As Lebanon crumbles Israel must prepare to defend itself from a new border along the Litani River

Violent Arab 'culture' played out in this long forgotten massacre of 1929, one amongst many pogroms against Jews in Arab countries. Arab violence is now devouring its own. Israel must not allow its bloodthirsty Islam inspired enemies to advance again onto its borders

While Arabs have complained that Israel was aggressive and expansionist from the day of its Independence (a projection that applied to Israel's Arab neighbors rather than itself), the time is coming when Israel is going to have to begin to re-take borders that the Bible prescribed for the Jewish Nation.

In the Torah (Bible) it says:

Genesis 15:18

" the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates…"

In the thousand or so years of the existence of the ancient kingdom of Israel the borders expanded and contracted with the fortunes of the wars forced upon its people.

Israel has been under great pressure from the USA, Europe and Islamic nations to shrink its already tiny borders on the way to its total annihilation. The present Obama Administration with its goal of Iranian hegemony over the Middle East would be only too happy for Israel to disappear the sooner the better. With that in mind, Iran's constant calls for the destruction of Israel and Obama's nuclear surrender to Iran make sense. Within the next decade we may see an Iranian attempt to launch nuclear tipped missiles at Israel.

Not for nothing did Rabbi Riskin compare Obama to Haman, Israel's ancient Persion foe who tried to destroy the Jewish People.

Reducing Israel's borders are forever on the world's agenda supposedly for peace and security of all nations in the region including Israel, but in reality the opposite is true, Israel only finds peace when it is strong and has a strong deterrent posture. After 1967 the USA sent a professional military mission to determine Israel's minimum territorial defense needs. It was agreed that Israel needed to keep everything it had taken in the war forced upon it by the Arab states. Giving away the Sinai to a less than friendly Egypt which has no historical claim to the land was a blunder by Begin that will at a future date need to be rectified.

For Israel to be safe it needs to move with the times, to realize that the era of Arab nations is coming to an end and that in order to protect itself from the Islamic anarchy, or even worse, the Caliphate, Israel will have to expand when necessary to new secure borders.

Israel's present borders in the Golan Heights fronting what used to be Syria are relatively strong and defensible so apart from making sure that friendly or at least quiescent forces are encamped on the other side of the border, there is little need for change there for the present although the following should be noted:

It is interesting to note that Israel has already violated the basic strictures of the top US military brass by: — Returning to Syrian control in 1974 all of the strategic high ground on the Golan Heights, running in a north-south direction from Kuneitra. 

Israel's border with Lebanon is in places such as the hills around Metullah defensible but in the West the Iranian proxy Hezbollah could invade at a time of its choosing. Israel has admitted that at least in the beginning of any hostilities it will have to reckon with Hezbollah capturing Jewish border communities. That would of course be a disaster for Israel which unlike with its enemies, values every Jewish life.

Thankfully Hezbollah is otherwise engaged in defending its positions in the Beqa valley and the Qalamoun mountains with the estimated loss so far of around 2,000 of its fighters. For a force estimated to be no larger than 10,000 fighters this is indeed shocking. Whereas once Hezbollah refrained from using child soldiers, children of 15 and possibly even younger are known to have been killed fighting for the terrorist group.

Hezbollah has picked a fight in Syria that it can not win but the blame should not be placed on its nominal head Nasrallah but Ayatollah Khameini in Iran. Hezbollah does Iran's bidding and Lebanon is going to pay the price.
The civil war is on its way in Lebanon and ISIS and friends are knocking steadily on the door.

Hezbollah will eventually fall and Lebanon will empty of its people just as Syria and Iraq are in the process of doing. If Israel does not step in to occupy the vacated lands it will find new foes just as radical as Iran on its northern border.

With the shia enemy defeated, the sunni jihadists pouring out of Syria into Lebanon will be looking for the next stage in their Jihad, the conquering of Israel. Israel will need to advance up to the Litani river at a minimum to preempt this and establish settlements to enable the new borders to be held. Where there are no settlements there is no security and the military needs to be much larger in order to police the borders.

The IDF sorely missed its Gush Katif settlements in the last war with Hamas in 2014 making its entry into Gaza that much more dangerous and costly. Ditto with Lebanon in the years 1982-2000.
As Lebanon crumbles Israel must ready itself to protect its northern border by advancing into the vacuum before it is filled and becomes a new and even more deadly threat than Hezbollah.

Nice bonfire in Damascus, now park up the F16's, brew the tea and leave the arabs to sort out their problems as before, in their own inimitable style

Ban Ki Moon, head of the organization of arab and islamic tyrants (and other assorted despots) otherwise known as the UN has condemned Israel. What a surprise.

How dare Israel go into the hyena's den and smash his teeth.  Israel should always wait for the UN to solve things peaceably as it did in Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur and now in South Kordofan.

Israel maintains its dignity, and its silence. Let the wolves howl, let the Syrian rebels unite with the Assad regime in talking of the jewish foe, of attacks by “external occupying forces” . Let them curse in frustration, and know that Israel will not wait for its enemies to come knocking, but will search them out and frustrate their plans in Israel's own time, on their own territory.

Israel seeks no war, no bloodshed, but by creating such a maelstrom in Damascus (the amount of munitions stored in the syrian army dumps is mind boggling. There is no way that 8 warplanes can deliver the amount of ordinance needed for a tiny fraction of that fireworks party) Israel has struck a very strong deterrent posture. Arabs will be impressed. And when arabs are impressed, they will normally look, as with the school bully, for an easier target.

Netanyahu has shown that Israel can keep its nerve in the face of the threats now being levelled at it. After delivering a pasting that Assad will not soon forget, Netanyahu took off for China. That sends one strong message to Israel's enemies, saying in effect, "I think so little of you that i'm off to trot." Netanyahu could not have acted better. But then, Netanyahu now has Moshe Ya'alon at the controls of the IDF, not the effete Ehud Barak, a man who went out of his way to understand, even justify the terrible atrocities committed by palestinian arab bombers against innocent israeli civilians.

Assad will hopefully now wish to cease attempting to reinforce Hezbollah with his most modern munitions and thus avoid further Israeli interventions. But that is a somewhat forlorn possibility as Assad is joined hip and thigh with Hezbollah and Iran. Assad is no longer an independent actor, if he ever was so until Assad finally goes (hopefully not too soon) Israel must expect further provocations, attempts to test the 'red line.'

Israel is now on high alert, has been for the last few days when a surprise exercise of ground troops was called in the north (now we know the reason, the troops are there so that Assad and Hezbollah don't get any ideas about how as arabs they have been 'humiliated' and in need of a little revenge).

As long as Israel's enemies don't talk themselves into doing anything foolhardy (difficult at the best of times for arab leaders who let their tongues wag their bodies), Israel must once again try and sink into the background, its red lines from now on being well understood by its enemies.

This is in contrast to Obama's chemical weapons red line fiasco. When Assad broke it by using chemical weapons, Obama shrank from acting. US credibility having been low for a while is now bumping along the bottom not just in the middle east, but in the world as a whole. From the Green revolution in Iran to Benghazi Obama has shown the USA as a broken reed (And of course China is watching, learning, and aggressing against its neighbours, sure in itself and in this US administration's reaction to its provocations).

Of course the USA is a mighty nation, one that has proved itself time and again, so just as soon as the american people shake themselves out of their stupor and elect a real leader, the world will sit up and take note. Okay, that will take a little while, but Israel can hold on, and some.

The shia and the sunni must be allowed to get on with their beloved business of showing each other just how right their lethal interpretation of islam is. My feeling is that they are both right. Islam is indeed a cruel, intolerant, crusading and imperial religion, the fruit of a poisonous and anything but 'holy' text.

Muslims will in a week or two's time have necessarily forgotten Israel, and it will remain forgotten until the next time islamist arabs try to test Israel's red lines.

My belief is that nothing has changed. The struggle will be brutal, and slow and very bloody, even with the West supporting the rebels, and maybe because of it. Absent this support the sunnis might have lost under the total commitment that Iran and Hezbollah are giving to this cause.

Neither side can afford to lose, not the alawites who stand to be slaughtered should they fail to create their redoubt, not Hezbollah who might find their whole community in Lebanon slaughtered by the sunni victors in Syria and their allies in Lebanon, should they fail to keep the lines of communication open to Teheran. The shia in Lebanon are beginning to feel very lonely and unloved.

So ironically the intensified efforts at shipping missiles to Hezbollah are all about Assad's building a defensive line of fortifications rather than any real intention to use those ground to ground missiles against Israel.
But Israel is not interested in allowing Hezbollah to build that impregnable shia-alawite redoubt, buttressed by game changing weaponry, directed at Israel or not (in the first instance). Hezbollah is the black mamba of snakes, unpredictable, agile and very deadly. You can't keep that sort of pet out in the open, confined or at all. The problem is that as well as the shia black mamba, we have the sunni fer-de-lance.

Israel's interest is in having the alawaites and Hezbollah isolated from each other as much as possible so as to break the direct line of supply through Iraq to Iran. Netanyahu is acting with great strategic skill and foresight here, only intervening when absolutely necessary in a war that Israel otherwise has no interest in taking part in.

For Israel the best outcome is one whereby these two snakes live together in the same pit and unable to unite with others of their species. The snakes will just as happily bite us as each other so it is not in our interest to feed them unless one is failing so badly that the other might become strong enough to devour the other.

So arabs will slaughter each other and weaken themselves so much that they will at some time in the not too distant future learn a holy terror, not the terror they have enjoyed making and inflicting on others until now, but the terrible fear of war close by in their own neighbourhood, affecting themselves and their families for months or even years on end. No matter how much they 'love death as we love life', the gnawing and unending fear can not but eventually have results.

Like the nazis arabs still hold to their koranic racist and imperial beliefs, ideas which extoll the virtues of armed conflict, murder and looting of one's enemy.

But should this conflict go on for long enough, even arabs will learn that war is not glorious, that nobody wins from war, that death and destruction is terrible, and is sought out only by fools, and evil people inspired by equally evil books, promoted by charlatans who wish for others to pay a bloody price.

This war will go on , supported on the one side by Iran and Iraq and their allies, and the sunni states on the other. It will go on and on until the lesson is learned, until there has been so much death, destruction and misery that as with the nazis, the glory of war is all gone, leaving only the terrible memories of the survivors.

Israel must not listen to those like general Ashkenazi who would have Israel take sides with one enemy against another. The enemy of my enemy in the middle east is not my friend. He will not thank you beyond today's battle. Tomorrow or even late this evening, he will be at your throat.

Israel must now pull back into its shell, doing no more than looking sullenly over the ramparts at its enemies. They'll understand.

The Islamic World War, right on Israel's doorstep

And Israel is doing absolutely nothing about it ( although there has been a little rumbling about chemical weapons). Thank the Lord. Israel's policy has been the best, unlike that of the USA which as usual has backed the wrong side, which in this case is any side.

 Israel has understood that the pox is in both the arab houses, the rebels and the syrian government. The secular rebels might have stood a chance in the beginning, had the USA armed them and trained them, but president Obama channeled aid to the anti-Assad forces via islamist Turkey which starved the secular rebels of aid. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have also been arming the sunni islamists. It is believed that Obama has for the last few years had a deliberate policy of supporting Muslim Brotherhood states as a bulwark against Iran. This is a stupid policy, which means that there is no side in this conflict which is moderate, no grouping which the West could live with after the guns fall silent. On one side is Iran, and the other al Qaidah and Muslim Brotherhood influenced islamists.

Although the secular rebels hold some territory, it is the Al Nusrah and other islamist rebels who are doing the main fighting and taking the most territory. If Assad goes, the secular rebels will also go with him, just as happened to the mujahideen in Iran once they deposed the shah. There was an almighty slaughter of the secular mujahideen, students, journalistsand intellectual opponents of the ayatollahs.

So will anyone win in this war? That's still not seeming likely. Despite the best efforts of europe and the USA to bring the war to a close with a victory for the sunni islamists, Iran and its shiite brothers the alawites and Hezbollah have too much to lose and they know it.

 During the funeral of a Hezbollah fighter who was killed in Syria, a prominent Hezbollah party official addressed the mourners amid their confusion about the deaths that their sons are being driven to. The official defended Hezbollah's fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria and described it as a duty more important than any other. He described it as a fighting for existence as they are defending places that are important to the Shiite sect and that it is a pre-emptive strike for battles that may target the sect if the Assad regime falls.

 It is a battle for life or death. This is how it is presented.

As the rebels ramp up the pressure, so Iran and Hezbollah increase their activities. We don't know much about the iranians, but Hezbollah fighters are dying in droves.

 NOW also reported that a large number of corpses of Hezbollah militants who died in combat in Syria are at the Sheikh Ragheb Harb Hospital Nabatiyeh’s Jeb Sheet and that the Shiite group is burying them in installments in order not to draw attention to the growing phenomenon of Hezbollah deaths in Syria.

 Sunni jihadists are being sucked in from all over the world and Iran and Hezbollah are propping up the beleagured alawite rump regime in Damascus.

Hezbollah that was founded with the aim of destroying Israel is now bleeding steadily but surely, all at no cost to Israel. In their blood lust, their petty islamic doctrinal differences (yet so important in an intolerant religion like islam which brooks no room for doubt, no room to question any accepted precepts) the shia and sunni branches of islam are locked in conflict from Pakistan to Lebanon.

Israel just watches, and does nothing except lob the occasional Tammuz missile back in answer to fire from Syria. Ehud Barack is gone and Israel and the West's enemies now know that if Israel is attacked, to expect a response, every time, even if the response is still not adequate to bring  Hamas to stop the attacks. The odd missile which does no harm to Israelis might not seem too serious to some, but these are terror weapons. They terrorise, such as with the missile fired at Sderot on Lag Baomer, a jewish holiday. The kids had to abandon their bonfires and enter protected rooms. This is the childhood Hamas has given jewish kids for over ten years now.

This destruction of Israeli children's lives is no longer tolerable now that there is there a government in power which refuses to sacrifice Sderot and Netivot. When Hamas fires a missile at Israel there is a price to be paid. Thankfully the stupid bombing of open areas is finished with. It didn't put the  terrorists off but was utilised by world media to condemn Israel as the aggressor. Now Israel closes a crossing with Gaza in return for fire, just letting humanitarian aid through.

And if the message does not finally get home, if Gazans do continue to attack Israel, Israel should cease the delivery of electricity and even cut all links with Gaza. Israel owes the arabs of Gaza nothing, and under international law does not need to keep rescuing that Muslim Brotherhood islamist entity from itself. Gaza has more in common with Egypt than with Judea and Samaria. Muslim Brotherhood Egypt and the international community should be allowed to care for Gaza, if they wish.

 And if the terror still continues, assassinations were very effective, are effective in bringing the jihadists to book. Hamas must know that its leaders will be killed if israeli children can not enjoy sabbath or holiday games in the outside air. When missiles hit Sderot just as children are going or returning from school, those responsible for the attacks must be eliminated, just as the US does to al Qaida leaders.

Even whilst muslim radicals fight amongst themselves, they still have Israel and the West not too far in the back of their minds, which is why it is best for the West to sit back and let our enemies get on with their business in Syria. The islamist fanatics are killing each other, and might very well continue to do so for years.

Syria and Iran the good news and the bad

The bad news is that europe and the US still haven't a clue about Iran. If they think Iran can be bribed away from its race for the bomb they are living in cloud cuckoo land. Whilst europe talks and begs, Iran will continue to whisper sweet nothings, all the while increasing its stockpiles of enriched uranium. 

Of course Iran will not be quizzed too hard about why its scientists were present at North Korea's nuclear test of a miniature device last week. It was capable of being mounted on a ballistic missile.
Of course Obama and his european allies have never heard of 'taqiya' (islamic concept of lying to your enemy to deceive him), so Khameini's assurances that there is a fatwa against muslims making a nuclear device along with other small concessions, will serve to assuage them somewhat. Iran has to be prepared to make some small gestures though, something Ahmadinejad has not been always interested in doing.

As regards a nuclear weapon being 'unislamic',Pakistan's developing an 'islamic' bomb doesn't seem to have been a problem in that godless nation of sunnis. Iranians would never develop such an evil weapon. Their interest in miniaturizing warheads is obviously purely academic.

If Israel can't achieve it any other way, it will have to attack Iran. The EMP route would seem the best, using a technically nuclear weapon, but with the ability to fry Iran's electrics for no human cost. It is surely getting very late in the day, and Israel must look to its security. Sending Iran back to the stone age is a small price to pay for avoiding war and the loss of israeli and iranian lives. Iranians are among the most cultured and educated of people in the region, and anything which will spare their lives must surely be a good thing.

Israel is however waiting too long. Iran will drag the europeans out so long that by the time they realize they've been had, the wiley iranians will have cooked up the next plan to keep the West on the hook, all the whilst increasing those stocks of uranium.

With Israel's defensive rocket systems, Iran can't do much harm to Israel, especially now Iran and Hezbollah are so heavily committed in Syria. The time is getting ripe. Israel must not leave it too late to act.

The good news is that Iran and its sidekick Hezbollah are getting ever deeper into the Syrian quagmire. They have bitten off a lot more than they want to chew, and i'm of the opinion that Hezbollah has signed its death warrant with its bombarding of sunni villages in Syria in the last year.

Increasingly iranians and hezbollah operatives are dying and being buried in secret ceremonies. It is too soon to know if the figure of a thousand dead hezbollah this last year is true but what is certain though is that the hatred of Hezbollah has now reached the point of no return. The Syrian rebels, sunnis and assorted sunni jihadists are not friends with the shia at the best of times, and when they are having missiles fired at them as if they are jews in Sderot? Unlike jews, sunni jihadist terrorists are none to patient, or discriminating in their response. If I was a lebanese shia, or an alawite I would be quaking at the hatred the Assad regime has stacked up in the last couple of years.

Israel might not have such a quiet Syrian border any more, but it will find that the Hezbollah threat will decrease and quite possibly fade away altogether in coming years. It's  time to put out feelers to Nabih Berri and Amal who might just be more accommodating once Israel has settled a few scores with Nasrallah (unless the Syrian sunni rebels get to him first).

Syria, not just the Assad regime is now in terminal decline, being no longer an effective state which can control its borders. Russia and Iran are fighting a lost battle for their ally.

It's time for Israel to plan for Hezbollah's collapse and even for advancing a buffer zone up to the natural border of the Litani river by agreement with future christian or even amal shia allies. This might happen in the wake of civil war breaking out in Lebanon.

Israel must be prepared to seek alliances with the kurds, of christians and indeed any other strategically placed group that reads the omens.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the alawites faced with global jihad came knocking at Israel's door?  Now that's an interesting thought. A post Nasrallah Hezbollah cut off from the Iranian hinterland by a sunni jihadist bloc, faced with destruction might even, allied with alawites, form the northern buffer protecting Israel.

All this whilst remembering that no alliances in the middle east last very long. Alliances get drawn and redrawn at the drop of a hat. Russia learned that fact in the 1970's in Egypt, and Israel learned it with the christians in the 80's in Lebanon. Present allies can become enemies in minutes, so it's wise not to invest too much in any one relationship. New friends must be happy just that you are not working actively against them, happy for whatever support is thrown their way, certainly not the loving bearhug americans give to every jihadist group willing to open up its grubby paws. But the US never learns the lesson, and ambassador Stephens will soon be forgotten as the US trains and supplies even  more jihadist terrorists via the cia and Turkey.



It's too hard to see how the dice will fall in the region, but Israel must be prepared to think laterally, to be prepared to entertain any proposals any alliances that offer even short term security along its borders.

Update from Syria: Rebels have gained ground but overall stalemate

Barry Rubin has interviewed Jonathan Spyer on PJ Media who has returned from Syria. In it Syper compares this trip with that at the beginning of the year and  says that whereas it was dangerous to cross the border from Turkey then, it can now be done openly with ease, although Syria still controls the skies.
He also says that Saudi financed armed groups in Syria are not effective:

In general, the Saudi record suggests that Riyadh is good at creating terror organizations, less good at creating effective military groups. I think this is borne out in the Syrian context.

  Worryingly his impressions of the Muslim Brotherhood contingent are different:

They are well-armed, well-equipped, and well organized, and were without doubt the most impressive organization I saw in the city from an organizational and military point of view. They also gave the impression of discipline and commitment. The commitment, of course, is to Muslim Brotherhood-style Sunni Islamism.

According to Spyer the mainly non islamist FSA seem well equipped but not as disciplined or unified as the MB. That sounds like another Iran 1979 situation could eventually arise whereby the secular Mujahideen were massacred by the Ayatollahs once the war against the Shah was won. This war is however more complicated.

Whatever the case, no sides hold any love for Israel. Whoever wins this civil war will aim their guns at Israel should they get the opportunity. The only problem is that Syria is now the fault line for the Shia-Sunni conflict. The sunnis supported by the USA can not afford to lose this war, and neither can Iran supported by Iraq, Russia and China. The sides will fight to a bloody standstill. Lebanon will not remain inviolate. There is a reckoning to be had with Hezbollah which is shia and has actively interfered to prop up Assad.


 

Iran's folly sees not only the destruction of the Assad regime but the beginnings of a Sunni - Shia war

Iran awash with petrodollars and secure in the knowledge that Obama has no intention of clipping its wings (despite the US gunboat diplomacy in the Persian Gulf) as to its nuclear ambitions has committed a fatal error. It is however hard to see what else Iran could do under the circumstances.

It is now being reported that  Iran is actively intervening in the civil war in Syria, using its Revolutionary Guards to prop up the Assad regime.

Iran can not afford to let Assad fall and be replaced by a sunni regime in Syria as Hezbollah's position amongst a sea of hostile sunni muslims would then become untenable in Lebanon. Iran's main front against Israel would collapse should Hezbollah's contact with the Iranian hinterland by way of Syria be broken.

Recently 48 Iranian 'pilgrims' werre arrested in Syria by the FSA rebels, amongst them an Iranian IRG general.

Now Iran's Commander General Salar Abnoush has this week told volunteers that, “We are involved in fighting every aspect of a war – a military one in Syria, and a cultural one as well.”

That Iran has now committed troops to Syria means that the fault lines are now drawn between Sunni muslims and Shia islam.

With foreign jihadis flocking to Syria and with islamist Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well as Jordan all giving their support to the rebels the terrible reality first enunciated by David Goldman ('Spengler') of a new 30 Years War in the middle east is becoming ever clearer.

Israel has in the last two years been facing ever increasing state threats and terror. Islamist enemies surrounding Israel from Egypt's Sinai desert, Lebanon, Gaza, the Palestinian Territories have constantly re-iterated their goals of the destruction of Israel.

But as always, the harder they try, the nearer they get to their goal, the further away they find themselves. Before the islamist Caliphate can be established, the sunnis and shiites will have to decide who will lead the caliphate. And this will necessarily take place on the battlefield between opposing adherents of fanatical islam.

President Obama has been responsible more than anyone for the forces that are now squaring up. He has seen to it that the Muslim Brotherhood from being a thorn in the side of Mubarak has become the ruling party of Egypt. Obama has supported the Turkish islamist ruling party and helped it in its support of Syrian islamists. Obama has expressed his fondness for Turkey's PM Erdogan as a good friend and he has supplied Saudi Arabia and UAE allies with tens of billions of dollars worth of armaments including hundreds of modern war planes such as the F15 and F16. Only this year Obam agreed to sell $30billion more arms to Saudi Arabia alone. Turkey will get 100 F35 fighters.

Obama having built up the sunni alliance against what seemed to be the best interests of the USA and of Western civilisation (which includes moderate muslims, the silent millions forced to comply on pain of death with the dictates of barbaric sharia imposing clerics ) has in fact formed the battle lines that will now give way to untold misery and death for many millions of muslims and minorities who happen to find themselves in the way.

The only silver lining in all this is that Israel will most likely be able to continue to sit this one out, to let the mass killings, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing happen all around it, and be affected only tangentially, by the seemingly constant small scale terror attacks and rocket launchings at Israeli towns. Even if Israel is forced to attack Iran's nuclear industry, the ramifications will not divert from the overall pattern of sunni-shia hostilities for more than a few months at most.

Israel's arab citizens and its christian population should see what is happening all around in the middle east and thank their lucky stars that they were born in a modern, democratic and tolerant, Jewish State, a state where everyone's interests are protected, where discrimination against minorities is outlawed.

When the genocidal frenzy of killing has abated, muslim societies in the middle-east might just begin to turn away from the cult of hatred and of killing. As with Germany which needed 4 million dead in WWII before it would give up on its desire for "Lebensraum" and "Total Krieg", and which is now a country whose people have a mostly pacisfistic nature, the middle-east will lose its love of war only through the barrel of a gun and through similarly enormous suffering.

An imaginary conversation with Cardinal Richlieu:

"We are a bit confused about Syria," I began. "Its leader, Bashar al-Assad, is slaughtering his own people to suppress an uprising. And he is allied to Iran, which wants to acquire nuclear weapons and dominate the region. If we overthrow Assad, Sunni radicals will replace him, and take revenge on the Syrian minorities. And a radical Sunni government in Syria would ally itself with the Sunni minority next door in Iraq and make civil war more likely."

"I don't understand the question," Richelieu replied.

"Everyone is killing each other in Syria and some other places in the region, and the conflict might spread. What should we do about it?"

"How much does this cost you?"

"Nothing at all," I answered.

"Then let them kill each other as long as possible, which is to say for 30 years or so. Do you know," the ghastly Cardinal continued, "why really interesting wars last for 30 years? That has been true from the Peloponnesian War to my own century. First you kill the fathers, then you kill their sons. There aren't usually enough men left for a third iteration."

"We can't go around saying that," I remonstrated.

"I didn't say it, either," Richelieu replied. "But I managed to reduce the population of the German Empire by half in the space of a generation and make France the dominant land power in Europe for two centuries.

"Isn't there some way to stabilize these countries?" I asked.

Richelieu looked at me with what might have been contempt. "It is a simple exercise in logique. You had two Ba'athist states, one in Iraq and one in Syria. Both were ruled by minorities. The Assad family came from the Alawite minority Syria and oppressed the Sunnis, while Saddam Hussein came from the Sunni minority in Iraq and oppressed the Shi'ites.

It is a matter of calculation - what today you would call game theory. If you compose a state from antagonistic elements to begin with, the rulers must come from one of the minorities. All the minorities will then feel safe, and the majority knows that there is a limit to how badly a minority can oppress a majority. That is why the Ba'ath Party regimes in Iraq and Syria - tyrannies founded on the same principle - were mirror images of each other."

"What happens if the majority rules?," I asked.

"The moment you introduce majority rule in the tribal world," the cardinal replied, "you destroy the natural equilibrium of oppression.

"The minorities have no recourse but to fight, perhaps to the death. In the case of Iraq, the presence of oil mitigates the problem.

The Shi'ites have the oil, but the Sunnis want some of the revenue, and it is easier for the Shi'ites to share the revenue than to kill the Sunnis. On the other hand, the problem is exacerbated by the presence of an aggressive neighbor who also wants the oil."

"So civil war is more likely because of Iran?"

"Yes," said the shade, "and not only in Iraq. Without support from Iran, the Syrian Alawites - barely an eighth of the people - could not hope to crush the Sunnis. Iran will back Assad and the Alawites until the end, because if the Sunnis come to power in Syria, it will make it harder for Iran to suppress the Sunnis in Iraq. As I said, it is a matter of simple logic. Next time you visit, bring a second bottle of Petrus, and my friend Descartes will draw a diagram for you."

"So the best thing we can do to stabilize the region is to neutralize Iran?"

"Bingeaux!" Richelieu replied.

"But there are people in the United States, like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who say that attacking Iran would destabilize everything!"

"Such fools would not have lasted a week in my service," the cardinal sniffed. "Again, it is a matter of simple logic. If Iran's capacity to build nuclear weapons is removed by force, upon whom shall it avenge itself? No doubt its irregulars in Lebanon will shoot some missiles at Israel, but not so many as to provoke the Israelis to destroy Hezbollah. Iran might undertake acts of terrorism, but at the risk of fierce reprisals. Without nuclear weapons, Iran becomes a declining power with obsolete weapons and an indifferent conscript army."

Richelieu's shade already had lost some color. "What should the United States do in Syria?" I asked.

"As little as possible," he replied. "Some anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles from Gaddafi's stockpiles, enough to encourage the opposition and prevent Assad from crushing them, and without making it obvious who sent them."

"And what will become of Syria?"

The cardinal said sourly, "The same thing will happen to the present occupants of Syria that happened to the previous occupants: the Assyrians, and the Seleucids, and the Byzantines before them. You seem to think the Syrians are at existential risk because they are fighting to the death. On the contrary: they are fighting to the death because they were at existential risk before the first shot was fired. They have no oil. They do not even have water. They manufacture nothing. They cling to ancient hatred as a drowning man grasps a stone."

"Isn't there anything we can do about it?" I shouted.

But Richelieu had turned back into a cardinal-shaped jellyfish, and if he gave an answer, I could not hear it. 

The silver lining in the Arab Spring's cloud

In my previous article, "Thinking the unthinkable about Lebanon, shiites and Hezbollah", I predicted that if the Assad regime in Syria is defeated, there will be a catastrophic shakeup of the middle-east, not all to the detriment of Israel, and very possibly much to its advantage. I further hoped that Israel is now in its post-Turkey phase actively encouraging the Kurds to take this possibly never to be repeated opportunity to wrest another portion of their nascent state away from Syria.

Today I read that this is indeed happening, that the Iraqi autonomous Kurds have been training Syrian Kurds, that there is what appears to be a united command being formed, and that the Syrian Kurdish region is now at leat semi-independent of the Assad regime. Happily Assad is not interested in picking a fight with the Kurds, and only too eager to let them pose a headache for Turkey next door. Turkey is of course training, protecting and supplying the islamists fighting to bring Assad's regime down. The weapons and money are s upplied mainly by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the USA. Obama gave Turkey's islamist government responsibilty for the supply of the opposition to Assad with the predictable result that the islamists gain. Michael Totten believes that the islamists will nevertheless not have it all their own way once Assad falls as there are to many fissures in Syrian society. But the counter to that is that with enough brutality any rule can be imposed, such as that of the Assad family all these years, or the unpopular Mullahs in Iran, or a sunni majority regime post Assad. Force of arms has time and again been shown to be the antidote to any lack of popular support.

The news could however hardly be better. Non-arab Kurds, natural allies of Israel have at the very least a loose federation now. Turkey has 14 million restive Kurds with no love at all for the Turks occupying their lands. Their territories in eastern Turkey (which also contained a million Armenians until the genocide) make up a third of the total land in the present Turkish state.

And then there are the Kurds of Iran, who could right now be wondering when their turn will come? And come it well might if sanctions are made to bite even harder. A collapse of the Iranian economy may well lead to the large population of restive Azeris and the Sunni minority to look to their own futures away from Iran.

The tectonic plates are shifting in the middle east, and the picture is not all bad for Israel. Indeed, the slow burn of Syria is the best of all possibilities, steadily weakening this most implaccable of Israel's foes, a country responsible for thousands of dead Israelis, for a generation to come. One can not rejoice over killing, but both sides in the Syrian civil war have great hatred of jews and Israel, and would turn their guns on Israel if given the opportunity. That they choose to kill themselves means that much less of a chance of Israelis, jews and arabs being killed by terrorists from Syria or Lebanon.

There is a lesson here not only for Israel, but for the USA, that it is not always helpful to intervene in other people's disputes. Rarely does it work out as previously anticipated and Israel has learned this lesson well from its past ventures (justified) into Lebanon. This time Israel steered well clear of helping either side in the civil war, a  wise policy. It might be nice to see a group friendly to Israel take power in Syria, but failing that impossible situation arising, then what is happening now could not be bettered. The Assad regime and its opponents are bleeding the country, which is very possibly going to split asunder into separate cantons ruled by the different tribes and ethnicities. As a unitary country Syria could possibly cease to exist.

Which brings us again to Lebanon. In my previous article I surmised that maybe the shiites could be weaned off their enmity for Israel once the reality of their position amongst a sea of sunni hostility sinks in. The Lebanese shiites have been sitting pretty for many years in their radicalism and acts of aggression against not only Israel but against the Lebanese people. And as if they did not have enough enemies, the Lebanese shiites seem to have backed the wrong horse in Syria. Well they weren't really given an option, as the minority shiite/alawite Syrian regime has protected and supplied them all these years, giving them the feeling of a deep hinterland all the way to Iran. But that is all about to end.

Iran's long arm in Lebanon is looking intensely vulnerable. Once Assad goes, Hezbollah is in shtuch. The Lebanese might very well sink again into civil war and the christians and sunnis, along with the Druse might soon be looking to rid themselves once and for all of Hezbollah, and settle some old scores with the shiites in the south. Of course there is a large shiite enclave in Beirut that could be the first to feel the heat. The shiites in the south, as the christians before them could well change their spots and look to Israel's support as a replacement for that of Iran. Israel would do well to encourage this split in the shiite camp when the time comes, during a future Lebanese civil war. This could see Hezbollah ceasing to exist. Israel's north would then be protected by a new buffer as in the 1970's.

In the Lebanon alliances are ephemeral, Israel must be prepared to take advantage of situations when they happen.

And all this  with hardly a mention of Turkey's problems such as its economy wedded to hot credit, consumption and tourism that has slumped this year. Arab and Iranian tourism has melted away. Long term Turkey has an aging population, unlike the Kurds.

And as for Israel, it will keep growing and gaining strength as long as it keeps its head, and doesn't have any more Olmerts who wish to give Israeli lands to its enemies (Did you know that Russia was given a mass of real estate in the centre of Jerusalem, courtesy of Olmert?). Despite our leaders, we can always depend on arabs to help. If Abbas had accepted all the lands Olmert had offered in 2008, Israel would have become in defensible again.

Thinking the unthinkable about Lebanon, shiites and Hezbollah

I read this article by Jonathan Spyer about sunni restlesness in Lebanon after I wrote my article about why Israel should support the Kurds.

Spyer sees the Arab or rather Sunni Islamic Spring coming to Lebanon soon. Should this happen, Israel will very possibly find the Hezbollah threat replaced with an effective unitary islamic state from Turkey right down to Egypt, in effect a new caliphate (Jordan would not last beyond tomorrow without Israel's suppport, and would Israel be prepared to intervene even there in a civil war, Syrian style?).

This adds a further impetus for Israel to act now, to reach out to Kurds so that they will take this once in a century opportunity to change the fate of their people.

A Syrian-Iraqi Kurdish state will put the fear of God (if they don't have it already) into Iran and Turkey with their own large populations of Kurds.

But what is moreover interesting is what will happen on Israel's northern border.

If Syria falls to the islamist sunnis, Hezbollah will find it very difficult to be resupplied by Iran, (which might also find its own populations revolting again if the economic problems get much worse).

As the region goes Sunni, Israel could very well find that Hezbollah has its back to the wall, and that shiites in Lebanon discover that Israel isn't their most pressing and hated enemy after all. As Spyer said, allegiences change in Lebanon, and nothing can be ruled out.

Israel might yet find that it has another opportunity in Lebanon and it should be prepared to reach out to the shiite community there. Israel might even soon find that Lebanese shiites come knocking on its door, and not with the intention of kidnapping soldiers either. Israel must be prepared to think laterally.

And if you say that Nasrallah is an implaccable foe, I refer you to the fate of his predecessor:

Nasrallah became the leader of Hezbollah after the Israelis assassinated the previous leader, Musawi in 1992