Another Israeli general who's lost the plot

This is a time for arabs to be at war with themselves and with Iran's proxy Hezbollah, and for Israel to enjoy some peace

Usually the problem is of Israeli generals is that of their feeling so powerful that they wish to test Israel's strength to resist attack. By making Israel such a tempting target through the giving away of land the surrounding arabs will be just unable to resist having another go. General Nizan Alon is just one of a number of such generals and intelligence Diskin types who really believe that miniscule Israel is way too large for its own good.

So it's refreshing to have an ex-general Amos Yadlin, who headed military intelligence between 2006 and 2010 who comes along without weeping for the poor palestinians, about how if he was a Palestinian he'd also take up the gun and slaughter Jews - Yes ex-defence Minister Barak actually said he could understand our enemies attacking Israel, that he would in their shoes. Well thankfully Barak the walking security disaster who during two years of the 2nd Intifada and thousands of dead and injured Israelis is well out of the picture. Barak didn't have a clue to stop the slaughter. Sharon did however, and the job was done within the year. Sharon didn't spend years using the friendly Nato manual on how to make friends with hostile muslim population and Palestinian Arab enemies, or by throwing money at them as Nato did in Afghanistan. No Sharon used good intelligence to find the murdering swine who sent idiots high on islam to place bombs in cafes, buses and even in a Passover seder for the elderly. He then arrested or assassinated the killers. There was much condemnation from the world, but Jews stopped dying, and the PalArabs have little stomach for a rerun of the intifada. Israel managed what western armies say is impossible, to suppress terror without cosying up to the enemy population. And that's why Israel won during the second intifada, and Nato is leaving Afghanistan with its tail between its legs.

Of course Israel has gone soft again since 2002 and the arabs are making Israeli's lives hell on the roads with tactics just short of an armed intifada. Isolated killings and daily firebombings and stonings are the rule, and woe betide a Jew who draws his weapon in self defence.

But I digress. Back to Amos Yadlin who believes Israel has so few problems that it should go look for a little action, as in bombing Syria, with the best of intentions of course.  Yadlin seems to believe the anti-Israel propaganda about Israel's being the region's policeman, and wishes to stop Assad from massacring his civilians.

“We have red lines [for intervention]. Our red lines include [Syria] firing at Israel, the transfer of advances weapons to Hezbollah, and activity by the chemical [weapons] units. I believe we should add to these red lines the murder of civilians at a level where we can no longer stand idly by,” Yadlin said.

But what Yadlin doesn't explain is why Israel should pull the arab irons out of the fire when arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt are just brimming full of western weapons, with many hundreds of the most modern fighter aircraft including Awacs radar. If arabs themselves don't feel the necessity to go put Assad's airforce out of business, why should Israel risk doing the job?

And in any case let's be frank, is it in Israel's strategic interest to stop this war between the sunni and shia world? We know very well that what will happen once this conflict ends is that those thousands of seasoned jihadis in Syria will turn their guns and their rockets on Israel. They make no secret of their goal being Israel after they have sorted Assad out. Thankfully Assad has powerful friends who are propping him up, true friends such as Israel can only dream of. Russia doesn't spill crocodile tears for Assad's enemies as the US and Britain do for each arab terrorist Israel knocks on the head. China is quite happy to sell anything Assad needs, if Iran doesn't have it in its own armory.

Has Yadlin even given a thought to how many of the 170,000 rockets shared between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran might descend on Israel were Iran to take offense at Israel knocking out the air force of their best buddy in the middle east?

Yadlin goes on:

Unilateral action should by no means be Israel’s first option, said the retired major general, who currently heads the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Aha, it's preferable to have some friends join in, but Israel with all of 8 million people should be prepared to go it alone to start a totally unnecessary war on behalf of the civilians of an enemy state who spare no opportunities to tell how much they hate jews and the 'zionist entity,' unless they are receiving treatment for wounds at the zionist's field hospital in the Golan.

The preferable contingency would be a NATO operation led by the United States with Turkey as its key member to implement a no-fly zone over Syria “at the very minimum.” 

Where has Yadlin been for the last few years? He wants Turkey to drive its war planes up to the Golan Heights? Will Erdogan be able to resist the opportunity for another provocation? What will Israel do when Turkey's jets 'stray' over the border? Nato might not be so interested in going to war with Israel once Israel down a couple of Turkey's F16's, or F35's when they arrive, but does Israel really need to get entangled with such a mess.

Turkey would dearly like to 'protect' Syrian civilians, just as Jew baiting and killing Russia 'protected' Jerusalem's Jews in the 19th century. There was reason for its interventions to help Jews, and that was of a grand strategy for warm waters that Yadlin is blissfully unaware. In those days Britain and France protected themselves from Russian hegemony in the area, in their own interests of course. Yadlin might not be that savvy or knowledgeable, but with Turkish troops already 30kms inside of Syria at least, 'protecting' a tomb, it would not take much encouragement for Turkey's army to march up to the Golan.

And that might not be such a bad idea as that would surely bring the islamic proxy war between Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others into a hot one. Sadly the truth is the hotter the Syrian-Islamic war gets, the better for Israel and western interests. Only when a terrible price in blood has been paid, by many arab actors, Iran and Turkey will they, as with Europe after two world wars learn the meaning of peace. Iran should have learned the lesson when it lost a million men fighting Saddam Hussein. Like Germany after WWI, it needs another opportunity to learn the lessons.

Israel should learn from the Kurds. They lie low until attacked, but will not be pushed around, as ISIS and Al Nusrah have found to their cost.

As for the muslim Arab world, it is wedded to violence in its culture, violence in the family, in the tribe and in the state. And unbridled violence will be the cure.

Turkey's irascible PM Erdogan is itching to join in against Syria and he should not be dicouraged to do so, but with his fellow muslim radicals for support, not with any Israeli complicity or help. Turkey is nowadays no friend, it is an enemy state not only for Israel but for the West and its values.

The sooner Israel learns to ignore the sometimes lukewarm overtures from Turkey the better. Erdogan has been a lifelong antisemite, a man who even wrote a disgustingly antisemitic play called MasKomYa, supposedly about Jews controlling the world as masons, communists and simply being jews. Hatred of Jews is in Erdogan's blood and he will spare no effort to undermine Israel, even if it means for a time suppressiong his hatreds.

Israel has lost enough blood because of a hundred years of arab aggression against the jewish People. We must suppress our sadness at seeing so much conflagration in a region that could be so different were arabs to lust after peace rather than conquest and war in the name of islam. Any intervention Israel makes will rebound on it, as when Israel tried to force a peace agreement with Lebanon in 1982.

Let Israel instead continue to enjoy its breathing space, to sit this one out and thank the Lord who works in mysterious ways to keep his People safe.

Aiming for the 'Great Satan'

The islamic terror state of Iran doesn't do anything by halves, so whilst it's developing the means to wipe Israel off the map, it is also developing its long arm, the one that can reach the USA.

Just as Britain's Neville Chamberlain refused to see what Hitler was doing, gave Hitler just that little bit more time to swallow some more territory, another country with "peace in our time", so the USA has for many years strong-armed Israel into postponing any attack to prevent Iran's nuclear program.

The USA has had great success in doing this, to the point where it is questionable that Israel can any longer act alone to destroy the iranian nuclear program or at least its weapons component,  if it uses conventional forces. Iran is just too big, has been allowed to advance too far, to amass too much nuclear material and know how to be stopped by a tiny country of 7 million people.

Israel now has to hope that Iran is not mad enough to attack it, something which is not a given with a country run by a shia who believes in the "hidden Mahdi", whose return will be amidst a world conflagration, who believes that shia islam will soon take over the world.

So it must be very comforting for americans to also find out that Iran is developing a program just for them. ICBM's which can reach the USA are in development.  Surely it's not beyond Iran's capabilities to tip twenty or thirty of them with nuclear warheads?

And if Just three of them get through, we can say goodbye to New York, Washington and........... well how about Chicago, or Detroit, or Philadelphia. Maybe all of them.

Whilst the USA has been 'nation building' in Afghanistan and Iraq, promoting extremist islam throughout the arab world, and helping to bring Al Qaidah to the fore in north africa with the crazy toppling of Ghadaffi, the Iranians have been busy developing an existential threat not just for Israel, but for the USA.

It's almost too late, but don't worry, Mr Kerry has now visited Israel 6 times in the last few weeks to bully Israel into giving genocidal arabs more territory with which to attack Israel from.

Obama's USA at least knows where its priorities lie.

Egypt's woes reflect a region in turmoil

He bows, scrapes and arms wahabite slavers and enemies of the West, and pressures Israel to sacrifice its security

What interesting times we live in. Had the american people not voted an anti-western and evil man into power for the second time, the middle east might not have seen such turbulence. As always with Israel's enemies, Obama's plans have yet again been frustrated. Whilst Mr Kerry has been stomping on Netanyahu's head, trying to get Israel to give away the family silver in exchange for a promise by palestinian arab terrorist Abbas to sit down and talk, the arab world has been eating its heart out, literally.

Kerry might yet be persuaded that the wider arab world has moved on from the troublesome and self-destructive palestinian arabs, but his boss certainly won't give up on his dream to cut tiny Israel even further down to size. A ten mile width border overlooked by hostile arabs with tanks and manpads to shoot up israeli planes on the tarmac is what Obama is about.

Whilst Obama has his hand on his heart promising Israel's security and helping fund a missile system that will be out of date in a few years, he has been plying all the arab countries around with armaments, stuffing Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, not to mention islamist Turkey with american arms and know how, arms developed and updated with Israeli help. Secrets Israel gives the USA find their way into arab hands all the better to destroy it.

But as with Hezbollah now fighting for it and Assad's lives in Syria, all those arms may yet be used to destroy arab dreams rather than Israel.

Still while Obama has his eye on Israel, but if Obama casts his eye around, he will see that everywhere he has meddled, his plans have come unstuck.

And now Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood West hating islamist fanatical government has been deposed, and we are all waiting to see whether Friday prayers in Cairo will finish with an outburst of violence to rival that in Syria. It may happen but the Muslim Brotherhood will be fighting in a different terrain. They have no Russia, Iran or Hezbollah to help them, and the few Hamas terrorists who were shooting at unarmed protesters have been arrested inside the MB HQ.

The Muslim Brotherhood does not look able to wage war against the egyptian army at present, although with the Libyan hinterland chock full of weapons controlled by Al Qaidah this could change. But as long as the egyptian army remains loyal (which is very possibly the case as Morsy acted in too much haste, unlike islamist Erdogan in Turkey), infiltration from Libya will run along a killing zone hundreds of miles long, a zone where the egyptian air force would make mincemeat of supply convoys to any rebels in Egypt.

Of course western media and governments are already coming out with their slanted news and condemnations of the overthrow of a democratic government. Where were the condemnations of the steady massacres of copts in Egypt? Democracy does not mean that minorities should be ethnically cleanzed from their countries, that the indigenous coptic people should give up their lives or their land because of western fallacies about democracy. Hitler was also democratically elected, and the islamist government of Morsy was no less evil, intending to attack Israel as soon as possible (the economic collapse put the brakes on his talk about 'changing' the peace treaty with Israel). Of course western media was not interested in Morsy's saying 'amen' to a sermon calling for the destruction of jews, or of Morsy's calling for jihad before his election. Western media was likewise not interested in Morsy's rant about teaching children and grandchildren to hate 'the descendants of apes and pigs' i.e. jews.

Is it good that Morsy has been overthrown? I'm actually not in favor of this, as the egyptian economy is in dire straits, and is possibly not able to be fixed. Whoever takes power now is going to be blamed for the slow starvation of Egypt's people. Morsy would have otherwise have taken the blame for the collapse. As it is the Muslim Brotherhood has actually been saved, either to fight another day, or to fight now.

Whatever happens, the news for those who love western civilization and Israel rather than hate them is not too bad.  Syria is burning and will continue to burn, possibly for years as neither shia or sunni can afford to back down. Turkey is heading for the rocks with tourism set to decline, with hot money propping up the turkish economy, and with a people that is heartily sick of the islamist police state.


How different things look now from only a couple of years ago. After Turkey provoked the Gaza crisis with its proxy IHH terror 'charity' thugs the fear was of an islamic coalition in the region which could prepare another 1973 like attack on Israel, or just squeeze it on all sides with asymetric warfare.

It shows that, where Israel is concerned we need faith, that all will be well, that a power greater than the West's enemies is protecting this outpost of western civilization.

My faith is however a little stretched by the case of Iran. Israel has been held back so long by Obama that it is now possibly too late to  prevent that country from getting nuclear weapons. Iran is however a country that has major pockets of instability, from the kurds and azeris in the north, to the arabs in the south. Iran is also now getting ever more committed into Syria, although it seems that Iraqi shia are losing their lives in Syria more than iranian nationals at the moment.

So maybe we can hold onto our faith. The islamic forces of darkness are first and foremost a threat to themselves.

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.

Israel sends the strongest message yet to Iran and the world

The new government of Israel has no illusions about the arab world and its so-called 'spring'. And when it comes to Iran Netanyahu now has the political backing he needs at home for the tough decisions he needs to take.

Gone is that disastrous appeaser Barak, a man who brought down a number of humiliations on Israel, whilst never losing confidence in his ability to gain peace through yet another concession and another withdrawal.

When Barak needed to show force he used it not against arabs waging a low intensity war of attrition against jews, who kill jews whenever the opportunity arises, but rather against the jewish community living in our ancient homelands of Judea and Samaria, jews who literally sit on the outpost of western civilisation and defend it from the barbarous arab islamic hordes.

Be in no doubt, if Israel were ever to give up Judea and Samaria ('West Bank'), this would mean the end of Israel, throttled by an indefensible rump of a country with arabs sitting on the heights with missiles to prevent Israel's air force from taking off. Barak should have learned this lesson of 1973 when israeli pilots were decimated by russian missiles.

And in these days of resurgent islam, Israel is only the 'little satan'. Both europe and the USA are not forgotten but not necessarily to be conquered by violent jihad. Demography, the hollowing out of societies through the muslim birth rate after mass immigration is also a legitimate form of jihad, preferable where possible:

Dawa, the call to Islam that by Islamic law must precede jihad, is all-too-often dismissed, as are its manifestations under the rubric of non-violent jihad, simply because this kind of assault does not kill. Instead, it intends “merely” to subjugate.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told a Toledo, Ohio, Muslim Arab Youth Association convention in 1995, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword, but through dawa.”

With the EU finally realising that there is no way that Iran will give up on its nuclear weapons program, peaceful means have all but been exhausted to stop Iran. Had China, Russia and others not worked to break the sanctions against Iran, then the sanctions might have succeeded, but that has not happened. A new and harsh tone is coming out of Israel, but it is improbable that Israel can now deter the mullas through threats alone. The years of Barak, Olmert and also Netanyahu's last government have served to lull our enemies into a belief that as with the USA, Israel will not defend its essential interests, has not the will to take on Iran.

Nevertheless both Israel's defence minister Yaalon and its pm Netanyahu have on Yom Hazikaron both sent a less than veiled warning to Iran, I believe the harshest to date:

(Netanyahu ) "Today, too, there are those who threaten to annihilate us -- they haven't succeeded in the past, they won't ever succeed", he said.

Netanyahu seemed to be alluding to Iran, which Israel believes is working toward achieving military nuclear capabilities and has issued countless threats to annihilate the Jewish state.

"If we have no choice, we will grasp our swords and go to battle," Netanyahu said, in one of the more sternly worded warnings he has issued to date.

(Yaalon) "Terrorist attacks, the firing of rockets at civilian populations and delegitimization campaigns are the challenges which stand before us in the years to come, they will accompany us for the foreseeable future and they will force us to respond with a firm hand."

"The nuclear program of a country which glorifies Jew-hatred and the destruction of the State of Israel is in its end stages, and if it is not dealt with, it will threaten Israel, the Middle East, and the entire world with viable nuclear weapons.It is now recognised that Iran can build nuclear weapons, has the materials and the knowledge to deliver them, possibly using ballistic missiles."

Only the warning from Netanyahu at the UN, after US President Obama refused to set any red lines for Iran, prevented Iran from entering the final stage of building an atomic weapon. But how long can the world live on tenterhooks, depending on fallible intelligence agencies to give warning when Iran will cross the line to assemble its weapons?

With Iran's latest rejection of the world's generous offers in return for giving up weapons, the nettle must be grasped. The US should act, and failing that, Israel should do what it can with its lesser capabilities to destroy the iranian war machine. If that involves Israel destroying the Iranian economy using an EMP weapon for want of any other alternative, Iran has only itself to blame. It is in any case believed that the Iranians are seriously considering such an attack themselves,

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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.

The USA crawls on its belly to Omar al Bashir of Sudan in the wake of the bombing

Only a few days ago I wrote about the pervasive sickness in the american administration, its security organs and the CIA in the sacrificing of an american ambassador (admittedly no better candidate existed, a man who learned his trade in doing down his country in the US Peace Corps [not too long ago I had the unpleasant opportunity to hear at first hand just how deep the rot has infected these types sent abroad to represent their nation yet who could only speak ill of their magnificent country the USA, the country on which the world still depends for peace and prosperity]. Stephens himself went to finishing school acting as political officer in the rabidly pro arab and anti-Israel East Jerusalem Consulate, a man who served not american and western interests but those of its arab and radical muslim enemies).

Ronald Reagan was capable of bringing down an evil Soviet regime which caused war and mayhem throughout the world and he found the like minded people to facilitate this.
George Bush was not however made of such stern stuff and allowed the incorrect and malign National Intelligence Estimate to blow him off course, from rescuing the world from the threat of nuclear proliferation and very possibly war as states such as Saudi Arabia,Turkey and Egypt along with many others race to catch up and develop their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves from Iranian hegemony.

We now know that only a credible threat of the use of force will be enough to stop, even at this late hour, the Iranian race for the bomb. Obama has however spent the last four years pressuring Israel to give up on any intentions to destroy the Iranian nuclear armaments industry (when not otherwise raining fire down on Israel over its building in the ancient jewish homelands of Judea and Samaria).And time is now indeed short, too short for sanctions to work. And what sanctions there are seem about to be shelved under a  new plan by Obama, in return for a symbolic slowing of the pace of Iran's nuclear processing.

Experts say it has become increasingly unrealistic to expect Iran to suspend all its enrichment, even if this demand is enshrined in a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and the aim should be to restrain the activity as much as possible.
Daryl Kimball of the Washington-based Arms Control Association said high-level U.S.-Iranian talks could help to reach a deal and reduce the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Negotiators should seek to limit Iran's enrichment, cap its stockpiles and give U.N. inspectors more access to ensure it does not engage in weapons-related nuclear activity. In return, there would be a "phased rollback of sanctions," he said.

In the USA the rot might spread below the surface in the universities and the media but the lead comes from the top, from the president, the heads of administration, the military and intelligence.

None more so than Robert Gates who did a magnificent job in the service of Iran. Iran has the CIA  more than any other world body to thank for the 2007 Intelligence Estimate that stopped the USA and Israel bombing the iranian nuclear industry flat (with the exception maybe of Muhammad Baradei who for many years prevented the IAEA bringing out any reports criticising Iranian nuclear ambitions. One asks oneself why did he do that? Was it simply being bribed or was it that this egyptian allowed his hatred of Israel to cloud his thought processes. For a majority of muslims in the middle-east the possibility of seeing Israel go up in a puff of smoke is just to delicious a prospect to resist).

So the USA has a seemingly all pervasive rot now, beginning at the top with Obama, Pannetta and Dempsey all wishing to guard the 'peace', and make the USA if not popular then acceptable to its enemies seemingly at any cost (no longer will there be bombing and mayhem and La Drang style 'broken arrow' operations to save 'expendable' americans, even an ambassador and his staff) . If even americans have little worth in the grand scheme of appeasement, then small nations such as Israel must sit up and take notice. The USA does not have your back!

If you are still not convinced then an article in todays Ynet in hebrew should help. It seems that the CIA has contacted a 'high official' in Sudan to assure that fanatically extremist islamist regime responsible for the ongoing genocide in Darfur and  bombings of villagers in South Kordofan that the USA was not responsible for the factory bombing. That put paid to a massive arms shipment intended for Gaza Sudan being a major route for arms to supply the islamist terrorists of Hamas with the weapons supplied and paid for by Iran.

Rather than congratulate Israel and bask in the reflected glory of a country that still has the guts to protect its own and western interests (even Bush refused to give Israel the go ahead in 2007 to destroy the North Korean supplied plutonium nuclear reactor in Syria. israel went ahead in any case) the USA distances itself and shows its enemies that Israel truly is alone in the world.

Rather than be happy that this Sudanese mass murderer has suffered a serious loss of face, Obama's USA cringes, demeans itself and loses the respect of allies and foes alike.

The CIA with the avowed intent of protecting americans inside Sudan informs the Sudanese authorities not only that the US didn't do it, but that the USA had no part in the operation, not even in supplying the intelligence.

There can be no greater example of the cravenness of the US and its foreign policy today.

It might be argued that saving american lives is a good thing no matter how its done. But this is not the way to do it. When americans are under threat their enemies will only be restrained when they know that the US will act as Regan did when Ghadaffi shot down american jets in the Gulf of Sidra. Ghadaffi then found that he was a target just escaping with his life when the USAF bombed his tent. That operation came after a long series of Libyan provocations and came with a warning that the US would be back if Libya did not desist. Libya did desist.

One of the lessons the US learned was one that it is now giving Israel cause to learn, that allies can let you down. France, Spain and Italy refused to allow US jets overflight rights on the way to Libya forcing a detour of thousands of miles on the pilots. Italy went one step further with Italian politician Bettino Craxi ringing Ghaddafi to forewarn him of the attack.

The question is whether Romney will be any different, whether he will stop the rot? Will he be able to rebuild US credibility in the world? It's hard to say but one thing is certain, that unless he replaces Obama and his radical crew things will only get seriously worse.

Throwing Israel under a bus is easy when you place no value on your own ambassador and diplomats

Can there be any greater indictment of this Obama Administration than the ever increasing evidence that is emerging of just how far the rot has extended within the US military and government complex. CIA officers who were prepared to risk their lives to save their ambassador and his staff were ordered to stay away from the US consulate in Benghazi. The brave agents not only had to reckon with extreme danger in their task of saving american lives but with the consequences of disobeying direct and repeated orders not to intervene.
But even worse american assets, planes, gunships and special ops teams specialising in such rescues were within striking distance of the embassy and were at the most 1 - 2 hours distance away (possibly minutes away if american warships off the Libyan coast are taken into account).

And there was at least one drone over the US consulate the whole time of the attack  sending real time video of what was happening to US leaders and military. There was absolutely no need for an american ambassador or his staff to die. 

It is hard for credibility of the USA to sink much lower in the eyes of its allies, but this seems to be the clincher. Americans are shackled with rules of engagement in Afghanistan which guarantee the advantage stays with the taliban. 

The US military chief Dempsey along with the heads of US intelligence spend their time conspiring to thwart an Israeli attack on Iran (remember that National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 that said Iran had given up its nuclear weapons ambitions in 2003? ).

It is a sad state of affairs when the tail wags the dog, which is what happened when any hope of a US attack by Bush was stymied by the NIE. Things changed when Obama and Clinton  cam along in that presidential blessing was given to american defeatism in the face of determined enemies.

Rather than in defending western civilisation against islamist barbarism, Russian and Chinese aggression Obama has sought to press the 'reset' button, appeasing enemies which have no good will, only intention to supplant the american superpower, and in the case of islamic supremacists, to replace western civilisation with shariah law.

The USA is now a superpower in decline, possibly terminal. It is rotten at its very core unable to even mention the name of its enemy.  US security agencies are not even allowed to target islamic radicals, only 'terrorists', as if islam and terror were mutually incompatible rather than the reality which is often the opposite. Those islamists who conspire to attack the West have a book, the Koran which validates their hatred, is the justification for their wish to supplant western civilisation.

US enemies have already taken note of the unwillingness to stand up for it allies such as Israel. The drums of war are beating strongly with Egypt supporting Hamas albeit mutedly in its attacks on Israel. Hamas only last week fired 70 rockets into Israel a day after a visit by the Qatari leader to the terrorist enclave. South East Asian countries better also sit up and take note faced as they are with Chinese aggression over the Spratly and other island formations. China is acting to fill a vacuum. It has been testing the waters, literally, and the US has been found wanting.

But the USA is not only absent when its allies need it, but also when the US's most important symbols and citizens are under immediate and extreme threat.

Israel must belatedly learn the lesson. It has wasted too much time waiting for the world under US leadership to take down the Iranian nuclear menace. With the threats to exterminate Israel coming almost daily now from Iran, Israel must take its fate in its own hands and remove the Iranian threat before nuclear tipped missiles land on Tel-Aviv. Hopefully the uniting of Netanyahu's Likud and Lieberman's Israel Beiteynu parties this week is a sign that.

This time next year we will know whether Netanyahu was just so much hot air, or whether he really meant it when he said no country would ever be able to commit another Holocaust.

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, though, denied the claims that requests for support were turned down.

"We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi," she said. "Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.  In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night-and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades."

The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

Watch "Special Report Investigates: Benghazi -- New Revelations" on Fox News at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, 3 p.m. on Sunday and 10 p.m. on Sunday.

A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they were never told to deploy. In fact, a Pentagon official says there were never any requests to deploy assets from outside the country. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Spectre gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.

According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," Panetta said Thursday. "But the basic principle here ... is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on."

U.S. officials argue that there was a period of several hours when the fighting stopped before the mortars were fired at the annex, leading officials to believe the attack was over.

Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers.

Tyrone Woods was later joined at the scene by fellow former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who was sent in from Tripoli as part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the consulate began -- a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex.

A motorcade of dozens of Libyan vehicles, some mounted with 50 caliber machine guns, belonging to the February 17th Brigades, a Libyan militia which is friendly to the U.S., finally showed up at the CIA annex at approximately 3 a.m. An American Quick Reaction Force sent from Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport at 2 a.m. (four hours after the initial attack on the consulate) and was delayed for 45 minutes at the airport because they could not at first get transportation, allegedly due to confusion among Libyan militias who were supposed to escort them to the annex, according to Benghazi sources.

The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi's fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.

Fox News has also learned that Stevens was in Benghazi that day to be present at the opening of an English-language school being started by the Libyan farmer who helped save an American pilot who had been shot down by pro-Qaddafi forces during the initial war to overthrow the regime. That farmer saved the life of the American pilot and the ambassador wanted to be present to launch the Libyan rescuer's new school.

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.


 

The parable of the snake........ how Israel has lost its will to protect itself

I sometimes despair when I read the Israeli press. I have just read a Jerusalem Post article about the sanctity of Israel's snakes, how they mustn't be harmed, how imported glue traps are cruel ( I won't link to the JP as deep linking doesn't work.  The article is reproduced below).

Nowhere in the article is there anything about the dangers of poisonous snakes to humans, or even that the glue traps aren't left willy nilly in the wild but inside people's houses where people should be able to feel safe.

There is not even a mention of whether snakes that get into houses are at all threatened. I believe that if snakes are getting into houses, then the population in the wild has increased leading to the need to expand even into built up areas they would not normally inhabit.  If this is so, why should venomous snakes have priority over the lives of families?

Surely an Israeli has the right to protect himself, his wife and his children from snakes within the confines of his own house? There is no mention in the article of the dangers to the Israeli child, of his right not to be hurt,  his life put in danger.

I'm beginning to understand how Israeli governments have allowed 12,000 Hamas rockets to blast away at the south of the country for so many years. There seems to be mindset in Israel that life, any life is sacrosanct, especially that of your enemy or an animal that might very well hurt you or your child. If you have power then you are beholden to think umpteen times, have manifold checks and balances placed upon you before you use that power. All well and good, but there comes a point when limiting the possibility of abuse of power means crippling your ability to act in a timely or effective fashion.

I am also beginning to understand how when arabs attack jewish settlements guards are afraid to draw their weapons. Jews frequently have their weapons taken off them for firing at their attackers in self defence when they clearly felt their lives threatened. The mind of the Israeli establishment is hard to fathom.

And this is of course why Iran has been allowed to get so far along its program to develop weapons. Heaven forbid Israel should bomb Iran's nuclear industry, even when Iranian spokesmen make it ever clearer what they intend to do with their weapons when they get them.

I hope Netanyahu knows what he is doing by continuing to talk and to wait, as he has been waiting for 15 years. Will he show he has not only the bluster but the mettle of Mr Beigin who in an Israel that was much weaker than it is now dared to go against the US and bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor before weapons could be developed?

Netanyahu must not only draw diagrams and make noise, but inform the world that when the balance is between Jewish and Iranian lives, Iranians will have to take the consequences. This rule applies in all other conflicts, and the stakes are now too high.

From Rafsanjani to Ahmadinejad the message has been clear, Israel will soon cease to exist.

Israel must act when it feels the time is right, and when it does act, inform Iran that any mass firing of indiscriminate weapons against Israel will be met with an 'overwhelming' response.

If Iran can not be stopped after 15 years of talks and sanctions, then any method Israel has at its disposal must be used to take Iran back to that medieval state of development, the same place where its country's genocidal rulers' mindset is.

Israel has the wherewithal to set Iran back not for one or two years but for fifty. Israel must be prepared to use its might to protect its people.

Human rights of one's enemies and the rights of animals are all well and good, but when the chips are down, every nation has a right to defend itself against those that are intent on harm.

Israel's obligation is first and foremost to its people, to the Jewish People, to make sure that never again will a country be able to threaten another Holocaust. Netanyahu is beginning to lose his credibility, that he will prevent the Holocaust that Iran intends for Israel.


The JP article:

Parks Authority demands end to illegal snake traps

By SHARON UDASIN

09/23/2012 22:47

Snakes are defined in Israel as a protected animal by law; the traps have been illegal in Israel since 1955.

Photo: BRC Pest Control Compnay Ltd.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) is working against the sale of illegal snake glue traps.
Thousands of them have already been sold across the country and pose a serious danger to the animals.

Snakes are defined in Israel as a protected animal by law, and therefore the INPA has demanded that the importer of the traps immediately remove the products from the market and collect them from store shelves around the country.

Such traps have been illegal in Israel since 1955 because they can cause serious harm to the animals, according to the authority. In addition to recalling their products, authority staff members have been speaking with snake trappers and discouraging them from using the already purchased instruments.
Eldad Peled, INPA director of inspection and enforcement, stressed that all harm to protected wildlife such as snakes is prohibited by law.
 
“Catching snakes requires great skill, both in the method of the capture – so that no damage occurs to the snake – and in the treatment of the animal after the capture,” Peled said.
“An authorized snake trapper knows that he must transfer the snake to the authority and that our inspectors release the snake into nature. The glue traps sold recently in Israel harm the snake during the time of the capture, and therefore we are acting aggressively against their sale,” he said.
In response, the importer has agreed to stop sales and said that it would work vigorously to collect all traps still on the shelves, according to the INPA.

Iran keeps telling Israel its days are numbered, so what is Israel waiting for?

Iran has been making statements for years about the need to destroy the 'cancerous tumour of Israel' ( to quote only the latest gem). It was argued in the past that Iran's statements were taken out of context, that it wasn't really threatening Israel. In the last year the threats to destroy Israel have come from so many different levels of government and the armed forces that no one can any longer deny they are being made.

So now people say that they don't mean what they say, that it's only bluster. To that we must look back in history.

When Hitler threatened to wipe out the jews in 'Mein Kampf', when the threat wasn't ignored, it was similarly described as bluster, as ravings of a fool.
Then Hitler said in 1939:

"If the world of international financial Jewry, both in and outside of Europe, should succeed in plunging the Nations into another world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world and thus a victory for Judaism. The result will be the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe."

Hitler was deadly serious but he was not listened to and nearly all of europe's jews were killed.

In Israel much of the top military and intelligence services are locked in the 'concept', just as they were in the time of Bar-Lev, that a war with Iran is too costly, that there is time, will know when Iran goes for the breakout for the bomb, that Israel is in any case so powerful that Iran would never dare to attack it even if it had the bomb. As with Hitler, logic is not always Israel's enemies strong point.

They all forget what Liebermann has remembered in his 2001 comment, that the later you leave things, the less likely you are to do the job properly, the more likely the enemy will be able to recover. Leaving things so late may even mean missing the fact that a bomb has been built, assembled and delivered to Hezbollah to 'post'. A bomb could travel overland to Lebanon and then by ship until opposite Tel-Aviv and then delivered in the ultimate suicide bomber's mission in a rubber dinghy.

Israel and the USA could easily miss this whilst looking for the breakout in terms of Iran's attaching a bomb to a missile.

So what more justification does Israel need to act? What more convincing do Israelis need?

It is time for Netanyahu to stop procrastinating. Sanctions have not worked and the latest IAEA report that far from inhibiting Iran's nuclear efforts, Iran has 30% more centrifuges spinning than at the beginning of the year.


If Israel is not to face a middle east full unstable states, nuclear armed powers, at least one of which is bound to use its weapon in a future conflict with Israel then it must act now. Israel must attack Iran's nuclear installations with all the power it can muster.

Only if Israel is resolute will arabs think twice about attacking it. Israel must think less about the human rights of its enemies and more about the human rights of Israelis not to be attacked with missiles, not to have to sleep in bomb shelters every night.

Israel must restore deterrence to those which would attack it with missiles.


It is therefore time for Israel to make the ultimate threat to Iran, that if it fires missiles indiscriminately into Israel's population centers, then as per Chriraq's threat in 2005, it will face an 'overwhelming response'.

This message may come before or after Israel's attack on Iran.

Not for nothing did Rafsanjani call Israel a 'one bomb state'

Netanyahu must now either order the attack on Iran or face going down in history as the prime minister responsible for Israel's demise after being attacked with one or more Iranian (or arab) nuclear weapons.

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. 

Obama trying to sap Israel's will to take on Iran

In the face of Israeli leaders' refusal to rule out an attack on Iran to divest it of its nuclear weapons program, Obama's propaganda war against Israel is in full swing.
Today the State Department has put the whole of Israel on its 'watch list', recommending against travel there.
Having only recently been to Israel this travel warning can only be described as nonsense ( I travel to other parts of the world where the dangers of getting harmed in Israel pale into insignificance. Like anywhere else one has to exercise caution, and this especially if you can be identified as jewish when in arab areas such as in  Judea and Samaria or East Jerusalem. I was recently in different areas along the border of Gaza, the 'hottest' part of Israel recently and still felt safe ).

Recently the US top soldier Dempsey said that Israel did not have the ability to take on Iran, that it could only halt its program for around a year which would just make Iran even more resolute and speed up its program.

Dempsey ignores what happened in Iraq when Israel destroyed its nuclear reactor. It never did renew its program, or with Syria in 2007 when Israel destroyed a plutonium conversion facility. Both programs were stopped dead.

It is wrong of Dempsey to fortell the future. The truth is that no one knows what will happen. Iran might try to move forward even more quickly, or it might be stopped dead in its tracks. The embarassment might even lead to the collapse of the regime, as happened in Argentina after the Falklands conflict. The Iranina regime of the ayatollas is not popular.

So now former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk is trotted out saying that "Israel’s talk of attacking Iran was “a classic case of crying wolf” and that Washington was learning “to live with it.”

Well maybe, but rather than crying wolf, Israel has been under extreme pressure for years now from the Bush and Obama regimes not to attack. We should know by summer of 2013 whether it was all just crying wolf or not.

Indyk should know that there has been great heart searching at the top levels of the Israeli state as to whether Israel should attack Iran. Israel has no aircraft carriers so a  conventional attack against many sites over a thousand miles away hidden in protected bunkers is no mean thing to undertake. Israel's president along with most of the security apparatus is against an attack on Iran. Netanyahu with the vision of his father and his mentor Jabotinsky face the knowledge of the Iranian regime that once in possession of nuclear weapons will very possibly wish to help bring the 'hidden Imam' by way of vapourising Israel.
Netanyahu remembers Jabotinsky's warnings of the destruction of europe's jews went unheeded, and he listens very carefully to Iran's almost daily threats to destroy Israel.

Indyk, who currently heads the the foreign policy division of the Brookings Institution think tank, told Army Radio that US officials feel there is nothing more they can do to reassure Israel that it has American support in stopping Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

“The US has done everything it could to reassure Israel and doesn’t have anything more in its quiver, no other arrow to shoot to reassure them. So it thinks [when it hears talk of an Israeli strike on Iran], ‘Here we go again. There’s nothing else we can do. We’ll learn to live with it.’”

 Indyk is surely joking? Sanctions on Iran are full of holes. Waivers for India,Russia,China and Turkey mean that Iran can export all its oil. Oil prices being at a new high mean that money is streaming into Iran's coffers.
Turkey and Iranian influenced (if not controlled) Iraq are providing banking services to Iran.

US sanctions are not working against Iran because they still have not been put into serious effect.

Hopefully Netanyahu along with Barak of Israel will find the will to divest Iran of the main parts of Iran's nuclear industry before it is too late for conventional weapons to reach the deep bunkers housing the Iranian centrifuges and the rest of its nuclear industry.

President Chiraq in 2005 said that if any foreign country used terrorists to plant bombs in France, that country would suffer a nuclear attack, and cease to exist.

Israel can not live with nuclear weapons in the hands of the mad Iranian regime. The world can not live with these weapons, but does not yet realise this. Once Iran goes nuclear, so will Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia to name just the most obvious candidates. Proliferation will take off and the world will become a much more dangerous place.

It is time for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear industry, and if possible as secondary targets destroy Iran's oil production/refining centers along with other essential industry such as power plants. Destruction of power plants are as important as destroying centrifuges. Without the enormous power needs of Iran's industry being met, the rebuilding of the centrifuges along with the nuclear program will be slowed immensely.

At the same time Israel should warn Iran that retaliation by the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel's population centers will be met with an overwhelming response.

Netanyahu must act to protect Israel's people. Despite the tsunami of world hatred towards Israel in the wake of such action, we all know that there is not another country that would do differently faced with the prospect of thousands of rockets fired with the intention of killing Israel's citizens.

Once again, Israel is going to have to pull the world's chestnuts out of the fire as Obama cares not for his country or for the peace of the world, but to only to curry favour with the west hating and caliphate aspirants of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama's new attempt to put Israel off attacking Iran, this time regarding 'accurate' Iranian missiles

We had this in 2007 concerning Iran:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

And now we have near constant reports such as the one below, about how Israel will supposedly only be able to put back the Iranian nuclear program by a year, and that even the USA can't do the job........

This latest Pentagon report is just more blather, of american intelligence linked strategists led by Obama who are working non stop to dissuade Israel by any means from taking responsibility for its fate and attacking Iran. Of course Israel now only has a tiny window of opportunity to attack Iran's program before it goes fully underground and not vulnerable to conventional bombing. Obama is constantly working to reduce that window, by using black propaganda against Israel and by threats and cajoling. Israel last year said it only had until this October to attack, and now we hear that Israel won't attack before November so as not to upset....... Obama and his election.

Netanyahu the mature politician and statesman ran rings around Obama last year, turning the tables completely. Obama had surprised Netanyahu as he was on the way to the US with a demand for the Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 'borders' with 'mutual swaps.' When Obama then tried to push his betrayal at the G20, Canada scotched the plan. But Netanyahu is sailing very close to the wind now. Israel will suffer from attacking Iran, but there seems little choice, Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons no matter what the cost. Ahmadinejad and his lunatic minions and media remind us of the necessity of pulling their sting almost daily now. And attack Israel must. It is time for Netanyahu to ignore Obama, attack and then explain why to the American people. Americans will most likely be most understanding, as unlike Obama, they have the measure of the threat from Iran, and they've not forgotten Khomeini's hostages.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Iran’s military has "boosted the lethality and effectiveness of existing" ballistic missile systems with "accuracy improvements and new sub-munition payloads," according to a Pentagon report. Portions of the document were declassified on Wednesday after having been presented to Congress last week.

The Pentagon report, obtained by Bloomberg, specifically notes that Iran's short-range ballistic missiles are evolving toward an operational ability to target sea vessels.

Iran's military improvements are occurring in parallel with regular ballistic-missile training that “continues throughout the country” and the addition of “new ships and submarines,” the report concluded.

The report repeats the long-standing US assessment that Iran with “sufficient foreign assistance may be technically capable of flight-testing” an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.

In February 2012, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in a CNBC interview that Israel estimates Iranian missiles will soon be capable of reaching the United States.

Iran is investing billions of dollars, Steinitz said, to develop inter-continental ballistic missiles. "We estimate that in two to three years they will have the first inter-continental ballistic missiles that can reach the east coast of America."

Iran also continues to develop ballistic missiles which can reach regional adversaries, Israel and Eastern Europe, including an extended-range variant of the Shahab-3 and a 2,000 kilometer medium-range ballistic missile, said the Pentagon report.

The report also disclosed that Iran is improving the "survivability" of its missile arsenal, code for saying that Iran has strengthened its missile counter-measures against potential attacks.