Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 13, 2024

Was Israel legally allowed to take over the buffer zone in Syria?

Israel and Syria signed a disengagement agreement in 1974 to end the Yom Kippur War. It has held for a remarkable 50 years.

Now, it appears that Israel is violating that agreement by entering areas that it was not allowed to enter under the agreement.

Is this legal?

First of all, the question is whether the Syria that signed the agreement in 1974 is considered the same government today. In general, under international law, a state is obligated to uphold agreements made by previous governments. It is too early to tell whether a successor government will uphold those obligations.

This gets a little more complicated by the fact that Syria never recognized Israel. While even parties that don't recognize each other are still obligated by the terms of the agreement, this could affect the legal analysis.

For Israel to abrogate the agreement, it has to adhere to various provisions in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Two possible legal avenues that could be pursued are Articles 61 and 62. Article 61 says that if the agreement becomes impossible to enforce it may be ended; Article 62 says that it could be ended by an unforeseen change in circumstances. The bars for both of them to be invoked are quite high, however, and even if Israel would want to invoke them, it would have to give formal notice and wait a time period for a response.

However, Israel has not nullified the agreement. It has said that the moves it has made like moving into the buffer zone are a temporary response to the changed circumstances following the collapse of the Assad regime. They are meant to secure Israel's border since there is no guarantee that any rebel forces could be trusted not to enter the buffer zone and UNDOF couldn't stop them. It is meant to only last until the security situation stabilizes and it becomes clear who will control the Syrian side of the border.

From Israel's perspective, holding onto the peak of Mount Hermon is essential for its self defense in the absence of a reliable UN or other force there.

Moves like these are justified under the necessity of self-defense or maintaining national security. Time is of the essence and Israel cannot afford to wait to secure its border and ensure no dangerous weapons fall into the hands of one of many jihadist groups in Syria. Up until last week, Israel could rely on the Syrian regime to act in certain ways that enforced the disengagement agreement; it can no longer rely on that and needs to make decisions now to protect itself. Even the hundreds of airstrikes can be viewed as proportionate since there has been little or no collateral damage and they were aimed at military targets.

So while it is technically violating the 1974 agreement with a regime that no longer exists, self defense justifies its actions under international law until a new Syrian government can step in and be trusted.

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One of the biggest traps that diplomats and pundits (and intelligence chiefs) fall into is substituting wishful thinking for objectively looking at the facts.

Here's an example from Professor Dror Ze'evi in Haaretz, but it applies to countless people buoyed by the lightning events in Syria:

The rebel leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammed al-Golani), is speaking from every possible platform about his desire for a representative government that will even be tolerant of the Alawites, who are identified with the old regime. Perhaps in the end, he will prove to be a terrorist who will lead his people into an attack on Israel. But the hysteria over this issue is exaggerated.

Israel is stronger than all the Syrian organizations put together. And since the air force has already attacked Syria's arsenals of chemical weapons and other strategic weapons, they possess nothing that could threaten Israel. Moreover, to a large extent, they owe their success in defeating the regime to the Israel Defense Forces' achievements in the war against Hezbollah and Iran, and they are aware of this.

...A democracy, or something close to it, in Syria that objects to Iranian intervention would be a significant advantage for Israel. It would ensure an end to arms transfers to Hezbollah, get rid of the Iranian militias that have entrenched themselves in Syria and turn Iran's plan for a joint, multifront operation to destroy Israel into a dead letter. It would also create an opening for peace in the future.

In addition, following the direct attack Iran suffered and the collapse of its proxies, there are powerful elements within that country that are interested in reconsidering its militant policy. It's true that Iranian leader Ali Khamenei opposes such a step, but the moderate groups are becoming louder.

Yet despite all this, Israel is behaving brutally and shortsightedly. It has occupied territory in Syria and has positioned itself from the start as hostile to Syria. Instead, immediately after the regime fell, the country's leaders should have wished Syrians success in replacing Assad's evil regime and said they would be happy to have peaceful, brotherly relations with Syria.

Firstly, the last paragraph is inaccurate. Netanyahu's message to Syria was not hostile, but resolute, and he indeed did say that he would be happy to have peaceful relations with Syria.

We send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria: to the Druze, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel. We're going to follow events very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel.

The message is that Israel wants peace but is prepared for any eventuality. Which is exactly the correct attitude.

Starting a lovefest for Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham because its leader has made some moderate statements is shortsighted. The keyword isn't embracing him but using caution.

Two weeks ago no one in the West publicly supported the jihadist Syrian rebels taking over Syria. Now the entire West is jubilant over the end of what they had previously effectively supported: a brutal but stable regime. The messaging is inconsistent and the responses have been inconsistent as well.

Rebuilding Syria is important. The West should not let China or Russia step into the vacuum and become the new Syria's major sponsor, and if that means judicious and contingent loosening of some sanctions or terrorist designations that exist against HTS and al-Joublani, those decisions need to be made with a clear head.

However, treating HTS as a suddenly respectable political group is as shortsighted as supporting Hezbollah as a political party was.

HTS has a history of brutality, including after it broke with Al Qaeda.

For five years, HTS has controlled Idlib, and we can look there to see a little about its philosophy of governance. It includes arbitrary arrests of critics, torture, extrajudicial executions, anti-woman laws, forced conversions to Sunni Islam, confiscating property of Druze and Christians, stealing humanitarian aid, using human shields and using children as suicide bombers.

Which means they are pretty much the Syrian Hamas - a jihadist group that also enjoyed worldwide respect as being pragmatic and wanting stability and peace before October 7. An Islamist group that claimed to do what is best for the people while building up a powerful army that was stronger than the ruling government's.

Additionally, there is a dismal record of successful revolutions where there are competing rebel groups.

Encouraging the longshot of transforming Syria into a stable, democratic regime must not only be based on carrots but also sticks. While no one expects the jihadists to start loving Israel or Jews, they respect power, and Israel has shown power while still extending a hand for peace.

As far as I can tell, the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes against Syrian weapons this week - many of them causing spectacular secondary explosions - has not killed or injured a single person. That is a message that is being heard loud and clear.

Israel's caution seems to be the most sane reaction to Syria of anyone in the world.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

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The Palestinian Authority executes a young man for no apparent reason. On video. But no Jews could be blamed, so no one cares.

A video was released this week showing an apparent point blank execution in Jenin.

Rabhi Shalabi, 19, was driving his motorcycle with his cousin.According to reports, he was carrying a carton of onions. He stops at a makeshift checkpoint. The Palestinian police vehicle is clearly visible. The cousins wait to be waved on through, as they are every day.

But this day Rabhi was shot dead, and the cousin got shot in the eye. (The cousin is in front, he can be seen waving his hand right before the gunshot.)

Unlike videos taken at Israeli checkpoints that show the security services shooting terrorists, there is no chaos. No split second decisions. No aggression from the victim. No threat. The shooter had ten solid seconds to size up the situation before deciding to shoot.

At first the Palestinian Authority denied it was responsible, claiming the cousins were shot by armed gangs. Only when the video was released did they grudgingly admit that they shot them.

And outside Arabic media, this story gained no traction at all. No press releases from human rights groups (although the local office of the UN human rights office did condemn it.) The main group condemning the PA is its rival Hamas.

The reason, of course, is because there are no Jews in the area to blame.

Palestinian lives only matter when those lives can be fodder for Jew-hatred. Otherwise, no one gives a damn.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/12 Links Pt2: The American university is rotting from within; Murdoch visits firebombed Melbourne synagogue; Paraguay reopens its embassy in Jerusalem

From Ian:

The American university is rotting from within

American universities face an unprecedented challenge with the return of Donald Trump. His administration seems likely to attack such things as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, while pushing to defund programmes favourable to terrorists, expel unruly students and deport those who are in the US illegally. Loss of federal support to universities, the educrats fear, could cause major financial setbacks, even among the Ivies. Like medieval clerics, the rapidly growing ranks of university administrators, deans and tenured faculty have grown used to living in what one writer describes as a ‘modern form of manorialism’, where luxury and leisure come as of right.

Universities are likely to try resisting any changes, no matter how justified. Nationally, 78 per cent of professors voted for Kamala Harris. To many, Trump’s election represents a rebellion of ‘uneducated’. The University of California at Berkeley blames his rise on ‘racism and sexism’. Wesleyan University president Michael Roth calls on universities to abandon ‘institutional neutrality’ for activism in the Trump era, predictably comparing neutral professors to those who accommodated the Nazis. Democracy dies, apparently, whenever the progressive monopoly is threatened.

This arrogance reflects decades of the sector’s rising power and influence. University became the ultimate passport into what Daniel Bell called the ‘knowledge class’ a half century ago. A National Journal survey of 250 top American public-sector decision-makers found that 40 per cent of them are Ivy League graduates. Looking at the question globally, David Rothkopf, author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, compiled a list of more than six thousand members of what he calls the global ‘superclass’: leaders of corporations, banks and investment firms, governments, the military, the media and religious groups. Nearly a third attended one of 20 elite universities.

Also like their clerical ancestors, today’s academics tend to embrace a common ideology. By 2017, according to one oft-cited study, 60 per cent of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared with just 12 per cent as conservative or far right. In less than three decades, the ratio of liberal faculty to conservative faculty has more than doubled. As pollster Samuel Abrams and historian Amna Khalid note, all this has occurred just as the US itself became somewhat more conservative.

Ideologically homogenous universities have become something akin to indoctrination camps, where traditional Western values are trashed while woke ideology is promoted. Not surprisingly, the graduates of today’s universities are inclined to maintain rigid positions on various issues, confident of their own superior intelligence and perspicuity while being intolerant of other views. They also tend to be not particularly proud to be American. The kind of support professors gave to the war effort in the Second World War would be hard to imagine today.

Ideological orthodoxy and fear of cancellation for the ‘wrong views’ is widespread on campus. A majority of students say they would report professors who say something offensive. Some 40 per cent of millennials, according to the Pew Research Center, favour suppressing speech deemed offensive to minorities – well above the 27 per cent among Gen X, 24 per cent among baby boomers, and 12 per cent among the oldest cohorts. The expansion of higher education, once seen as fulfilling the promise of liberal civilisation, is now accelerating its decline.

More remarkable still, the college campus has become the epicentre of movements embracing Islamist regimes like Iran and terrorist groups like Hamas. A Cornell professor who found the 7 October pogrom ‘exhilarating’ was briefly suspended but is now back in the classroom. He’s not alone. The American Association of University Professors this year rescinded its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts, which invariably target only Israel. The slaughter of innocent Israelis has occasioned celebrations on radicalised campuses, most notably Columbia, Harvard and other elite schools. Ignorance, rather than knowledge, now sparks college protests. Pro-Hamas demonstrators rarely know the geography of either the river or the sea that they’re chanting about.

Jonathan Tobin: Trump’s pick for civil rights can doom DEI racism

Such lawsuits would raise the real possibility that any college, university, K-12 school system, corporation or arts organization that used DEI to determine hiring or admissions would lose federal funding, and be subjected to sanctions in the same way that institutions that enforced racial segregation and discrimination were punished. In the face of a DOJ determined to oppose these toxic policies, it is entirely possible that support for DEI—something that is not just current liberal intellectual fashion but a new orthodoxy that seeks to suppress and punish all those who dissent from it—will be rolled up like a cheap carpet.

No other measure undertaken by private or governmental initiatives could do more to reverse the dominance of woke ideology. It would also go far in stemming the surge of antisemitism that was enabled by DEI policies and racial ideologues, and that has swept across the nation since the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The opposition to such an effort from not just congressional Democrats but the mainstream media and those who now rule so many of our institutions will be ferocious. Pursuing the end of DEI will take a keen legal mind, courage and willingness to fight, as has already been demonstrated by Dhillon. Her confirmation should be treated not just as a test of loyalty to Trump, but of support for the values of Western civilization and American liberty that the left has been so eager to undermine under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And Jewish groups who purport to care about the fight against antisemitism, even those that are dominated by liberals, should stand with her.

While cynics often say that politics and elections don’t affect much in our everyday lives, putting someone like Harmeet Dhillon at the helm of the Civil Rights Division could be a crucial turning point that marks the moment the tide was turned against a destructive ideology threatening to change America for the worst for the foreseeable future.

Kassy Akiva: Universities That Ignored Anti-Semitism Will Face Consequences Under Trump, Ernst Says

Colleges and universities that did not work to stop campus anti-Semitism will face consequences under the Trump administration and Republican-dominated Senate, Senator Joni Ernst told The Daily Wire.

“The new Senate Republican majority is going to work with the Trump administration to enforce the law in the face of campuses that have fanned the flames of hate through inaction,” the Iowa Republican told The Daily Wire. “Elite universities have made their bed, and they’ve got to lie in it, but not on the taxpayers’ dime.”

Anti-Semitic incidents have increased by over 500% since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israeli civilians. Ernst is one of several senators who have raised the alarm about the harm anti-Semitism has had on Jewish students. She says the Biden administration has repeatedly ignored her.

“The Biden administration ignored my repeated calls for action and sat on its hands as anti-Semitic violence exploded on college campuses across the country,” said Ernst.

In contrast, President-elect Donald Trump has threatened both public and private universities with repercussions for enabling hatred and promoting a diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.

“My first week back in the Oval Office, my administration will inform every college president that if you do not end anti-Semitic propaganda, they will lose their accreditation and federal taxpayer support,” Donald Trump said in a September speech.

He added that Jewish Americans must have “equal protection” and that the United States government will not “subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers, and we’re not going to do it, certainly [not] on American soil.”

12/12 Links Pt1: The Age-Old Curse of ‘Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself’ Ireland Says the Quiet Part Out Loud; Putting Israel on Trial, Kafka Style

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Age-Old Curse of ‘Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself’

This debate came up again as Israel began taking out loose chemical weapons and conventional arms caches in Syria after the fall of the house of Assad earlier this week. The complaint: This isn’t self-defense! The implication being that Israel has a right to self-defense only.

According to this logic, Israel must wait until it is attacked with chemical weapons. Only then may it hit back.

The same, then, I suppose goes for Iranian nukes. Once Israel is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, it may bomb Iran.

The senselessness of this position is obvious, so why do people still hold it? One answer is that, as many have said throughout the past 76 years, Israel is the Jew of the world. That is, for 2,000 years rights and privileges that were otherwise available to everyone could be withheld at random from Jews. Now that there’s a state of Israel, those exceptions are applied to international laws and norms as well.

Indeed, Jews should bristle at the condescending declarations that we have a right to defend ourselves, just as we do every year on the holiday that marks the introduction of that wretched phrase into our story.

Purim celebrates that the Jews of Persia were saved from destruction. The evil royal adviser Haman convinced the king to seal a decree that on a certain day, Jews should be killed and their property taken. When Queen Esther turns the tables on Haman, the king issues a new decree: The Jews can and should defend themselves against any and all who come to kill them.

The obvious question is asked: Why didn’t the king simply revoke the earlier decree? The answer: Royal decrees could not be revoked, but they could be countered by new decrees. Therefore, rather than prevent the masses from trying to kill the Jews, the king simply responded by saying that the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves.

This is what the Jewish people have been living with ever since. When our fate is left up to the nations of the world who continue to see us as their subjects and not their equals, the best we get is that we may defend ourselves.

Of course Israel has a right to defend itself. It also has a right to defeat its enemies and safeguard the lives of its people. If it were up to others, Hamas would be alive and well, as would Hezbollah. The world is a better place when Jews assert their basic rights and obligations.

Seth Mandel: Ireland Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Amazing. The Irish government is saying that Israel can’t justly be convicted on a genocide charge as the law stands, so the law should be changed in the middle of the trial in order to achieve a predetermined outcome.

This is surely among the more corrupt statements ever made regarding due process by a high-ranking elected official in a democracy. Vyshinsky worked for Stalin; Martin works for the prime minister of Ireland. Somehow they ended up in the same place. What a proud day for Western Europe.

In fairness to Martin, his terrible idea wasn’t his own. He is simply copying off the recent Amnesty International report on the war, which blew up in the organization’s face. Martin is a guy who sees someone step on a rake and thinks, that looks like fun.

As a refresher, the Amnesty report acknowledged that Israel isn’t guilty of genocide by the traditional understanding of international law, so the organization simply changed the definition of genocide. Problem solved!

Well, not really. Because in the process, Amnesty had torched whatever credibility it had left: Organization insiders leaked the report ahead of time to try to blunt its impact, its Israel chapter disavowed the report, and the whole thing immediately fell to earth with a thud.

But Amnesty isn’t a state; it’s just a pressure group. Its opinion carries influence but not legal weight. Ireland, on the other hand, is a member state of the international “court” currently trying this case. Its intervention is shameless and, if followed, would sink the concept of international law to the bottom of the ocean.

Is it worth all that, just to get the Jews?

There’s a larger question here, of course. And that is the question of what some states of the free world have allowed themselves to become, either out of their own anti-Zionism or their fear of the anti-Zionist masses, or a combination of the two.

Obsessions with Israel are self-defeating, whether or not one cares about the fact that they are also morally deficient. Oct. 7, 2023, seems to have ignited in people throughout the world the belief that Israel really was on the ropes and that this was their chance to contribute to its defeat. Sometimes that contribution was military: Iran activated every one of its proxies and fired at Israel from every front. Sometimes that contribution was diplomatic: Russia notched a win or two at the United Nations by taking Hamas’s side in the war. Sometimes that contribution was mostly symbolic: Britain’s Labour Party, once back in power, announced it was suspending dozens of arms export licenses to Israel.

But now all that seems to be slipping away. Iran had its clock thoroughly cleaned, Russia is floundering, and Western diplomatic antagonism toward Israel is looking downright silly. Rational thinking would suggest Ireland’s leadership accept the fact that Israel is going to survive this particular round. But in the throes of obsession, Dublin is going for broke at the ICJ by throwing its lot in with a discredited Amnesty International.

The only real value here is in Ireland’s transparency. What was left unsaid has now been said: The purpose of the public campaign against Israel is not to defend international law but to contravene it.

Israel does world a service by hitting Assad’s chemical weapons caches

In the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse, Israel did the world a major service.

Over the past few days, the Israeli Air Force struck dozens of alleged Syrian chemical weapons sites to prevent these capabilities from falling into the hands of potential terrorists.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced on Monday, “We attacked strategic weapons, the residual chemical weapons capabilities, long-range missiles and rockets, so they won’t fall into the hands of radicals.”

The United States, apparently content to let Jerusalem handle this critical military task while it struck Islamic State targets in Syria, must now help finish the job.

With a bit of luck, diplomacy will be sufficient, but the effectiveness of talking likely depends on speaking softly while carrying a big stick.

The priority for Washington is to pressure Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the power behind Syria’s new governing authority — to let international inspectors in and certify Damascus’ chemical weapons are verifiably eliminated.

HTS is a US- and UN-designated terrorist organization that is an offshoot of al-Qaeda, so more than a little caution is in order.

A US official told Axios on Sunday that Washington believes it has “good fidelity” on Syria’s chemical weapons inventory, and that these capabilities are not currently at risk for acquisition by non-state groups.

Thanks, on the latter, no doubt, goes to Jerusalem.

To the end, the Assad regime possessed a robust stockpile of chemical weapons, along with chemical agents, precursors, and associated research capabilities, munitions, storage, and testing sites.

The US State Department assessed as recently as May 2024 that Syria had an undeclared chemical weapons program, which it used to attack its own people on at least 50 verified occasions between 2012 and 2019. The actual figure is likely far higher.

In 2013, Damascus used the debilitating nerve agent, sarin, to murder 1,400 people in Ghouta.

Netanyahu Trial Judge Keeps Calling Recesses To Watch Footage Of IDF Destroying Syrian Weapons (PreOccupied Territory)

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Tel Aviv, December 12 - Court proceedings regarding corruption allegations against Israel's prime minister have suffered repeated interruption, witnesses say, because the presiding justice has persistently stopped those proceedings to catch up on the latest video clips of Israeli airstrikes against military stockpiles and assets of the former Assad regime, lest they call into the hands of various jihadi rebel groups who also see Israel as an enemy.

Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu's trial for improper receipt of gifts, known in local shorthand as "Case 4000," began over the last week. Trouble began early, even as prosecutors began their opening statements, when, after about three minutes of the State Attorney starting to lay out the conceptual basis for the case against the prime minister, Judge Agatha Sidis of Tel Aviv-Yafo District Court ordered her to pause, as the time had come for an update on Israel's operations to destroy the remnants of Syrian naval, land, and air assets, as well as munitions, chemical weapons, and various other military facilities - with hundreds of airstrikes occurring just over the first night of the operation. Judge Sidis then spent fifteen minutes in her chambers before returning to the courtroom.

The phenomenon repeated itself six minutes later, just when the prosecutor felt she was hitting her stride. This time the recess lasted only twelve minutes, but the rhetorical momentum of the prosecution's opening statement had evaporated.

Netanyahu's attorney Amit Hadad fared little better. He got about thirty seconds into it before the judge again interrupted, this time inviting both attorneys into her chambers to view clips of the strikes together. The trio, plus two clerks and a bailiff, spent nearly half an hour reviewing footage of secondary explosions and of absolutely smashed naval vessels and Russia-supplied fighter jets, as well as images of tanks on fire and anti-aircraft batteries as charred wrecks.

Hadad restarted his spiel upon the reconvening of the session, only to face another interruption eight minutes later. This time, Judge Sidis ordered screens and speakers set up in the courtroom itself, and she then proceeded to show many of the videos she had already viewed in her chambers, while offering commentary and frequently pausing the playback to point out important details her audience might otherwise have missed.

She then ordered the bailiffs and clerks to make sure the audio and video equipment is already set up in advance of tomorrow's proceedings, so that no interruption of proceedings is necessary to get right to the important things.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

In a long article at Haber Vakti, Professor Dr. Mustafa Ozturk writes (and tweets) that the Jews are lying when they say that the classic Christian blood libel is a myth.

In Judaism, the blood ritual is first associated with the Passover Feast or Pessah, as it is also known. The Passover Feast (Pessah) is a feast in which the Israelites celebrate their exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Prophet Moses. Although the Passover Feast, celebrated in the middle of April every year, has undergone some changes from past to present, the sacrifice stands out as the most fundamental argument. In this celebration or commemoration, a suitable goat would be selected, the goat would be fattened for a while and slaughtered on the day of the feast. The goat, all of whose blood was carefully drained, would be eaten, including its offal. Various sources state that the Passover Feast was celebrated in this way by the Jews for at least a thousand years. This form of celebration continued until the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. According to many European historians, Jews abandoned the practice of sacrificing goats after the Temple was destroyed, but continued the same ritual by shedding the blood of Christian children, whom they viewed as animals.

The 13th century Flemish historian Thomas Cantimpreli, on the other hand, attributes the origin of the blood ritual to the crucifixion of Jesus. Pilate, the governor of the city, refuses to shed the blood of the person believed to be Jesus. The Jewish crowd waiting for the execution, however, protests this and chants, “Spill his blood, let his blood be on us and our children.” After this incident, the Jews turned killing Christians and shedding their blood into a ritual of worship. The blood ritual, which has been a serious topic of debate among Jews and especially Christians for centuries, is described in detail on Wikipedia, taking into account information from Jewish and Christian sources. Accordingly, a Christian boy who has not yet reached puberty is kidnapped or purchased in some way and hidden in a synagogue or somewhere else. When the night of the ceremony arrives, all the guests have taken their places and the torture instruments are ready.

The Christian child, who is considered a sinner from birth, is tried by a court of law. The naked and tied child is brought before the judge to have the verdict announced and is declared to have been sentenced to death. Before being executed, the child is subjected to various tortures. Treatments that the human mind cannot comprehend, such as mutilation, cutting off the penis, bleeding in a barrel with needles, and whipping are among the preferred methods of torture. After the child, who has been knocked unconscious by various tortures, is given a crown made of thorns and nailed to a cross. The blood flowing from the cuts on his body is filled into bowls. Finally, if the child is still not dead, he takes his last breath when a sword, spear or dagger is stabbed into his heart.

The blood obtained through the blood ritual, which Jews describe as “one of the oldest and most absurd anti-Semitic slanders in history,” is also added to the bread baked on Passover. As is known, unleavened bread is made and eaten for a week on Passover. According to some branches of the Jews, the most acceptable of these breads is the one with human blood mixed in it.

He traces the 2,000 year history of the libel - and accepts every single case, even up to a completely unsubstantiated accusation from Russia in 2005.

Not surprisingly, Ozturk writes a lot of articles about Jews, including one where he believes that an AI created photo of Netanyahu with a red cow is legitimate. Clearly, this professor of Turkish-Islamic Literature is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But he has no problem getting these lies published.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

When Dictators Fall: Iraq (Whack-a-mole) VS Syria (Dominoes) (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Following the defeat of Saddam Hussein and his capture during the Iraq War in 2003, there were multiple reactions. Some saw it as freedom from oppression and an opportunity for democratic government. Sunni Arabs who benefited from Hussein's rule were afraid of being marginalized and thought what others saw as liberation was more of an occupation.

Western allies celebrated the removal of a vicious dictator as a victory for democracy and human rights, but critics were concerned about potential instability.

While it was not difficult to see that Iraq's defeat resulted in the removal of Iran's premier enemy, it is not clear if anyone actually predicted the degree to which Iran would gain influence and dominate the region.

The victory over Iraq was a game of whack-a-mole: Saddam's Iraq was replaced by Iran.

Now with the removal of Bashar al-Assad, the defeat of a brutal dictator again has consequences outside of the dictator's own country. This time the consequences play out with a cascading effect:

o The Hamas massacre on October 7 led both to Israel's crippling of Hezbollah and the weakening of Iran.

o The weakening of those two entities led to the fall of Syria since they could not lend the support they had given in the past. Similarly, Russia's involvement in Ukraine hampered its ability to defend Assad

o The removal of Syria from the constellation of Iranian proxies further hurts Iran's ability to act in the region and reveals its weakness

In addition, going forward:

o Iran will have difficulty getting arms to Hezbollah.

o  Russia's naval base in Tartus and airbase at Khmeimim are in jeopardy, putting its only Mediterranean port at risk and weakening its ability to project military power in the region.

o  Turkey will increase its influence in the area and could pose a further threat to the Kurds

o  The weakening of Iran may hurt the Houthis too.

o  The fragility of Lebanon is further threatened by neighboring Syria

And then, of course, there is Israel.

A Times of Israel article on December 6 featured the headline, Syrian rebel commander urges Israel to support uprising, strike Iran-backed forces. The article quoted an anonymous rebel commander from the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

We are open to friendship with everyone in the region – including Israel. We don’t have enemies other than the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iran. What Israel did against Hezbollah in Lebanon helped us a great deal. Now we are taking care of the rest.

The problem is that the FSA is not in charge. Instead, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadi organization, is leading the overthrow of Assad. MEMRI reported on an HTS video that is much less reassuring:

After taking control of Damascus following the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime on December 8, 2024, HTS Islamist militants, in a video posted by Althawra Network Media on Facebook, declared that just as they entered the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, they will enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and the Kaaba in Mecca. They also advised the people of Gaza to remain patient, suggesting they would soon come to Jerusalem.

This is why Israel not only fortified the buffer zone between it and Syria and extended it, but also struck chemical weapons caches and other missile and air-defense systems in Syria.

However, with such instability, there is no way to be sure what the vulnerabilities will drive the various concerned parties to do to secure their positions and react to real and perceived threats.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The New York Times has an article about a Palestinian Christian winemaker who waxes poetic about the long history of Palestinian wines.

Sari Khoury, the proprietor of Philokalia in the West Bank, would prefer to speak of the craft of winemaking and the ancient winemaking history of Palestinians rather than of the precarious circumstances he must currently navigate simply to get his work done.

Mr. Khoury was one of the very few winemakers working in the region before the Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza, about 45 miles to the southwest. And his work, creating excellent natural wines, has continued through the war.

Winemaking is not widely practiced today in the West Bank, though Mr. Khoury cited one other producer near Bethlehem, Cremisan Winery, which has been making wine since 1885 and is run by the Salesians of St. John Bosco, a Roman Catholic order.

“After recognizing those grapes, I wanted to make a wine that would celebrate 10,000 years of wine history,” he said. “I wanted to plant these native varieties in one plot.”

There are actually a lot of wineries in the West Bank that are unmentioned in this article, that have been making award-winning wines for longer than Mr. Khoury has.

KosherWines.com lists 50 different wines from the region.

They just happen to be owned by Jews, and are therefore excluded from being even mentioned by the newspaper of record.

Before 1948, when anyone talked about Palestine wines, they almost always were referring to Jewish owned wines.

When the Cremisan Winery mentioned was created in 1885, by a cleric to employ poor Christians, there was already a thriving Carmel wine business. Interestingly, the Cremisan website says "Today the area of Cremisan is acknowledged as one of the most beautiful localities in Judea."

Of course, Jews had been making wine in the region way before the 19th century. Archaeologists have unearthed winepresses and equipment from the First Temple period. Wine is mentioned prominently in the Hebrew scriptures and Talmud.

The New York Times itself in 2015 wrote about how Israelis were using ancient grape DNA to recreate wines as they were in Biblical times.

That article also mentions that some Israeli wineries purchase grapes from Palestinian Arab vineyards but everything must be done secretly - not only because they are selling to Jews but because there would be backlash from Muslims who don't want to see any alcohol sold in "Palestine." (There are lots of products of vineyards that Muslims can consume, like grape leaves and grapes themselves.)

It also noted that winemaking was banned by Muslim authorities in Palestine for many centuries, with the Ottoman Empire only allowing the Christian and Jewish communities to restart it in the 19th century.

It is more than curious that an article that talks about the history of winemaking in the region excludes Jews as well as the Muslim antipathy towards wine.

It is also hard not to notice that while the 2015 article about Jews making wine takes pains to also speak to Palestinians who have a tiny wine industry in comparison, this article about a Palestinian winemaker is not at all keen on evenhandedness.

Not to mention that the original Christians in the Holy Land were converts from Judaism.

_______

While I was researching this, I found an interesting example of fake news from the mid-1800s.

There are a number of articles from then arguing whether King David or Jesus drank fermented or unfermented Palestinian wine.

At that time a temperance movement arose attempting to ban all alcoholic beverages, and the Christians behind it tried to claim that the wine mentioned in the Bible was actually unfermented grape juice, which is absurd - there are plenty of Biblical verses that mention or allude to wine's intoxicating effects. (One of the leaders of the temperance movement was Dr. Thomas Welch, who founded Welch's Grape Juice specifically to make a pasteurized product that does not ferment over time.)

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Department of Foreign Affairs of Ireland issued a press release saying it is joining South Africa's accusations of genocide against Israel - but with a caveat:

By legally intervening in South Africa’s case, Ireland will be asking the ICJ to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a State.

We are concerned that a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised.

Ireland’s view of the Convention is broader and prioritises the protection of civilian life – as a committed supporter of the Convention, the government will promote that interpretation in its intervention in this case.

Just like Amnesty, Ireland knows how the ICJ has interpreted genocide in the past - and it knows that Israel isn't guilty based on legal precedent.

Specifically, the ICJ said in its 2015 judgment of Croatia v. Serbia:

148. The Court recalls that, in the passage in question in its 2007 Judgment, it accepted the possibility of genocidal intent being established indirectly by inference. The notion of “reasonableness” must necessarily be regarded as implicit in the reasoning of the Court. Thus, to state that, “for a pattern of conduct to be accepted as evidence of . . . existence [of genocidal intent], it [must] be such that it could only point to the existence of such intent” amounts to saying that, in order to infer the existence of dolus specialis from a pattern of conduct, it is necessary and sufficient that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question. To interpret paragraph 373 of the 2007 Judgment in any other way would make it impossible to reach conclusions by way of inference.

Since Israel's actions in Gaza can easily be explained in the context of urban warfare and Hamas' use of human shields, that in itself disqualifies the case. The only way that intent to genocide could be the "only inference that could reasonably be drawn" is if the people making that inference are antisemites who assume Jews are evil at the outset of their interpretation.

By the way, the evidence in the Serbia v. Croatia case for intent of genocide was far more overwhelming against Serbia than anything in the South African case against Israel. There were concentration camps just for Croats, Croats were specifically targeted while their neighbors weren't, there was a history and pattern of insults and racist statements against Croats.

The counter-argument by Serbia is amazing. The Serbs freely admit that they discriminated against the Croats and treated them badly based on their ethnicity. But said that their intent was merely ethnic cleansing, not genocide.

According to the ICTY, the leadership of Serbia and that of the Serbs in Croatia, inter alia, shared the objective of creating an ethnically homogeneous Serb State. That was the context in which acts were committed that constitute the actus reus of genocide within the meaning of Article II (a) and (b) of the Convention. However, the conclusion of the ICTY indicates that those acts were not committed with intent to destroy the Croats, but rather with that of forcing them to leave the regions concerned so that an ethnically homogeneous Serb State could be created. The Court agrees with this conclusion.

The case against Israel doesn't come close to the amount of evidence that Croatia brought to establish intent. And those decisions from the ICTY and ICJ are the closest thing to international law we have.

No wonder Ireland wants the court to change its own criteria for determining intent for genocide. There is no way that a reasonably unbiased court can apply consistent standards and find Israel guilty.

Of course, when it comes to Israel, the international community often comes up with new and novel interpretations (or formulations!) of the law just for the Jewish state.

According to Amnesty and apparently Ireland, even if there is a reasonable explanation for actions in a war - like, you know, it being a war - that is not enough to show it is not genocide. Amnesty suggests:

[T]he requisite specific intent to destroy a group as such, in whole or in part, may coexist with an additional, yet complementary, aim. From this perspective, in the context of an armed conflict, the destruction of a group as such with specific intent, that is, the commission of genocide, may be instrumental to achieve a certain military result, or it may be pursued in parallel to particular military aims, for instance defeating enemy forces.

Amnesty is saying that no matter how much Israel can show that every single act it does it meant to defeat Hamas, as long as Netanyahu invokes Amalek then judges can decide that Israel really, or also, intends to commit genocide. That logic would make every single war potentially genocide. But it is only to applied to the Jewish state.

In short, Amnesty (and probably Ireland) are trying to set up a definition of intent to genocide that can never be refuted as long as some antisemite decides to twist the words of Jews.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

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12/11 Links Pt2: Why the world reveres Jewish victims but condemns Jewish sovereignty; What Happened When Oxford Anti-Semites Were Exposed to Facts

From Ian:

Why the world reveres Jewish victims but condemns Jewish sovereignty

WE ARE NOT witnessing a new phenomenon but rather the latest iteration of an ancient social pathology. Antisemitism always thrives in emotional contradiction and irrationality. Jews were vilified as both capitalists and communists, as both powerless parasites and dangerous overlords. Now, they are both the ultimate victims of history and the ultimate perpetrators of modern injustice, at the same time.

To those who gladly consume these contradictions: Who still cannot connect the dots? Who fails to see the link between these centuries’ old tropes and the modern demonization of Israel?

It is not ignorance that fuels this hypocrisy. It is willful blindness. It is far easier to condemn the sins of the past than to confront the prejudices of the present. It is more convenient to mourn dead Jews than to stand up for living ones. And it is politically expedient to single out Israel for criticism while ignoring the atrocities of its neighbors.

The dots are there for anyone willing to see them. But as long as society continues to indulge in selective morality, as long as it tolerates antisemitism disguised as political critique, the cycle of hypocrisy and hatred will persist.

The question remains: Who still cannot connect the dots?

The Explosion of Jew-Hate in Canada

For Sarah Rugheimer, a professor of astronomy at York University in Toronto, the first sign of the virulent strain of antisemitism now embedded in Justin Trudeau’s Canada appeared on a lamppost.

It was a few weeks after the Hamas massacre of last October 7. Rugheimer, 41, was walking in a park near her home in the city’s quiet Cedarvale neighborhood when she saw a poster of the Israeli hostage Elad Katzir, a 47-year-old farmer from Kibbutz Nir Oz, covered with swastikas.

In the days that followed, as the war raged in Gaza, swastikas turned up all over Cedarvale. They also started appearing on the York campus, where Rugheimer serves as the Allan I. Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy. As fall turned to winter, a swastika showed up in the snow outside the campus building where she works.

An astrophysicist with a particular interest in the origins of life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets, Rugheimer tended to confine her worldly concerns to scientific matters. So the swastikas came as a shock. But worse was to come.

She grew up in Montana, and her academic career took her around the world—from a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard University to Scotland, England, and now Canada. But until taking up her post at York University two years ago, Rugheimer said she’d never encountered any overt antisemitism. Nor had she given much thought to her identity as a Zionist: Like the vast majority of Jews around the world, Rugenheimer believes in Israel’s right to exist.

Jew-hatred was a phenomenon of the fringes, she reckoned. “It wasn’t on my radar,” she told me. Now, it’s everywhere. “Every week there is a major incident in Canada, and multiple minor ones every day in my neighborhood.”

It was what was happening inside her university that disturbed her the most.

York’s student unions issued a declaration just after the attack calling the barbarism of October 7 a “justified and necessary” act of resistance against settler colonialism, genocide, and apartheid. The student groups found widespread support among York’s professors—some of whom Rugheimer considered friends.

A politics department faculty committee demanded the university enforce a definition of “anti-Palestinian racism” that encompassed any expression of sympathy for the right of Israelis to exist within their own state: “Zionism is a settler colonial project and ethno-religious ideology in service of a system of Western imperialism that upholds global white supremacy.”

The modern misnomer of the Palestinian refugee

Of all the blood libels that have been spun against the Jewish people for thousands of years, the invention of Palestinian refugees is the most sophisticated and dangerous, and one that could lead to the destruction of the Jewish state and a second Holocaust.

Even at a time when it seems the truth has little value, it’s worthwhile to check the facts. When did the illegal Arab immigrants—the “Palestinians”—invade the Land of Israel?

Journalist Samuel Clemens, best known by his pen name Mark Twain, toured the Land of Israel in 1869 and wrote about it for his readers. Among his reflections, published in the book Innocents Abroad, he wrote that when traveling from the Sea of Galilee to Mount Tabor, “We never saw a human being on the whole route.”

Of Jerusalem, he said, it is “mournful and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.” Summing up his visit, Twain wrote that the land “is desolate and unlovely.”

Research carried out by professor and demographer Mustafa Abbasi of Tel-Hai College found that in 1890, before the British Mandate was implemented, Jerusalem had an absolute Jewish majority with 25,000 Jewish residents, 9,000 Muslims and 8,000 Christians.

After they took over, the British authorities carried out repeated population surveys. According to a report submitted in 1937 by the Royal Palestine Commission, better known as the “Lord Peel Commission,” in just six years under British control, the Arab population in Haifa (where I reside) increased by 86%. In Jaffa, the population increased by 62%, and in Jerusalem, it increased by 37%.

Where did these masses of illegal Arab immigrants come from?

In minutes from the Permanent Committee of the League of Nations in June 1935, we find a partial answer to the origin of the “Palestinians.” It records an interview with Tewfik Bey El-Huriani, the governor of Hauran, a region in southern Syria, who said that “in the last few months, from 30,000 to 36,000 Hauranese had entered Palestine and settled there.”

The committee emphasized that these Hauranese had “actually settled” and were not just visiting. Just to get a perspective, the number of Arabs who illegally immigrated to the Land of Israel from just one area in just a few months exceeded immeasurably the number of Jews who immigrated to Mandatory Palestine during an entire year.

That wasn’t the world’s first inclination that the Arab population was rapidly and illegally coming to British Mandatory Palestine.

Yisrael Medad: The new truth

For Marx, “practical Judaism” equals “huckstering and money,” and if Christians engage in such practices, they “become Jews.” Judaism seeks to achieve “universal dominance.” It alienates men. Jews become the ultimate enemy, and humankind needs to emancipate itself from this Judaism.

Whether or not one accepts Marx’s analysis, what is relevant for today’s crusade of anti-Zionism is that a Jewish state is a pariah. Israel becomes the arch-agent of colonialism—the replacement evil of capitalism—or the true root generator of capitalism. Marx was Jewish and white, yet his theorizing concepts have been adapted, remixed and weaponized to destroy the movement of Jewish nationality—Zionism—and its fulfillment: the State of Israel.

There is, however, one more ingredient in this neo-Marxist framework that drives the assault on Israel and Zionism and it is racism. Marx was class-focused, and therefore, the social and economic oppressions of today, based on gender and race, were left untreated. I am unsure what Marx would think about professed transgender theory or the harassing of Nancy Mace at her congressional offices, and yet, thanks to the tool of intersectionality and the atmosphere of wokeism, his structure has been enthusiastically welcomed by pro-Arab propagandists.

Mehdi Hasan, for example, published an op-ed in The Guardian titled, “Israel is a rogue nation,” demanding that it should be removed from the United Nations. Hasan, a Shi’ite Muslim educated at Christ Church, Oxford, knows very well the difference between a state and a nation. He sought to undermine not only Israel’s membership in the United Nations but to cast doubt on its Jewish nationality.

In the piece he wrote, “Israel only exists today because of a U.N. general assembly resolution.”

Israel, of course, exists because it has succeeded in defending itself. And if, to any degree, that 1947 resolution possesses relevance, since the so-called Palestine Arabs rejected it they shouldn’t exist at all. Logic, though, is never a propagandist’s strong point. Mixing and melding elements of Marxism and wokeism with an underlying layer of anti-Semitism has resulted in a campaign to negate Jewish identity and the right of Jews to maintain a state. In lecture halls, the streets, television studios, theaters and social-media platforms, the cauldron is stirred to produce a counter-message in a fog of filthy air in which fair is foul, and foul is fair.

12/11 Links Pt1: Israel Chose, and the World Changed; How Israel Went From Disaster to Victory; Hamas hands hostage list to Egypt; What the Melbourne synagogue attack shows us about antisemitism in the diaspora

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Israel Chose, and the World Changed

The great delusion of post-Marx history is that change results from vast impersonal forces rather than the workings of individual human actions and unforeseen circumstances. What history records is the way free will and sheer contingency gum up the works of the Great Machine of Progress.

Would there have been an Arab Spring without a fruit vendor in Tunisia setting himself on fire in 2010? What if Derek Chauvin had taken the day off on June 20, 2020? What if there had been a blizzard on January 6, 2021?

And…what if Yahya Sinwar had hit his head on a pipe in a tunnel on October 6, been concussed, and hadn’t given the order to move on the kibbutzim and the Nova festival on October 7? Had he hit his head, would we be living in a world today in which Hamas has been all but destroyed, in which Hezbollah has been literally and perhaps fatally crippled, in which Iranian strikes against Israel have led to the mullahs losing their air defenses while steeling themselves for the loss of their nuclear program—and with the Assads gone from power in Syria after 53 years of ghoulish evil the likes of which the world has rarely ever witnessed?

All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

You could argue that a war conducted by Israel to destroy Hamas was always in the cards, just as the Israelis demonstrated they had thought the same with Hezbollah, since, beginning in 2015, they planned to destroy the Iranian catamite army by creating a shell import-export company that specialized in communications devices—and then laid in wait to activate the plan.

The war happened, though, because Sinwar made it happen. It was different north of Israel. The Jewish state chose the time, manner, and place of the pager detonation. They chose. It didn’t just happen. Impersonal forces didn’t move the levers in Gaza or in Lebanon. Leaders did.

Now, why Israel waited as the country’s north was depopulated and the financial, logistical, and psychological costs of that depopulation mounted will be matters of controversy there for the coming generation. Clearly its leaders believed they had to deal with Sinwar’s unprecedented blow first. And clearly they were managing world opinion, which is to say American opinion.

Israel knew it needed to win the war with Hamas, and that there was no way to conclude the war with Hamas without turning north and taking out Hezbollah. And I think Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet (as much as they all hated and hate each other) knew that the United States under Joe Biden simply did not want Israel to win. Biden and Co. may have wanted Israel to prevail in some fashion—but not if it was going to be too much of a pain in the Democratic Party’s ass.

Jake Wallis Simons: With Assad gone, now is the time to bomb Iran’s nukes

The other day, an Israeli intelligence officer who shares information with British agencies in London told me about her work. “Iran is the big focus for us. But for the British, it is maybe third on their priority list,” she said.

Fair enough. Tehran may be a grave threat to Britain but due to its apocalyptic obsession with Jerusalem, it poses a far greater danger to Israel. Despite the differences in priorities, however, the Britain-Israel intelligence collaboration has long been very fruitful.

In 2015, for instance, a tip-off from Mossad led British police to uncover a Hezbollah bomb factory in northwest London with three tons of ammonium nitrate hidden in disposable ice packs. And as we saw this week, when it comes to the threat of nuclear weapons, the London-Jerusalem relationship has proven priceless.

When I visited him at his home a few years ago, Ram Ben-Barak, the former deputy director of Mossad, told me that in the early-2000s, British spies had alerted Mossad to rumours about a nuclear programme in Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

MI6 didn’t take the reports particularly seriously, he said. Mossad, however, viewed even a slim chance as a great danger and investigated the matter urgently. Thank God they did. On September 6, 2007 the Ehud Olmert government ordered the bombing of Bashar al-Assad’s nuclear programme.

At the time, many voices, both domestic and international, opposed the attack due to fears of escalation and instability. Even George W Bush – hardly a shrinking violet when it came to military action – refused to give it his blessing. Undeterred, Olmert and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, elected to go it alone.

Now that the contemptible Assad regime has collapsed, that decision looks especially shrewd. If Assad’s nukes hadn’t been destroyed by Israeli jets 17 years ago, Abu Mohammad al Jolani, the obscure 42-year-old terror chief who seized power in Syria last weekend, might well have found himself in control of them today.

It doesn’t bear thinking about. This is a man who took up the cause of jihad after being radicalised by the Second Intifada. This is a man who is literally named after the Golan Heights. Would he have been able to resist placing Tel Aviv in the nuclear crosshairs and pulling the trigger?

‘Opportunity’ to weaken Iran amid Syrian regime collapse, national security experts say

Bashar Assad’s rapid fall as president of Syria offers Israel and the United States a chance to bolster their regional security interests, experts said on Monday during a Jewish Institute for National Security of America online event.

“The Israelis don’t know what’s coming next—whether the next Syrian government will be hostile, and they want it to be as weak as possible, so they are actively targeting the Syrian military,” said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor.

“What’s critical from the American national security point of view is that Syria not become a terrorist state along the lines of Al-Qaeda or ISIS, and that Syria no longer continues to be a highway of support for Hezbollah,” Abrams.

Israel has been using its air force to target chemical weapons stockpiles in recent days—“something they never could have done when there was an existing Syrian state because it would have been taken to be an act of war,” Abrams said.

“There are significant American interests in the region and now with this opportunity to destroy weaponry, Russia is losing out on its bases in the Mediterranean and this will weaken President Vladimir Putin,” he said.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at JINSA’s Center for Defense and Strategy, also addressed the online event. The incoming Trump administration won’t want to spend political capital intervening in Syria, he said.

“The president is making declarations about U.S. policy and meeting with foreign leaders, so we’re in this odd situation where it’s not exactly clear what U.S. policy is at a time of enormous opportunity to further weaken our worst adversaries in the region and establish a less threatening Syria,” Hannah said.

“I hope somehow we can get our act together with the Israelis to figure out what to do, because we may not have another opportunity to achieve the most important national security imperative for the United States, preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state,” he added.