A street in Halabja after the attack
ASSAD POISONS THE MINDS OF WESTERN POLICY MAKERS
* Nadim Shehadi: “Assad has diverted attention from what is happening on the ground and focused it on the red line that the U.S. has drawn itself behind and seems unable to enforce. In the meantime, the daily massacres and destruction continues with impunity and the regime is triumphantly declaring victory over its opponents and gleefully celebrating the impotence of the United States. It all started in July last year with the Syrian regime itself throwing the cat among the pigeons by leaking information and acknowledging the existence of chemical weapons for the first time…”
* “Chemical weapons are not the only tool in the regime’s mind games with the West. In the summer of 2011, while teenage female bloggers and peaceful protesters were being arrested by the thousands, the regime released an estimated 1,500 Islamist prisoners from its jails including some connected to al Qaeda that it has a long experience in dealing with to create chaos in both Iraq and Lebanon.”
* Andrew Roberts: “Although both the Axis and Allied powers in World War II considered using poison gas, neither did, possibly through fear of retaliation. Adolf Hitler did use gas to perpetrate his Holocaust against the Jews. But he did not unleash this weapon on the battlefield – not even on the Eastern Front, where he considered that he was fighting against Slavic untermenschen (sub-humans)…”
* In 1987 and 1988, Saddam Hussein launched attacks on 40 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, using new mixtures of mustard gas and Sarin, Tabun and VX. (Ten milligrams of VX on the skin can kill a man, while a single raindrop weighs eighty milligrams.)
* The late Richard Beeston of the Times of London, writing from Halabja in 1988: “Like figures unearthed in Pompeii, the victims of Halabja were killed so quickly that their corpses remained in suspended animation. There was a plump baby whose face, frozen in a scream, stuck out from under the protective arm of a man, away from the open door of a house that he never reached.”
* An estimated 5,000 civilians, the majority of them women and children, died within a few hours at Halabja, through asphyxiation, skin burns and progressive respiratory shutdown. However, a further 10,000 were “blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated,” according to a report by the University of Liverpool. These victims later suffered neurological disorders, convulsions, comas and digestive shutdown. In the years to come, thousands more, the State Department noted, were to suffer from “horrific complications, debilitating diseases, and birth defects” such as lymphoma, leukemia, colon, breast, skin and other cancers, miscarriages, infertility and congenital malformations, leading to many more deaths.
* Tom Gross: Had the West acted forcefully against Saddam then, instead of appeasing him, perhaps he would never have thought he had a green light to later invade Kuwait and then to defy UN WMD inspectors, and the Iraq war may never have been necessary.
* Saudi agents flew an injured Syrian to Britain, where tests showed sarin gas exposure.
* Saudi official: “You can’t as president draw a line and then not respect it.” (Tom Gross: … with all the implications that will have, including giving a green light to the nuclear weapons programs of Iran – and others. And to say that the use of WMDs is now permitted may well, in the future, open the floodgates to many other regimes and terror groups using them.)
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
CONTENTS
1. Welcome to the Middle East, episode 2
2. “Halabja and the BBC” (by Tom Gross, The Weekly Standard, Aug. 27, 2013)
3. “How Assad used chemical weapons to poison debate on Syria” (By Nadim Shehadi, CNN, Aug. 26, 2013)
4. “Syria’s gas attack on civilization” (By Andrew Roberts, Wall St Journal, Aug. 26, 2013)
5. “A veteran Saudi power player works to build support to topple Assad” (Wall St Journal, Aug. 25, 2013)
6. “Obama’s ‘war’ by wordplay” (By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2013)
7. “Syrian rebels receive huge Gulf-financed weapons shipment” (Al Bawaba, Aug. 25, 2013)
WELCOME TO THE MIDDLE EAST, EPISODE 2
I attach six articles below. The authors of three of them – London-based Lebanese academic Nadim Shehadi, British historian Andrew Roberts, and Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer – are subscribers to this list, as is the late foreign editor of the Times of London, Richard Beeston, and some others quoted in these articles.
Another subscriber to this list, Edward Lutwak, writes in The New York Times: There is only one outcome that the United States can possibly favor: an indefinite draw. By tying down Mr. Assad’s army and its Iranian and Hizbullah allies in a war against Al Qaeda-aligned extremist fighters, four of Washington’s enemies will be engaged in war among themselves and prevented from attacking Americans or America’s allies: Chemical weapons were fired by Assad’s brother Maher’s unit.
Welcome to Middle East, episode 2: if you need a drawing to better understand how complicated it can get, see here.
HALABJA AND THE BBC
By Tom Gross
(To be published in The Weekly Standard)
August 27, 2013
Concerning the latest use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, at least the media are reporting on it properly.
In the 1990s, when I interviewed for a job at BBC News in London, I was asked in the final interview stage to provide an example of a news item which I thought the BBC had not covered properly.
I answered “Halabja” and pointed out that when watching the BBC's (then) flagship Nine o'clock 30 minute evening news, Halabja had only been mentioned briefly in the second half of the bulletin, as the sixth item, after a (non)-story about a visit Prince Charles had made that day (I think it was to a factory).
I said, timidly, that I realized that the BBC could not cover every atrocity in the third world, but surely the genocidal gassing of thousands of women and children -- because they were Kurds -- was an event that needed highlighting prominently?
The interview panel -- comprising senior BBC news editors -- looked at each other with amused expressions before one turned to me, and said "Don't be ridiculous. You will be telling us you are a Zionist next." He then said the interview was over. I didn’t get the job.
“THE COST OF NON-INTERVENTION IS NOW ALAS TOO OBVIOUS TO ELABORATE UPON”
How Al-Assad used chemical weapons to poison debate on Syria
By Nadim Shehadi
CNN website
August 26, 2013
There may still be doubts whether the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its own civilian population [Tom Gross – I don’t think there are any doubts at this point: he has already used them on several occasions in the last year] ; but there is however conclusive evidence that it has effectively used the toxic stuff to poison the minds of western policy makers and paralyze the debate over intervention.
This is so much so that it has diverted attention from what is happening on the ground in and focused it on the red line that the U.S. has drawn itself behind and seems unable to enforce. In the meantime, the massacres and destruction continues with impunity and the regime is triumphantly declaring victory over its opponents and gleefully celebrating the impotence of the United States.
It all started in July last year with the Syrian regime itself throwing the cat among the pigeons by leaking information and acknowledging the existence of chemical weapons for the first time.
This was followed by three messages by the Syrian foreign ministry’s spokesperson: One was that the chemical weapons would not be used by the regime against its own population; two was an implication that the weapons would be used against an outside force while the third and most important message was that the regime was securing the weapons so that they do not fall into the hands of the rebels.
This was enough in itself to trigger so many reactions in the west, especially in the US. First and foremost, it evoked the WMD debate over the justification of the Iraq invasion, the effect of that was to create for the Syrian regime a host of unwitting allies among those that were opposed to the Iraq invasion and against any further intervention.
The issue of chemical weapons became a debate about intervention which then triggered reassuring statements by the Obama administration that there was no intention of intervening in Syria except if the red line of using chemical weapons on civilians was crossed. These statements, in August 2012, unintentionally also resulted in reassuring the regime that it could carry on its suppression of the revolt with no fear of intervention as long as chemical weapons were not used.
In May 2012, a couple of months before these statements, the deaths of 108 people in one day at Houla, according to the United Nations was considered as a massacre the repetition of which would warrant an intervention.
The regime emerged from the episode with what it considered as a green light to continue with suppressing the revolt and the tolerance level was raised to an average casualty rate of between 100 and 200 every day, equal to or double that of Houla.
If President Barack Obama’s huffs and puffs are not convincing anymore, their credibility is further undermined by one of his top military men, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently criticized the president for mentioning the red lines and the possibility of intervention.
At the same time Gen. Dempsey was laying down military options so costly and long term that their net effect would further strengthen the hand of the anti-intervention lobby. But there was an even better message from the Pentagon for the Assad regime in November 2012: despite its opposition to intervention, the Pentagon indicated that it could lay down plans for intervention in Syria to secure the chemical weapons stockpiles “to prevent them falling into the wrong hands” should the regime lose control with the emerging chaos.
One can imagine the relief in Damascus when this is interpreted as the U.S. and its military only worrying enough to think of intervention if and when the regime weakens and there is a possibility of its fall.
The flipside of this means that the U.S. cannot see beyond the regime and that it would therefore prefer President Bashar al-Assad to stay. Recent comments by Gen. Dempsey about the opposition being incapable of taking over post al-Assad echo similar statements made last October by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Better still, this meant that the green light and the licence to kill its own citizens and regain control of the country was still in effect no matter what public statements say; and now even that red line about the use of chemical weapons has all but lost its significance.
The regime knows full well it can gain endless time by manipulating the mandates and bureaucratic arrangements of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is also further reassured by seeing the issue become part of party political rivalry.
Chemical weapons are not the only tool in the regime’s mind games with the West. In the summer of 2011, while teenage female bloggers and peaceful protesters were being arrested by the thousands, the regime released an estimated 1,500 Islamist prisoners from its jails including some connected to al Qaeda that it has a long experience in dealing with to create chaos in both Iraq and Lebanon.
This manoeuver also bore fruit and wreaked havoc both on the ground and in the western debate over Syria, all this while the oil still flows to the regime’s port of Tartus through territories held by those very Islamists that give a boost to the regime’s narrative of fighting terrorism.
Now that Syria is back on the international agenda, it may also be the time to re-evaluate what is happening there and look beyond the red herrings that the regime throws at us with the aim of diverting attention from its crimes.
The cost of non-intervention is now alas too obvious to elaborate upon. After more than 100,000 dead, refugees and displaced in the millions and much of the country destroyed, the international community can no longer watch a regime killing its people and do nothing about it.
“IT TAKES A BARBARIAN TO EMPLOY POISON GAS. ASSAD JOINS THE RANKS OF MUSSOLINI, HITLER AND SADDAM HUSSEIN”
Syria’s Gas Attack on Civilization
By Andrew Roberts
The Wall Street Journal
August 26, 2013
‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; but someone still was yelling out and stumbling, and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . . .”
Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” describing his experience of a chlorine-gas attack in World War I, highlights its horror and explains in part the thinking behind the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, which comprehensively outlawed such weapons in 1925.
Only 4% of all battlefield deaths in the Great War had been caused by gas, yet the foul nature of those deaths meant that gas held a particular terror in the public imagination. Since 1925, it has only been countries that are recognized to be outside the bounds of civilization that have taken recourse to it.
The latest outlaw to do so is Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who deployed chemical weapons against opponents of his regime in the suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21, according to press reports and a statement over the weekend by Doctors Without Borders.
The first was Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, which unleashed mustard gas on the Ethiopian subjects of Emperor Haile Selassie in the Abyssinian campaign of 1935-41. The gas dropped by the Italian air force was known by the Ethiopians as “the terrible rain that burned and killed.”
The horrific results wrought upon unarmed civilians, photographed by the International Red Cross, were much the same as Wilfred Owen described in his poem about a comrade on the Western Front who had failed to put his gas-mask on in time: “Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”
Although both the Axis and Allied powers in World War II considered using poison gas, neither did, possibly through fear of retaliation. Adolf Hitler did use gas to perpetrate his Holocaust against the Jews in Europe. But he did not unleash this weapon on the battlefield – not even on the Eastern Front, where he considered that he was fighting against Slavic untermenschen (sub-humans).
His hesitation to use gas on the battlefield was not due to the fact that he had himself been gassed in the trenches of World War I, but because he rightly suspected an overwhelming Allied response to any first use of such a weapon. Winston Churchill actively considered using poison gas both defensively – in June 1940, when Britain faced invasion – and offensively, in July 1944, to aid the attacks on the Ruhr. Fortunately, no invasion came in 1940, and in 1944 he and the British chiefs of staff decided against the use of poison gas, putting moral considerations above the undoubted military benefits.
In the Korean War, the Chinese and North Korean intelligence services alleged that the United States had used aircraft to drop flies, fleas and spiders infected with anthrax, cholera, encephalitis, plague and meningitis in “germ bombs.” In January 1998, documents in the Russian presidential archives conclusively proved that the charges were entirely fraudulent – invented as a way of blaming America for outbreaks of these infectious diseases in their own countries.
Some Marxist fellow-travellers in the West, such as the British academic Joseph Needham, promoted these foul libels, but even they – and, significantly, the disinformation machines of Beijing and Pyongyang – never went so far as to accuse the U.S. of using poison gas. They recognized that no one would believe that United Nations forces in Korea would be so barbaric as to resort to such weapons.
In 1987 and 1988, Saddam Hussein launched attacks on no fewer than 40 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, using new mixtures of mustard gas and various nerve agents such as Sarin, Tabun and VX. (Ten milligrams of VX on the skin can kill a man, while a single raindrop weighs eighty milligrams.) The worst attack came on March 16, 1988, in Halabja.
Iraqi troops methodically divided the town into grids, in order to determine the number and location of the dead and the extent of injuries, thereby enabling them scientifically to gauge the efficacy of various different types of gases and nerve agents. One of the first war correspondents to enter the town afterward, the late Richard Beeston of the Times of London, reported that “Like figures unearthed in Pompeii, the victims of Halabja were killed so quickly that their corpses remained in suspended animation. There was a plump baby whose face, frozen in a scream, stuck out from under the protective arm of a man, away from the open door of a house that he never reached.”
Between 4,000 and 5,000 civilians, many of them women and children, died within a few hours at Halabja, through asphyxiation, skin burns and progressive respiratory shutdown. However, a further 10,000 were “blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated,” according to a report by the University of Liverpool’s Christine Gosden.
These victims later suffered neurological disorders, convulsions, comas and digestive shutdown. In the years to come, thousands more, the State Department noted, were to suffer from “horrific complications, debilitating diseases, and birth defects” such as lymphoma, leukemia, colon, breast, skin and other cancers, miscarriages, infertility and congenital malformations, leading to many more deaths.
It takes a barbarian to employ poison gas. Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler (with Zyklon B) and Saddam Hussein were three such, and today another is Assad. Yet the Chinese and Russians continue to excuse and defend him, and the White House ties itself into rhetorical knots in order to avoid having to topple him.
It’s true that in this civil war, shrapnel and Kalashnikov bullets have killed many more of the 100,000 Syrians than has poison gas. Nevertheless, it is right that the use of poison gas by Assad be singled out for special condemnation.
Wilfred Owen, who was himself killed a week before the end of the Great War, recalled in “Dulce et Decorum Est” his gassed comrade’s “white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” and how he heard “the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.” There is a long and honorable history of the civilized world treating those dictators who use poison gas as qualitatively different from the normal ruck of tyrants whose careers have so stained the 20th and 21st centuries.
President Obama, who talks endlessly of the importance of civilized values, must now uphold this one.
QATAR IS “NOTHING BUT 300 PEOPLE…AND A TV CHANNEL,” THE SAUDI PRINCE YELLED INTO A PHONE
A Veteran Saudi Power Player Works To Build Support to Topple Assad
By Adam Entous, Nour Malas, Margaret Coker
The Wall Street Journal
August 25, 2013
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud maneuvers behind the scenes to defeat the Syrian regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies.
Officials inside the Central Intelligence Agency knew that Saudi Arabia was serious about toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud to lead the effort.
They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout.
Prince Bandar – for two decades one of the most influential deal makers in Washington as Saudi ambassador but who had largely disappeared from public view – is now reprising his role as a geopolitical operator. This time it is to advance the Saudi kingdom’s top foreign-policy goal, defeating Syrian President Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.
Prince Bandar has been jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime, according to Arab, American and European officials.
Meanwhile, an influential protégé, current Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir, is leading a parallel campaign to coax Congress and a reluctant Obama administration to expand the U.S. role in Syria.
The conflict there has become a proxy war for Middle East factions, and Saudi Arabia’s efforts in Syria are just one sign of its broader effort to expand its regional influence. The Saudis also have been outspoken supporters of the Egyptian military in its drive to squelch the Muslim Brotherhood, backing that up with big chunks of cash.
The Saudi lobbying is part of the calculus as the U.S. weighs its options in the wake of a suspected chemical attack last week. Damascus suburbs allegedly targeted are at the heart of what the Saudis now call their “southern strategy” for strengthening rebels in towns east and south of the capital.
As part of that, intelligence agents from Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Jordan and other allied states are working at a secret joint operations center in Jordan to train and arm handpicked Syrian rebels, according to current and former U.S. and Middle Eastern officials.
The CIA has put unspecified limits on its arming efforts. But the agency has been helping train rebels to better fight. Earlier this year it also began making salary payments to members of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, U.S. and Arab officials said. There are now more CIA personnel at the Jordan base than Saudi personnel, according to Arab diplomats.
Jordan denied any training or arming of Syrian rebels was taking place in the country, something Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said would be contrary to Jordan’s national interest and policy “to remain neutral” on Syria.
“There are no military bases in Jordan for the Syrian opposition…There are no bases of any sort. This is inconsistent with the Jordanian position that calls for a political solution to the Syrian crisis,” Mr. Momani said. He added that Jordanian King Abdullah has said firmly “Jordan will never be a base of training to anyone and will never be the launching base of any military action against Syria.”
For decades, wasta has been Prince Bandar’s calling card. The prince also wins U.S. officials’ trust in part because his background is, in its own way, so American. Though his father was a Saudi crown prince, his mother was a commoner, and he rose through the crowded royal ranks by force of will.
He attended U.S. Air Force officer training in Alabama, did graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University and worked his way into the good graces of several U.S. presidents. He has painted his personal airplane in Dallas Cowboy colors, and his son attended the pro-football draft this year at the table of owner Jerry Jones. Prince Bandar declined to be interviewed for this article.
Not everyone in the Obama administration is comfortable with the new U.S. partnership with the Saudis on Syria. Some officials said they fear it carries the same risk of spinning out of control as an earlier project in which Prince Bandar was involved – the 1980s CIA program of secretly financing the Contras in Nicaragua against a leftist government. The covert program led to criminal convictions for U.S. operatives and international rebukes.
“This has the potential to go badly,” one former official said, citing the risk weapons will end up in the hands of violent anti-Western Islamists.
Many top U.S. intelligence analysts also think the Syrian rebels are hopelessly outgunned by Assad allies Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group, according to congressional officials and diplomats.
Prince Bandar and Mr. Jubeir have told the U.S. they don’t necessarily expect a victory by the Syrian rebels anytime soon, but they want to gradually tilt the battlefield in their favor, according to American officials who have met with them.
The Saudi plan is to steadily strengthen carefully selected groups of rebel fighters not in the radical Islamist camp, with the goal of someday seeing them in control in Damascus. Difficult as such an effort is proving to be, the Saudi thinking goes, not trying would risk a future in which Syria was dominated either by extremist Muslims from among the rebels or by Iran, Riyadh’s arch rival in the quest for regional dominance.
In Jordan, officials said they couldn’t yet tell whether the joint operation has reaped success in sifting moderate Syrian rebels from the extremists. Some said they couldn’t rule out the possibility some Saudi funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar. U.S. officials said they couldn’t rule out that mistakes would be made.
Saudi King Abdullah, whose mother and two of whose wives hail from a cross-border tribe influential in Syria, tried for a decade to woo Mr. Assad away from Iran’s sway. He failed. The king’s attitude hardened in 2011 after the Assad regime, rebuffing the king’s personal advice on how to ease tension, cracked down brutally on political opponents and did so during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The king then decided to do whatever was needed to bring down Mr. Assad, American and Arab diplomats said.
Qatar also wanted the autocratic Assad regime out. While the Saudi princes initially were divided about how to proceed, some worrying that armed insurgents in Syria could later threaten Saudi stability, Qatar intervened quickly and gained influence with the rebels, according to Arab and American officials.
The Saudis stepped up rebel support in early 2012, at first by joining forces with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to fund what was then the main opposition group, the Syrian National Council. Saudi Arabia quickly soured on the effort because the Council wasn’t buying arms with the money, diplomats said, and began to push for directly arming the insurgents. It also began to work with Qatar through a command center in Turkey to buy and distribute arms.
But tensions grew over which rebels to supply. Both Saudi and American officials worried Qatar and Turkey were directing weapons to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Qatari and Turkish officials denied they favored certain rebel groups.
The Saudi king also was uncomfortable at sharing control with Qatar, a Persian Gulf rival. At a meeting to coordinate arms shipments last summer, Prince Bandar took a swipe at Qatar, a tiny nation with one of the region’s largest broadcasters.
Qatar is “nothing but 300 people…and a TV channel,” the Saudi prince yelled into a phone, according to a person familiar with the exchange. “That doesn’t make a country.” Saudi officials declined to comment on the exchange.
It marked the start of a new, more aggressive drive by Prince Bandar, and a Saudi shift to operate out of Jordan instead of Turkey. In July 2012, the Saudi king – his uncle – doubled the prince’s duties; already head of the national-security office, Prince Bandar took over the Saudi General Intelligence Agency as well.
“His appointment to head intelligence marked a new phase in Saudi politics,” said Nohad Machnouk, a Lebanese legislator with close ties to the Saudi leadership.
Some critics of Prince Bandar within the kingdom and in Washington described him as inclined to be impulsive and overoptimistic about what he can achieve. Defenders said his enthusiasm and drive were what made him the king’s go-to problem solver.
The Saudi ambassador, Mr. Jubeir, has long been courting members of Congress who could pressure the administration to get more involved in Syria. He found early support from Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
He also reached out to centrists, helping set up a rare one-on-one meeting for one of them, then-Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), with King Abdullah in Riyadh. Mr. Nelson said he told the king that if regional powers pulled together with a common strategy, it would be easier for the U.S. to become a partner.
Mr. Jubeir used his access to policy makers, including the president, to push the message that U.S. inaction would lead to greater Middle East instability down the road, American officials said.
A senior U.S. intelligence official called the Saudis “indispensable partners on Syria” and said their efforts influenced American thinking. “No one wants to do anything alone,” the official said in explaining why the partnership expanded.
The Saudi goal was to get the U.S. to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned base in Jordan. Then-CIA chief David Petraeus was an early backer of the idea, said Arab and U.S. officials, and helped clinch Jordanian military support for the base. Gen. Petraeus declined to comment.
Prince Bandar met with the uneasy Jordanians about such a base. His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ “ said a person familiar with the meetings.
Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia gave the Saudis strong leverage, officials in the region and the U.S. said. They said that with the blessing of the Jordanian king, an operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition then started arriving, Arab officials said.
Prince Bandar sent his younger half-brother and then-deputy national-security adviser, Salman bin Sultan, to oversee the operation in Jordan. Some regional officials took to calling him “mini-Bandar.” Earlier this summer, Prince Salman was elevated to deputy defense minister.
Mr. Petraeus in mid-2012 won White House approval to provide intelligence and limited training to Syrian rebels at the base, including in the use of arms provided by others. Saudi and Jordanian agents began vetting the fighters to be trained, said Arab diplomats and a former U.S. military official.
Prince Bandar has largely stayed out of Washington but held meetings with U.S. officials in the region. One was in September 2012. Sens. McCain and Graham, who were in Istanbul, met him in an opulent hotel suite on the banks of the Bosporus.
Mr. McCain said he made the case to Prince Bandar that the rebels weren’t getting the kinds of weapons they needed, and the prince, in turn, described the kingdom’s plans. The senator said that in succeeding months he saw “a dramatic increase in Saudi involvement, hands-on, by Bandar.”
In September and October, the Saudis approached Croatia to procure more Soviet-era weapons. The Saudis got started distributing these in December and soon saw momentum shift toward the rebels in some areas, said U.S. officials, Arab diplomats and U.S. lawmakers briefed on the operation. Officials in Croatia denied it was involved in weapons sales.
That winter, the Saudis also started trying to convince Western governments that Mr. Assad had crossed what President Barack Obama a year ago called a “red line”: the use of chemical weapons. Arab diplomats say Saudi agents flew an injured Syrian to Britain, where tests showed sarin gas exposure. Prince Bandar’s spy service, which concluded in February that Mr. Assad was using chemical weapons, relayed evidence to the U.S., which reached a similar conclusion four months later. The Assad regime denies using such weapons.
After Mr. Petraeus’s November resignation over an affair, his job was handled by his deputy, Michael Morell, who privately voiced skepticism the agency could make sure any arms supplied by the U.S. wouldn’t end up with hard-line Islamists, said congressional officials.
Ultimately, the new CIA chief was John Brennan, whose closest Saudi confidant when he was White House counterterrorism adviser was also focused on the risk of inadvertently strengthening al Qaeda. Since moving to the CIA, Mr. Brennan has been in periodic contact by phone with Prince Bandar, officials said.
Despite its caution, the CIA expanded its role at the base in Jordan early this year. At that point, though, the U.S. still wasn’t sending weapons.
In early April, said U.S. officials, the Saudi king sent a strongly worded message to Mr. Obama: America’s credibility was on the line if it let Mr. Assad and Iran prevail. The king warned of dire consequences of abdicating U.S. leadership and creating a vacuum, said U.S. officials briefed on the message.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, who was the first Saudi official to publicly back arming the rebels, followed with a similar message during a meeting with Mr. Obama later that month, the officials said.
By late spring, U.S. intelligence agencies saw worrisome signs that Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, in response to the influx of Saudi arms, were ramping up support to Mr. Assad. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed arming the rebels, and Mr. Jubeir and Prince Bandar turned their attention to skeptics on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
They arranged a trip for committee leaders to Riyadh, where Prince Bandar laid out the Saudi strategy. It was a reunion of sorts, officials said, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) warmly scolding Prince Bandar about his smoking.
Mr. Obama in June authorized the CIA to provide arms at the Jordanian base, in limited quantity and firepower, on the understanding the U.S. could reverse course if there weren’t sufficient controls on who got them, congressional officials said.
Prince Bandar flew to Paris soon after for talks with French officials. In July he was in Moscow to meet with one of Mr. Assad’s prime supporters, President Vladimir Putin.
A generation ago, Prince Bandar, in a role foreshadowing his current one on behalf of Syrian opposition, helped the CIA arm the Afghan rebels who were resisting occupation by Soviet troops.
Arab diplomats said that in meeting with Russian officials this summer, the prince delivered the same message he gave the Soviets 25 years ago: that the kingdom had plenty of money and was committed to using it to prevail.
This past weekend, as the White House weighed possible military attacks against Mr. Assad, Saudi Arabia and its allies pressed Mr. Obama to take forceful action in response to the chemical-weapons reports, according to a U.S. official. The Arab message, according to another official, was: “You can’t as president draw a line and then not respect it.”
– Siobhan Gorman, Julian E. Barnes and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this article.
“IN THE END, THIS ISN’T ABOUT LANGUAGE. IT’S ABOUT LEADERSHIP”
Obama’s “war” by Wordplay
By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
August 8, 2013
Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” – the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of the country.
Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano’s famous formulation, terror attacks are now “man-caused disasters.” And the “global war on terror” is no more. It’s now an “overseas contingency operation.”
Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of “workplace violence.”
The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack – and for days it is waved off as nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?
Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue. Second, because if you keep lying to the American people, they may seriously question whether anything you say – for example, about the benign nature of NSA surveillance – is not another self-serving lie.
And third, because leading a country through yet another long twilight struggle requires not just honesty but clarity. This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Just Tuesday night, explaining the U.S. embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from “violent extremism.”
The word “extremism” is meaningless. People don’t devote themselves to being extreme. Extremism has no content. The extreme of what? In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of a radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and to its murderous quest for dominion over all others.
But for President Obama, the word “Islamist” may not be uttered. Language must be devised to disguise the unpleasantness.
Result? The world’s first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers and ever more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.
This would all be comical and merely peculiar if it didn’t reflect a larger, more troubling reality: The confusion of language is a direct result of a confusion of policy – which is served by constant obfuscation.
Obama doesn’t like this terror war. He particularly dislikes its unfortunate religious coloration, which is why “Islamist” is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies – “open hand,” “mutual respect” – have yielded nothing. The war remains. Indeed, under his watch, it has spread. And as commander in chief he must defend the nation.
He must. But he desperately wants to end the whole struggle. This is no secret wish. In a major address to the National Defense University just three months ago he declared “this war, like all wars, must end.” The plaintive cry of a man hoping that saying so makes it so.
The result is visible ambivalence that leads to vacillating policy reeking of incoherence. Obama defends the vast NSA data dragnet because of the terrible continuing threat of terrorism. Yet at the same time, he calls for not just amending but actually repealing the legal basis for the entire war on terror, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Well, which is it? If the tide of war is receding, why the giant NSA snooping programs? If al-Qaeda is on the run, as he incessantly assured the nation throughout 2012, why is America cowering in 19 closed-down embassies and consulates? Why was Boston put on an unprecedented full lockdown after the marathon bombings? And from Somalia to Afghanistan, why are we raining death by drone on “violent extremists” – every target, amazingly, a jihadist? What a coincidence.
This incoherence of policy and purpose is why an evacuation from Yemen must be passed off as “a reduction in staff.” Why the Benghazi terror attack must be blamed on some hapless Egyptian-American videographer. Why the Fort Hood shooting is nothing but some loony Army doctor gone postal.
In the end, this isn’t about language. It’s about leadership. The wordplay is merely cover for uncertain policy embedded in confusion and ambivalence about the whole enterprise.
This is not leading from behind. This is not leading at all.
FOUR HUNDRED TONNES OF WEAPONS WERE SMUGGLED INTO SYRIA FROM TURKEY ON SUNDAY
Syrian rebels receive huge Gulf-financed weapons shipment
August 25, 2013
Al Bawaba
www.albawaba.com/news/syria-rebels-weapons-gulf-515779
Four hundred tonnes of weapons were smuggled into Syria from Turkey on Sunday in a bid to boost opposition capabilities, rebel sources told Reuters, following a suspected chemical weapons strike on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus last Wednesday.
The source told Reuters the Gulf-financed shipment, which came from the Turkish province of Hatay in the past 24 hours, was one of the single biggest shipments of weapons to reach rebel forces since the uprising against President Bashar Assad turned deadly more than two years ago.
“Twenty trailers crossed from Turkey and are being distributed to arms depots for several brigades across the north,” Mohammad Salam, a rebel operative who witnessed the crossing from an undisclosed location in Hatay, told Reuters.
A senior official in the Gulf and Western backed Supreme Military Council, an umbrella group for rebel troops, confirmed the arms delivery, and said that weapons airlifts into Turkey have significantly increased since rebel held Sunni neighbourhoods and suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus were allegedly gassed last Wednesday.
Syrian opposition sources say between 500 and well over 1,000 civilians were killed this week by deadly nerve gas fired by pro-Assad forces. The attack caused international outrage following video footage of young children killed by the alleged gas attacks went viral on the internet. It has increased calls abroad for military intervention after over two years of international inertia over Syria’s conflict.
Syrian authorities sought to avert blame on Saturday by saying its government troops discovered chemical weapons in suburban Damascus tunnels frequently used by rebels. However, Western powers cited preliminary evidence indicating that troops loyal to the Syrian government were behind the chemical attack, and the United States is repositioning naval forces in the Mediterranean to give President Barack Obama the option of a military strike in Syria, should it be required.
Iran’s foreign minister said the Syrian government had told Tehran it would allow U.N. inspectors to visit areas reportedly affected by chemical weapons, Iran’s Press TV said on Sunday, according to Reuters. This follows hints made by Syrian minister of information Omran Zoabi that the UN team, already in Damascus, would not be allowed access to the chemical weapons site as it was not previously agreed on by the UN and the Syrian government.
Syrian citizens trying to identify dead bodies, after the latest poisonous gas attack
* Extremist Member of the British Parliament tells Iranian TV: Israel gave Al Qaeda chemical weapons to use in Syria
* Syrian child refugees now number over one million
* In other under-reported news, the Associated Press reports that Islamist extremists slit the throats of at least 44 Christian villagers in northeast Nigeria and gouged out the eyes of some victims who survived
***
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
There is another dispatch on the Syrian use of chemical weapons here: “Like figures unearthed in Pompeii”.
CONTENTS
1. The West’s record of appeasement in dealing with evil
2. Israel: Chemical weapons were fired by Assad’s brother’s unit
3. Syrian child refugees now number over one million, with 2 m. more inside Syria
4. A map of the 23 places the U.S. may bomb if there’s a Syria no-fly zone
5. Report: 31 Palestinians killed in Syrian chemical strike
6. Extremists slit throats of 44 in Northeast Nigeria
7. Washington Post staff trapped as Egyptian-Americans denounce them
8. The Middle East explained in a letter to The Financial Times
9. British MP on Iranian TV blames Israel for Assad’s chemical attack
10. Letters to God cleared from Western Wall as Jewish New Year approaches
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
THE WEST’S RECORD OF APPEASEMENT IN DEALING WITH EVIL
“Despite graphic media coverage, American policymakers, journalists, and citizens are extremely slow to muster the imagination needed to reckon with evil. Ahead of the killings, they assume rational actors will not inflict seemingly gratuitous violence. They trust in good-faith negotiations and traditional diplomacy. Once the killings start, they assume that civilians who keep their heads down will be left alone. They urge ceasefires and donate humanitarian aid.”
-- Samantha Power, in her book “A problem from Hell: America and the age of genocide.”
***
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Tom Gross writes:
This was, of course, written long before Samantha Power became the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. She wasn’t even present on Wednesday during the emergency UN Security Council meeting on the chemical attack in Syria. (She was on a trip to Ireland.)
By doing nothing, the West has simply made the situation much worse. If they had acted decisively in 2011, Assad could have been forced to the negotiating table relatively easily.
Now at least 150,000 civilians have died and millions more turned into refugees, with violence spilling over into Lebanon and Iraq. Obama has allowed Iran and Russia to gain the upper hand, and forced secular Syrians to start supporting Islamist extremists. There are also now at least 10,000 Hizbullah and Iranian fighters inside Syria helping Assad’s death squads.
Some, such as John McCain (and myself), have consistently argued since 2011 that the West ought to act, both for humanitarian and for strategic reasons.
Now it will be much harder. But waiting any longer will only make the situation far worse (One million dead? Two million dead? The use of WMDs becoming the norm both in Syria and beyond? The complete disintegration of Iraq and Lebanon?), and make it harder to act when the West will eventually be forced to act.
And if the West wants to bring pressure to bear on the murderous Assad regime, they need to act in a serious way against the government that is really controlling Assad and encouraging his use of chemical weapons – Iran.
ISRAEL: CHEMICAL WEAPONS WERE FIRED BY ASSAD’S BROTHER’S UNIT
The chemical weapons used by the regime of President Bashar Assad last Wednesday to kill many hundreds of Syrian civilians were fired by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, which is under the command of the president’s brother, Maher Assad, according to Israeli intelligence.
The nerve gas shells were fired from a military base in a mountain range to the west of Damascus, Israel TV reported, citing Israeli officials.
The embattled regime has concentrated its vast stocks of chemical weaponry in just two or three locations, the report said, under the control of Syrian Air Force Intelligence, itself reporting to the president.
Israel is increasingly concerned about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and the possibility of these weapons falling into still more dangerous hands than those of Assad.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran was closely watching how the world would deal with the attack.
“Syria has become Iran’s testing ground, and Iran is closely watching whether and how the world responds to the atrocities committed there by its client state Syria and its proxy Hizbullah against innocent civilians in Syria,” he said.
The use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians on Wednesday “proves yet again that we cannot permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Netanyahu added.
SYRIAN CHILD REFUGEES NOW NUMBER OVER ONE MILLION, WITH 2 M. MORE INSIDE SYRIA
The UN announced last week that the number of children forced to flee Syria has reached one million, with a further two million children displaced within the country.
The rich gulf Sunni Arab states who have more money than they know what to do with, are letting their fellow Sunnis (including tens of thousands of children) sleep rough on city streets in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere.
Instead of buying yet another European football team and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new players, they might want to help build housing for some of the children sleeping on the streets, wastegrounds, and sides of roads all over Lebanon.
HERE’S A MAP OF THE 23 PLACES THE U.S. MAY BOMB IF THERE’S A SYRIA NO-FLY ZONE
Here.
REPORT: 31 PALESTINIANS KILLED IN SYRIAN CHEMICAL STRIKE
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports that at least 31 Palestinians died in the chemical weapons attack that is said to have killed up to 1,300 civilians in the suburbs of the Syrian capital of Damascus on Wednesday.
Eleven members of a family from the West Bank city of Jenin were among the victims, according to a relative of the al-Hurani family.
Ma’an cited another relative as saying 20 members of a Palestinian family from Nazareth in northern Israel had also been killed in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on Wednesday.
EXTREMISTS SLIT THROATS OF 44 IN NORTHEAST NIGERIA
In other under-reported news, the Associated Press reports that Islamist extremists killed at least 44 Christian villagers in continuing attacks in an Islamic uprising in northeast Nigeria.
The attackers raided Dumba village in Borno state before dawn and slit their victims’ throats -- a new strategy since gunfire attracts security forces.
The Associated Press reports that the attackers gouged out the eyes of some victims who survived.
WASHINGTON POST STAFF TRAPPED AS EGYPTIAN-AMERICANS DENOUNCE THEM
Washington Post staff were trapped in the main lobby of their Washington, D.C. headquarters last Thursday as hundreds of Egyptian-American protesters blocked the entrance to the building, while chanting “The Washington Post is lying” and “The Washington Post: Stop Supporting Terrorists and the Muslim Brotherhood!”
“A large group of Egyptian protesters rallied in front of The Washington Post offices on Thursday afternoon, registering their support for military leader Gen. Abdel Fatah el-Sisi and their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood,” reported the Post. The Post reported that its main lobby “was shut down and no one was allowed in or out” during the demonstration.
Many of the Egyptian-Americans were Copts criticizing the failure of The Washington Post to accurately cover events in Egypt, and to properly report the attacks on Christian churches by the Muslim Brotherhood.
You can watch a video of the incident here:
There was also a sizeable and noisy demonstration outside the White House, where protestors chanted “Obama Stop Supporting The Muslim Brotherhood.”
They carried signs with Al Jazeera’s logo with a black mark through it. As I reported previously in these dispatches, Al Jazeera is under investigation in Egypt and may be permanently banned in the country, for what many say is its support of Islamists.
THE MIDDLE EAST EXPLAINED IN A LETTER TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES (LAST FRIDAY)
BRITISH MP ON IRANIAN TV BLAMES ISRAEL FOR ASSAD’S CHEMICAL ATTACK
The soon-to-be-reelected Member of the British Parliament for the heavily Muslim constituency of Bradford West, says Israel gave Al Qaeda chemical weapons to use in Syria.
George Galloway was speaking on the Iranian government propaganda television station Press TV, that answers to that “moderate” President Rouhnai:
Galloway, also known as “Assad’s Man in London” (and before that as “Saddam’s Man in London”) has long been accused of making vile anti-Semitic remarks.
LETTERS TO GOD CLEARED FROM WESTERN WALL AS JEWISH NEW YEAR APPROACHES
Jerusalem’s Western Wall was yesterday cleared of notes “to God” left there by worshippers.
Shmuel Rabinowitz, Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall, says it is important to make sure there’s always room for new notes.
Millions of people a year (Jews and non-Jews alike) visit the Western Wall and leave written prayers and notes on small pieces of paper which they wedge into the cracks of the wall in the ancient Jewish temple stones.
To protect the privacy of these notes, they are never read or fully counted by those who collect them, but every few months they are taken by rabbis to be buried underground in Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives.
[Notes above by Tom Gross]
Planes almost never turn around: Cancer patient Inbar Chomsky with her recovered passport
* A packed Israeli El Al plane – with the support and cheers of everyone on-board – turns around to pick up an 11-year-old cancer patient
* UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admits that his organization is biased against Israel
* Getting high beyond the Green Line: Shortage of soft drugs across Israel leads young secular Tel Aviv residents to settlements, “where residents fearlessly grow marijuana”
* Belgium forces Israeli tennis team to be fined 10,000 euros for refusing to play on Yom Kippur and asking to postpone the game by one day
* IBM buys Israeli company that protects Bank of America, HSBC, PayPal and RBS, from cyber threats, for almost $1 billion
***
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach five articles about Israel. The first is a happy story for once, and the fifth will also be regarded by some as happy.
The third is an economic story, and I would like to add that on Thursday, Moody’s affirmed Israel’s A1 rating, citing the resilience and growth of Israel’s economy.
The rating agency said that Israel’s “high-tech niche and entrepreneurial culture have continued to underpin its latent dynamism,” and remarked that official reserves have risen “to record high levels.”
Earlier this year, the world’s leading investor, Warren Buffett, said that Israel is the “most promising investment hub” in the world outside the United States.
Among recent purchases of Israeli start-ups was the purchase by Google for over one billion dollars of the Israeli mobile mapping application Waze.
CONTENTS
1. “Pilots turn packed passenger jet around to get cancer-stricken girl, 11, and take her to summer camp after she lost passport” (By Ryan Gorman, Daily Mail, Aug. 17, 2013)
2. “UN chief admits bias against Israel” (By Omri Efraim, Ynet, Aug. 16, 2013)
3. “IBM buys Israeli cybersecurity startup company for millions” (Israel HaYom, Aug. 15, 2013)
4. “Israeli tennis team fined for refusing to play on Yom Kippur” (By Elad Benari
Israel National News, Aug. 12, 2013)
5. “Getting high beyond Green Line” (By Itamar Fleishman, Ynet, Aug. 16, 2013)
ARTICLES
PILOTS TURN PACKED PASSENGER JET AROUND TO GET CANCER-STRICKEN GIRL, 11
Pilots turn packed passenger jet around to get cancer-stricken girl, 11, and take her to summer camp after she lost passport
By Ryan Gorman
Daily Mail (London)
August 17, 2013
* Passengers and airline staff were initially devastated about having to leave the girl behind, even crying as she was led off the flight
* Her passport was found in another camper’s backpack minutes after departure from the gate
* Everyone agreed the plane had to go back, passengers cheered when the girl was taken back aboard
An Israeli airline – with the support of everyone on-board – turned around a plane to pick up an 11-year-old cancer patient.
All set to fly to New York August 7 to attend a camp for paediatric cancer patients, Inbar Chomsky, was taken off an El-Al Airlines flight after her passport went missing.
Despite a frantic search by airline staff, passengers and the group Chomsky was travelling with, her passport was gone, flight attendants had no choice but to remove the sick girl.
Tears in their eyes, everyone said good bye to the devastated young girl after a half hour search aided by airline staff and passengers failed to turn up the girl’s passport, according to Ha’aretz.
‘El Al sadly called her mother to tell her that Inbar’s passport was lost and that the girl, who had been fighting illness so valiantly, would not be able to fly to Camp Simcha’ Rabbi Yaakov Pinsky, director of of the Israeli branch of Chai Lifeline wrote in Yeshiva World News. ‘What a horrible experience for an 11 year old girl.’
Minutes after the doors closed and the plane taxied away from the gate, a fellow camper looking through another girl’s backpack found Chomsky’s passport and told flight attendants, according to Ha’aretz.
The plane’s pilots immediately stopped the plane, according to Haaretz, and after about 45 minutes were able to convince air traffic control to let them return to the gate to pick Chomsky up, Pinsky wrote.
Still overcoming her disappointment while at the gate with Elad Maimon, program director of the Israeli branch of Chai Lifeline, Chomsky and others watched in disbelief as the plane turned around, said Ha’aretz. ‘The flight attendants could not believe their eyes,’ Maimon told the paper. ‘They told me they had never seen such a thing.’
‘Planes rarely return to the gate after departing, read an El Al statement, continuing that ‘after consulting with El Al crew on the plane and El Al staff at the airport the decision was made and the plane returned to pick up Inbar.’
Passengers cheered and cried, wrote Pinsky, saying they shared ‘Inbar’s happiness and excitement,’ and calling it ‘one of the greatest moments’ he has ever witnessed.
Located in the Catskill Mountains roughly two hours north of New York City, an area long-popular with Jewish tourists, Camp Simcha is a summer camp meant to uplift the spirits of children living with cancer and other similar medical problems, according to its website. Campers are medically supervised and take part in sports, carnivals, talent shows, helicopter rides and other activities.
Chai Lifeline works with Camp Simcha to bring children with pediatric cancer to the camp, among other activities.
BAN KI-MOON ADMITS UN’S BIAS AGAINST ISRAEL
UN chief admits bias against Israel
By Omri Efraim
Yediot Ahronot (Ynet)
August 16, 2013
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with students at the UN headquarters in Jerusalem on Friday afternoon, and admitted that his organization was biased against Israel.
Responding to a student who said Israelis felt their country was discriminated against in the international organization, Ban confirmed that there was a biased attitude towards the Israeli people and Israeli government, stressing that it was “an unfortunate situation.”
Ban met with the students as part of the UN Model international academic convention initiated by students at the College of Management.
He told them he had come to the region for the sixth time to express his support for the renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. “I have never been this optimist,” he said, adding that the international community had never had such expectations and hope that the peace process would reach a solution.
Addressing the attitude towards Israel, Ban said that the Jewish state was a UN member and should therefore be treated equally like all other 192 member states. Unfortunately, he added, Israel has been criticized and sometimes discriminated against because of the Mideast conflict.
A peace process is just a piece of paper, he said, adding that the Oslo Agreement was never implemented and remained a piece of paper. “This time I expect real peace,” he said. “The Israeli and Palestinian people are neighbors and have no choice but to live in harmony and peace side by side.”
Asked about the split between Fatah and Hamas, the UN chief responded that reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians was highly important. “There can be no solution of three states – the State of Israel and two Palestinian states. The vision is of a two-state solution, and that’s the reason we are trying to advance a Palestinian reconciliation process,” he said.
Earlier Friday, Ban met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told him that the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the refusal to recognize the Jewish state “on any border” and had nothing to do with Israel’s settlement enterprise.
Ban also met with President Shimon Peres and stated that negotiations were the best way to move towards a two-state solution. He said this was a critical moment for Israel.
ANOTHER ISRAELI COMPANY BOUGHT FOR ALMOST A BILLION DOLLARS
IBM buys Israeli cybersecurity startup company for millions
Israel HaYom
August 15, 2013
Technology giant IBM announced on Thursday that it plans to acquire Israeli security software vendor Trusteer for an undisclosed amount, believed to be between $800 million and $1 billion.
With offices in Boston and Tel Aviv, Trusteer helps firms protect web applications, employee and customer computers, and mobile devices from cyber threats.
Among Trusteer’s more prominent clients are financial services firms such as Bank of America, HSBC, PayPal and RBS, who use the company’s technology to protect their customers against financial fraud and cyber-attacks.
Trusteer is considered one of the fastest growing cybersecurity companies in Israel, with an annual income of $100 million. The company’s technology mainly prevents cyberattacks on databases through peripheral machines.
As part of their announcement, IBM said that it will set up a cybersecurity software lab in Israel that will bring together more than 200 Trusteer and IBM researchers and developers to focus on mobile and application security, advanced threat, malware, counter-fraud, and financial crimes.
Brendan Hannigan, GM, security systems division, IBM, issued a statement, saying “Trusteer’s expertise and superior technology in enterprise endpoint defense and advanced malware prevention will help our clients across all industries address the constantly evolving threats they are facing.”
MEAN BELGIANS FINE ISRAELI TENNIS TEAM
Israeli tennis team fined for refusing to play on Yom Kippur
By Elad Benari
Israel National News
August 12, 2013
The Israel Davis Cup team will be fined 10,000 euros for refusing to compete on Yom Kippur.
The game against the Belgian team which was scheduled for Yom Kippur is one in a play-off series. Immediately after it became known that the game had been scheduled for Yom Kippur, the team’s management informed the World Tennis Association that the Israeli team will not be able to compete that day and requested an alternative date.
The Association accepted the request and postponed the match by one day, but nonetheless ordered the Israeli team to pay the Belgian team 10,000 euros as compensation for deferring the game.
The chair of the Israel Tennis Federation, Asi Tuchmayer, wrote in a letter quoted by Yediot Ahronot on Sunday that “for a long time the Belgian tennis union refused to recognize our basic need to avoid playing on Yom Kippur. Only after the intervention of the World Tennis Association was it decided not to play that day.”
Referring to the fine imposed on the Israeli team, Tuchmayer added, “The high penalty deals a devastating blow to our budget and professional program. As an institution representing the State of Israel and its values, we are proud to stand against all those who refuse to recognize the importance of the tradition of the Jewish people.”
COEXISTENCE FOR POT
Getting high beyond the Green Line
By Itamar Fleishman
Yediot Ahronot (Ynet)
August 16, 2013
Settler leaders have been struggling for years to improve their image in the eyes of those they refer to as the residents of “the state of Tel Aviv.” After initiating tours of their blooming communities and areas with splendid views, launching PR campaigns and organizing face-to-face meetings, it seems there is finally hope for a building relationship – yet from an entirely different direction: Getting “high” together.
Following the shortage of “soft drugs” in central Israel, mostly because of the fence built on the border with Egypt, an increasing number of young Israelis are flocking to the territories to consume, buy and roll marijuana with young settlers.
You won’t usually hear them discuss politics and the peace process, and words like “the green line” tend to have a completely different meaning during these meetings.
SETTLING IN HEARTS? SETTLING IN LUNGS!
It’s late in the evening in one of the Samaria communities. A group of young people in their 20s are sitting on the balcony of one of the settlement’s houses, getting ready to commit the farthermost illegal activity from the “price tag” hate activities.
Assaf, a settlement resident, is responsible for supplying the stuff, while his friend Eran, who arrived from the central city of Ramat Gan, is in charge of the rolling. Refreshments to ease the expected drug “munchies” were provided by Yael and Noa, two of Eran’s friends from Tel Aviv, who are visiting the territories for the very first time.
“The road is a bit scary, but it’s actually pretty nice here. We came to relax, so we shouldn’t be afraid,” one of them says, refusing to have her picture taken.
Between tokes, Assaf finds the time to share amusing thoughts about marijuana’s contribution to the Jewish people’s unity. “For years, we settlers have been using the slogan ‘Settle in the hearts.’ If only we had known that it is much easier to settle in the lungs, everything would have been much easier.
“You see here young people who can speak the same language and bridge ideological gaps. They always bring here all kinds of Tel Avivians to drink the wine and enjoy the view, but they just come and go. The shortage in the center has caused them to come and want to stay, at least for the night, because it’s difficult to drive home afterwards.”
Eran welcomes the new relationship as well, admitting that he never thought he would return to the territories after his military service, certainly not for this purpose.
“We all know each other from university,” he says. “When the shortage began, we started looking for alternative sources and never imagined that Assaf would be the one to provide the stuff.
“One day, while we were making small talk, he told us about a smoking meeting he had with his friends in the community, and we were amazed to discover that while we are craving the stuff – the settlers are celebrating. We joked that after taking our budgets, they’ve stolen our stuff too.”
The reason the settlers have been “blessed” with plenty of drugs has to do with the fact that the police enforcement in the territories is weaker. Growing the stuff is relatively safe and the chance that someone will inform the police is small.
Moreover, while a large number of people compete for the services of every drug dealer and supplier, in Judea and Samaria one source supplies the drugs to a small number of customers by word of mouth.
“You must understand that here people won’t find out after two days about a person who has the stuff,” says Assaf. “Take for example those who get medical marijuana and sometimes give some of it to their friends. In Tel Aviv they are harassed and bothered, like someone who has won the lottery. Here such a person is a hidden nature reserve. No one has heard about him or even knows him. He will almost always have stuff to give you.”
Assaf is joined by Noa, who says she was “amazed” by how relatively easy it was to obtain drugs beyond the Green Line. “It’s not that there are ‘ATMs’ here like in Lod, but there will almost always be someone who can help you get organized if you look hard enough.
“The funny thing is that we initially thought the suppliers were Palestinians, and then we discovered that there are settlers who smoke and grow the stuff and have simply kept it to themselves.”
Yet there appears to be some rare Jewish-Palestinian fellowship in this particularly charged place for the purpose of getting hold of the desired stuff. A young Palestinian was arrested last week in a police operation in the Judea and Samaria District for operating a drug delivery service from his village near Nablus to quite a few Jewish settlements.
The young man would take orders from settlers in Samaria and the Binyamin region, as well as from communities such as Itamar, Elon Moreh and even Yitzhar, which is considered a particularly sensitive place. He would transfer the drugs to his customers using a taxi which would arrive at the gate of the community or any other agreed upon place.
The police detected the “drug cabs” and questioned the buyers, who framed the young Palestinian and led to his arrest.
“There was no difference between moderate and more extreme communities,” says Chief Inspector Nir Sarousi, a detective at the Judea and Samaria District Police.
OUT OF SIGHT
Police have also detected a recent rise in the consumption and cultivation of drugs in Judea and Samaria. In recent months, Judea and Samaria investigators have uncovered a number of large marijuana production labs, as well as small labs used by residents for private consumption. The police attribute the increase to the shortage across the country as well.
“I have been working in the field of drugs for 10 years now, and the past two years have seen a sharp increase in the number of labs opened or operated in our district,” says Chief Inspector Sarousi. “We have encountered large labs as well, but also labs that people use for their own needs. The reason is that the border has been closed and people don’t produce hashish here, so they focus on marijuana.
“A person says, ‘It’s dry out there, perhaps I’ll grow some at home, put it in the closet and use it whenever I need it.’ People are also investing in the cultivation, buying advanced equipment and irrigation systems. We find modern labs which cost up to tens of thousands of shekels to set up.”
Sarousi admits that the phenomenon has to do with the level of enforcement and the wide area where the illegal activity is taking place.
“People have decided to grow it themselves and smoke instead of buying and risking getting caught in our operations. In the territories each person has his own garden and his own yard. It’s not like in the city where someone looks out the window and sees the ultra-violet light used for production. Here, whoever puts a little shed in his backyard and maintains a small circle of people who keep it a secret has a very little chance of getting caught. Enforcement here is difficult and they know it.”
Relatives of Israelis killed in terror attacks holding pictures of their murdered loved ones as they demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem today
UPDATE, Aug. 14, 2013, 6 am
The Mayor of Ramallah was among those celebrating and partying overnight with these cold blooded murderers, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (below, center) hugged them and called them my brothers” – the Western media still insist on calling Abbas a “moderate”.
The PA has announced it will pay the released prisoners a stipend of $2,000 a month.
A SHAMEFUL DAY FOR ISRAEL
[Note by Tom Gross]
Tonight, under U.S. and international pressure, Israel released the first batch of 26 of the 104 terrorists which I referred to in recent dispatches.
Since most international media are not explaining who these people are (and all were duly convicted by courts that are respected the world over), here are details about just a few of them:
* Abu-Musa Salam Ali Atia of Fatah, who murdered Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenberg in the town of Petah Tikvah near Tel Aviv in 1994. He was hacked to death using an axe in broad daylight.
Rotenberg was one of the last survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp and was one of those involved in the famous escape from Sobibor.
* Ra’ai Ibrahim Salam Ali of Fatah who was jailed in 1994 for the murder of 79-year-old Morris Eisenstatt. Eisenstatt was also killed by axe blows to the head while he sat on a public bench reading a book in the Tel Aviv suburb of Kfar Saba.
* Salah Ibrahim Ahmad Mugdad, of Fatah, was imprisoned in 1993 for killing 72-year-old grandfather Israel Tenenbaum by beating him on the head with a steel rod.
* Two of the prisoners, Abu Satta Ahmad Sa’id Aladdin and Abu Sita Talab Mahmad Ayman, were imprisoned in 1994 for the murder of David Dadi and Haim Weizman. They killed Dadi and Weizman as they slept in Weizman’s apartment, and then cut off their ears as trophies.
* Abdel Aal Sa’id Ouda Yusef was imprisoned in 1994 for the murder of Ian Sean Feinberg and the murder of Sami Ramadan.
Feinberg, a 30-year-old father of three, was a tireless advocate for Palestinian economic development, and was killed in his office as he helped plan a job creation scheme for Palestinians.
* Sualha Fazah Ahmed Husseini and Sualha Bad Almajed Mahmed Mahmed, of Fatah, were imprisoned for a stabbing attack on a crowded bus in Ramat Gan (next to Tel Aviv) in 1990. The two randomly and viciously stabbed passengers, killing 24-year-old Baruch Heizler and badly wounded three young women.
* Sha’at Azat Shaban Ata was imprisoned in 1993 for helping to orchestrate the murder of 51-year-old Simcha Levi, a woman who made her living driving Palestinians to work.
* Maslah Abdullah Salama Salma, of Hamas, was imprisoned in 1993 for the brutal murder of Petah Tikvah convenience store owner Reuven David. Abdallah, together with an accomplice, entered David’s convenience store on May 20, 1991, bound David’s arms and legs and beat him to death.
* Na’anish Na’if Abdal Jafer Samir, imprisoned in 1989 for the murder of Binyamin Meisner.
* Arsheed A’Hameed Yusef Yusef, imprisoned in 1993 for the murder of Nadal Rabu Ja’ab, Adnan Ajad Dib, Mufid Cana’an, Tawafiq Jaradat and Ibrahim Sa’id Ziwad.
And the list goes on and on.
For more details, please see these previous dispatches:
* For the first time, Netanyahu faces significant criticism from both left and right in Israel
* “Because if he is released, I will no longer be able to live”
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
UPDATE 2, Aug. 14, 2013, 10 am
When it comes to 25 terrorists, this is how Egypt deals with them -- although this has not been reported at all in the Western media...
Egyptian army kills 25 "terrorists" in Sinai
Asharq Al-Awsat
http://www.aawsat.net/2013/08/article55313305
Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat — Egyptian military aircraft attacked jihadist targets in Sinai on Saturday evening, 24 hours after four members of the Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis group were killed in a controversial air attack.
The Egyptian army said it estimated the number of casualties among the Islamist extremists in the latest attack to be at around 25 killed and injured.
Colonel Ahmad Mohamed Ali, official spokesman of the army, said in a statement on Facebook that the army carried out an attack at 9:00 pm on Saturday evening after spotting a terrorist group near the village of Touma in northern Sinai, close to the border with Gaza.
Ali said the attack, carried out by the army’s Apache attack helicopters, was a result of what he called “plans by the terrorist group to carry out criminal acts against members of the armed forces, the police, and the people of Sinai.”
He said the attack resulted in 25 “terrorists” being killed or injured, and the destruction of an arms and ammunition depot belonging to the terror group.
Ali added that the terrorist group that was attacked was involved in recent attacks on Egyptian army personnel in the Sinai.
Children play in front of damaged buildings in the Arabeen neigborhood of Damascus
* Columnist Carol Hunt, writing in The Sunday Independent (Ireland): “Of those Irish citizens questioned, over 1/5th would deny citizenship to Israelis, with 11.5 per cent stating they would deny Irish citizenship to all Jews, and less than 60 per cent saying they would accept a Jewish person into their family. Bloody hell – what did the Jews ever do to us?”
* Peyvand Khorsandi, writing in The Independent (UK): “Hopes that Iran will get sweeter with Rouhani in power are naive, to say the least… if he is a moderate or a reformer, I’m the Jolly Green Giant. You can’t be a moderate in Iran. Protecting the sanctity of the Islamic Republic’s founding Khomeini-ist principles, and its resulting injustices, is your raison d’etre and if you’re not up to the task, you’re dead.”
* “It’s all very Cosa Nostra – you can’t stray; you can’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and thuggish credentials are a must: it’s a gangster regime, pure and simple… You can understand more about how the Iranian regime operates by watching the 2008 Italian mafia film Gomorrah than by reading the reportage of some Western newspapers, whose journalists seem to believe Rouhani is about to unveil Scandinavian-style social democracy.”
* A major Western paper finally reports on the extent of Israeli help in treating wounded Syrian children: “The 3-year-old girl cried ‘Mama, Mama’ as a stranger rocked her and tried to comfort her. She had been brought alone from Syria to the government hospital in this northern Israeli town five days earlier, her face blackened by what doctors said was probably a firebomb. In the next bed, a girl, 12, lay in a deep sleep. She had arrived at the pediatric intensive care unit with a severe stomach wound that had already been operated on in Syria, and a hole in her back. Another girl, 13, has been here more than a month recovering from injuries that required complex surgery to her face, arm and leg. She and her brother, 9, had gone to the supermarket in their village when a shell struck. Her brother was killed in the attack.”
* Below: Link for photo, video and lie of the day
***
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
CONTENTS
1. Photo of the day: The end of Ramadan, as viewed from a Tel Aviv beach
2. Video of the day: A Muslim Israeli soldier keeps watch over Israel’s Gaza border
3. Lie of the day: Official Syrian News Agency reports Syrians are celebrating the end of Ramadan “amid an atmosphere of brotherly friendship and tremendous joy”
4. “Across forbidden border, doctors in Israel quietly tend to Syria’s wounded” (By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, August 5, 2013)
5. “Iran’s new president? I see only an old and vicious regime” (By Peyvand Khorsandi, The Independent, UK)
6. “I’ll ask this only once: What has Israel ever done to us?” (By Carol Hunt, Sunday Irish Independent)
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The end of Ramadan, as viewed from a Tel Aviv beach.
This photo appeared in the Irish Examiner newspaper in Dublin.
VIDEO OF THE DAY
A Muslim Israeli soldier keeps watch over Israel’s Gaza border
LIE OF THE DAY
One of the Syrian subscribers to this list (he is in Aleppo, is reliable and wishes to remain anonymous) writes:
Please tell your subscribers that according to the government-controlled Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Syrians are celebrating Eid al-Fitr to mark the end of Ramadan “amid an atmosphere of brotherly friendship and tremendous joy.” No kidding, check out SANA’s reports.
***
Tom Gross adds: Over 9 million Syrians have now been displaced (7 million internally and over 2 million externally), one third of all buildings in Syrian cities have been damaged or destroyed, well over 100,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands of others “disappeared” – taken to be tortured in one of the regime’s vast, decades-old network of underground and overground dungeons and torture centers, or disposed of in marked graves.
Just from the official figures alone, we learn that over 4,400 Syrians were killed during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Many Syrians have also joined family abroad. Oxfam estimates that 25 % of the population of Lebanon is now Syrian.
The lack of response by the West (both military, but even more important humanitarian) to the Syrian crisis, will I fear, mark the darkest chapter in the Obama presidency. It is worse than Bill Clinton’s failure to show leadership and to intervene in the Rwandan genocide because Clinton had limited time to do so before the genocide was complete.
Among recent dispatches on this list on Syria, please see: The twisted reality of an Italian freelancer in Syria
***
I attach three articles below. In the first piece, Isabel Kershner, who is The New York Times’ number Two correspondent in Jerusalem (and like other New York Times foreign and op-ed staff, is a subscriber to this list) reports on the Israel government’s help for the Syrian war wounded, an issue I have reported several times on this website over the last 6 months.
The other two articles are by Iranian and Irish commentators.
-- Tom Gross
ARTICLES
A RARE POSITIVE STORY ABOUT ISRAEL IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
An Israeli girl, left, and a wounded Syrian girl, meet at the Western Galilee Hospital in Israel, where scores of Syrians have been taken for treatment (NY Times)
Across Forbidden Border, Doctors in Israel Quietly Tend to Syria’s Wounded
By Isabel Kershner
New York Times
August 6, 2013
www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/world/middleeast/across-forbidden-border-doctors-in-israel-quietly-tend-to-syrias-wounded.html
NAHARIYA, Israel — The 3-year-old girl cried “Mama, Mama” over and over as a stranger rocked her and tried to comfort her. She had been brought from Syria to the government hospital in this northern Israeli town five days earlier, her face blackened by what doctors said was probably a firebomb or a homemade bomb.
In the next bed, a girl, 12, lay in a deep sleep. She had arrived at the pediatric intensive care unit with a severe stomach wound that had already been operated on in Syria, and a hole in her back.
Another girl, 13, has been here more than a month recovering from injuries that required complex surgery to her face, arm and leg. She and her brother, 9, had gone to the supermarket in their village when a shell struck. Her brother was killed in the attack.
As fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels has raged in recent months in areas close to the Israeli-held Golan Heights, scores of Syrian casualties have been discreetly spirited across the hostile frontier for what is often lifesaving treatment in Israel, an enemy country.
Most are men in their 20s or 30s, many of them with gunshot wounds who presumably were involved in the fighting. But in recent weeks there have been more civilians with blast wounds, among them women and children who have arrived alone and traumatized.
Israel has repeatedly declared a policy of nonintervention in the Syrian civil war, other than its readiness to strike at stocks of advanced weapons it considers a threat to its security. Officials have also made clear that Israel would not open its increasingly fortified border to an influx of refugees, as Turkey and Jordan have, given that Israel and Syria officially remain in a state of war.
But the Israeli authorities have sanctioned this small, low-profile humanitarian response to the tragedy taking place in Syria, balancing decades of hostility with the demands of proximity and neighborliness.
“Most come here unconscious with head injuries,” said Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director general of the Western Galilee Hospital here in Nahariya, on the Mediterranean coast six miles south of the Lebanese border. “They wake up after a few days or whenever and hear a strange language and see strange people,” he said. “If they can talk, the first question is, ‘Where am I?’ “
He added, “I am sure there is an initial shock when they hear they are in Israel.”
The identity of the patients is closely guarded so they will not be in danger when they return to Syria. Soldiers sit outside the wards where the adults are to protect them from possible threats and prying journalists. But doctors granted access to the children in the closed intensive care wing, on the condition that no details that could compromise their safety were published.
Like many Israeli hospitals, this one serves a mixed population of Jews and Arabs; its staff includes Arabic-speaking doctors, nurses and social workers. In the lobby, a glass display case contains the remnants of a Katyusha rocket that was fired from Lebanon and hit the hospital’s eye department during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. The rocket penetrated four floors but nobody was injured because all the north-facing wards had been moved underground.
With more than 100,000 people estimated to have died in the Syrian civil war, Dr. Barhoum, an Arab Christian citizen of Israel, acknowledged that the Israeli medical assistance was “a drop in the ocean.”
But he said he was proud of the level of treatment his teams could provide and proud to be a citizen of a country that allowed him to treat every person equally. He said the cost of the treatment so far had amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars and would be paid for by the Israeli government.
Since late March, almost 100 Syrians have arrived at two hospitals in Galilee. Forty-one severely wounded Syrians have been treated here at the Western Galilee Hospital, which has a new neurosurgical unit as well as pediatric intensive care facilities. Two of them have died, 28 have recovered and been transferred back to Syria, and 11 remain here.
An additional 52 Syrians have been taken to the Rebecca Sieff Hospital in the Galilee town of Safed. The latest, a 21-year-old man with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, arrived there on Saturday. A woman, 50, arrived Friday with a piece of shrapnel lodged in her heart and was sent to the Rambam hospital in the northern port city of Haifa for surgery.
Little has been revealed about how they get here, other than that the Israeli military runs the technical side of the operation. The doctors say all they know is that Syrian patients arrive by military ambulance and that the hospital calls the army to come pick them up when they are ready to go back to Syria.
The Israeli military, which also operates a field hospital and mobile medical teams along the Syrian frontier, has been reluctant to advertise these facilities, partly for fear of being inundated by more wounded Syrians than they could cope with.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said that “a number of Syrians have come to the fence along the border in the Golan Heights with various levels of injuries.”
He added that the military has, “on a purely humanitarian basis, facilitated immediate medical assistance on the ground and in some cases has evacuated them for further treatment in Israeli hospitals.”
Now, efforts are under way to bring over relatives to help calm the unaccompanied children.
When the 13-year-old arrived, she was in a state of fear and high anxiety, according to Dr. Zeev Zonis, the head of the pediatric intensive care unit here.
“A large part of our treatment was to try to embrace her in a kind of virtual hug,” he said.
Days later, the girl’s aunt arrived from Syria. She began to care for the Syrian children here, living and sleeping with them in the intensive care unit. The staff and volunteers donated clothes and gifts.
The aunt, her face framed by a tight hijab, said a shell had struck the supermarket in their village suddenly, after a week of quiet. A few days later, she said, an Arab man she did not know came to the village.
“He told us they had the girl,” she said. “They took me and on the way told me that she was in Israel. We got to the border. I saw soldiers. I was a little afraid.”
But she added that the hospital care had been good and that “the fear has passed totally.” She was reluctant to speak about the war back home, saying only, “I pray for peace and quiet.”
Sitting up in bed in a pink Pooh Bear T-shirt, the niece, who was smiling, said she missed home. She and her aunt were expected to return to Syria later this week.
Asked what she will say when she goes back home, the aunt replied: “I won’t say that I was in Israel. It is forbidden to be here, and I am afraid of the reactions.”
“IT’S ALL VERY COSA NOSTRA: IT’S A GANGSTER REGIME, PURE AND SIMPLE”
Iran’s new president? I see only an old and vicious regime
By Peyvand Khorsandi
The Independent
August 5, 2013
www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/irans-new-president-i-see-only-an-old-and-vicious-regime-8746926.html
Hopes that Iran will get sweeter with Rouhani in power are naive, to say the least
Since his election in June, I’ve been asked a number of times what I think of Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president.
As an Iranian exile, I don’t think much – or I’d be on the first plane home (for a visit, anyway).
For what it’s worth, I think he’s atrocious, and I was surprised when Iranians voted him in; by all accounts they were petrified at the prospect of four years under one of his even more reactionary rivals.
I say even more reactionary because there should be no doubt the man is one of ‘Them’ – an unabashed Islamist: if he is a moderate or a reformer, I’m the Jolly Green Giant.
You can’t be a moderate in Iran. Protecting the sanctity of the Islamic Republic’s founding Khomeini-ist principles, and its resulting injustices, is your raison d’etre and if you’re not up to the task, you’re dead.
It’s all very Cosa Nostra – you can’t stray; you can’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and thuggish credentials are a must: it’s a gangster regime, pure and simple.
For years this guy was the Secretary of Iran’s feared Supreme National Security Council.
Countless killings occurred under his watch; not least during the student uprising of 1999 which Rouhani vowed to “crush mercilessly and monumentally”.
Gunning down students is par for the course in the Islamic Republic. A few dead young people who sought democracy are no big deal to Iranian Islamists.
July 1999 was the precursor to the protests of June 2009. Then, the original smiling mullah – the Colonel Sanders of the Islamic Republic, Mohammad Khatami, stood by as government forces attacked his supporters who were protesting the closure of a reformist newspaper. There is no reason to expect any more integrity from Rouhani.
Iran has to be viewed in terms of bloodshed. You can understand more about how the Iranian regime operates by watching the 2008 Italian mafia film Gomorrah than by watching Newsnight or reading the reportage of some Western newspapers, whose journalists seem to believe Rouhani is about to unveil Scandinavian-style social democracy in Iran.
So the fact that Rouhani promises to be a bit friendlier to the West doesn’t mean much, because human rights in Iran are not a concern of Western governments any more than they are in Bahrain or in Saudi Arabia. (The last thing we want to do is upset such allies.)
From politicians such as Jack Straw, who has visited Iran a number of times, and George Galloway, who had his own show on the Islamist regime’s broadcaster, to the arms dealers who make a packet selling weapons to Tehran – no one cares to remember the victims of Iran’s mullahs when they chomp on chelo kebab with them.
Have no doubt, as the Supereme Leader’s PR machine offers up a cutesy, smiling cleric keen to work with the West, inviting us to see him as no more harmful than the Cookie Monster, deals will be done; oil, gas, and guns will be sold; but not much will change on the ground for Iranians.
Four years ago, people were being shot in the street. Now they are effectively washed from public consciousness in the West as the press focuses on Washington’s preoccupation with nuclear weapons – and yes, by the way: regardless of the charade being played out about whether Rouhani has referred to Israel as a sore, or a wound, or other chronic medical condition, it’s in the interests of both sides to speak to each other – and it won’t be their first time.
When Israelis were selling arms to Iran in the early 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, Rouhani was the protégé of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who at that time was head of the Iranian military. So the president may just need to dust down his old contacts book to overcome the nuclear impasse.
“Just how will Iran’s new ruler keep his people’s spirits up?” Newsnight presenter Anita Anand asked chirpily the other night, outlining the concerns of the electorate as if she were talking about Belgium and not an Islamist dictatorship. (People’s desire for freedom of speech, women’s rights and the freeing of political prisoners were not put to this particular henchman of Mr Rouhani, and no member of Iran’s opposition party was invited to contribute an alternative perspective).
Ms Anand’s use of the word ‘ruler’ here was interesting – the president in Iran is known as ‘the President’, not ‘the ruler’. The ruler is ‘the Supreme Leader’. So it was wrong for Newsnight, in the run-up Rouhani’s inauguration, to say that “eight years of Ahmadinejad’s rule is coming to a close” and worse still, to consider what the “new regime” will bring.
What new regime? Indeed, what new president?
“BLOODY HELL – WHAT DID THE JEWS EVER DO TO US?”
I’ll ask this only once: What has Israel ever done to us?
Demonised by many, the embattled state treats Palestinians better than most, says a puzzled Carol Hunt
August 4, 2013
Sunday Independent (Ireland)
It’s a tough one to figure out. So I’ll put it out there and all answers on a postcard please.
The Tanaiste was off this week, doing sterling work in China. As I write I’m hearing reports that the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) and Beijing International Airport (BCIA) are now “Sister Airports”, UCD announced that they have agreed to establish a new international college with Shenzhen University – in addition to the other collaborations it has with other universities. Eamon Gilmore has stressed how Ireland and China want to strengthen their economic, trade and education ties and how “person to person” interaction between the two countries – such as exchange students – does much to foster better relations all round.
And who can argue with any of that?
Well, defenders of human rights can, one presumes. In an interview last week Gilmore looked decidedly uneasy as the elephant-in-the-room question was put to him regards doing business with China. An unelected regime, let us remember, which executes well over 2,000 of its own people every year and imprisons those who dare to speak against it. And let’s not forget – oh, you already have? – China’s occupation of Tibet where it’s estimated over a million people have died as a result.
To be fair, Gilmore gave a cogent reply, saying that, “doing business with a country strengthens your ability to have dialogue on human rights”. And while it’s laughable to think China will take a blind bit of notice, the premise of Gilmore’s answer has merit.
But see, I’m confused. If encouraging greater trade and academic ties and “person to person” interaction is so great for forging human rights dialogue, then why is Israel, seemingly alone of all countries in the world, singled out for no-holds-barred censure and boycott?
If academic and cultural communication is good, then why did the TUI become the first trade union involved with education and academia in the EU to adopt a resolution calling on its members to “cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel”?
‘Doing business with a country strengthens your ability to have dialogue on human rights’
If Eamon Gilmore has repeatedly said he is against cultural boycotts (and he showed admirable support for the Israeli Film Festival last year in the face of thuggish intimidation), why does Labour Youth call Israel an “apartheid state” (an insult to all people who have suffered under one) and profess support for BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions)?
“Duh”, says everyone I speak to, “it’s because of Palestine!”
Really?
You see, I’ve read all the histories, so I am aware that after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France divided up the Middle East – creating Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. I know that in 1921 80 per cent of what was called the “Palestinian Mandate” was made into (Trans) Jordan (where currently two million Palestinian refugees live yet only 167,000 are allowed citizenship or are eligible for education and healthcare).
I am aware that in 1948 the UN voted to halve the remaining 20 per cent; Israel was born and immediately invaded by five neighbouring Arab countries whose objective was – and still is – to annihilate it. In 1967, when tiny Israel was forced to pre-empt a massive Arab invasion, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt. I know that all current facts and statistics show that Palestinians are treated far better by Israel than other Arab nations –where they are subjected to apartheid discrimination. And I’m aware that if I am to be accepted in polite, liberal society I should keep my mouth shut and just agree – Israel bad, Arabs good.
But in all conscience I can’t. I need to know why so many Irish politicians and groups are only “pro-Palestinian” “against Israel”, as it were, and say, not Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan or the Arab League?
I emailed queries to both the TUI and Labour Youth and, at time of writing, am awaiting a reply. There are, however, a few politicians who are not in the Bash-Israel brigade and I spoke to a couple this week, just to reassure myself that I wasn’t completely bonkers.
Labour TD Joanna Tuffy said; “I agree with your premise, Israel is singled out for more than just criticism but demonisation ... I think the right approach is to be a critical friend of Israel, to be an honest broker, supportive of both sides in this conflict, but it’s difficult to take that approach with the very polarised debate, driven by the IPSC and their tactics which are stressful to experience.” Ambassador Boaz Modai seems to be on the same page as Tuffy as he says: “We have no problem with criticism – every country can be criticised for something – but we are bothered by the fact that Israel alone is all too often singled out, and treated unfairly when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
In contrast TD Gerald Nash, chair of the large Oireachtas Friends of Palestine Group, rejects the notion “that Israel is alone in being held up to a particular standard of behaviour that we do not apply to other states”. “The recent record of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs & Trade challenges that notion”, he says. He insists that in his experience he has “encountered a range of views in the Oireachtas and in the media around the issue of Palestine and Israel”.
Hmm, FG chairman Charlie Flanagan doesn’t think so. “Israel”, he told me, “has been demonised by an Irish media slavishly dancing to the Palestinian drumbeat for decades [yet] Israel has a far better and more progressive record on human rights than any of its neighbours.” He added: “The truth must be told.”
Disturbingly, the truth is that a study conducted in May 2011 revealed that, of those Irish citizens questioned, over 1/5th would deny citizenship to Israelis, with 11.5 per cent stating they would deny Irish citizenship to all Jews, and less than 60 per cent saying they would accept a Jewish person into their family.
Bloody hell – what did the Jews ever do to us? As I said, answers on a postcard please.
* Robert Springborg: Many Egyptians fear that General Fattah al-Sisi wants to return Egypt to a familiar style of secular authoritarianism. But his record suggests he may have very different intentions: a hybrid regime that would combine Islamism with militarism.
* Even though he overthrew a government dominated by Islamists, there is reason to suspect that Sisi’s true goal might not be the establishment of a more inclusive, secular democracy but, rather, a military-led resurrection and reformation of the Islamist project that the Brotherhood so abysmally mishandled.
* He is reputed to be a particularly devout Muslim who frequently inserts Koranic verses into informal conversations, and his wife wears the conservative dress favored by more orthodox Muslims in Egypt. Those concerned about Sisi’s views on women’s rights were alarmed by his defense of the military’s use of “virginity tests” for female demonstrators detained during the uprising against Mubarak. Human-rights activists argued that the “tests” amounted to sexual assaults.
* The thesis that Sisi produced at the U.S. Army War College, despite its innocuous title (“Democracy in the Middle East”), reads like a tract produced by the Muslim Brotherhood. He writes: “Democracy cannot be understood in the Middle East without an understanding of the concept of El Kalafa,” or the caliphate, which Sisi defines as the 70-year period when Muslims were led by Muhammad and his immediate successors.
* Sisi is not nearly as modest as he has long preferred Egyptians to believe. It is significant that he not only remained minister of defense in the new government but also took the post of first deputy prime minister. Sisi also had his spokesman release a 30-minute YouTube video glorifying the general and the military. Not long thereafter, demonstrators in Cairo and elsewhere were seen carrying large photos of Sisi.
***
This is another in a series of dispatches concerning Egypt. I attach three notes by myself and then three articles by others, including the Washington Post interview with General Sisi.
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
CONTENTS
1. Cairo court sentences 43 democratic activists to prison
2. Egypt cancels Erdogan’s visit to Gaza
3. Al-Masry Al-Youm: Majority of terrorists in Sinai arrested
4. “Sisi’s Islamist agenda for Egypt” (By Robert Springborg, Foreign Affairs, July 28, 2013)
5. “Egypt’s kingmaker might be its king” (By Ahmed Feteha, Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2013)
6. An interview with Gen. Sisi (By Lally Weymouth, Washington Post, August 3, 2013)
[Notes by Tom Gross]
CAIRO COURT SENTENCES 43 DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISTS TO PRISON
Last week, a Cairo court sentenced 43 pro-democracy activists to up to five years in prison. The charges include operating “illegal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)” and “receiving foreign funds without permission”.
As I wrote at the time when he was arrested earlier this year, among them are Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute, the only American citizen who remained in Egypt to face the charges. He and four others were given a two-year sentence. Twenty-seven other foreign employees were sentenced in absentia to five years each, while 11 Egyptians received one-year sentences.
The 43 worked for peaceful organizations such as Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
The 2011 revolution was supposed to end the repressive climate under Mubarak. It seems not much has changed.
EGYPT CANCELS ERDOGAN’S VISIT TO GAZA
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports that the new Egyptian government has canceled the planned visit to Gaza by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Egyptian authorities said Erdogan was too close to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt’s state prosecutor said last week that ousted President Mohamed Morsi was detained over suspected collaboration with Hamas in attacks on police stations and prison breaks in early 2011.
For background, please see:
* The “Al Jazeera Decade” (& Morsi charged with collaborating with Hamas)
* Muslim Brotherhood says Egypt’s new president is secretly Jewish
AL-MASRY AL-YOUM: MAJORITY OF TERRORISTS IN SINAI ARRESTED
The Egyptian publication Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that for the first time in weeks, Sinai has witnessed several days without any terror attacks.
The Egyptian security forces have deployed in strength across Northern Sinai since the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi on July 3. The almost daily attacks had rocked the lawless Sinai peninsula, and troops, police officers and civilians were killed.
A security source told Al-Masry Al-Youm that “the latest calm can be attributed to the fact the majority of terrorists in the Sinai have been arrested.”
Those arrested, he said, include Palestinian members of Hamas, and Jihadis from Syria and Afghanistan, as well as Egyptians.
***
I attach articles below
The first is by Robert Springborg, writing in the journal Foreign Affairs. Springborg is professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School.
The second is by Ahmed Feteha, the business editor of Ahram Online, Egypt’s largest English language news website.
The third is an interview given to the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth by Egyptian Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Lally Weymouth, who has interviewed most of the leading Middle East leaders over the years, is a longtime subscriber to this email list, and a member of the Graham family that this week sold the Washington Post to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. She is the daughter of Katharine Graham and Philip Graham, both of whom were publishers of the Post, and is the mother of the Washington Post’s present publisher, Katharine Weymouth.
-- Tom Gross
ARTICLES
A HYBRID REGIME THAT WOULD COMBINE ISLAMISM WITH MILITARISM?
Sisi’s Islamist Agenda for Egypt
The General’s Radical Political Vision
By Robert Springborg
Foreign Affairs
July 28, 2013
Many Egyptians fear that Fattah al-Sisi wants to return Egypt to a familiar style of secular authoritarianism. But his record suggests he may have very different – although equally undemocratic – political intentions: a hybrid regime that would combine Islamism with militarism.
***
Addressing graduates of military academies is a standard responsibility for high-ranking military officers all over the world. But last week, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the commander of Egypt’s armed forces, which recently deposed the country’s first freely elected president, went far beyond the conventions of the genre in a speech to graduates of Egypt’s Navy and Air Defense academies. Sisi’s true audience was the wider Egyptian public, and he presented himself less as a general in the armed forces than as a populist strongman. He urged Egyptians to take to the streets to show their support for the provisional government that he had installed after launching a coup to remove from power President Mohamed Morsi, a longtime leader of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. “I’ve never asked you for anything,” Sisi declared, before requesting a “mandate” to confront the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters have launched protests and sit-ins to denounce the new military-backed regime.
Sisi’s speech was only the latest suggestion that he will not be content to simply serve as the leader of Egypt’s military. Although he has vowed to lead Egypt through a democratic transition, there are plenty of indications that he is less than enthusiastic about democracy and that he intends to hold on to political power himself. But that’s not to say that he envisions a return to the secular authoritarianism of Egypt’s recent past. Given the details of Sisi’s biography and the content of his only published work, a thesis he wrote in 2006 while studying at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, it seems possible that he might have something altogether different in mind: a hybrid regime that would combine Islamism with militarism. To judge from the ideas about governance that he put forward in his thesis, Sisi might see himself less as a custodian of Egypt’s democratic future than as an Egyptian version of Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, the Pakistani general who seized power in 1977 and set about to “Islamicize” state and society in Pakistan.
Last summer, when Morsi tapped Sisi to replace Minister of Defense Muhammad Tantawi, Morsi clearly believed that he had chosen someone who was willing to subordinate himself to an elected government. Foreign observers also interpreted Sisi’s promotion as a signal that the military would finally be professionalized, beginning with a reduction of its role in politics and then, possibly, the economy. Sisi’s initial moves as defense minister reinforced this optimism. He immediately removed scores of older officers closely associated with his corrupt and unpopular predecessor. And he implicitly criticized the military’s involvement in politics after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, warning that such “dangerous” interventions could turn Egypt into Afghanistan or Somalia and would not recur.
The Muslim Brotherhood also had a favorable attitude toward Sisi, and certainly did not see him as a threat. Brotherhood spokesmen praised his dedication to military modernization and noted that, unlike his predecessor, who maintained close ties to Washington, Sisi was a fierce Egyptian nationalist – “100 percent patriotic,” in the words of Gamal Hishmat, the official spokesman for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. In May, when a prominent ultraconservative Salafist named Hazem Abu Ismail criticized Sisi for making “emotional” appeals for popular support for the military, a number of Brothers leapt to the general’s defense.
Throughout Sisi’s tenure as defense minister, the Brotherhood dismissed his political potential. Obviously, they underestimated him. That is not to say that he had been planning a coup the entire time; there is not enough evidence to determine that. But there is plenty of evidence that Sisi is not nearly as modest as he has always preferred Egyptians to believe. It is significant that he not only remained minister of defense in the new government but also took the post of first deputy prime minister. Following the cabinet’s formation, Sisi’s spokesperson appeared on television to say that although the general was not running for the presidency, there was nothing to prevent him from so doing if he retired from the military. Sisi also had his spokesman release a 30-minute YouTube video glorifying the general and the military, taking particular care to illustrate the military’s provision of goods and services to civilians. Not long thereafter, demonstrators in Cairo and elsewhere were seen carrying large photos of Sisi.
As fears of the general’s political ambitions have intensified, so have concerns about the nature of his political views. Since deposing Morsi, Sisi has clearly been trying to give the impression that he is committed to democracy. He has taken pains to ensure that civilian political figures share the limelight with him. Hazem al-Beblawi, who was appointed as the prime minister of the transitional government, claimed in his first television interview after taking office that he had not met Sisi prior to the swearing-in ceremony and that the general had not intervened in any way in his choice of ministers.
But even though he overthrew a government dominated by Islamists, there is reason to suspect that Sisi’s true goal might not be the establishment of a more inclusive, secular democracy but, rather, a military-led resurrection and reformation of the Islamist project that the Brotherhood so abysmally mishandled. Indeed, after Morsi became president, he tapped Sisi to become defense minster precisely because there was plenty of evidence that the general was sympathetic to Islamism. He is reputed to be a particularly devout Muslim who frequently inserts Koranic verses into informal conversations, and his wife wears the conservative dress favored by more orthodox Muslims. Those concerned about Sisi’s views on women’s rights were alarmed by his defense of the military’s use of “virginity tests” for female demonstrators detained during the uprising against Mubarak. Human-rights activists argued that the “tests” were amounted to sexual assaults; Sisi countered that they were intended “to protect the girls from rape.”
Morsi likely also found much to admire in the thesis that Sisi produced at the U.S. Army War College, which, despite its innocuous title (“Democracy in the Middle East”), reads like a tract produced by the Muslim Brotherhood. In his opening paragraph, Sisi emphasizes the centrality of religion to the politics of the region, arguing that “for democracy to be successful in the Middle East,” it must show “respect to the religious nature of the culture” and seek “public support from religious leaders [who] can help build strong support for the establishment of democratic systems.” Egyptians and other Arabs will view democracy positively, he wrote, only if it “sustains the religious base versus devaluing religion and creating instability.” Secularism, according to Sisi, “is unlikely to be favorably received by the vast majority of Middle Easterners, who are devout followers of the Islamic faith.” He condemns governments that “tend toward secular rule,” because they “disenfranchise large segments of the population who believe religion should not be excluded from government,” and because “they often send religious leaders to prison.”
But Sisi’s thesis goes beyond simply rejecting the idea of a secular state; it embraces a more radical view of the proper place of religion in an Islamic democracy. He writes: “Democracy cannot be understood in the Middle East without an understanding of the concept of El Kalafa,” or the caliphate, which Sisi defines as the 70-year period when Muslims were led by Muhammad and his immediate successors. Re-establishing this kind of leadership “is widely recognized as the goal for any new form of government” in the Middle East, he asserts. The central political mechanisms in such a system, he believes, are al-bi’ah (fealty to a ruler) and shura (a ruler’s consultation with his subjects). Apologists for Islamic rule sometimes suggest that these concepts are inherently democratic, but in reality they fall far short of the democratic mark.
Sisi concludes that a tripartite government would be acceptable only if the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are all sufficiently Islamic; otherwise, there must be an independent “religious” branch of government. He acknowledges that it will be a challenge to incorporate Islam into government, but concludes that there is no other choice. (As an afterthought, he adds that “there must be consideration given to non-Islamic beliefs.”)
If Sisi’s thesis truly reflects his thinking – and there is no reason to believe otherwise – it suggests not only that he might want to stay at the helm of the new Egyptian state but that his vision of how to steer Egyptian society differs markedly from those of the secular-nationalist military rulers who led Egypt for decades: Gamal Abdel al-Nasser, Anwar al-Sadat, and Mubarak. The ideas in Sisi’s thesis hew closer to those of Zia ul-Haq, who overthrew Pakistan’s democratically elected government in 1977 and soon began a campaign of “Islamicization” that included the introduction of some elements of sharia into Pakistani law, along with a state-subsidized boom in religious education. It is worth noting that Sisi has gone out of his way to court the Salafist al-Nour Party, by ensuring that the constitutional declaration issued on July 13 preserved the controversial article stating “the principles of sharia law derived from established Sunni canons” will be Egypt’s “main source of legislation.” He also tried to undercut support for the leaders of the Brotherhood by appealing directly to their followers, referring to them as “good Egyptians” and “our brothers.” These moves may have been intended to inoculate him against the charge that the coup was anti-Islamist – a critical point, since Islamism still enjoys broad support in many parts of Egyptian society. But it may also reflect a genuine belief in and commitment to Islamism.
If Sisi continues to seek legitimacy for military rule by associating it with Islamism, it could prove to be a disaster for Egypt. At the very least, it would set back the democratic cause immeasurably. It would also reinforce the military’s octopus-like hold on the economy, which is already one of the major obstacles to the country’s economic development. And it would also pose new dilemmas for the military itself: somehow it would need to reconcile serving the strategic objectives of Islam and those of its American patrons. It’s not clear whether that circle could be squared. And the experiment would likely come at the expense of the Egyptian people.
EGYPT’S KINGMAKER MIGHT BE ITS KING
Egypt’s Kingmaker Might Be Its King
By Ahmed Feteha
Wall Street Journal (Opinion)
July 28, 2013
With dozens of Islamist protesters dead and hundreds wounded, this weekend in Egypt was the bloodiest since the army overthrew President Mohammed Morsi earlier this month. Egyptians were not surprised by the violence: The man behind Mr. Morsi’s ouster, Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, had all but promised the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters.
In days that followed the July 3 coup, news reports suggested that “the military” was running the country on an interim basis until elections could be held. It has since become clear that Gen. Sisi is firmly in charge, and his intentions are less clear.
In a lengthy, televised speech on Wednesday, Gen. Sisi called for nationwide rallies on Friday to give the armed forces a “mandate” to combat “violence and terrorism” – a synonym for the Brotherhood. In issuing the threat, Gen. Sisi instantly brought to mind Gamal Abdel Nasser, another adventurous Egyptian army officer who led his own coup, against King Farouk in 1952. Nasser ushered in a dictatorship that would last until 2011. In 1954, Nasser rounded up and tortured thousands of Brotherhood members. Many Egyptians worried that history was repeating itself.
On Friday, Gen’s Sisi’s supporters turned out by the hundreds of thousands in many cities. Nearly all of the country’s television channels, including privately owned ones, devoted their coverage to the pro-army rallies. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Mr. Morsi’s supporters gathered in an eastern Cairo suburb, Nasr City, where they have held a defiant vigil for over a month. In the early hours Saturday, when some of the protesters attempted to expand the area of the sit-in, security forces opened fire. The Brotherhood insists that the attack was a “premeditated massacre.” The security forces contend that the Islamists were armed and “created a crisis.” So far, the army and Gen. Sisi have remained silent.
In the weeks since Mr. Morsi was removed from office, Gen. Sisi has been the country’s most popular figure. State-run media regularly compare “the field marshall of the people” to larger-than-life Egyptian leaders like Anwar Sadat and even Ahmose, the pharaoh who expelled the Hyksos invaders from the country 3,500 years ago.
Even after Saturday’s bloodshed, the media largely echoed the official line blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, not Gen. Sisi’s rallying cry against the Islamist group. But in throwing over Mr. Morsi, Gen. Sisi is largely responsible for alienating Islamists, who account for at least a quarter of the population. On Friday, as pro-army crowds gathered, the government added fuel to the fire by filing criminal charges against Mr. Morsi for collaborating with the Hamas militant group during the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
Gen. Sisi has promised that he has no desire to rule. But many find it hard to believe that he will head back to the barracks after seizing the heights of Egyptian political life. And with hundreds of thousands of supporters chanting Gen. Sisi’s name in Tahrir Square, the little-known general is increasingly looking like Egypt’s king rather than its kingmaker.
At 58, Gen. Sisi is a former head of the military intelligence services and the youngest member of the military council that ruled Egypt after the Hosni Mubarak regime fell two years ago. The general studied at the U.S. Army War College and the Defense Academy of the United Kingdom. He was a military attaché in Saudi Arabia and was one of the Egyptian military officials who coordinated antiterror efforts with the U.S. after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But none of this is particularly remarkable. As one well-connected source in the Egyptian armed forces told me: “To dive into Sisi’s character, you have to think of him as a project, not an individual.”
Gen. Sisi, it turns out, was one of a handpicked few that Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi – Gen. Sisi’s long-serving predecessor – groomed to become the army’s future leaders. A young major in the early 1990s, Gen. Sisi worked in virtually every department in the ministry of defense. He would leave to serve in combat units to fulfill his promotion requirements, only to return again to the ministry. Since the army is the heart of Egypt’s bureaucracy, the general became familiar with the inner workings of the state.
With such training, Gen. Sisi bears more resemblance to Mr. Mubarak than to Nasser. Like Mr. Mubarak he belongs to the class of top-level bureaucrats who are conservative by nature. Like Mr. Mubarak, he has firsthand administrative experience and knows the depth of Egypt’s predicaments. He played by the rules even as he climbed the power ladder.
This institutional commitment is perhaps what Mr. Morsi saw in Gen. Sisi when appointing him army chief in August 2012: a model soldier who would obey orders and stay out of politics. What Mr. Morsi overlooked or didn’t understand is that the army that ruled Egypt for 60 years hardly considers the public sphere off-limits. As early as October 2012, in a televised speech, Gen. Sisi reminded his countrymen of the centrality of the military to the country’s fate. “As long as the Egyptian army is strong, coherent and solid,” he said, “don’t be concerned” about Egypt’s future.
Ousting the president and bringing the army back into politics was a risky move that Gen. Sisi couldn’t have taken unless he had solid support inside the institution. It appears he did. “It was not an individual decision. He had the blessing of his mentors and the ‘core leadership’ of the army,” another army source told me.
As Christopher Hitchens once put it: “Egypt is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country.” Gen. Sisi seems to have acted out of the conviction that the army is Egypt’s guardian. But this guardianship appears to be turning into an ownership, with Gen. Sisi holding the keys and the rest of the army’s top brass lined up behind him.
SISI: THE EGYPTIAN MILITARY DOES NOT MAKE COUP D’ÉTATS
An interview with Egyptian Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi
By Lally Weymouth
Washington Post
August 3, 2013
The following are excerpts from Washington Post senior associate editor Lally Weymouth’s Aug. 1 interview with Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt’s defense minister, armed forces commander and deputy prime minister.
Sisi: The Egyptian military does not make coup d’états. The last coup was in the fifties. There is a very special relationship that binds the Egyptians and their military.
The dilemma between the former president and the people originated from the ideology that the Muslim Brotherhood adopted for building a country, which is based on restoring the Islamic religious empire.
It was always in their minds that they have the exclusive truth and the exclusive rights. This made them lead the country only to satisfy the grass-roots that they represent. That’s what made him [Morsi] not a president for all Egyptians.
Weymouth: When did that become obvious to you?
Sisi: It was obvious [from] the day of his inauguration. He started by offending the judiciary … [Then] The Brotherhood experience in ruling a country was very modest – if not absent. A major part of their culture is to work secretly underground.
We [the army] dealt with the president with all due respect for a president chosen by the Egyptians. We were very sincere in all the assessments that we referred to him throughout the period I was in my office as commander in chief.
We understand also that the military’s intervention to support the Egyptians was not a surprise. We can go back [through] my statements, starting with my invitation to the political powers in Egypt to come to a negotiating table for reconciliation in November of last year until the last 48-hour deadline I gave the president and the political powers to come to a compromise.
Weymouth: Was this before the constitution?
Sisi: Before. There was sincere advice referred to the president [by the army] on developments on the ground and . . . proposed recommendations [as to] how to deal [with them].
Weymouth: So you were giving the president advice on Ethiopia and the Sinai, for example, and he was ignoring you?
Sisi: The military [was] very keen and predetermined on [Morsi’s] success. If we wanted to oppose or not allow [the Brotherhood] to come to rule Egypt, we would have done things with the elections, as elections used to be rigged in the past.
Unfortunately, the former president picked fights with almost all the state institutions — with the judiciary, with the al-Azhar religious institution, with the Coptic church, with the media, and with the political powers. Even with public opinion. When a president is having conflicts with all of these state institutions, the chance of success for such a president is very meager. On the other hand, the president was trying to call in supporters from religious groups.
Weymouth: From where?
Sisi: From inside Egypt. He was trying to call in and mobilize around him people with religious backgrounds in order to show that he had support.
Weymouth: But not from other countries?
Sisi: Both, as a matter of fact. It was available at that time for these people to come to support him from the inside or the outside.
Weymouth: Reportedly, he made it available for people to come from Afghanistan and to go to the Sinai, is that true?
Sisi: Yes, he made it available for people from Afghanistan to come into Egypt and maybe to go into Sinai. The influence of the jihadist Salifists. . . [increased] over time. The security procedures that were in place to prevent terrorist elements and weapons from entering the country disappeared with president [Morsi]. So they found a very free and fertile environment to work in.
Remember this — the concept of the state with [the Brotherhood] is completely different than the concept of any modern state that we can find around the world. They look at political borders as boundaries created by imperialism to put the Islamic world under partition.
Weymouth: Did they have contacts with other Islamic groups in other countries?
Sisi: They have an international presence in more than 60 countries — the Muslim Brotherhood. The idea that gathers them together is not nationalism, it’s not patriotism — it is an ideology that is totally related to the concept of the organization.
Let’s go back to the developing circumstances here. Among the Egyptians, resentment started to rise. They were also terrified and terrorized in their own homes. It is true that former president Morsi came to office with 51 percent of the people’s vote, but many of them felt that they had put their lives and the lives of their children in the wrong hands. They did not imagine that this leadership would deal with them the way it did throughout the year.
The Muslim Brotherhood have their own values, but they look at their own values as those that should be followed and imposed upon the Egyptians. No one else has the right to their own principles. We find that their real representation among the Egyptians varies between 5 to 10 percent maximum.
Weymouth: You hear 30 percent or so in the U.S.
Sisi: Americans base their estimates on the results of the elections. A major part of this percentage is composed of sympathetic Egyptian voters. The Egyptians felt sympathy for people who had been humiliated and oppressed by the previous regime. They believed in their goodness, in their religious appearance, and they gave them their votes.
Weymouth: To many Egyptians, you are a hero. Will you run for president?
Sisi: I am not a hero. I’m just a person who loves his people and country and felt hurt that the Egyptians were treated in such a way. The simple Egyptian people were crying in their homes. Heroism comes only from mutual sentiments. It’s not an epic deed that has been conducted.
Weymouth: Are you disappointed by U.S. reaction to the events of July 3rd? Do you feel it is unfair?
Sisi: The United States was never far from anything that was going on here. We were very keen on providing very clear briefings to all U.S. officials.
Months ago, I told them there was a very big problem in Egypt. I asked for their support, for their consultation, for their advice, as they are our strategic partner and allies.
Weymouth: Months ago?
Sisi: Months ago. The developments and complications of the situation were very clearly provided for the Americans many months ago.
Weymouth: Did you tell them before Morsi left that he was going to go?
Sisi: No.
Weymouth: Not even the day before?
Sisi: In our statements, we said in clear words that the complications and developments on the ground would lead to a civil war here.
When these statements came out in March, in the U.S. there were a lot of question marks. They said, “Why is the General saying that the developments and complications on the ground will lead to a crisis?”
The numbers of the people who began to oppose the political leadership grew in size and continued to grow until there was that spectacular mass of the people. Throughout the different phases, we had our recommendations and proposed advice [to Morsi]. A lot of things could have happened – like, for example, forming a coalition government without having to touch the post of the president.
Weymouth: If Morsi had cooperated?
Sisi: Cooperated with the people, not with me.
Weymouth: In order to stay as president, he would have had to agree to something?
Sisi: He just used to listen to all recommendations and advice but never executed any of them. Yes. I believe it wasn’t him alone who was making the decisions. There was the organization of the Brotherhood behind him — the Guidance Office of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian people felt that he wasn’t the man making the decisions and that he wasn’t their president. He was the president of a certain faction, and he was not exercising command or leadership. The leadership was in the hands of the Brotherhood. And this is one major reason for his failure.
Weymouth: The United States is very concerned about the sit-ins at Rabaa [al-Adawiya mosque] and Nahdet [Misr Square], [two areas in Cairo where the Muslim Brotherhood has staged protests].
Sisi: We really wonder: where is the role of the United States and the European Union and all of the other international forces that are interested in the security, safety and well-being of Egypt? Are the values of freedom and democracy exclusively exercised in your countries but other countries do not have the right to exercise the same values and enjoy the same environment? Have you seen the scores of millions of Egyptians calling for change in Tahrir? What is your response to that?
You left the Egyptians, you turned your back on the Egyptians and they won’t forget that. Now you want to continue turning your backs on Egyptians? The U.S. interest and the popular will of the Egyptians don’t have to conflict. We always asked the U.S. officials to provide advice to the former president to overcome his problems.
Weymouth: What did the United States do?
Sisi: The result is very obvious. Where is the economic support to Egypt from the U.S.? Even throughout the year when the former president was in office — where was the U.S. support to help the country restore its economy and overcome its dire needs?
The dynamics in the street here is very fast. The will of the people moves by the hour. Only 20 days before Morsi was ousted, the public was only calling for reshuffling the government. But ten days later, the demands changed to having early presidential elections. Five days later, the call was for Morsi to leave.
I want to remind you that we gave a 7-day grace period for everybody in Egypt before the 30th of June – a period for the key players to work the problem out. On June 30th, at the end of the seven days, I gave an extra 48 hours. I stated very clearly that with the end of the 48 hours, if nothing changes, there would be a road map declared between the military and political powers of Egypt.
The day the communique was declared [July 3], there was a meeting [I called] with the [Coptic] pope, the grand sheikh of al-Azhar, Dr. [Mohamed] ElBaradei, a political representative of the Salifist Nour Party, a representative for the Egyptian women, representatives from the Egyptian judiciary and representatives from the young people, the Tamarod. The Freedom and Justice Party was invited to this meeting.
Weymouth: And they didn’t come?
Sisi: They didn’t show up. At this meeting, all attendees agreed on the road map. The first point is that the chief justice of the supreme constitutional court will be an interim president for the republic. A technocrat government has been formed. A committee will be formed of legal and constitutional experts to address constitutional amendments and provide recommendations for public debate. After the public debate, the constitution will be put up for a public referendum. Once the constitution is approved, we will conduct parliamentary and then presidential elections within nine months.
Weymouth: Are you going to run for president?
Sisi: I want to say that the most important achievement in my life is to overcome this circumstance, [to ensure] that we live peacefully, to go on with our road map and to be able to conduct the coming elections without shedding one drop of Egyptian blood.
Weymouth: But are you going to run?
Sisi: You just can’t believe that there are people who don’t aspire for authority.
Weymouth: Is that you?
Sisi: Yes. It’s the hopes of the people that is our [hope]. And when the people love you – this is the most important thing for me.
The pains and suffering of the people are too many. A lot of people don’t know about the suffering. I am the most aware of the size of the problems in Egypt. That is why I am asking: where is your support? The title of the article should be “Hey America: Where is your support for Egypt? Where is your support for free people?”
On July 3rd, the same day the communique was declared, I sent a message to the former president. I asked him to keep the initiative in his hands. Put yourself to a public referendum and see if the people want you.
Weymouth: And he said?
Sisi: No way. Not yet. After two years.
Weymouth: Did he understand that he was just about to go?
Sisi: No. Nobody expected that.
Weymouth: When did you make up your mind?
Sisi: I made every possible effort to show due respect and due discipline for the state institution to the very last minute.
Weymouth: Did you feel there would be civil strife if the army didn’t intervene?
Sisi: I expected if we didn’t intervene, it would have turned into a civil war. Four months before he left, I told Morsi the same thing. I told him that the way you and your group are dealing with the Egyptians, you are creating a conflict between your supporters, who deal with the Egyptians not as political opposition but as people who are trying to fight against Islam. I told him at that time that if the two groups of Egyptians, your supporters and the rest of the Egyptians, fight with each other, as the military, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.
What I want the American reader to know is that this is a free people who rebelled against an unjust political rule, and this free people needs your support. You are dealing with a patriotic and an honorable military institution that does not aspire for power and the Egyptians should be supported and assisted by the free peoples of the world. Because Egyptians won’t forget who is extending their helping hands and who is turning their backs on them.
Weymouth: Aren’t the Americans warning the interim government against any further civil strife or bloodshed?
Sisi: The U.S. administration has a lot of leverage and influence with the Muslim Brotherhood, and I’d really like the U.S. administration to use this leverage with them to resolve the conflict.
Weymouth: How do you feel about reconciliation with [the Islamists]? Do you think it’s important?
Sisi: Of course.
Weymouth: How can you do that when the Muslim Brotherhood feels they won the election and now their leaders are in jail?
Sisi: In your opinion, how many Muslim Brothers are in jail? 5,000? 7,000?
Weymouth: I have no idea.
Sisi: It’s about eight or nine people. And they were arrested legally with legal warrants.
The leaders, Saad al-Katatni and Khairat al-Shater, are the only ones in jail right now under investigation for prosecution. The rest of the leaders are outside. Most of them are in Rabaa. They are protecting themselves with the masses of the people there.
Whoever will clean these squares or resolve these sit-ins will not be the military. There is a civil police and they are assigned to these duties. On the 26th of this month, more than 30 million people went out onto the streets to give me support. These people are waiting for me to do something.
Weymouth: I heard people are starting to criticize you because you haven’t done anything about the two sites. Is that true?
Sisi: Can we just sacrifice thousands of people on the street just to evade criticism? I cannot do anything that would lead to bloodshed to evade criticism.
Weymouth: What is Hamas’ involvement inside Egypt?
Sisi: Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood looked at Hamas as part of the family.
Weymouth: How can you assure the United States that you don’t want the military to rule Egypt — that the army wants to go back to its barracks?
Sisi: Mark my words and take me very seriously: The Egyptian military is different from other militaries around the world.
Weymouth: Is your intention not to have the military step in again? With the new constitution, is your intention to adopt democracy in Egypt?
Sisi: Yes, we understand that mechanisms of democracies and the constitutions around the world provide the means for the people to change or impeach their presidents if they are not satisfied with their performances.
Weymouth: But you hope the future constitution provides for a democratic way [to oust a leader]? Do you really want to have civilian rule here?
Sisi: Yes, absolutely.
Weymouth: That is your dream one day?
Sisi: Yes, I hope this day will come soon.
Weymouth: In a future election, would Egypt accept international observers?
Sisi: We are ready to receive monitors and international observers for the elections from everywhere in the world.
The Egyptians are looking up to you, the Americans. Don’t disappoint their hopes. Don’t give them your backs. In the Egyptian culture, talking a lot about aid and U.S. assistance really hurts our pride and dignity.
Weymouth: Are you referring to a possible cut off of U.S. assistance? Are you worried?
Sisi: If the Americans want to cut assistance, they can do that. But they don’t have to hurt us. That hurts the Egyptians a lot.
Weymouth: Were you upset by the hold up of the [F-16s]?
Sisi: Yes. This is not the way to deal with a patriotic military.
Weymouth: Did President Obama call you after July 3rd?
Sisi: No.
Weymouth: Did any U.S. official call you? Secretary of State [John F.] Kerry? Defense Secretary [Chuck] Hagel?
Sisi: Hagel. Almost every day.
I just want to emphasize that you are dealing with a person who is honorable, sincere, someone who has integrity. Someone who would not have respected himself if he didn’t do what he did [on July 3rd]. I could have just satisfied myself being a Minister of Defense and turned my head away from the Egyptians and the problems from which they were suffering every day and just left the Egyptian scene to boil. We changed places – the military and the Egyptians. We wanted to give them comfort, to relieve their suffering, and take the suffering on our shoulders. We relieved their suffering and took it on our shoulders.
(From left to right: Tal, Nir and Adi Moses before the attack.)
* Obama calls Abbas, who claims that he is committed to a two-state solution.
* The list of prisoners slated to be released includes terrorists who threw firebombs at buses carrying children, who raped and stabbed 13-year-old kids and who murdered the elderly, including a Holocaust survivor, and stabbed to death a leading university professor.
* The Independent (a paper of choice among many British teachers) says those being released are Israeli-held “political prisoners”.
* In its lead editorial, Ma’ariv says “This is a Shylock deal. The Americans, the Arabs and the Europeans are asking the senior Jewish representative, the private and collective Israel: Cut some flesh from your body so that we will know that you are serious.”
* Jerusalem Post columnist Michael Freund: “Just imagine how we would react if the German, French or Russian governments chose to allow the murderers of Jews to go free. Such a move would be universally denounced throughout the Jewish world as a grave injustice, and rightly so. There is no reason why the Israeli government should not be held to the same ethical standard.
“Indeed, for 2,000 years, we waited for the day when those who harm Jews would be brought to justice and made to pay for their crimes. For a Jewish government in Jerusalem to set killers free is nothing less than a slap in the face to everything this country represents.”
* Tom Gross quoted in the Washington Free Beacon: “This is the first time that Netanyahu is facing significant criticism from both left and right in Israel, who are on the same page on this issue. Many in Israel who are scratching their heads as to Netanyahu’s motives, knowing that he is an intelligent man who must have been aware of the public outcry this issue would generate.”
* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.
CONTENTS
1. Obama calls Netanyahu and Abbas, urges quick movement, sustained momentum
2. Raping a 13-year-old boy, murdering an elderly Holocaust survivor
3. The (London) Independent: Excusing terrorism
4. Israeli media united against deal (apart from some extreme leftists in Ha’aretz)
5. Israeli public “strongly opposes” prisoner release
6. Shin Bet head criticizes the release
7. Deputy Defense Minister Danon: It is “lunacy” to release terrorists
8. Israelis scratch their heads as to Netanyahu’s motives
9. Netanyahu on ‘Final Resolution’: Not ‘A Single Arab On Our Lands’ (Daily Beast)
10. Hamas: Abbas is involved in a conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian cause
11. Satire: Highlights from this week’s Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington
12. For the record, this is how the Israeli cabinet voted; and the convicted terrorists
OBAMA CALLS NETANYAHU AND ABBAS, URGES QUICK MOVEMENT, SUSTAINED MOMENTUM
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
This dispatch is a follow-up to Monday’s dispatch, which was titled “Because if he is released, I will no longer be able to live” and which included an article by terror victim Adi Moses, translated for this email list which I titled “But me, you do not really know at all”.
A sizeable number of readers asked for more on the convicted terrorists that Israel – foolishly and immorally in my opinion – has agreed to release in advance of peace talks.
If – and it is a big if – these killers ought ever be released, it should be on the day after the Palestinians declare an end of conflict, not now, when they are being treated as heroes among a large swathe of Palestinian society.
Although I think John Kerry’s peace talks are extremely unlikely to succeed within the nine month framework he has set, I don't agree with the many analysts who think they have absolutely no chance of producing an agreement and therefore are not worth trying at all, since their failure could lead to bloodshed.
But I think the chances of the talks producing a sustainable agreement that will end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are significantly diminished if the Palestinian Authority claims that these killers and rapists are heroes (and tells this to the public), and insists -- with American collusion -- that they be set free even before an agreement has been reached.
Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as part of the U.S. efforts to get Middle East peace negotiations off the ground. According to the White House, Abbas told Obama during the call that he is committed to the two-state solution and believes an agreement must be reached as soon as possible.
RAPING A 13-YEAR-OLD BOY, MURDERING AN ELDERLY HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
This is information I added to my website on Monday shortly after I sent my previous dispatch:
The list of prisoners slated to be released includes terrorists who threw firebombs at buses carrying children, who raped and stabbed 13-year-old kids and who murdered the elderly, including a Holocaust survivor.
Among the 104 prisoners going free:
* Abu Na’ame Abrahim Mahmus Samir, who blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing six passengers.
* Kamal Awad Ali Ahmad, currently serving 16 life terms, for the torture and murder of 16 people.
* Ahmed Mahmed Jameel Shahada, who was sentenced to a 47 year term for the rape and murder of a 13-year-old Israeli boy. The boy was killed by being beaten on the head with an Iron bar.
* Jumaa Adem and Mahmoud Kharbish, who killed Rachel Weiss and her three young children in 1988, along with an Israeli soldier (David Delarosa) who tried to save the children
* Mohammad Adel Daoud, who killed a pregnant woman and her 5-year-old son in a 1987 firebomb attack.
* Issa Abd Rabbo, who murdered a young Israeli couple that was on a hike outside Jerusalem in October 1984. After tying them up and covering their heads, Abd Rabbo executed them at point-blank range.
* Salah Ali Hader Razeq, who stabbed to death 64-year old historian and winner of the Israel Prize, Professor Menachem Stern, in June 1989.
THE (LONDON) INDEPENDENT: EXCUSING TERRORISM
The British paper the Independent (a favorite among many British high school teachers and university lecturers), misleading its readers about the Middle East, called those being released Israeli-held “political prisoners”.
This isn’t, of course, just offensive to their victims, but it is offensive to genuine political prisoners held by actual non-democratic regimes around the world, since it demeans the very term “political prisoner”.
By contrast, The Washington Post described the terrorists to be released as:
“The list of prisoners who may be released in coming days includes militants who threw firebombs, in one case at a bus carrying children; stabbed and shot civilians, including women, elderly Jews and suspected Palestinian collaborators; and ambushed and killed border guards, police officers, security agents and soldiers.”
ISRAELI MEDIA UNITED AGAINST DEAL (APART FROM SOME EXTREME LEFTISTS IN HA’ARETZ)
Shortly after I sent out my dispatch earlier this week I added some other information to my website, as follows:
Most Israeli papers today criticize Netanyahu for the deal.
The headline in today’s Yediot Ahronot reads “the murderers will be released.”
In its lead editorial, Ma’ariv says “This is a Shylock deal. The Americans, the Arabs and the Europeans are asking the senior Jewish representative, the private and collective Israel: Cut some flesh from your body so that we will know that you are serious.”
Jerusalem Post columnist Michael Freund described the government’s decision as “morally reprehensible, politically short-sighted and diplomatically dim-witted. It sets an abysmal precedent: Israel has agreed to pay a fee for the right to negotiate with its enemies, something that for months the government had said it would never do.
“Just imagine how we would react if the German, French or Russian governments chose to allow the murderers of Jews to go free. Such a move would be universally denounced throughout the Jewish world as a grave injustice, and rightly so. There is no reason why the Israeli government should not be held to the same ethical standard.
“Indeed, for 2,000 years, we waited for the day when those who harm Jews would be brought to justice and made to pay for their crimes. For a Jewish government in Jerusalem to set killers free is nothing less than a slap in the face to everything this country represents.”
ISRAELI PUBLIC “STRONGLY OPPOSES” PRISONER RELEASE
Polls of the Israeli public have shown that 80 percent of leftist and centrist Jews, and 95 percent of right-wing ones, “strongly oppose” the prisoner release.
Israelis do not understand why Netanyahu has agreed to release these terrorists just to woo the Palestinians to what will probably prove to be futile negotiations.
Netanyahu said in “an open letter to the Israeli people”:
“This is an incredibly difficult decision. It hurts the bereaved families, it hurts all of the Israeli people and it hurts me very much. It clashes with the most important principle, the principle of justice… [but] sometimes prime ministers are forced to make decisions that go against public opinion – when the issue is important for the country.”
(Full text of Netanyahu’s letter in Hebrew here.)
SHIN BET HEAD CRITICIZES THE RELEASE
The director of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency, Yoram Cohen, expressed reservation regarding the release of 104 convicted terrorists and said that “their release will damage security, both in terms of immediate threat to public safety and in terms of an erosion of deterrence.”
Cohen said he had handed the government a list of prisoners divided into three categories: Those who can be released, those that should not be released and those that should be released only to Gaza or deported away from Israel and the West Bank.
DEPUTY DEFENSE MINISTER DANON: IT IS “LUNACY” TO RELEASE TERRORISTS
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, a rising star of the ruling Likud party, and a frequent critic of prime minister Netanyahu, sent a letter to Likud ministers asking them to vote against the planned release.
“I call on you to vote against the release of prisoners, but in favor of the negotiations, without preconditions,” he wrote. “It is lunacy to release dozens of terrorists who have the blood of hundreds of Israelis on their hands, just to make the Palestinians willing to sit with us next to the negotiating table.”
ISRAELIS SCRATCH THEIR HEADS AS TO NETANYAHU’S MOTIVES
Adam Kredo, in an article in the Washington Free Beacon yesterday writes:
“This is the first time that Netanyahu is facing significant criticism from both left and right in Israel, who are on the same page on this issue,” political and media analyst Tom Gross said. “Many in Israel who are scratching their heads as to Netanyahu’s motives, knowing that he is an intelligent man who must have been aware of the public outcry this issue would generate.”
Thank you to all those who have recommended or linked to my previous dispatch on this issue, including a link from the New York Times website. Among them:
* Douglas Murray in The Spectator (London), last paragraph here.
* Lee Smith in the Weekly Standard (Washington), last link here.
* CIFwatch (Jerusalem)
NETANYAHU ON ‘FINAL RESOLUTION’: NOT ‘A SINGLE ARAB ON OUR LANDS’
Netanyahu on ‘Final Resolution’: Not ‘A Single Arab On Our Lands’
By Gil Troy
The Daily Beast
July 30, 2013
Of course, Benjamin Netanyahu did not say that – or any such thing. Netanyahu, as the leader of the Jabotinskyite Likud movement understands that Israel must remain a Jewish and democratic state that respects all its citizens, including Arabs, many of whom serve honorably in the courts, the Knesset, and elsewhere. But imagine the outrage if Netanyahu had said such a thing – we have seen how when third-string Knesset backbenchers make even less offensive remarks it generates New York Times headlines and much Jewish handwringing about supposed Israeli “racism,” when, of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a national one not a racial one at all.
By contrast, when Mahmoud Abbas, briefing “mostly Egyptian journalists,” according to the report reprinted in the Jerusalem Post, imagined an Israeli-free (but let’s face it, basically Jew-free) Palestinian state, few mainstream media outlets decided this was news. This Outrage Gap, this magical ray that renders Palestinian bigotry and hate-mongering invisible, has perverted the so-called “peace process” for decades, and has already caused imbalance in this latest round of negotiations – which, despite my frustrations and fears, I desperately hope will succeed.
To be fair, this is Abbas’s full sentence: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands.” This is, of course, one of the fundamental assumptions guiding peace talks for decades, that the Jews will leave what the Palestinians have convinced the world is their territory exclusively, while Arabs will stay in Israel. That assumption follows the guidelines of the original British Mandate after World War I, which created a Jew-free Transjordan, east of the Jordan River, and envisioned carving out some territory west of the Jordan for a Jewish state.
Let me be clear. My vision of Israel’s future includes all of Israel’s current citizens and their future descendants, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. Moreover, I understand that a future Palestinian state will require displacing more Israelis from some territory, as was done with Yamit after the Egyptian Peace Treaty and was done in Gaza – and we forget – part of the West Bank, with the Disengagement. I also believe that the most viable arrangement with the Palestinians will respect current demographic realities as much as possible, trying to draw viable boundaries that minimize the amount of inconvenience to people living on both sides of the Green Line – that improvised boundary from 1949.
But the free pass given Abbas on these remarks, like the free pass given to his odious dissertation trying to Nazify Zionism and minimize the Holocaust, tells a deeper, darker tale. There are vast armies of Palestinian enablers in the West who exaggerate every Israeli imperfection and soft-pedal serious Palestinian evils. This asymmetry results in always blaming Israel – even when the Palestinians turn from negotiating back to terror in 2000 – and always putting the onus on Israel to make the first move – as evidenced by Israel’s major concession this week in freeing murderers with blood on their hands. This outrage gap holds democratic Israel, with all its imperfections, to an impossibly high standard, while rarely holding Palestinians up to even the most minimum standards when it comes to judging their undemocratic procedures, their appalling human rights record, their hostile attitudes toward gays, women, Jews, or any non-Palestinian, non-males.
Clearly, this imbalance hurts Israel, undermining Israel’s standing, alienating bystanders, putting extra-pressure on Israel even from natural allies in the United States and Europe. But this imbalance hurts Palestinians too, in at least two central ways.
First, I think reflects what I call liberal condescension. I hold Palestinian politics and society up to high standards out of respect; giving Palestinians a free pass, be it when they terrorize or demonize, shows contempt for them, assuming that somehow they cannot live up to basic standards of decency.
Second, all this enabling feeds Palestinian extremism and Israeli extremism as well. Indulging Palestinian bigotry, oppression, fanaticism, and violence helps make the Middle East more incendiary, undermines Israeli moderates, and fuels the fanatics.
Just as many critics of Israel insist they are true friends trying to save Israel’s soul, true friends of the Palestinians in the West would start by publicizing Abbas’s remarks – and then repudiating them as contrary to the kind of country he should be trying to build and the kind of tone he should be trying to set in negotiations.
(Gil Troy is a longtime subscriber to this email list.)
HAMAS: ABBAS IS INVOLVED IN A CONSPIRACY TO LIQUIDATE THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE
Here is Hamas’s latest views on the Palestinian Authority:
Hamdan: Abbas is involved in a conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian cause
July 31, 2013
www.qassam.ps/news-7301-Hamdan_Abbas_is_involved_in_a_conspiracy_to_liquidate_the_Palestinian_cause.html
Al Qassam website- Beirut- Osama Hamdan, a leader in Hamas movement, stated that PA president Mahmoud Abbas leads a serious scheme to drive a wedge between Gaza and Egypt, as part of a systematic policy to take revenge on Hamas movement.
Hamdan confirmed that Hamas movement has managed to get official documents to prove PA involvement in a conspiracy in coordination with US and Israel to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Abbas is involved in paving the way for an Israeli aggression against the Gaza strip, the leader in Hamas movement said.
Meanwhile, MP Ismail al-Ashqar, who is in charge of the security and interior committee of the PLC, called on Egyptian authorities to exercise caution regarding the fabricated information provided by the PA and Abbas.
He pointed out to the false accusations which are fabricated in Ramallah to implicate Hamas movement in Egyptian interior affairs.
These fabricated accusations have catastrophic political and security agenda that targets the Palestinian people and resistance through launching an incitement media campaign to demonize the Palestinian resistance, he added.
For his part, Ihab Ghussain, the government spokesman, condemned Fatah movement ongoing policy to distort the Palestinian resistance.
These attempts to involve our people in the Egyptian internal security events will not affect the historical relationship between the Egyptian and Palestinian peoples, said Ghussain.
He stressed that these fabricated stories only serve the occupation and cover the Israeli crimes against Palestinian people.
He added that the Palestinian people will prosecute those responsible for these crimes that target the Palestinian people and their interests.
***
Tom Gross adds:: Here Al Jazeera English reports “Hamas accuses rival Fatah of smear campaign”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H4K15FY7Bs&sns=em
SATIRE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS WEEK’S ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE TALKS IN WASHINGTON
This satirical piece is from the Dubai-based website “The Pan-Arabia Enquirer,” which is modeled on America’s “The Onion”.
Highlights from this week’s Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington:
- Laughs all round after Kerry admits his last two trips to the Middle East were “simply for the air miles”
- Mahmoud Abbas, speaking via video link up, admits he’s “frankly not that arsed about Gaza”
- Israel asks to postpone discussions about the permanent status of falafel
- To avoid a diplomatic minefield, both delegations agree to refer to Palestine as ‘an unspecified part of the West Bank and the Gaza strip which Israel refers to as Judea and Samaria, the future status of which can only be resolved through negotiation by the two parties, except Jerusalem of course’, or AUPOTWBATGSWIRAJASTFSOWCOBRTNBTTPEJOC for short
FOR THE RECORD, THIS IS HOW THE ISRAELI CABINET VOTED
Those in favor of freeing convicted terrorists in advance of peace talsk:
1. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud)
2. Yuval Steinitz (Likud)
3. Moshe Ya’alon (Likud)
4. Gideon Sa’ar (Likud)
5. Sofa Landver (Yisrael Beytenu)
6. Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Yisrael Beytenu)
7. Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid)
8. Yael German (Yesh Atid)
9. Yaakov Peri (Yesh Atid)
10. Shai Piron (Yesh Atid)
11. Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid)
12. Tzipi Livni (Hatnua)
13. Amir Peretz (Hatnua)
Those against:
1. Gilad Erdan (Likud)
2. Yisrael Katz (Likud)
3. Yair Shamir (Yisrael Beytenu)
4. Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beytenu)
5. Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home)
6. Uri Ariel (Jewish Home)
7. Uri Orbach (Jewish Home)
Those abstaining:
1. Silvan Shalom (Likud)
2. Limor Livnat (Likud)
THE CONVICTED TERRORISTS
Here’s the list of the 104 killers to be released. A number of them are Israeli citizens.
1. Karim Yusef Yunis, arrested in January 1983 (Israeli citizen)
2. Maher Abdel Latif Yunis, arrested in January 1983 (Israeli citizen)
3. Issa Nimer Abed Rabbo, arrested in October 1984
4. Ahmed Farid Shehadeh, arrested in February 1985
5. Mohamed Ibrahim Nasr, arrested in May 1985
6. Rafi Farhoud Karajeh, arrested in May 1985
7. Mustafa Amer Ghnaimat, arrested in July 1985
8. Ziad Mahmoud Ghnaimat, arrested in June 1985
9. Othman Abdallah Bani Hasan, arrested in July 1985
10. Haza’a Mohamed Sa’di, arrested in July 1985
11. Mohamed Ahmed al- Toss, arrested in October 1985
12. Fayez Mutawi al-Khur, arrested in November 1985
13. Mohamed Musbah Ashour, arrested in February 1986
14. Ibrahim Nayef Abu Mukh, arrested in March 1986 (Israeli citizen)
15. Rushdi Hamdan Abu Mukh, arrested in March 1986 (Israeli citizen)
16. Walid Nimer Dakka, arrested in March 1986 (Israeli citizen)
17. Ibrahim Abdel Razek Bayadseh, arrested in March 1986 (Israeli citizen)
18. Ahmed Ali Jaber, arrested in July 1986 (Israeli citizen)
19. Afu Musbah Shkair, arrested in July 1986
20. Samir Ibrahim Abu Ni’meh, arrested in October 1986
21. Mohamed Adel Daoud, arrested in December 1987
22. Yassin Mohamed Abu Khdeir, arrested in December 1987
23. Bashir Abdallah Khatib, arrested in January 1988 (Israeli citizen)
24. Mahmoud Othman Jabarin, arrested in October 1988 (Israeli citizen)
25. Juma’ah Ibrahim Adam, arrested in October 1988
26. Mahmoud Salem Kharbish, arrested in November 1988
27. Samir Saleh Sarsawi, arrested in November 1988
28. Bilal Ahmed Hussein, arrested in December 1988
29. Ibrahim Lutfi Taqtouq, arrested in March 1989
30. Samir Nayef al-Na’neesh, arrested in March 1989
31. Bilal Ibrahim Damra, arrested in June 1989
32. Mustafa Othman al-Haj, arrested in June 1989
33. Nihad Yusef Jundiyeh, arrested in July 1989
34. Mohamed Mahmoud Hamdiyeh, arrested in July 1989
35. Raed Mohamed al-Sa’di, arrested in August 1989
36. Najeh Mohamed Muqbel, arrested in July 1990
37. Mohamed Jaber Nashbat, arrested in September 1990
38. Ahmed said al-Damuni, arrested in September 1990
39. Mohamed Abdel Majid Sawalha, arrested in December 1990
40. Hosni Faregh Sawalha, arrested in December 1990
41. Mohamed Ahmed al- Sabbagh, arrested in January 1991
42. Khaled Daoud Azraq, arrested in February 1991
43. Mukhles Sidki Sawafta, arrested in March 1991
44. Fares Ahmed Baroud, arrested in March 1991
45. Khaled Mohamed Asakreh, arrested in May 1991
46. Faisal Mustafa Abu al- Rub, arrested in September 1991
47. Jamal Khaled Abu Muhsen, arrested in October 1991
48. Abdel Rahman Yusef al- Haj, arrested in February 1992
49. Mohamed Ata Muamar, arrested in February 1992
50. Ibrahim Hasan Ighbariyeh, arrested in February 1992 (Israeli citizen)
51. Mohamed Said Ighbarieyh, arrested in February 1992 (Israeli citizen)
52. Yahya Mustafa Ighbarieyh, arrested in March 1992
53. Mohamed Tawfik Jabareen, arrested in March 1992
54. Numan Yusef Shalabi, arrested in May 1992
55. Adnan Mohamed al- Afandi, arrested in May 1992
56. Sharif Hasan Abu Dhailah, arrested in May 1992
57. Muayad Salim Hijja, arrested in May 1992
58. Faraj Saleh al-Rimahi, arrested in July 1992
59. Israr Mustafa Samarin, arrested in August 1992
60. Musa Izzat Kura’n, arrested in August 1992
61. Dia Zakariya al-Falouji, arrested in October 1992
62. Osama Zakariya Abu Hanani, arrested in October 1992
63. Mohamed Yusef Turkeman, arrested in October 1992
64. Ahmed Juma’a Khalaf, arrested in November 1992
65. Mohamed Fawzi Falneh, arrested in November 1992
66. Jamil Abdel Wahab Natsheh, arrested in December 1992
67. Nasser Hasan Abu Srour, arrested in January 1993
68. Mahmoud Jamil Abu Srour, arrested in January 1993
69. Taher Mohamed Zaboud, arrested in February 1993
70. Ahmed Said Abdel Aziz, arrested in February 1993
71. Osama Khaled Silawi, arrested in February 1993
72. Yusef Abdel Hamid Irshaid, arrested in March 1993
73. Atef Izzat Sha’ath, arrested in March 1993
74. Mahmoud Nofal Da’ajneh, arrested in March 1993
75. Mohamed Mustafa Afaneh, arrested in April 1993
76. Ramadan Mohamed Yakoub, arrested in April 1993
77. Ayman Mohamed Jaradat, arrested in April 1993
78. Omar Issa Masoud, arrested in May 1993
79. Yusef Awwad Masalha, arrested in May 1993
80. Mahmoud Musa Issa, arrested in June 1993
81. Rizek Ali Salah, arrested in June 1993
82. Salah Mahmoud Mukled, arrested in July 1993
83. Nael Rafik Salhab, arrested in September 1993
84. Ahmed Awad Kmeil, arrested in September 1993
85. Salameh Abdallah Musleh, arrested in October 1993
86. Esmat Omar Mansour, arrested in October 1993
87. Mikdad Ibrahim Salah, arrested in October 1993
88. Samir Hussein Murtaji, arrested in October 1993
89. Said Rushdi Tamimi, arrested in November 1993
90. Mohamed Yusef Shamasneh, arrested in November 1993
91. Abdel Jawad Yusef Shamasneh, arrested in December 1993
92. Ala Eddin Fahmi al-Karaki, arrested in December 1993
93. Nasser Fawzi Barham, arrested in December 1993
94. Hilmi Hamad al-Amawi, arrested in January 1994
95. Ala eddin Ahmed Abu Sitteh, arrested in January 1994
96. Midhat Fayez Barbakh, arrested in January 1994
97. Ayman taleb Abu Sitteh, arrested in January 1994
98. Yusef Said al-Al, arrested in February 1994
99. Atiyeh Salem Musa, arrested in March 1994
100. Hazem Kassem Shbair, arrested in March 1994
101. Ali Ibrahim al-Rai, arrested in April 1994
102. Mahmoud Mohamed Salman, arrested in May 1994
103. Rami Jawdat Barbakh, arrested in October 1994
104. Ibrahim Fayez Abu Ali, arrested in October 1994