This conflict has gone on for so long that Assad’s mind game about making a stand against terror groups has actually become part of reality. It’s not the whole story, but it’s part of it.

I spent much of February and March in Beirut. Almost every single person I interviewed thinks Assad won the mind game and that the White House is allied with Damascus. “The United States has more soft power in the region than before,” Shehadi says, “but you’re going to lose it in Syria because Barack Obama is seen as a supporter of Bashar al-Assad.”

Mosbah Ahdab, a former member of Parliament from Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli, put it to me this way when I met him for lunch: “Assad is receiving arms from Iran and Russia and the Nusra extremists are receiving arms from the Gulf. Why shouldn’t the Free Syrian Army receive weapons? Everybody here is wondering what’s going on.”

The truth is that Washington is just cautious. The Obama administration is horrified by the prospect of another war such as the one in Iraq and only joined the war in Libya because Europe led from in front and Qaddafi didn’t have any friends. Assad has powerful friends in Lebanon and Iran. Widening the war could set the whole region ablaze, especially if Iran and Hezbollah decide to drag in the Israelis, which could be accomplished in all of ten minutes. The US is also afraid of the Syrian aftermath and seems to have no idea what it should do.

Samy Gemayel, son of Lebanon’s former President Amine Gemayel and a current member of Parliament, senses Washington’s confusion. “Before you can know what to do,” he told me in his office in Lebanon’s mountains above Beirut, “you have to know what you want.”

The way he sees it, the US has three strategic options in the region.

First, support the status quo regimes.

Second, support change. “Put your money on the democratic process that could evolve after a period of instability,” he says. “It’s risky. After decades of dictatorship, things can’t evolve rapidly into stable democracy after just one or two years. It takes time to build a real democratic system that puts moderate people in charge. Extremists always take the lead after dictators fall. So this is a long-term option.”

The third strategy, he says, “is to look at the social tissue of these countries and determine if they’re even viable. And if they are not, you partition the region.”

The first option isn’t really an option, at least not in Syria. The US can’t back Assad. He’s a sworn enemy of Americans and a state sponsor of terrorism.

The third option isn’t realistic either. The United States is not going to redraw the map of the Middle East the way the British and French did in the early twentieth century.

Doing nothing likewise isn’t an option. Superpowers can’t do nothing at all when their interests are at stake, not even superpowers with instinctive non-interventionists as president.

“Americans need to decide which strategy they want,” Gemayel says. “Maybe Washington wants a different strategy in each country. But in order to know what you should do, you need to know what you want. If you don’t know what you want, you won’t know what to do. But if you have a strategy and you know where you want to be in twenty years, you’ll know exactly how to deal with someone like Assad.”

The only logical option for the US of those Gemayel lays out is the second – support change. Figuring out how to proceed isn’t rocket science.

Here are two ways:

The first is to go all in and back the moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army right now. Give them guns, training, air support, or some combination. It’s risky, of course, and there are trade-offs. Hezbollah and Iran might escalate. Some American aid would almost certainly end up in the hands of bad actors who will later use it against us and our friends no matter how careful we are. It’s not obvious who’s who in the field right now. But the advantage of such a forthright move is that the anti-Assad phase of the war will wrap up more quickly. Syria will spend less time functioning as a terrorist magnet, and Jabhat al-Nusra will have less time to gain traction and become a formidable post-Assad force.

The second option is to wait for Assad to fall and then back the Free Syrian Army. Everyone in Syria knows the moderate elements of the anti-Assad opposition will clash with the Islamists when the government falls. At that time it will be easy to separate the Islamists from everyone else because the Islamists will be fighting everyone else.

If we go with the second option, Jabhat al-Nusra is not at all likely to take over Syria. The entire country – the Alawites, the Christians, the Druze, the Kurds, the liberal Sunnis, the moderate Sunnis, the nationalist Sunnis, the mainstream conservative Sunnis, and the tribes in the hinterlands – will be against them. And if the West backs all of those factions, that’s it. It’s all over for Jabhat al-Nusra. They’ll be able to blow things up and wreak havoc, for sure, but they will not rule.

And the United States can gain back some of the soft power and moral authority we’re losing right now in the region. Those angry with us for our de facto support of Assad and for our de facto support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will see the United States on their side for a change.

“Assad will fall,” says Jean-Pierre Katrib, a Beirut-based university lecturer and human rights activist. “This is the course of history. Even the Soviet Union, with all its robust organization and rigid infrastructure, only lasted for seven decades. No oppressive regime can forever resist the tide of history which has been moving toward greater freedom and representation. That may sound too philosophical or naïve, but that’s how I see it. Post-Assad Syria won’t be democratic, however. That will take time. It’s going to be messy.”

He’s right, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Post-Assad Syria will be a disaster. There is no getting around it. Just look at the last Arab country the West intervened in. Libya has a serious problem with Islamists and terrorists, but at least they aren’t ruling the country as they were in northern Mali before the French intervened. What would we rather see? A post-Assad Syria that looks like a messier version of Libya? Or a post-Assad Syria that looks like Mali did last year?

“A lot depends on the ability of the international community to shape the next Syrian government,” says Edward Gabriel, the former US ambassador to Morocco and co-founder of the American Task Force for Lebanon. “The US has warned the opposition that the sanctions imposed on the Assad government will remain in place if the opposition assumes power and behaves vindictively toward minorities. The opposition is not happy with the US because of perceived lack of support, but if the US and its allies can more proactively support the opposition and help shape the new Syria, a moderate, religiously tolerant Syria could result.”

“You have to remember,” the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation’s Eli Khoury says, “that liberals are the largest minority. They’re a solid minority and it would be dumb to leave them by themselves, especially when, if allied to the other minorities, they make up a sizable proportion of people.”

It might not work out. Anything can happen in the Middle East, and good initiatives fail on a regular basis, but we should be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from history. Post-Assad Syria may fall apart like post-Hussein Iraq, but it is not destined to do so.

“Iraq was not a defeat,” Chatham House scholar Shehadi says. “It was a victory for the US. Saddam Hussein crumbled like that. The United States was not only fighting Iraq in Iraq. Every regime in the region, including American allies, fought the United States in Iraq. When Assad is gone, the key difference between post-Assad Syria and post-Saddam Iraq is that the whole region was against the fall of Saddam and the whole region favors the fall of Assad. The whole region contributed to the mess in Iraq, while the whole region will collaborate to stabilize Syria.”

Or almost the whole region: Iran will always play a spoiler’s role. But Shehadi’s point is still valid. We don’t have to choose the devil we know or the devil we don’t in Syria. We might get stuck with one or the other, but if we cross our fingers and do everything right, we may well end up with neither.

NEW IRANIAN PRESIDENT’S SON KILLED HIMSELF “OVER FATHER’S EXTREMISM”

By Tom Gross

The leading London-based pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reports today that Iranian President-Elect Hassan Rouhani’s eldest son took his own life in 1992, in protest at his father’s involvement with Iran’s murderous Islamic regime and his father’s close ties to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“I hate your government, your lies, your corruption, your religion, your double acts and your hypocrisy,” wrote the future president’s son in his suicide note, according to the Saudi-owned paper. “I am ashamed to live in such an environment where I’m forced to lie to my friends each day, telling them that my father isn’t part of all of this. Telling them my father loves this nation, whereas I believe this to be not true. It makes me sick seeing you, my father, kiss the hand of Khamenei.”

The official Iranian press, which is controlled by Khamenei, has admitted that Rouhani’s eldest son committed suicide in 1992 but the regime’s media denied it was a political act.

Rouhani has said in the past that his son committed “a great sin” by killing himself, but he still made sure his son was buried in a prime plot in the temple of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini.

 

ROUHANI, AN EXTREMIST WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION SINCE ITS MURDEROUS BEGINNING

Many western media are continuing to report that Rouhani is a “moderate” (for example: “Iran Moderate Wins Presidency by a Large Margin” www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/middleeast/iran-election.html and “Moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani wins Iran’s presidential vote” www.washingtonpost.com/world/iranians-await-presidential-election-results-following-extension-of-polling-hours/2013/06/15/3800c276-d593-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html ) and “centrist” (the BBC’s term).

Here is what they are not telling you:

Rouhani has been involved in the Islamic revolution since its murderous beginning. In 1978 he moved to France to join Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution, who was living in exile in Paris.

He then helped found the Islamic regime in Tehran and for the last three decades has been intimately involved in its security apparatus (which has killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of people).

Among the security positions Rouhani has held:

* He was chairman of the Majles Defense Committee from 1985-1989

* He was deputy commander-in-chief during the Iran-Iraq War from 1988-1989

* He was supreme commander of civil defense from 1985-1990, and commander of the Khatam-ol-Anbiya Headquarters

* His most notable position was Chairman of the Supreme National Security Council (1989-2005), the period in which the Supreme National Security Council helped mastermind the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people (including many elderly Holocaust survivors), and of the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19 U.S. airmen

He is still Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s personal representative on the council, and informed sources say that Khamenei engineered his victory in last weekend’s election as a ruse to fool the West, to help western powers lower their guard – as some western diplomats already appear to be doing.

 

EDUCATED IN SCOTLAND

Like many leading members of other extreme anti-Western organizations such as Hamas and al-Qaeda, Rouhani also has received an extensive Western education in addition to his religious training.

He has a B.A. in law from Tehran University as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in law from Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland.

 

ROUHANI EASILY OUTWITTED THE NUCLEAR NEGOTIATORS FROM GERMANY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN

Intelligence sources say that Rouhani easily outwitted and out-negotiated the European troika of nuclear negotiators from Germany, France and Britain, from 2003-5 when he was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. Indeed Rouhani later boasted of doing so to colleagues in Farsi.

Rouhani has also admitted that he exploited diplomacy to advance his country’s nuclear program. He made clear during a little-known address to the Iranian parliament in 2004 that he viewed Pakistan as a role model for his country’s effort to master the nuclear fuel cycle in the face of world opposition.

 

A READER WRITES…

In response to my dispatch on Sunday concerning Rouhani’s election victory, a reader writes:

Just watching headlines in the major U.S. dailies, first I learned that only conservatives had been allowed to run in Iran’s presidential election. Then I learned that a moderate was ahead. Finally, I’ve learned that a reformist has won.

Things change so fast!

***

I attach three articles below. The first is from 2006 from my former colleague at The Sunday Telegraph, Phil Sherwell; and the second two are by Lee Smith and Michael Freund, both long-time subscribers to this email list.

-- Tom Gross

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

WILL HASSAN ROUHANI REALLY MODERATE IRANIAN POLICIES?

There have been mixed reactions to the victory in the Iranian elections of Hassan Rouhani, the most moderate of the six hardline candidates permitted to stand. (His name is also being spelled Rohani and Rowhani in various Western newspapers.)

72 per cent of Iran’s 52 million eligible voters turned out to vote, with a surprisingly high 50.7% selecting Rouhani. Many newspaper headlines today in the West, including those of The Washington Post and The New York Times, are declaring him to be a “moderate”.

Rouhani, 64, who is associated with the so-called “conservative pragmatist” camp of former Iranian President Rafsanjani, will assume the presidency on August 3.

Many observers both inside and outside Iran regard the mild-talking Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and say he may prove more worrisome than his openly extremist opponents like Saeed Jalili would have been. He is unlikely to curtail Iran’s round-the-clock drive to build a nuclear arsenal, or stop arming the Assad regime and Hizbullah. He may be able to release a few of Iran’s thousands of political prisoners, but not free the most important dissidents.

Rouhani became the favored candidate of Iran’s reformists in this election after the Supreme Leader reduced an initial list of 680 presidential candidates to just six approved hardliners.

A European diplomat told the Agence France Presse news agency on the eve of the election that there are “no shades of grey among the remaining candidates, but only of black”.

U.S. Secretary of State Kerry said that this was “hardly an election by standards which most people in most countries judge free, fair, open, accessible, accountable elections”.

The good news, however, is that as of August 3, the current president, the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, Twelfth-Imam believing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should be out of the picture.

***

A reader writes:

Just watching headlines in the major U.S. dailies, first I learned that only conservatives had been allowed to run in Iran’s presidential election. Then I learned that a moderate was ahead. Finally, I've learned that a reformist has won.

Things change so fast!

 

MIXED REACTIONS TO THE NEW PRESIDENT FROM ISRAEL

Israel’s foreign ministry today released a statement that “Iran will continue to be judged by its actions.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres welcomed the election of Hasan Rouhani, saying he hoped he could bring about a change in Iran’s nuclear policy.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned today against being taken in by Iran’s election of the relatively moderate Rouhani.

“Let us not delude ourselves,” Netanyahu said. “The international community must not become caught up in wishes and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program. It must be remembered that the Iranian ruler, at the outset, disqualified candidates who did not fit his extremist outlook and from among those whose candidacies he allowed was elected the candidate who was seen as less identified with the regime, who still defines the State of Israel in an address last year as ‘the great Zionist Satan.’”

Israel’s center-left Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, said the surprise election results would test the resolve of the West in its bid to deny Iran nuclear weapons.

 

NEW INDEX RANKING WORLD’S TOP ARMIES PLACES ISRAEL JUST THREE AHEAD OF IRAN

Israel’s military may have an internationally outstanding reputation, but a new power index fails to give it a top 10 ranking.

The new global rankings published by GlobalFirepower.com, which list the top 68 militaries in the world, shows the Iranian military has made enormous strides and now ranks just three places behind Israel.

The list takes into account over 40 factors to determine an army’s strength. Israel is placed in this year’s list at number 13 while Iran has rapidly climbed the list to number 16. Turkey, a country that has expressed open hostility to Israel in recent years ranks 11th on the list, ahead of Israel, while the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt is in 12th spot, one place ahead of Israel.

Some analysts believe Israel’s true ranking should be higher since it has not made public its rumored first and (submarine-bound) second strike nuclear capabilities, nor various other strategic assets it has kept secret.

The United States ranks highest on the list followed by Russia in second place, China in third, India fourth and the United Kingdom in fifth place.

 

PEW STUDY: LARGE MAJORITY OF IRANIANS FAVOR SHARIA LAW

A new survey of Iranians published last Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, three days before the elections, found that a large majority of Iranians favor implementing Sharia (Muslim religious) law in Iran – 83 percent are for it as opposed to just 15 % who are against it.

37 % of Iranians said that they believe the Iranian government already adheres to Sharia law “very closely,” while another 45 % say it follows Sharia law “somewhat closely.” Among the 13 % who believe Sharia law is largely not being implemented in Iran, a large majority, 78 %, believe it should be.

Pew carried out its study from February 24 to May 3, involving 1,522 face-to-face interviews with a nation-wide sample of Iranians.

Younger Iranians were less likely to favor a strong influence by religious leaders in politics. Among Iranians aged 18-34, just 35 % are in favor, compared to 46 % for those over 34.

 

NEW POLL: POPULATIONS THROUGHOUT ARAB WORLD AND WEST, MISTRUST IRAN

A separate Pew poll released last week, conducted during the same period among 37,653 respondents in 39 countries, found that majorities in most countries have an unfavorable view of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Among Americans, 69% have an unfavorable opinion of the Iranian regime, compared to just 16% favorable. Among Germans, the figure is an even more stark 85-7 %. Among the French, it’s 88-11 %. And in Britain, the figures are 59-17 %.

In the Middle East, unfavorable views of Iran have intensified since the last such survey conducted before the so-called Arab Spring – probably because of Iran’s backing for Hizbullah and for the Assad regime in Syria. For example, in Turkey, 68% dislike Iran, an increase of 12 points since the last such poll.

Iran is disliked by a huge majority of Jordanians (81-18 %) and Egyptians (78-20 %), and among a clear majority of Palestinians (55-37 %).

Among Sunnis in Lebanon, 93% said they had unfavorable view of Iran compared to just 6% favorable.

The results can be seen here.

 

AMERICAN LEADERS DENOUNCE LATEST ANTI-SEMITIC POST BY IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER

American Jewish and non-Jewish leaders have denounced a Facebook posting that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, made on the eve of Friday’s presidential elections, in which the Iranian leader’s Facebook profile featured a vicious anti-Semitic caricature of a Jew accompanied by allegations that Jews secretly control America and the world.

***

Below, I attach an article by Afshin Shahi, a lecturer in Middle East politics at Britain’s Exeter University, in which he says that Iran is in the throes of an unprecedented sexual revolution, and asks whether it could eventually bring down the regime.

-- Tom Gross

THE MUSIC VIDEOS SPURRING ON THE PRO-WESTERN DEMONSTRATORS

In the first two videos below, anti-government supporters have added music to the clips of the protests. These videos have been watched by millions of Turks on the internet, even though Turkish TV has tried to censor them.

 

HOW THE TURKISH MEDIA ARE CENSORING WHAT IS HAPPENING

 

THE MOSQUES THAT HAVE BECOME FIRST-AID SHELTERS

Erdogan has tried to rally his base by alleging that these “hooligans” were “drinking in mosques.” In fact the mainly secular protestors have sought refuge in mosques, such as the one in this video that has become a first aid center:

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

SYRIA ISSUES ADVISORY AGAINST TRAVEL TO TURKEY

It seems that some officials in Bashar Assad’s regime still have a sense of humor.

The Syrian government yesterday issued a travel advisory to Syrian citizens, warning them against traveling to Turkey, “for their own safety, due to the security conditions in some Turkish cities that have deteriorated over the past days.”

The Syrian foreign ministry added that “Erdogan’s repression of peaceful protest shows how detached he is from reality.”

Syria also called on Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to “stop the violent repression of the protesters, and if he can’t, then to resign.”

The advisory is similar to the one that Turkey issued against travel to Syria two years ago.

In recent days, Syrian state television has broadcast many hours of live footage from Istanbul, where thousands of protesters have clashed for the last three days with riot police who fired teargas and water cannons.

The UN claims the Syrian civil war has left at least 80,000 people dead, although informed observers say the true figure exceeds 120,000, the vast majority of whom have been killed by the regime.

 

MEDIA OBSCURES ISSUES IN TURKEY; NEGLECTS TO MENTION ERDOGAN’S MOSQUE PLANS

Much of the Western media has reported that the disturbances in Turkey in the last few days were caused by the government tearing down trees at a park in Istanbul’s main Taksim Square, in order to build a new shopping mall.

What media such as the BBC and others have not made explicit is that the largely secular crowds were protesting not plans to build a shopping mall but the announcement that Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party was planning to construct a new mosque in the square.

Those media that have mentioned this, such as the Reuters news agency, have buried the information deep in their reports. For example, Reuters mentions Erdogan’s plan to build a new mosque in the square only in the sixth paragraph of its report on Sunday.

Erdogan has increased Islamism through various measures in recent years and tried to curtail secular habits, such as drinking alcohol, in Turkey.

 

JEWISH KIDNEY DONATION SAVES PALESTINIAN BOY

Sarit and Avi Naor, an Israeli couple, on Sunday donated their dead son Noam’s kidney to a 10-year-old Palestinian boy, thereby saving his life. Noam died in an accident last week. The Naor family, who are orthodox Jews, consulted with rabbis, who encouraged them to donate his kidney to save the Palestinian boy. (The second kidney could not be used.)

Israeli President Shimon Peres called the couple to say he was “proud of your contribution to peace”.

“According to Jewish tradition, every person is created in God’s image, and whoever saves a human being serves the essence of Judaism. You have made all of us proud,” Peres told them.

“I hope this case will lead only to peace,” Sarit replied to the president.

The transplant was performed by Israeli doctors at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in the town of Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv. The Palestinian recipient, who comes from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, was previously being treated at another Israeli hospital, Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek.

After the surgery, the recipient’s Palestinian father said he was extremely grateful for the donation, but – such is the hatred for Jews in Palestinian society – his name is being withheld from press reports for his own safety.

 

“ISRAEL” AND “GOD” ARE SUBJECTS CAUSING MOST DEBATE ON WIKIPEDIA

A new study has found that “Israel” and “God,” along with “Adolf Hitler” and “Holocaust,” are among the most fought over entries by users of Wikipedia.

Wired magazine reports that the findings are to be published in a new book coming out next year titled, “Global Wikipedia: International and cross-cultural issues in online collaboration.”

The findings are contained in a chapter titled “The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis.”

The book has gathered data on the number and nature of edits articles are subjected to on the user-written online encyclopedia.

The study has incorporated all the different language versions of the site. The study found, for example, that “Hitler” is a subject of a very large number of edits in the German version of Wikipedia.

 

“GAZA STRIP”: FEMALE SOLDIERS DISCIPLINED FOR POSING FOR SEXY PHOTOS

The Israeli army said on Sunday that it has disciplined a group of female Israeli soldiers who posed for some sexy photos in underwear on their base, and then posted the images on Facebook.

The women were new recruits stationed on a base in southern Israel. The pictures show the soldiers without their uniforms, wearing only lingerie and holding their guns.

The story was yesterday reported around the world. The British tabloid The Sun ran the photos under the headline “Gaza strip!”

The story has also been reported in several Arab media, but many parts of the soldiers’ bodies were censored in the accompanying photographs.

Last year, another group of five female Israeli soldiers were disciplined after they posed for photographs in a barracks room, dressed only in helmets and combat vests.

 

HAMAS: “ABDUCTING SOLDIERS IS AT THE HEART OF OUR PALESTINIAN CULTURE”

Hamas have told Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas that “Kidnapping Israelis is a source of pride, not shame.”

The kidnapping of IDF soldiers “is at the heart of Palestinian culture,” Abu-Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s Izz ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades said, responding to a speech last week in which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called such abductions alien to Palestinian norms.

“Operations to capture enemy soldiers and trade them for our heroic prisoners are at the heart of our people’s culture, and are a source of pride for them and their resistance,” Abu-Ubaida said.

At the “Breaking the Impasse” session of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa in Jordan last month, Abbas pleaded with Israel to release all Palestinian prisoners (including convicted murderers) and thus spare Fatah the need to abduct Israeli soldiers and swap them for Palestinian prisoners, as Hamas did with Gilad Shalit.

“Do you want us to abduct other Shalits?” Abbas asked. “This is not part of our culture.”

Hamas was responding to these remarks.

***

Tom Gross adds: The terrorist (26-year-old Bahar Sa’ad) who was arrested by security forces in Ramallah last week while in the final stages of a deadly Hamas plot, was one of the prisoners Israel released in the Gilad Shalit exchange in 2011 and then deported to Jordan, the Israel Security Agency announced yesterday.

 

U.S. AID WORKER IN EGYPT SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS IN PRISON FOR PROMOTING DEMOCRACY

Robert Becker, 44, from Washington, D.C., was sentenced to two years in prison in Egypt today after being found guilty of illegally promoting democracy.

Becker, together with 43 other NGO workers, was arrested at gunpoint by Egyptian police in December 2011 following a high-profile raid on foreign nonprofit organizations in Egypt.

The other Americans fled to the U.S. embassy and escaped Egypt with the help of the State Department in March 2012.

However, Becker refused to go, saying he would not abandon his Egyptian NGO colleagues.

The other U.S. citizens, including the son of Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, were also found guilty and sentenced in absentia to five years in prison.

Becker posted an internet message before his sentencing today saying he had no help from the U.S. government or embassy, and had been abandoned by the U.S. government.

 

ALICIA KEYS SAYS SHE WILL DEFY BOYCOTT CALLS AND HAPPILY PERFORM IN ISRAEL

Pop star Alicia Keys says she will defy a flurry of calls from anti-Israeli activists in America and Europe and that she is looking forward her performance in Tel Aviv on July 4.

In a statement to The New York Times, Keys said on Friday: “I look forward to my first visit to Israel. Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show.”

Last week, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and anti-Israeli activist Alice Walker, asked Keys to cancel her upcoming Tel Aviv concert appearance.

In an open letter posted online, Walker wrote that Keys was putting herself in “soul danger” by performing in “an apartheid country.”

Walker last year refused to authorize a new Hebrew translation of her acclaimed novel “The Color Purple.”

(For my article on that episode, please see here.)

Pink Floyd star Roger Waters also urged Keys to cancel her appearance.

In March, Waters convinced another pop star, Stevie Wonder, to cancel an appearance at an Israeli fundraising event in Los Angeles.

Keys, 32, is one of the most successful soul singers of the past decade. Her albums have sold over 35 million copies and she has won 14 Grammy Awards.

Other stars to defy boycott calls, and perform in Israel in recent years include Madonna, Paul McCartney, Elton John and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY SCIENTISTS MAY HELP THE BLIND TO SEE

Israeli scientists develop bionic eye for people born blind
By Dan Even
Ha’aretz
May 31, 2013

Israeli scientists have developed a technology that may enable people who are blind from birth to see, with the help of a bionic contact lens.

The new technology, developed by a team at Bar-Ilan University, has yet to receive approval for clinical trials, but its feasibility is currently being tested on seeing individuals, with the aid of a model simulating the bionic lens.

The technology consists of a tiny camera that receives visual information from the environment and transmits signals to a bionic contact lens. The lens passes the signals via electrodes to the cornea and from there to sensory brain areas, generating a stimulus that simulates visual information.

“This technology is good news for humanity, especially in bringing sight to people blind from birth without requiring surgery or damaging other vital senses or organs,” says Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, head of Electrical Engineering and Nanophotonics at Bar-Ilan University, who headed the research team.

In recent years, several companies around the world have developed a bionic eye, but all of them rely on a technology which is of little help to those who are congenitally blind. This system, which bypasses the retina, is intended for those who suffer from retinal degeneration. It consists of a tiny camera implanted in the eye that transmits electric signals directly to the sight nerves attached to the retina, bypassing the retina and generating visual stimulation.

In addition, that system is invasive and requires surgery. It also depends on the stimulation of brain areas that process sight, which are developed in childhood. This makes it unsuitable for those who are blind from birth, since those areas of the brain are not developed in congenitally blind people. The U.S. company Second Sight, the German company Retina Implant AG, the Australian company Bionic Vision and the Israeli company Nano Retina all use this technology.

The visual resolution in existing bionic eyes is about 16 pixels, compared to a million (1 mega) pixels in a normal eye. This enables people with bionic eye implants to distinguish between light and darkness and shadows, but not to make out entire objects or letters, or to be independently mobile.

In contrast, the new Israeli technology is non-invasive and is intended to provide sight to the congenitally blind.

“The new technology attempts to deal with the problems of existing bionic eye technologies to enable even people who are blind from birth, in whom the brain region that processes visual information is not developed, to see,” explains Zalevsky.

The bionic lens stimulates the corneal nerves in the eye’s external part, which are connected in the brain to areas that process sensory information.

The technology consists of a tiny camera with an image compressor and an electric signal amplifier located outside the patient’s body and can be attached to his eye glasses or to a cellular device. Super resolution techniques are used “to encode an image of numerous pixels and compress it into few pixels,” explains Zalevsky.

“The encoding enables compressing static visual sights, reducing the pixels yet allowing transmission of visual information similar to a healthy person’s vision,” he says.

The compressed information is transmitted, after being electrically amplified, from the minute camera by wireless technology to a bionic contact lens in the eye. The proposed lens will have some 10,000 tiny electrodes enabling cornea stimulation. “The cornea is the richest eye part in sensory nerves and has tens of thousands of sensory points to which the tiny electrodes on the lens can connect with,” says Zalevsky.

It’s already possible today to place tiny electrodes, even opaque ones from metallic material, on contact lenses that look transparent. The electrodes stimulate the cornea’s sensory points by transmitting tension, without direct contact with the cornea, due to the compressed signal amplification in the external apparatus.

The stimuli are passed from the cornea via the nervous system to various brain regions that process visual information.

“In this way even a person who is blind from birth can see. In blind people, the sensory areas that receive the information from the cornea are developed, like regions enabling them to read Braille with the sense of touch,” says Zalevsky.

He says the new technology is like “a Braille lens that enables blind people to see in a way similar to Braille reading.”

The Bar-Ilan technology has yet to be approved for clinical testing. But in the last few months the system’s feasibility has been tested on 10 seeing subjects with a model simulating the bionic lens, which transmits stimuli to the finger rather than the cornea.

The scientists have taught the testees to decode simple images and then to transmit, with finger signals, images received by an external camera.

At this state the visual stimulus among the subjects enables spatial vision in black, white and gray, in low 100-pixel resolution.

“But the actual lens will consist of 10,000 electrodes that will enable receiving visual images of much higher resolution and perhaps color in the future,” says Zalevsky.

An article about the technology has recently been published in Optical Engineering and the development will be exhibited in the Israel BioMed conference in June.

***

Tom Gross adds: Among past dispatches on Israeli scientific breakthroughs, please see:

The amazing Israeli innovations Obama will see this week (& Tchaikovsky Flashwaltz!)

 

ISRAELI WRESTLER ATTACKED BY EGYPTIAN RIVAL

Israeli wrestler attacked by Egyptian rival
By Oren Aharoni
Yediot Ahronot (Ynet, Israel)
June 2, 2013

Israeli wrestler Ilana Kartysh won a gold medal Saturday in the Golden Grand Prix tournament in Italy, but her historical achievement was marred by a very unpleasant incident, when she was attacked by her Egyptian rival during the semi-final.

Kartysh, 22, who competed in the 67-kilogram weight category, made it to the semi-final after beating opponents from Hungary and Kazakhstan. There, she experienced a violent incident she won’t be able forget for quite a long time.

In the semi-final, Kartysh met the African champion, Enas Mostafa of Egypt. At the beginning of the match, Mostafa refused to shake hands with her. During the fight, she broke two of the Israeli’s fingers and bit her in the back – causing her to bleed. At the end of the match, unsurprisingly, she refused to shake hands with her again.

“I can’t remember such dirty behavior in sports,” Kartysh told Ynet after the fight. “In wrestling you must shake hands at the beginning of a match and at the end of a match. But not only did she refuse to shake my hand, she even broke my fingers and bit me until I began bleeding.

“On the ground, when she was on top of me, she just bit me. I have her teeth marks on my back, and I began bleeding too,” the Israeli wrestler adds. “Because of her dirty behavior my desire to beat her grew stronger.”

Do you know why she did it?

“From the beginning of the match, when she didn’t come over to shake my hand – I knew something was wrong. I felt some kind of hatred towards me and I don’t know why, maybe it has to do with politics and maybe not, but it’s never happened to me before. She really attacked me.

“I can’t even describe how proud I felt hearing ‘Hatikva’ (Israel’s national anthem) playing in the end.”

Kartysh, who has been trained in recent months by a Canadian coach, one of the best in the field, made it all the way to the final, where she competed against a local participant. She won the last battle as well and stepped on the podium to receive the gold medal, Israel’s first ever in a Golden Grand Prix competition.

 

“THE ‘MUSLIMS-KILLED-BY-THE-WEST’ LIE: YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS”

The ‘Muslims-Killed-by-the-West’ Lie
By Dennis Prager
RealClearPolitics
May 29, 2013

The alleged butcher of the off-duty British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, defended his carving up of a living human being by claiming that he was engaging in “an eye for an eye” because the British army is killing Muslims in Afghanistan.

Normally there is no reason to respond to the justifications offered by terrorists and other murderers of the innocent. But in this case it is important to do so because much of the Muslim world resonates to this argument and because much of the world’s left offers this argument.

This is true even though a large majority of Muslims do not support terror and even though leftists do not support it. Nevertheless, throughout the Muslim and leftist worlds it is believed – and our children are taught this at college – that America, the UK and other countries are targeted by Muslims because we kill Muslims.

The argument is morally perverse and a lie.

First, the U.K. and others are in Afghanistan in order to defend Muslims. Brits and other Westerners are risking their lives, and dying, in that country on behalf of Muslims.

Here’s a question for Muslims and leftists who buy this argument about the West killing Muslims in Afghanistan: Who are we fighting in Afghanistan?

I thought the Brits and Americans were fighting the Taliban, the people who throw acid in Muslim girls’ faces for attending school, the people who murder nurses who inoculate Muslim children against disease. Now, if fighting the Taliban is to be equated with fighting Muslims, this is a real contradiction of everything much of the Islamic world and virtually all of the left have been contending for years – that the Taliban represent a tiny group of extremists in the Muslim world, and that they have so completely perverted Islam that they cannot even be called Muslims.

Well, you can’t have it both ways. If killing the Taliban is the same as “killing Muslims,” then you can’t argue that the Taliban don’t represent Islam or Muslims.

So, on the issue of the West fighting in Afghanistan, the Muslims and the left need to make up their minds: Is killing the Taliban a service or a disservice to Muslims? This is the first and last question both groups need to answer. Everything else is commentary.

Second, if any group here should be entitled to exercise an eye for an eye, wouldn’t it be Christians? It is Christians who are being murdered, and whose communities are being decimated, in the Muslim world. Christians have lived in the Middle East – in places such as Iraq and Egypt – since long before Muhammad was born. It is Christians in Nigeria who are routinely slaughtered by Muslims. And it is Christians in Pakistan who are burned alive in their churches.

And what about the 52 Brits blown up by Muslim terrorists in the U.K. on July 7, 2005? How is it that not one Brit decided to take an eye for an eye against any Muslim?

In the real world – as opposed to the fantasy worlds of the Organization of Islamic States and your local university – it is Christians who are being killed by Muslims, not Muslims who are being killed by Christians.

And there’s a third lie to this claim of Muslims as victims of the West.

Nearly every one of the tens of thousands of Muslims killed in the last few years has been killed by other Muslims – in Syria and Iraq in particular.

There is something of great significance to be learned from this. In the Muslim world today, it is hatred of the West, not love of – or even concern for – fellow Muslims, that animates Muslim atrocities and terror against the West. Just as it is Arab hatred of Israel, rather than Arab love of fellow Arabs that animates the Arab world.

Every Muslim and every Western leftist who perpetrates the lie about the West killing Muslims as the source of Islamist terror abets that terror.

 

IRANIANS MAY SOON REGARD AHMADINEJAD’S EIGHT-YEAR PRESIDENCY AS “THE GOOD OLD DAYS”

Iran’s likely next prez: Worse than A’jad
By Amir Taheri
New York Post
May 31, 2013

Iranians may soon regard Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eight-year presidency as “the good old days” – for the man tipped to be imposed as the next president of the Islamic Republic has unveiled a program that could lead to harsher repression at home and more conflict abroad.

He is Saeed Jalili, who has led the Iranian team in nuclear negotiations with the European Union plus Russia, China and the United States.

A surprise last-minute candidate, Jalili is seen as a protégé of “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, who has prevented rival factions from fielding credible candidates in next month’s presidential election.

Jalili, 47, lost a leg fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. Born in Mashad, Iran’s chief “holy” city, he graduated from a religious university with a PhD in theology. His dissertation was on the Prophet Mohammad’s foreign policy – which, according to Jalili, consisted of preparing jihadists for “destroying the empires of the time” and “opening the path for mankind’s conversion to Islam.”

In his first major speech as presidential candidate, Jalili presented “a massive extension of the realm of Islam” as his top priority. “We are determined to uproot the Zionist regime [Israel] and destroy capitalist and communist systems,” he said. “Our aim is to propagate the Islamic system.”

He also claimed there was “no reason why the Islamic Republic should not lead the world’s Muslims in seeking global power.”

Yet the Islam of which Jalili talks is a special brand. Labeled “pure Mohammadan Islam,” it is based on Shiism plus the teachings of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and “Supreme Guide” Khamenei.

“We are in a position to challenge global powers,” Jalili said. “And if anyone says that we are after creating a great empire, we have no problem with that.”

His analysis is based on the belief that the United States is in “historic retreat” and that other Western democracies lack the will to defy Tehran. Iran’s alliance with Russia will help neutralize the United Nations and prevent it from taking action against Iranian ambitions.

Some in Jalili’s camp also believe that the United States and Western European democracies are heading for internal turmoil symbolized by “the revolt of the poor” and tensions caused by “grievances of Muslim and black minorities.”

This week, his supporters held a special ceremony to honor Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson of Black Muslim leader Malcolm X. According to RAJA News, an agency run by Jalili’s camp, Shabazz had converted to Shiism and was “murdered by CIA agents” in Mexico on May 9 as he was preparing to travel to the Iranian holy city of Qom to train as a mullah.

While the foreign-policy section of Jalili’s program is devoted to his plan to destroy Israel and the United States, his domestic program could destroy the lives of many Iranians. He promises “no mercy” to those who dare question Khamenei’s leadership, and promises to create “a new economy based on self-sufficiency and resistance.”

“We should not become slaves of consumerism” he says. “If need be, we could seal the oil wells and live a simple life.”

His code word is “khod-kafa’i” (self-sufficiency) with demands that Iranians tighten their belts to cope with UN, US and EU sanctions.

Ruh-Allah Husseinian, a Jalili adviser, goes further by asserting that Iran should devote its energies to “spreading the rule of Islam” rather than “building an economy.” As he said at a rally last week, “The shah could have turned Iran into a second Japan . . . But what would have been the good of that? We made revolution to protect Islam and go to war against the infidel powers . . .

“We cannot devote our attention to economic issues and forget Palestine,” Husseinian said. “The elimination of Israel has been and remains an aim of our revolution as fixed by Imam Khomeini.”

Jalili and his group could best be described as “the North Koreans of Islam.” Their aim is to build a wall around Iran while waging low-intensity terrorist war against real or imagined foes abroad. The result could be greater misery for the Iranian people.

However, Iranians could still fight back to prevent Khamenei from imposing his protégé. A discredited electoral process shouldn’t be allowed to produce a suicidal administration that could make even Ahmadinejad look sane.

 

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