The Public Security Department (PSD) launched a campaign aimed at putting an end to "negative activities" and harassment in front of girls schools throughout the kingdom.
PSD chief General Tawfiq Tawalbeh ordered police departments throughout the kingdom to conduct "comprehensive security surveys" of all-female schools throughout the kingdom, in coordination with local officials and education departments, to eliminate negative behavior in front of the schools.
PSD press office said that the security campaign comes after students, parents, and school principals filed numerous complaints of disrespectful acts by young men as female students enter and leave their schools.
What exactly are the boys doing?
A hint comes from this description of a short film made last year at a Jordanian university:
Produced by students at the university’s Faculty of Foreign Languages, the film dares to show the dark side of the kingdom's conservative society and sheds light on a daily plight that young girls face as they seek education.
In the two-and-a-half-minute film, girls are shown carrying placards that expose some of the provocative phrases they often hear from their male counterparts.
In one scene, a veiled girl holds a hand-written paper that reads: "Let’s go to my home, for $70." Another says: "Can I take a ride, strawberry lips, good for kissing."
The video goes on to expose the most common phrases whispered in the ears of female students as they pass through the university’s corridors. It also shows young men sitting on benches, watching girls swaying their hips as they move between classes.
The Ammon News article is creepier, though, as the film seems to describe boys acting sickeningly towards their peers in college, while harassment outside girls-only schools implies that older boys and men are targeting younger girls.
Last week I quoted the anti-Hamas Palestine Press Agency as saying that Hamas was considering passing a new penal code in Gaza, based on Islamic Sharia law, that would impose (among other penalties) chopping off the hands of thieves.
This has been confirmed by an article in Al Hayat, where they mention other laws that would go with it, such as the death penalty for adultery, administering lashes for drinking, gambling or "verbal abuse," and the lowering of the age of marriage for girls to 10 years old.
The article notes that there is disagreement within Hamas itself whether this penal code should be approved, with some saying that it should not and others saying that alternative punishments like jail time instead of flogging might be more appropriate.
It's been over a day since I revealed that The Economist made a crucial error in a May 4th article where they claimed that "So far this year, Israel’s army has evicted almost 400 Palestinians from the West Bank."
In fact, the number of Arabs evicted from the West Bank this year is zero.
I'm not sure who is the proper person to contact at The Economist to complain about mistakes like this. The best I was able to find was Heidi Wenyon, Group brand and communications executive, + 44 (0) 20 7576 8357 heidiwenyon@economist.com - assuming that The Economist cares about their brand enough to correct egregious errors.
The entire article was sickeningly biased, as I noted. To see the truth about Susiya - facts that The Economist will never show you - watch this video:
Once again, Ma'an - the most secular and professional of all Palestinian Arabic media - shows that it doesn't mean that they are professional in any absolute sense.
Here is how they describe (and have always described) the occasional visits to Joseph's Tomb by religious Israeli Jews:
More than 1,000 Israeli rightists on Sunday night visited Joseph's Tomb near Balata refugee camp east of Nablus guarded by Israeli forces, locals said.
Clashes erupted between Israeli forces and Palestinians, onlookers said Monday.
More than 30 buses carried hundreds of Israeli settlers to Nablus around 10 p.m. Sunday, alongside Israeli police and soldiers. Palestinians threw stones toward them while Israeli forces fired tear gas and stun grenades.
How do they know that the worshipers are "settlers"?(Calling them "rightists" is probably accurate but is also an assumption.) Why couldn't religious Israeli Jews from the left side of the Green Line visit a Jewish holy spot?
Of course "clashes erupted." It isn't that Israeli forces responded to rocks and Molotov cocktails with tear gas - they happened simultaneously!
As I've noted previously when Ma'an used inflammatory language, Jews have the right under existing agreements to visit Joseph's Tomb. It really should be the PA protecting them.
The Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today helpfully adds that "the settlers arrived by the dozens of buses, and they began to establish their religious rituals, and to celebrate provocatively in Joseph's Tomb." Because Jewish prayer in an unquestionably Jewish shrine is, inherently, provocative.
Because, as we've noted before, Muslims are now trying to claim the tomb for themselves. During last year's visit on the same Hebrew date, Ma'an informed us that "Muslims believe that an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Yussef (Joseph) Dawiqat, was buried there." This famous sheikh has no biography online as far as I can tell, and the earliest mention I can find of him is 2010 (that article claims that Sheikh Yusuf lived "before 1850" even though the tomb was there way before that.
In his short life, Palestinian toddler Mohammed al-Farra has known just one home: the yellow-
painted children's ward in Israel's Tel Hashomer hospital.
Born in Gaza with a rare genetic disease, Mohammed's hands and feet were amputated because of complications from his condition, and the 3 1/2-year-old carts about in a tiny red wheelchair. His parents abandoned him, and the Palestinian government won't pay for his care, so he lives at the hospital with his grandfather.
"There's no care for this child in Gaza, there's no home in Gaza where he can live," said the grandfather, Hamouda al-Farra.
Mohammed's plight is an extreme example of the harsh treatment some families mete to the disabled, particularly in the more tribal-dominated corners of the Gaza Strip, even as Palestinians make strides in combatting such attitudes.
It also demonstrates a costly legacy of Gaza's strongly patriarchal culture that prods women into first-cousin marriages and allows polygamy, while rendering mothers powerless over their children's fate.
Mohammed was rushed to Israel as a newborn for emergency treatment. His genetic disorder left him with a weakened immune system and crippled his bowels, doctors say, and an infection destroyed his hands and feet, requiring them to be amputated.
In the midst of his treatment, his mother abandoned Mohammed because her husband, ashamed of their son, threatened to take a second wife if she didn't leave the baby and return to their home in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, al-Farra said. In Gaza, polygamy is permitted but isn't common. But it's a powerful threat to women fearful of competing against newer wives.
Now Mohammed spends his days undergoing treatment and learning how to use prosthetic limbs.
His 55-year-old grandfather cares for him. Mohammed's Israeli doctors, who've grown attached to the boy, fundraise to cover his bills, allowing him and his grandfather to live in the sunny pediatric ward.
But it's not clear how long he'll stay in the hospital, or where he'll go when his treatment is complete. As a Palestinian, Mohammed is not eligible for permanent Israeli residency. Yet his family will not take the child back, the grandfather said. His parents, contacted by The Associated Press, refused to comment.
Dr. Raz Somech, the senior physician in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer's pediatric immunology department, attributes Mohammed's genetic disorder to the several generations of cousin marriages in his family - including his parents.
Speaking to Ynet, Somech said the toddler was returned to Gaza once or twice so he could see his parents, and returned "even sicker and more bruised. The grandfather said he did not want to take him back to the hospital, but cannot treat him on his own."
Somech said Mohammed arrived at the hospital at the age of six months with a severe intestinal disease. "Intestinal diseases are very rare at this age, so it was clear to us that it was something genetic. We diagnosed him as having a genetic disease that is related to the immune system and mainly damages the digestive system. He is the first child in Israel who was diagnosed with this disease. There are only a few hundred others in hospitals worldwide," said the physician.
Doctors at Sheba stabilized Mohammed's condition with large amounts of medication. "We considered a bone marrow transplant, which can save lives, but unfortunately we could not find a donor with matching tissue type, so we continued the medication treatment, which paradoxically weakens the immune system even more," he told Ynet.
"Mohammed was in the hospital for a long time, and at some point a severe bacterial infection led to necrosis, which required the amputation of his four limbs."
...Doctors' fundraising has covered Mohammed's years of treatment, Somech said. One donor provided $28,000 for Mohammed's prosthetics.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is supposed to fund transfers to Israeli hospitals. But it stopped covering Mohammed's bills six months after he arrived, Somech said. Palestinian health official Fathi al-Hajj said there was no record of the case.
There has been a growing number of cases where the Palestinian Authority stopped paying for patients because of its budgetary problems, Mor Efrat of rights group Physicians for Human Rights said.
Al-Farra said he stepped in to care for Mohammed to save his daughter's marriage. He sleeps beside Mohammed and ensures he's clean and fed.
Palestinian citizen from the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip revealed that due to a medical error committed by one of the Israeli hospitals, his child has lost his hands and feet.
Abu Ahed Farra, 37, said that their suffering has begun when his youngest son Mohammed, who was born in August 2009, started suffering from continuous diarrhea.
He said that doctors in Gaza were unable to diagnose his illness, so they moved him to an Israeli hospital, where he remained more than eight months hospitalized.
"During this period, there has been no improvement in the health condition of Mohammed" Farra said.
He added that in June 2011 the Israeli doctors injected the child with a dose of medication after which his condition has somewhat improved.
"Days after a nurse gave the child another dose without consulting the doctor, and the child's condition quickly worsened. He entered in a coma. The doctors injected him with the anti-dote and the child woke up. However, his skin color turned into black and the examinations showed that the blood was not reaching his hands and feet," the father said.
He added that they were shocked when they received an urgent request from the hospital demanding them to approve the amputation of the child's four limbs.
The family filed a lawsuit against the Israeli hospital, and the court decided that the hospital will pay all the costs of treatment and accommodation of the child in hospital.
Mohammed Farra, who will be four years old after few months, still suffers from a difficult health condition. He has not fully recovered from his illness, and ended up losing his limbs due to a medical mistake.
So, which story is more believable?
Given that the grandfather testifies that Abu Ahed Farra has no desire to visit his son, and in fact he never does, it sure sounds like the Israelis are telling the truth. (I'm no doctor, but necrosis does not seem to come from giving too many antibiotics.)
The US Administration needs to understand that the Arab League is an incompetent and ineffectual body that has long been ridiculed by most Arabs. This is a body that has never played an instrumental role in solving Arab crises such as the Lebanese Civil War, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or the ongoing bloodshed in Syria.
It now remains to be seen whether Kerry and President Barack Obama will ever notice that they are betting on the wrong horses. Neither the Arab League nor the Palestinian Authority leadership has a mandate to offer any concessions to Israel or recognize its right to exist.
The crossings and IDF checkpoints in Judea and Samaria have been the source of much confusion and debate worldwide. Crossings and checkpoints, while both provide important security benefits, are different.
Border police on Sunday confiscated 54,000 illegal eggs that were being smuggled into Jerusalem by an Arab driver from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria. The eggs were inside a non-marked truck that is usually used to transport dirt.
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is under criticism by Jewish advocacy group B'nai Brith Canada for "abdicating its responsibility to stop convicted terrorist Leila Khaled from having the opportunity to poison the minds of Canadian students."
A B'nai Brith statement noted that "Khaled is scheduled to speak via Skype at a conference hosted by a Pro-Palestinian university student group and sponsored by a university Alma Mater Society on the 4th of May. She has been convicted of terrorism for carrying out hijackings for the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a listed terrorist organization."
In late April, it was discovered that RPA “head” David Stein was actually a man named David Cole. Cole has appeared in online videos espousing Holocaust revisionism. After confirmation that Cole and Stein were indeed the same person, Cole (himself Jewish) refused to renounce his views denying the Holocaust.
Norway has still not received any response from the Palestinian Authority in the matter of financial support for terrorist convicted prisoners. Now the opposition demands that the government put pressure on the Palestinians.
Norwegian authorities responded after Israeli media last year revealed the hitherto unknown aspects of the financial aid scheme for Palestinian prisoners who are in Israeli prisons.
With the interdependence between countries deepening in the globalized world, China and Israel have a shared destiny. The closer our cooperation is, the more benefits will accrue for both our peoples, and the more contributions we will be able to make to regional stability, world peace and global prosperity.
I am fully convinced that with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to China, a brighter future for our friendship and cooperation will be ushered in.
The writer is the People’s Republic of China’s ambassador to the State of Israel.
From ‘The Jazz Singer’ to ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,’ the way Jews are portrayed on the silver screen reflects their acceptance into American society, says author Eric A. Goldman
Several months ago, Turkish zookeepers in Izmir asked Ramat Gan Safari for help in boosting their zoological collection.
The Ramat Gan Safari – like other zoos in Israel — is a member of the international zoological organization and regularly participates in exchanging animals to promote breeding and bolster exhibits at other zoos. But Horowitz noted this is the biggest exchange in which the Ramat Gan Safari has ever taken part.
Horowitz also said that although Israel and Turkey may be at diplomatic odds with one another; animals are the true gesture of cooperation and always override politics.
Anti-Israel idiots are having a field day with the accusation that Israel bombed Syria with depleted uranium munitions. The Jerusalem Post did Israel no favors by quoting the original source of the report, the notoriously unreliable Russia Today, without comment, and the JPost imprimatur allowed the rumor to worm its way to Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.
So how did this rumor start? From Russia Today:
Israel used "a new type of weapon", a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.
“When the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake,” said the source, who was present near the attack site on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday morning.
“Then a giant golden mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted uranium shells.”
Yes, this unnamed "senior official" said that based on the shape and color of the explosion, it must have been
depleted uranium!
He is clearly trying to say that DU, being somewhat radioactive, would have the same signature mushroom cloud as atomic weapons.
This is, of course, entirely nonsense. DU is not an explosive. It is used by the military only because it is dense and hard so it is ideal for munitions that need to penetrate deeply (like bunker busters or armor-penetrating shells.) It does not affect the explosion caused.
The color of the explosions comes simply from the stuff being blown up; in the case of the biggest fireball seen on video, it is probably showing that engine fuel was part of the explosion.
From the RT article, we see absolutely zero evidence that DU was used. It is the idle speculation (or accusation) of an anonymous "official" who apparently doesn't know anything about the chemistry behind explosions.
Publishing and republishing this information without context is irresponsible journalism on everyone's part.
The Economist has a very slanted article that is headlined "Squeeze them out: As Jewish settlements expand, the Palestinians are being driven away."
One sentence has a major factual error. The only way that error could have gotten into the article is from the reporter assuming the worst from Israelis, and either grossly misinterpreting a document with his anti-Israel glasses on or, worse, purposefully misrepresenting that document.
Here's the sentence, which is meant to be the major factual evidence for the almost entirely subjective article:
So far this year, Israel’s army has evicted almost 400 Palestinians from the West Bank and dismantled over 200 homes, the fastest rate for two years, according to the UN.
The Economist even tweeted this, where it was retweeted 400 times:
I can believe 200 homes being demolished - there is illegal building all the time, and structures get knocked down - but is it possible that Israel "evicted 400 Palestinians from the West Bank" this year?
That would be a major story that everyone missed, if true.
Sure enough, I found the document that the Economist based this on. It is not a UN document, but rather written by an alphabet soup of anti-Israel NGOs, hosted on the UN website.
Here's what it says:
In 2013, 203 Palestinian structures have been demolished thus far, displacing 379 people, including 222 children, and otherwise affecting an additional 541 people’s ability to earn an the income or access water and other basic services.
Nobody was evicted from the West Bank.
The Economist replaced "displaced" with "evicted" and then added "from the West Bank."
I have no idea whether the document is accurate to begin with - clearly, the unnamed reporter didn't make even a weak attempt to verify the facts with Israeli officials, something any real journalist, no matter how biased, would at least pretend to do.
Even if the NGO document is correct, the Economist's misrepresenting of it is not a simple error, but evidence that the article was written with the initial goal of demonizing Israel. They might - and should - issue a correction, but the "mistake" is not the story. The story is how they could have made that mistake to begin with, and what it says about the objectivity of the story itself.
The target seemed to be a Syrian version of Iran’s Fatah-110 missile, capable of traveling 300 kilometers with a half-ton warhead.
Most important of all, however, is the message that is sent to both Syria and Iran. By standing by its warnings that it would not tolerate the transfer of gamechanging weapons to Hezbollah, Israel has made it clear – this time at least – that when it uses the rhetoric of “unacceptable” and “intolerable” it is not just being “so hectoring and schoolmarish,” as Foreign Policy’s Rosa Brooks recently put it in an article titled “Would Machiavelli have drawn a red line?” While statesmen of other countries seem to make declarations without having any intention of standing behind their words, Israel will not tolerate Syria’s crossing its red lines. And that is an important message for the mullahs of the Islamic Republic, too.
On April 30, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that imposing a no-fly zone on the Syrian government through U.S. Airforce sorties over Syria would be a daunting but feasible prospect, but he said he doubted the value of the likely outcome.
“The U.S. military has the capability to defeat that system, but it would be a greater challenge, and would take longer and require more resources” than in Libya, Dempsey told reporters.
“The Israeli strikes over the last 48 hours have indicated that those Russian air-defense systems are not as robust as is sometimes reported,” he said. “We can stop Bashar Assad from killing his own people.”
“We have to arm the opposition. We also need toward imposing a no-fly zone so that Bashar Assad cannot continue to use helicopter gunships against civilians and so the refugees he's creating aren't destabilizing our allies like Jordan.”
After two years of empty U.S. rhetoric and threats for crossing imaginary red lines, Assad had no fear of U.S. intervention. He was right. Even using the horrendous Sarin gas had done nothing to get Obama off his fence. Instead, under heavy criticism for his reluctance to accept the evidence that Sarin gas was used, Obama is now trying to redefine either “red,” or “line,” or both.
US strategy, and that of the West and international organizations, has been based on two ideas that have proven to be wishful thinking.
Given the recent military gains of the Syrian regime, obituaries of dictator Bashar Assad have proven exaggerated, and that puts the Obama administration in a bind.
There is “no context,” Huff-Watcher wrote ”Why is Israel ‘striking’ Syria? Every responsible ‘newspaper’ in the world is saying something about the reason.”
Huff-Watcher contends that the headline lacking context is not new for the Huffington Post when it comes to reporting on Israel. “This is nothing new. It is part of HuffPost’s continuing pattern of whipping up hatred against Israel and Jews, through egregiously decontextualized headlines and headline imagery, ignoring the preceding attacks that made Israel’s military response necessary, then falsely depicting Israel as the aggressor,” the blogger writes.
There are two main components to the Iran-centered Shi’ite terror network: The first is the Quds Force – the elite overseas arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, tasked with carrying out attacks, subterfuge, and arms smuggling around the world – and the second is Tehran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hizballah.
Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi were arrested in June 2012 and led officials to a 15-kilogram (33-pound) stash of the explosive RDX. Officials in Kenya say the two suspects may have been planning attacks on Israeli, American, British or Saudi Arabian interests in Kenya.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban did not go far enough in condemning the anti-Semitism that has reared its head in Hungary, the World Jewish Congress said Sunday, hours after Orban called for zero-tolerance of anti-Jewish activity at the opening address of the group’s annual meeting in Budapest.
Even for those acutely aware of the rise of anti-Semitism worldwide, viewing “Jew Bashing: The New Anti-Semitism,” a new, investigative documentary, is a profoundly disturbing experience. It is also a must-see.
The impressive feature, written and produced by award-winning Canadian-Israeli filmmaker and former war correspondent Martin Himel, is divided into four segments: the Middle East, Europe, the US and Canada. Each is approximately 45 minutes long, and the viewer remains spellbound throughout. Canadian media visionary Moses Znaimer is the executive producer and a different section of the series will be screened on Canada’s VisionTV on Monday evenings throughout the month of May.
Lost in the glare of the media attention on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood party are the smaller, completely insane Islamist parties to its right. (You know, the ones that make the MB appear "moderate" by
comparison.)
The Egyptian Islamic party, headed by Mohamed Abu Samra and Kamal Habib, is just one of these powderkegs that are off the radar of most Western analysts.
Muhammad Abu Samra, the Secretary-General of the Islamic Party said: “We will soon take revenge against Israel for what it did in Syria. It will begin with convoys of jihadis on the Egyptian-Palestinian borders, on May 15.
Abu Samra said, in an interview yesterday, Sunday, with Rula Kharsa, the media personality in the “Al-Balad Al-Youm” program on the Sada Al-Balad channel, that there is another aim for marking this day: it is embarrassing President Mursi, who protects the Jews under the pretext of respecting the American treaties and who didn’t do a thing when Gaza was hit – which was a test conducted by America to check how committed he is to his treaty with Israel.
Only last week, Samra said something even more outrageous, according to the Christian Post:
Mohamed Abu Samra, secretary-general of the Islamic Jihad Party, made the claim that "it is permissible to kill some Christians today," then gave his argument defending such a position.
He justified this announcement by saying: "Those who came out with weapons, their blood is allowed for us [to spill], as a fighter is not considered dhimmi."
"In the recent funeral, the Christians brought the Qur'an and urinated on it. The Sheikh of Al-Azhar did not deny it. They also came out in demonstrations to destroy Muslim places, chanting 'We'll bring Islam down by any means possible,'" Samra said during an interview with Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan on Wednesday.
One of the major problems with the Islamist government in Egypt isn't with the Muslim Brotherhood itself - but its very existence as the new "mainstream" has moved the center far to the right - and as a result, it has legitimized racist, hateful Islamist rhetoric that was considered taboo before the revolution.
The deadly nerve agent sarin has been used by Syrian opposition fighters during the war-torn country’s conflict, U.N. human rights investigator Carla del Ponte said late Sunday.
“According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas,” del Ponte, a former war crimes prosecutor, said in an interview with Swiss radio late on Sunday, according to AFP news agency.
“We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas,” she added.
She stressed that the U.N. commission of inquiry on Syria, which she is a part of, had far from finished its investigation.
The commission, which is set to present its latest findings to the UN Human Rights Council during its next session in June, might still find proof that the Syrian regime was also using this type of chemical weapons, del Ponte said.
Apparently, there is no direct evidence, so it is a little irresponsible to make that claim based only on witness testimony.
If true, the question is - where did they get it from? Is Al Qaeda or other groups developing sarin themselves, or did they steal it?
Just when you thought things couldn't get messier in Syria...
A rebel spokesman, who spoke from a “liberated area” held by the opposition in Damascus, told NBC News there were huge explosions just before 2 a.m. Sunday local time (7 p.m. Saturday ET) in the Qaysoun mountains on the edge of Damascus.
“Around 10 locations were hit," the spokesman said. "It was difficult to tell what was hit in the raid and what exploded afterwards. Some of the targets were weapons and weapons depots.
"Secondary explosions continued for about four hours. They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”
From its Damascus media office, the Free Syrian Army listed nine apparent targets, including the Syrian Revolutionary Guard, the 104th brigade headquarters, a weapons depot in Qasyoun and a military research center at Jamraya.
The NYT notes that there were reported casualties (reported by YNet):
The attack struck several critical military facilities in some of Syria's most tightly secured and strategic areas, killing dozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace, a high-ranking Syrian military official told the newspaper.
Rebels, opposition activists and residents said the strikes hit bases of the elite Republican Guard and storehouses of long-range missiles, in addition to a military research center that American officials have called the country’s main chemical weapons facility, the report said.
A doctor at the military’s Tishreen Hospital said Monday that there were at least 100 dead soldiers and many dozens more wounded, according to the New York Times.
It is still unclear if this was an air-raid - or if it was a series of missiles shot from Syrian airspace. JE Dyer notes:
A Russia Today news item stated that the IAF launched 12 missiles into Syria from Lebanese air space; if valid, that report indicates the IAF used Israeli Popeye air-to-surface missiles to conduct the attack. The Popeye has a range of about 50 statute miles (78km), allowing standoff attacks. An ordnance package of this size, and a pattern of multiple, sequential strikes, fit the profile of an attack intended to badly cripple one or more facilities of industrial character, including weapons storage sites.
The explosive weight capacity of the Popeye is also consistent with the character of the explosions seen in the videos. I do note that the explosions in the videos appear to indicate strikes on above-ground, non-hardened targets. These are only a few of the explosions; there were presumably more.
One paragraph in this NYT analysis shows a bit of unintended bias on the part of "experts" quoted:
The increased frequency and intensity of the attacks also demonstrates Israel’s desire to take advantage of the chaotic situation, security experts say, as well as its calculation that Syria, Hezbollah and Iran are too preoccupied and weakened by the raging conflict in Syria to retaliate strongly against even a brazen escalation.
But several warned there was a risk of Israeli overreach, particularly given the fiery rhetoric with which Damascus, Tehran and Hezbollah responded, a stark contrast to the silence that greeted some earlier attacks.
Isn't it possible that Hezbollah and Iran, fearful of Syria's fall which would destroy Hezbollah's main artery for weapons supplies, are using the civil war in Syria as a smokescreen to accelerate arms transfers - and Israel is ensuring that its long-held "red lines" are not being compromised?
Here is Al Arabiya's coverage:
Finally, Zvi has a roundup of reactions to the raids:
Turkey
* The Turkish regime is saying little about any of this. Most attention is on the terrorist massacres of hundreds of Sunnis in Bayda and Banias, about which Erdogan said today:
"Hear me, Bashar al-Assad. You will give an account for this. You will pay a very, very heavy price for [only] showing the courage you cannot show others to the babies in the cradle with soothers in their mouths. God willing, the lamentations of these children will fall upon you as blessed revenge,” he said during a gathering of his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) consultation gathering in Kızılcahamam, near Ankara. "Erdoğan’s harsh words came a day after a new massacre was reported by activists in a Sunni town near Banias in Syria’s western Alawite enclave.
While the reference to "others" is no doubt a veiled reference to Israel, priorities are clearly priorities.
* Turkey's armed forces began a 10-day miniature "mobilization exercise" in Adana province today.
* (Mavi M talks are underway in Tel Aviv)
Saudi Arabia
* Asharq alawsat (former editor):
This air raid serves as a message to Hezbollah that Israel is not bothered by Hassan Nasrallah’s threats... Of course, this further complicates the crisis in Syria, but who said that it was not complicated in the first place?... This second message is for the international community. Even if Israeli aircraft were outside of Syrian airspace when they delivered their payloads, as was announced, this means that the US and the international community have the ability to constrain Assad within hours. This is the opposite of what is currently being said about Assad’s defense systems.
Misc. Media
Headlines and first paragraphs largely seem to explain what happened.
* WaPo, headline: "Israel enforces "red line" with Syria airstrike on weapons bound for Hezbollah"
* USA's NPR, first sentence: "Israel has conducted an airstrike against a target in Syria, in an apparent attempt to keep a shipment of missiles from reaching Hezbollah"
* AP, first sentence: "Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital, setting off a series of explosions as they targeted a shipment of highly accurate, Iranian-made guided missiles believed to be on their way to Lebanon's Hezbollah group, officials and activists said."
* Aljazeera ran the AP piece.
* Reuters, first sentence: "Israeli jets devastated Syrian targets near Damascus on Sunday in a heavy overnight air raid that Western and Israeli officials called a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah."
* Reuters (Jeffrey Heller), first sentences: Iran was squarely in Israel's sights when it sent its planes to hit targets in Syria, waging a war-within-a-war that showed a readiness to strike out alone if its red lines were crossed. Allegations of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons have grabbed headlines and driven new calls for U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria's civil war. But when it took military action over the weekend while Washington stayed on the sidelines, Israel was homing in on targets with strategic significance for its own possible war with Iran rather than for Syria's internal fighting.
* Fox, headline: "Israel launches airstrike on Syria targeting weapons, official says"
* Guardian, subtitle: "Unnamed western intelligence sources reportedly claim attack was attempt to stop missiles reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon"
* LATimes, first sentence: "Huge explosions were reported in Damascus early Sunday, just two days after a reported Israeli airstrike in Syria targeting surface-to-air missiles possibly destined for neighboring Lebanon and the militant group Hezbollah."
* Politico, first sentences: "The Syrian state news agency SANA, citing initial reports, said early Sunday that Israeli missiles struck a military research center near the capital Damascus." After calling this a "sharp escalation", the piece explains about the targeting of weapons bound for Hezbollah.
* Financial Times waits until paragraph 4 to explain that "In both attacks, Israel hit Fateh-110 long-range missiles that were in transit from Iran through Syria to Islamic militants Hizbollah , in Lebanon."
* Guardian (UK) headline: "Syria regime accuses Israel of declaring war", subtitle: "Isreal's night raid on 'missiles destined for Hezbollah' deepens fears of conflict spreading beyond Syria"
* CNN web site: The 2nd worst piece that I saw. You have to read for more than 20 paragraphs before there is any mention of weapons bound for Hezbollah.
* Telegraph (UK), headline: "Syria accuses Israel of supporting 'terrorists' in the wake of air strikes". First sentences: "Syria accused Israel of supporting "terrorists" including al-Qaeda, threatening retaliation for Israeli air strikes on military bases that have drawn the Jewish state deep into the civil war raging across the border. The strikes north of Damascus, in the early hours of Sunday morning, lit up the night sky and felt "like an earthquake", according to residents. Continuing explosions suggested weapons and ammunition facilities were hit, in line with Israel's policy of preventing heavy arms transfers to Hizbollah, Syria's ally in neighbouring Lebanon."
* Guardian (UK), first sentences: Syria's crisis always attracts intense international attention when outsiders get involved – especially Israel. Damascus called the latest raid "a declaration of war" but it was probably intended as something more limited – to maintain Israel's own security "red lines", irrespective of the wider picture. Pre-emptive attacks are an Israeli speciality – from the 1967 assault on Egypt and Syria through the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor to last year's strike on an Iranian-built factory in Sudan supplying weapons to Gaza. By all accounts, the raids near Damascus at the weekend were intended to stop advanced missiles being delivered to the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is allied to Syria and backed by Iran. It was only last week that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, pledged publicly to stand by Bashar al-Assad, along with the president's other "real friends" in Tehran and Moscow.
* WSJ, first sentence: "Israeli warplanes bombed a target in Syria in an overnight strike Thursday, U.S. officials said, the second such attack this year in a sign of growing Israeli concern that advanced Syrian weapons could fall into terrorists' hands."
* Aftenposten (Norway), the most distorted reporting of all: "United States was not informed in advance about the Israeli air attacks on targets in Syria, according to a U.S. intelligence source." The 4-paragraph story never mentions Hezbollah, saying only that Israel "bombed an arms cargo in Syria." The judgment of the Aftenposten editors is extremely suspect.
* BBC (UK), summary: "Israel's air strikes on military targets in Syria show co-ordination between Israel and "terrorist groups", the Syrian foreign ministry says." showing the spin that the BBC wants to put on this event, because using the Syrian statement to characterize the event shows an absolute lack of interest in the truth. The report itself hammers out the Assad regime's propaganda points, mixes in the daily dose of hypocritical condemnations from Arab officials who are secretly pleased or could not care less, and throws in terms like "significant escalation". The sidebar analysis by Jerusalem-based Yolanda Knell is less twisted, and references to "our correspondent" (Knell) suggest that the piece was authored not by Knell herself but by the BBC's middle east desk, which has persistently displayed some of the most extreme anti-Israel biases among global news organizations.
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Cease Firing
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[image: Dry Bones cartoon, Peace, Oct 7, Jews, War, Cease Fire, Jewish,
Israel, Palestine, Gaza,]
It really is that simple
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Tuesday, May 07, 2013
Elder of Ziyon
