From Ian:
From Arab Spring to Islamic Winter - to Total Chaos
Michael J. Totten: Dig In For a Long War
From Arab Spring to Islamic Winter - to Total Chaos
Middle East experts Dr. Mordechai Kedar and Prof. Eyal Zisser recently sat down with Arutz Sheva ahead of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), and recapped the tumultuous and bloody events of the Arab world over the past year.Summing Up the Year in the Arab World - Dr. Mordechai Kedar and Prof. Eyal Zisser
Kedar, a senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University, began by noting the current warfare is the continuation of a trend of disorder since the "Arab spring" revolutions began in 2011, leading to the "deterioration of states like Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen."
"On the ruins of these countries we see already enclaves of Islamic states," said Kedar, noting the Islamic State (aka ISIS) that has brutally seized power and declared statehood in parts of Iraq and Syria, as well as the Al Qaeda-linked Boko Haram terror group that similarly declared statehood in Nigeria.
Zisser, an expert on Syria and Lebanon and Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities at Tel Aviv University, concurred with Kedar's appraisal, saying "the Arab spring turned out to be an Islamic winter, and now it's not a spring, it's not a winter - it's simply chaos and anarchy."
The western world has exhibited "hypocrisy" towards the developing bloodshed in the Middle East according to Kedar, who remarked the world only wakes up when Westerners are beheaded.
Michael J. Totten: Dig In For a Long War
So we’re resisting one group of odious actors and boosting the other.PA’s Erekat claims 96% of Gaza dead were civilians
We’ve done this before, most famously during World War II when the US and Britain formed an alliance with Josef Stalin against Adolf Hitler in Germany. The long Cold War against Russia began almost immediately after the allies defeated the Nazi regime. One of the West’s last moves in that war was backing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation, some of which later formed the Taliban as others joined the Northern Alliance.
If there were an easier way to clean up the world, believe me, we’d do it. But there’s not. So here we are.
When the Syrian civil war started I argued that the Assad should take be taken care of before the Sunni Islamists, but the latter were weaker then, and in any case we’ll have to deal with both in the long run either way. Because there can be no chance whatsoever of peace and quiet in the Middle East until both the Islamic State and the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis are defeated. Effectively dealing with just one of those factions will take many years.
The Obama administration has been perfectly in line with American public opinion these last few years in wishing the Middle East would just sod off and leave us alone. Huge numbers of Middle Easterners have felt the same way about us. After working in and writing about the region for ten years, I’m sick of it too. But we’re stuck with each other, like it or not.
In an Army Radio interview conducted in English, Erekat also claimed that Israel killed 12,000 people and injured another 12,000 in Gaza, though it was possible that he misspoke and intended to say 2,000 fatalities — the widely accepted figure.
Responding to Erekat’s interview, Israel’s Communication Minister Gilad Erdan said the Palestinian leadership was operating “an industry of lies” aimed at fundamentally delegitimizing Israel, and that there was “no one to talk to” about peace on the Palestinian side.
Erekat spoke three days after Abbas leveled the genocide allegation against Israel in his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to address the General Assembly later Monday, having vowed to “refute the lies” disseminated by Abbas against Israel.
Erekat, in the radio interview, defined genocide as “a direct attempt to eliminate, horrify, relocate, destroy a way of life” and claimed “Israel committed the killing of 12,000 and wounding 12,000 Palestinians; 96 percent of them are civilians.”

















