SHOCKING: Biden BETRAYS Israel After Rafah | Caroline Glick Show In-Focus

Revealing the End Times Prophecy of Elam (Iran)

The Head of the Snake | Jerusalem Dateline - April 30, 2024

“This Is Coming To Israel" | Sunday Night LIVE With Pastor Tom Hughes

U.S. B-52 Bombers Fly Over Middle East as Iran Threatens Israeli Cities ...

Syria's war: Who is fighting and why [Updated]

Special Middle East report on the chemical attacks in Syria

Russian nuclear-capable Iskander missiles deployed in Syria

Republished from A sclerotic goes to war  
By Joseph Wouk via servehiminthewaiting.com
Source: Russian nuclear-capable Iskander missiles deployed in Syria

Russia has deployed its most advanced tactical missile system, the Iskander-M, in Syria in the last few days, debkafile reports exclusively from its military and intelligence sources.

The Russian Iskander is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and has never been made available to any foreign army for operational use.

No nuclear-capable surface missiles were deployed in any Arab country bordering on Israel since 2007 when Chinese DF-21 missiles were installed in Saudi Arabia.
The Russian missiles (NATO codenamed SS-26) have a range of 500 kilometers (see map).
The Iskander’s transfer to the Kaliningrad enclave in the Baltic Sea in 2015, putting it in range of Central and Western Europe, was a mark of heightened tensions with the West over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

Its deployment in Syria, amid a bloody five-year civil war, is a game changer in terms of the balance of strength in the Middle East. Its range – from the Russian Hmeimim base in western Syria – covers all of Israel up to the southern town of Beersheba, points in Turkey up to the outskirts of Ankara and the eastern and central Mediterranean including Cyprus.
The Russian decision to scale down its forces in Syria was only part of the picture: Warplanes and bombers are being pulled out, but as fast as they leave, they are being replaced by the most advanced missile systems in the Russian arsenal.

On March 15, Moscow announced that the formidable S-400 ground-to-air missiles would stay in Syria after the withdrawal. Ten days later, on March 25, the Iskander-M systems were in place. The Iskander-M is rated the top short-range ballistic missile in the world.
The combination, say debkafile’s military sources, makes the Hmeimim base the hub of the most sophisticated missiles in the Middle East.
Its mobile launching vehicle carries two missiles. It only takes a few minutes to prepare them for launch; each may be fired separately. In flight, its operating team can retarget the weapon, adjusting it if necessary to hit  moving targets such as missile launchers, tank columns or supply convoys.

Another special feature of the Iskander-M is the control of its warhead by an encoded radio signal that even UAVs or AWACS cannot intercept. The missile can therefore lock on the target without being shot down. The missile’s computer receives an image of the target, locks on it and zooms toward the target at supersonic speed.

The Iskander-M is adaptable for use against small or large targets and can easily evade air defense batteries. Its targets can be set by satellites, surveillance planes, intelligence mechanisms or even field soldiers directing artillery fire from images scanned to their computers. Furthermore, its independent navigation system is not affected by poor weather conditions, including fog or darkness, like other ballistic missiles. It is moreover almost impossible to pre-empt the launch of the Iskander-M due to the mobility of its launching system.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey Preparing For Massive Ground Invasion Of Syria?

image: http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/images/recent/warfeb102016.jpg
By Michael Snyder - The Economic Collapse Blog February 16, 2016

Share this article:

---

350,000 soldiers, 20,000 tanks, 2,450 warplanes and 460 military helicopters are massing in northern Saudi Arabia for a military exercise that is being called "Northern Thunder".  

According to the official announcement, forces are being contributed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia and several other nations.  

This exercise will reportedly last for 18 days, and during that time the airspace over northern Saudi Arabia will be closed to air traffic.  This will be the largest military exercise in the history of the region, and it comes amid rumors that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are preparing for a massive ground invasion of Syria.

If you were going to gather forces for an invasion, this is precisely how you would do it.  Governments never come out and publicly admit that forces are moving into position for an invasion ahead of time, so military exercises are a common excuse that gets used for this sort of thing.

If these exercises are actually being used as an excuse to mass forces near the northern Saudi border, then we should expect an invasion to begin within the next couple of weeks.  If it happens, we should expect to see the Saudi coalition storm through western Iraq and into Syria from the south, and it is likely that Turkey will come in from the north.

The goal would be to take out the Assad regime before Russia, Iran and Hezbollah could react.  For the past couple of years, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies have been funding the Sunni insurgency in Syria, and they were counting on those insurgents to be able to take down the Assad regime by themselves.

You see, the truth is that ISIS was never supposed to lose in Syria.  Saudi Arabia and her allies have been funneling massive amounts of money to ISIS, and hundreds of millions of dollars of ISIS oil has been shipped into Turkey where it is sold to the rest of the world.

The major Sunni nations wanted ISIS and the other Sunni insurgent groups to take down Assad.  In the aftermath, Saudi Arabia and her allies intended to transform Syria into a full-blown Sunni nation.

But then Russia, Iran and Hezbollah stepped forward to assist the Assad regime.  Russian air support completely turned the tide of the war, and now the Sunni insurgents are on the brink of losing.

Aleppo was once the largest city in Syria, and Sunni insurgents have controlled it since 2012.  But now relentless Russian airstrikes have made it possible for Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah ground forces to surround the city, and it is about to fall back into the hands of the Syrian government.

If this happens, the war will essentially be over.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies have invested massive amounts of time, money and effort into overthrowing Assad, and they aren t about to walk away now.

If the war was to end right at this moment, a weakened Assad regime would remain in power, and Iran and Hezbollah would be the dominant powers in the country for years to come.  And once Assad died, it would be inevitable that Iran and Hezbollah would attempt to transform Syria into a full-blown Shiite nation.  This is something that Saudi Arabia and Turkey want to avoid at all costs.

So they are actually considering what was once absolutely unthinkable a massive ground invasion of Syria.

But if Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies go in, they run the risk of a full-blown war with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.  Just consider some of the comments that we have seen in recent days...

Reacting to a potential troop deployment, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said Saturday, "Let no one think they can attack Syria or violate its sovereignty because I assure you any aggressor will return to their country in a wooden coffin."

Pavel Krasheninnikov, a deputy of Russia s State Duma, has warned Saudi Arabia that any military ground operation in Syria without Damascus consent would amount to a declaration of war, Press TV reported.

We could literally be looking at the spark that sets off World War 3.  I can t believe that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are actually considering this.

And if it does happen, you can rest assured that Barack Obama gave them the green light to go in.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the decision may have already been made.  Just consider what Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is saying&

"If we have such a strategy, then Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch a ground operation," he added, fueling concerns that a foreign troop invasion may soon further complicate the already turbulent situation in the war-torn country.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE voiced their readiness to contribute troops for a ground operation in Syria on the condition that the US would lead the intervention. Damascus and its key regional ally, Iran, warned that such a foreign force would face strong resistance.

And in addition to all of the forces massing in northern Saudi Arabia, the London Independent is reporting that the Saudis have sent troops and aircraft to a military base in Turkey...

Saudi Arabia is sending troops and fighter jets to Turkey s Incirlik military base ahead of a possible ground invasion of Syria.

The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, confirmed the deployment in a statement to the Yeni ^afak newspaper on Saturday, days before a temporary ceasefire is due to come into force.

There are reports that Saudi officials are saying that the decision to send in ground troops is "irreversible", and Reuters is reporting that the Syrian government claims that some Turkish troops have already entered the country&

The Syrian government says Turkish forces were believed to be among 100 gunmen it said entered Syria on Saturday accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents fighting Damascus.

"The operation of supplying ammunition and weapons is continuing via the Bab al-Salama crossing to the Syrian area of Azaz," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council published by state news agency SANA.

Of course the Turkish government is not going to confirm that report, but what we do know is that Turkey is shelling Kurdish forces on the Syrian side of the border.  The funny thing is that these Kurdish forces are actually being supported and supplied by the U.S. government.

So the Turks are not supposed to be doing this, but according to Reuters they have been doing it for two days in a row anyway&

The Turkish army shelled positions held by Kurdish-backed militia in northern Syria for a second day on Sunday, killing two fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Turkey on Saturday demanded the powerful Syrian Kurdish YPG militia withdraw from areas that it had captured in the northern Aleppo region in recent days from insurgents in Syria, including the Menagh air base. The shelling has targeted those areas.

image: http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/images/ads/TFP_freedvd.jpg

The hostility between Turkey and the Kurds goes back a long, long way.  The Syrian Kurds are not threatening Turkey in any way right now, but Turkey is using the instability in the region as an excuse to lob artillery shells at a hated enemy.  It is an act of naked aggression that the Obama administration should be loudly denouncing.

In addition, it is being reported that Syrian government forces have also been getting shelled by the Turkish military...

Anatolia news agency reported that the Turkish military hit Syrian government forces on Saturday, adding that the shelling had been in response to fire inflicted on a Turkish military guard post in Turkey s southern Hatay region.

Turkish artillery targeted Syrian forces again late on Saturday, according to a military source quoted by RIA Novosti. The attack targeted the town of Deir Jamal in the Aleppo Governorate.

Needless to say, the Russians are quite alarmed by all of this.

In fact, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is warning about what could happen if things spiral out of control&

In the wake of Saudi Arabia s proposal to send in ground troops on Thursday, the Russian Prime Minister claimed the move could spark a new world war.

"A ground operation draws everyone taking part in it into a war," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

"The Americans and our Arab partners must consider whether or not they want a permanent war."

If Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies launch an invasion and make a mad dash to take out the Assad regime in Damascus, the Russians will inevitably respond.

And if tactical nuclear weapons are necessary to keep the invading forces out of Damascus, the Russians will not be shy about using them.

I don t know if I have ever seen a scenario which was more likely to initiate World War 3 than the one that we are watching unfold right now.

So what has the mainstream media been saying about all of this?

Incredibly, they have been almost entirely silent.  When he went looking for news about these events, James Bailey could find almost nothing on either Fox News or CNN&

I just visited the home page for Foxnews.com and found not one single mention of the insane events now unfolding in the Middle East. I could not believe it, so I used my Find tool to search for Syria and Saudi Arabia. Not one mention!

Of course that could change at any moment, but nothing there when I checked. Their stories were all about the meaningless Presidential election, which has already been decided regardless of what we think about it, and other stories about entertainment, sports, Congressional political theater, etc.

So I went to CNN and found just about the same thing with one news story about the Syrian cease fire, but when I read it there was no mention of any of the big events that have developed this week. This is truly an amazing media blackout!

But Fox News does have space to run headlines like these...

Spanish man skipped work for 6 years, still got paid

48 people rescued from stuck tram cars at New Hampshire ski resort

Lovelorn elephant takes out his rage on more than a dozen cars

And CNN apparently thinks that these news stories are more important than the potential beginning of World War 3...

Kanye West drops album, says he s $53 million in debt

Dutch cops train eagles to hunt drones

Teen hands out 900 flowers to girls at school

If Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies are going to conduct an invasion of Syria, the most likely time for this to happen will be by the end of this month during these military exercises.

If we can get to March 1st and no invasion has happened yet, perhaps we can breathe a little sigh of relief.

But if it does happen, and the Russians and the Iranians decide to shoot back, it really could be the start of World War 3.

If you have not been paying attention up until now, you need to start, because this could literally change

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=132#4cmz1jQ2ML5uK938.99

Our World: Israel and the Russian challenge

Obama cannot take action against Russia without discrediting his entire Middle East policy, and so destroying his own legacy.

MILITARY ATTACHES and journalists talk after a Russian Defense Ministry briefing in Moscow about the attempt to interdict Islamic State’s oil trade.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Israeli Air Force commanders are reportedly deeply worried about Russia’s military presence in Syria.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed his forces to Syria last year, he claimed that the deployment would be brief. Russian forces were placed in Syria, Putin said, to protect Assad and would leave once he was able to defend himself.

Last week, when the terms of the deployment agreement concluded between Russia and Syria were made public, we discovered that those early claims were false. Under the terms of the deal, Russia can maintain permanent bases in Syria.

Israel’s Air Force is no match for Russia’s. The S-400 anti-aircraft system Russia is deploying to Syria covers half of Israeli territory. Russia’s deployment means that Israel has lost its regional air superiority.

To be sure, Putin’s decision to set up permanent bases in Syria is not directed against Israel. He is interested in defending Russian interests in areas like oil and Syria where Israel is not an actor. This is the reason that Russia and Israel have been able to reach tactical agreements over Syria.

Among other things, the sides agreed to deconflict their aircraft flying over Syria.

But Israel’s ability to reach tactical understandings with Russia doesn’t mean Israel can trust that Russia’s operations in the area will not harm its national security in significant ways.

For instance, the reports that Russia is transferring arms to Hezbollah are deeply worrying. For the past five years, according to reports in foreign media, the Air Force has repeatedly bombed shipments of Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

Israel is not in a position to contemplate bombing Russian military shipments to Lebanon. It is also not in a position to challenge a Russian decision to allow Hezbollah to use advanced weapons like Yakhont anti-ship missiles against naval ships either from Lebanon or Syria.

And there is no reason to believe that Russia won’t do so.

Russia has been acting in alliance with Hezbollah, Assad and Iran since the 1980s. Putin’s reported willingness to cooperate with Israel in various areas does not mean that Russia is no longer Iran’s partner in supplying Hezbollah and facilitating its operations.

The government and military have no options for dealing with Russia’s sudden emergence as a major power in our backyard. And there is nothing new in Israel’s helplessness.

We’ve never had an option for reining in Moscow.

But until Barack Obama came into office, Israel never had to worry about Russia.

For 65 years, the US forced Russia to curb its activities in the Middle East.

Until Barack Obama entered the White House, every US president from Franklin Roosevelt on believed it was a US economic and strategic interest of the first order to curb Russian power in the Middle East. The chief reason the US began its strategic alliance with Israel after the 1967 Six Day War was because by defeating Russian clients Egypt and Syria, Israel proved its value to the US’s Cold War strategy.

In the succeeding decades, Israel and the US had a division of labor. It was Israel’s job to defeat or deter Russian – or Soviet – clients in the Arab world. It was the US’s job to deter Russia – or the Soviet Union.

Now, in the final year of the Obama presidency, all that is gone. Obama is content to see Russia exert power and influence that none of his predecessors would have countenanced. And so, for the first time, Israel finds itself standing alone against Russia, with no clear means of protecting its vital national security interests.

Obama’s refusal to take any steps to curb Russia’s deployment and ambitions in the region is not surprising.

It not that he doesn’t understand that Russia’s rise means America’s fall. He undoubtedly has been warned of the implications of Russia’s return to region by the relevant government agencies and the military.

But none of that matters to him. The only thing that Obama cares about is his legacy. Obama cannot take action against Russia without discrediting his entire Middle East policy, and so destroying his own legacy.

OBAMA’S POLICY in the region is based on the assumption that the US is responsible for instability and war in the Middle East. As a consequence, Obama’s regional policy is one that requires the US to abandon those who benefited from US protection and partnership – first and foremost Israel and Saudi Arabia, and appeasing those who most oppose the US and its allies – first and foremost Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

With Iran’s capture of the US naval craft and its illegal detention of 10 US naval personnel last week, Iran demonstrated, once again, that it has not been appeased by Obama’s nuclear and financial concessions.

Iran continues to view the US as its primary enemy and it continues to view itself as at war against America.

It is beyond dispute that Iran committed a war crime in photographing the US military personnel in humiliating ways and forcing one sailor to film an apology to Iran. The language of the Geneva Conventions is cut and dry on the subject.

But rather than take action against Iran, by among other things, delaying the revocation of economic sanctions against Iran, the Obama administration defended Iran’s act of war against the US.

In a press briefing, State Department spokesman John Kirby argued that Iran did not commit a war crime when it detained and photographed the US sailors in humiliating ways because Iran is not at war with the US.

This is an idiotic statement meant to hide an indefensible position. Obviously, if Kirby is right and Iran is not at war with the US, then the act of detaining and photographing the sailors moves from a mere war crime, to an act of international piracy and hostage taking.

In other words, in detaining US sailors and photographing them, Iran either committed a war crime and an act of war, or it committed an even larger crime – and initiated a war with the US.

But Obama cannot acknowledge that this is the case, because if he does, he will be unable to defend his larger policy – which is equally indefensible.

Iran began broadcasting photographs of the sailors kneeing before their Iranian captors and a video apology in which a sailor issued a groveling apology and thanked Iran for its kindness and hospitality the day before Secretary of State John Kerry stood before the cameras in Vienna and announced that the US and its partners would remove economic sanctions against Iran as soon as the IAEA announced that Iran was abiding by the nuclear deal.

The IAEA then duly announced that Iran was in compliance and it could receive its $150 billion in frozen funds.

Iran crowed that the American sailors cried and otherwise acted like cowards when they were apprehended just hours before Obama went before the cameras and congratulated himself for his brilliantly smart diplomacy that has prevented war. Obama similarly chastised unnamed critics for criticizing his decision to bow and scrape before Iran as it committed acts of war against America.

Obama was undoubtedly relishing the moment as he declared diplomatic victory over his political opponents, but even if he was unhappy about Iran’s behavior he couldn’t have done anything about it.

Obama brags that he was able to reach a nuclear deal where all his predecessors failed. But this hides the main distinction between him and those who came before him.

None of Obama’s predecessors concluded a nuclear deal with Iran because unlike Obama, none of his predecessors were willing to abandon US interests – including the interest of preventing the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons – in order to get a deal. Obama cannot attack Iran’s aggression on the high seas without calling into question the wisdom of his nuclear diplomacy.

He cannot take action against Russia without calling into question his belief that US power in the Middle East is the chief cause of all the region’s problems.

Israel’s military and political leaders are right to be concerned about the implications of Russia’s return to Syria. And it is far from clear that there is a way to credibly minimize the dangers. But, since we’re not going anywhere, we will have to make the best of a bad situation.

Whatever we do, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that unless the next US president rejects Obama’s entire Middle East policy and shepherds the military and financial resources to abandon it, on Russia, Iran and beyond, Israel will have to fend for itself for the foreseeable future.

Eye to Eye Part 2 - Bill Koenig and Gary Stearman

Who is being delusional?

Reblogged from carolineglick.com

Friday, November 20th, 2015



On Tuesday night Channel 10 broadcast an interview with PLO chief and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in which Abbas admitted publically for the first time that he rejected the peace plan then prime minister Ehud Olmert offered him in 2008.

Olmert’s plan called for Israel to withdraw from the entire Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, and from 93.7 percent of Judea and Samaria. Olmert also offered sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians to compensate for the areas Israel would retain in Judea and Samaria.

Abbas said his rejection was unequivocal. “I didn’t agree. I rejected it out of hand.”

For years, the story of Abbas’s rejection of Olmert’s 2008 offe has been underplayed. Many commentators have insisted Abbas didn’t really reject it, he just failed to respond.

But now the truth is clear. Abbas is not interested either in peace or in Palestinian statehood.

Abbas’s many apologists in the Israeli Left insist that he didn’t reject the plan on its merits. Rather, they argue, Abbas rejected Olmert’s offer because by the time Olmert made it, he was steeped in criminal investigations that forced him to resign from office eight months later.

Hogwash, says former AP reporter Mark Lavie. Following the interview’s broadcast Lavie countered that if Abbas was truly interested in establishing an independent Palestinians state, he wouldn’t have cared about the political fortunes of the Israeli prime minister. He would have taken the offer and run knowing that, as Olmert said, the likelihood that he’d get a similar offer in the next 50 years was nonexistent.

The most notable reaction to Abbas’s admission was the reaction that never came. The Israeli Left had no reaction to his interview.

Abbas is the hero of the Left.

He is their partner. He is their moderate. He is their man of peace. Abbas is the Palestinian leader to whom every leftist politician worth his snuff, from opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to the Meretz Knesset faction make regular pilgrimages to prove their devotion to peace.

Their man in Ramallah received the most radical offer ever to see the light of day. And rather than accept it, he rejected it out of hand and refused to meet with Olmert ever again, and he openly admits it.

The Left’s non-response is not surprising. Abbas’s decision to end all speculation about whether or not he is a man of peace is merely the latest blow reality has cast on their two-state formula.

The Left’s policy of land for peace failed more than 15 years ago when Abbas’s boss Yassir Arafat preferred war to peace and initiated the worst campaign of terror that Israel had ever experienced.

Yet for the last 15 years, the Israeli “peace camp,” has never wavered in its view that despite it all, Israel must rid itself of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Rather it members has grown angrier and angrier at their own people for abandoning them and less and less willing to agree that there is anything – including Israeli statehood itself – that is more important than giving up Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

The Left’s reactionary position was on full display last Thursday at the annual “peace conference,” hosted by the far left Haaretz newspaper.

Last year, the conference’s audience attacked Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett both verbally and physically when he presented his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria. This year it was Tourism Minister Yariv Levin’s turn to be assaulted.

Levin was subjected to constant catcalls from the audience, whose members called him “Goebbels” for arguing that the two-state formula has no chance of bringing peace and that the time has come to consider other options.

But Levin’s claims were simply common sense.

This week the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion published its most recent survey. The results were no surprise. Indeed, they were more or less consistent with historical survey results.

According to the PCPO data, 63 percent of Palestinians oppose holding peace talks with Israel. 58 percent think Mahmoud Abbas, whose term of office ended in 2009, should resign. A majority of Palestinians support a new assault or “intifada” against Israel. 42 percent of Palestinians support the use of terrorism against Israel.

Also this week, ahead of the Jerusalem Post’ Diplomatic Conference held Wednesday, the Post published a new poll of Israeli public opinion. According to the data, 46 percent of Israelis support a policy of separating from the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state. 35 percent of Israelis support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. For Israelis under 45, the numbers are reversed.

Today a majority of Likud Knesset members and all members of the Jewish Home’s Knesset faction oppose Palestinian statehood and support applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria.

Rather than deal with the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis support their two-state model, the Left has decided to ignore both.

The Haaretz conference last week hosted a panel discussing whether the two state paradigm remains viable. In his remarks, Prof. Shlomo Ben Ami, who served as foreign minister in 2000 during the failed Camp David peace summit, explained that given the Israeli and Palestinian publics’ rejection of the two-state formula, (but especially the Israeli rejection of it), the UN Security Council determine Israel’s final borders. In other words, from Ben Ami’s perspective, withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is more important than maintaining Israel’s independence and governing in accordance with the will of the people.

When the panel’s moderator expressed concern that the mass expulsion of Israelis from their communities in Judea and Samaria, which the two-state formula requires would cause a civil war within Israeli society, Ben Ami just shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t delude myself. I never deluded myself that this would be a boy scouts’ trip,” he said.

“You can’t do this through consensus….Consensus is the great enemy of leadership,” he said.

Ben Ami continued, “War unites, peace divides…A leader who wants to make peace will always have a split nation behind him.”

MK Meirav Michaeli, who serves as the Zionist Union’s Knesset faction head said for her part that the greatest obstacle to peace is Israel. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Israel hasn’t had a leader willing to do what it takes to make peace.

In Michaeli’s view, when the Left next forms a government, it will need to adopt – as is opening position in negotiations – the position that Israel shares responsibility for the fate of the so-called “Palestinian refugees.”

Michaeli explained, “Israel needs to be part of a coalition that will find a solution,” for the descendants of the Arabs that left Israel during the 1948-1949 pan-Arab invasion of the infant state of Israel.

Michaeli also insisted that Israel needs to stop demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. Israel should suffice instead with a Palestinian acknowledgment that it does indeed exist.

It goes without saying that there has never been, and there never will be a majority of support in Israel either for Ben Ami’s position or for Michaeli’s position. This is the reason that they prefer to ignore the Israeli people and wait for “the world” to save “the peace” for them.

This brings us to the 46 percent of Israelis who would like to separate from the Palestinians and let them have a state.

The only reason that a plurality of Israelis still supports a policy that has failed continuously for the past fifteen years is because the Israeli Left has blocked all discussion of alternative policies.

Over the past twenty years, the Left has implemented three policy initiatives: the peace process with the PLO from 1993 to 2000, the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. These policies never enjoyed the sustained support of the majority of the public.

To the extent they ever mobilized the temporary support of bare majorities of public, they did so only because the media campaigned continuously on behalf of these initiatives. Not only did key all the mass circulation newspapers and all major broadcast media outlets support these plans, they blocked all debate about them. Opponents were demonized as extremists.

And this brings us to the 35 percent of Israelis who support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.

It is this virtual blackout on coverage of opposing views that makes the results of the Post’s opinion poll remarkable. In the absence of almost any public discussion of the possibility of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria aside from the self-generated publicity of advocates of the position, more than a third of Israelis overall, and a plurality of young Israelis supports it.

Over the past week, Netanyahu has been asked his opinion of the prospects for unilateral Israeli actions towards the Palestinians three times, once in Washington and twice in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s responses have been enigmatic. But collectively they lend the clear impression that the premier does not support unilateral Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria and at least in principle, does not oppose the sovereignty model.

In his remarks at the Post’s conference Wednesday, Netanyahu said cagily, “There are all sorts of unilateral moves in all sorts of directions. Wait and see. And they are not necessarily in the direction you think.”

Speaking to the Likud’s Knesset faction on Monday Netanyahu clarified his remarks on the subject last week in Washington saying, “I didn’t say unilateral withdrawals. I said unilateral steps. You can imagine what I mean – states are disintegrating and we will protect our interests.”

Sitting next to Ben Ami at the Haaretz conference was the lone non-leftist on the panel. Halachic expert Malka Puterkovsky said that in her view, Israel should apply its sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. Doing so, she argued, will not risk Israel’s future as a Jewish state.

Both the audience and her fellow panelists reacted to her statements with a the same extreme hostility with which they responded to Bennet and Levin.

When Ben Ami —  the man who thinks it is more important for Israel to expel some one hundred thousand Israelis from their homes than avert a civil war, and prefers borders forced on Israel by the UN to Israeli democracy and independence – was asked his opinion of Puterovsky’s position, he called the notion of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria “delusional.”

We need to take Netanyahu’s coy responses to questions about unilateralism as an invitation to begin a serious public discussion of the option. The public wants this discussion and we need this discussion.

As for how the peace camp will respond, well, there are worse things than aving reactionaries call you “delusional.”
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Read more: http://thelightseed.blogspot.com/#ixzz3sBJGtnVu

The diplomatic track to war

Friday, April 3rd, 2015 

Reblogged from http://carolineglick.com/the-diplomatic-track-to-war/  

The world powers assembled at Lausanne, Switzerland, with the representatives of the Islamic Republic may or may not reach a framework deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But succeed or fail, the disaster that their negotiations have unleashed is already unfolding. The damage they have caused is irreversible.

US President Barack Obama, his advisers and media cheerleaders have long presented his nuclear diplomacy with the Iran as the only way to avoid war. Obama and his supporters have castigated as warmongers those who oppose his policy of nuclear appeasement with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.

But the opposite is the case. Had their view carried the day, war could have been averted.

Through their nuclear diplomacy, Obama and his comrades started the countdown to war.

In recent weeks we have watched the collapse of the allied powers’ negotiating positions.

They have conceded every position that might have placed a significant obstacle in Iran’s path to developing a nuclear arsenal.

They accepted Iran’s refusal to come clean on the military dimensions of its past nuclear work and so ensured that to the extent UN nuclear inspectors are able to access Iran’s nuclear installations, those inspections will not provide anything approaching a full picture of its nuclear status. By the same token, they bowed before Iran’s demand that inspectors be barred from all installations Iran defines as “military” and so enabled the ayatollahs to prevent the world from knowing anything worth knowing about its nuclear activities.

On the basis of Iran’s agreement to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, the US accepted Iran’s demand that it be allowed to maintain and operate more than 6,000 centrifuges.

But when on Monday Iran went back on its word and refused to ship its uranium to Russia, the US didn’t respond by saying Iran couldn’t keep spinning 6,000 centrifuges. The US made excuses for Iran.

The US delegation willingly acceded to Iran’s demand that it be allowed to continue operating its fortified, underground enrichment facility at Fordow. In so doing, the US minimized the effectiveness of a future limited air campaign aimed at significantly reducing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

With this broad range of great power concessions already in its pocket, the question of whether or not a deal is reached has become a secondary concern. The US and its negotiating partners have agreed to a set of understanding with the Iranians. Whether these understandings become a formal agreement or not is irrelevant because the understandings are already being implemented.

True, the US has not yet agreed to Iran’s demand for an immediate revocation of the economic sanctions now standing against it. But the notion that sanctions alone can pressure Iran into making nuclear concessions has been destroyed by Obama’s nuclear diplomacy in which the major concessions have all been made by the US.

No sanctions legislation that Congress may pass in the coming months will be able to force a change in Iran’s behavior if they are not accompanied by other coercive measures undertaken by the executive branch.

There is nothing new in this reality. For a regime with no qualms about repressing its society, economic sanctions are not an insurmountable challenge. But it is possible that if sanctions were implemented as part of a comprehensive plan to use limited coercive means to block Iran’s nuclear advance, they could have effectively blocked Iran’s progress to nuclear capabilities while preventing war. Such a comprehensive strategy could have included a proxy campaign to destabilize the regime by supporting regime opponents in their quest to overthrow the mullahs. It could have involved air strikes or sabotage of nuclear installations and strategic regime facilities like Revolutionary Guards command and control bases and ballistic missile storage facilities. It could have involved diplomatic isolation of Iran.

Moreover, if sanctions were combined with a stringent policy of blocking Iran’s regional expansion by supporting Iraqi sovereignty, supporting the now deposed government of Yemen and making a concerted effort to weaken Hezbollah and overthrow the Iranian-backed regime in Syria, then the US would have developed a strong deterrent position that would likely have convinced Iran that its interest was best served by curbing its imperialist enthusiasm and setting aside its nuclear ambitions.

In other words, a combination of these steps could have prevented war and prevented a nuclear Iran. But today, the US-led capitulation to Iran has pulled the rug out from any such comprehensive strategy. The administration has no credibility. No one trusts Obama to follow through on his declared commitment to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

No one trusts Washington when Obama claims that he is committed to the security of Israel and the US’s Sunni allies in the region.

And so we are now facing the unfolding disaster that Obama has wrought. The disaster is that deal or no deal, the US has just given the Iranians a green light to behave as if they have already built their nuclear umbrella. And they are in fact behaving in this manner.

They may not have a functional arsenal, but they act as though they do, and rightly so, because the US and its partners have just removed all significant obstacles from their path to nuclear capabilities. The Iranians know it. Their proxies know it. Their enemies know it.

As a consequence, all the regional implications of a nuclear armed Iran are already being played out. The surrounding Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are pursuing nuclear weapons. The path to a Middle East where every major and some minor actors have nuclear arsenals is before us.

Iran is working to expand its regional presence as if it were a nuclear state already. It is brazenly using its Yemeni Houthi proxy to gain maritime control over the Bab al-Mandab, which together with Iran’s control over the Straits of Hormuz completes its maritime control over shipping throughout the Middle East.

Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Eritrea, and their global trading partners will be faced with the fact that their primary maritime shipping route to Asia is controlled by Iran.

With its regional aggression now enjoying the indirect support of its nuclear negotiating partners led by the US, Iran has little to fear from the pan-Arab attempt to dislodge the Houthis from Aden and the Bab al-Mandab. If the Arabs succeed, Iran can regroup and launch a new offensive knowing it will face no repercussions for its aggression and imperialist endeavors.

Then of course there are Iran’s terror proxies.

Hezbollah, whose forces now operate openly in Syria and Lebanon, is reportedly active as well in Iraq and Yemen. These forces behave with a brazenness the likes of which we have never seen.

Hamas too believes that its nuclear-capable Iranian state sponsor ensures that regardless of its combat losses, it will be able to maintain its regime in Gaza and continue using its territory as a launching ground for assaults against Israel and Egypt.

Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq have reportedly carried out heinous massacres of Sunnis who have fallen under their control and faced no international condemnation for their war crimes, operating as they are under Iran’s protection and sponsorship. And the Houthis, of course, just overthrew a Western-backed government that actively assisted the US and its allies in their campaign against al-Qaida.

For their proxies’ aggression, Iran has been rewarded with effective Western acceptance of its steps toward regional domination and nuclear armament.

Hezbollah’s activities represent an acute and strategic danger to Israel. Not only does Hezbollah now possess precision guided missiles that are capable of taking out strategic installations throughout the country, its arsenal of 100,000 missiles can cause a civilian disaster.

Hezbollah forces have been fighting in varied combat situations continuously for the past three years. Their combat capabilities are incomparably greater than those they fielded in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There is every reason to believe that these Hezbollah fighters, now perched along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, can make good their threat to attack and hold fixed targets including border communities.

While Israel faces threats unlike any we have faced in recent decades that all emanate from Western-backed Iranian aggression and expansionism carried out under a Western-sanctioned Iranian nuclear umbrella, Israel is not alone in this reality. The unrolling disaster also threatens the moderate Sunni states including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The now regional war in Yemen is but the first act of the regional war at our doorstep.

There are many reasons this war is now inevitable.

Every state threatened by Iran has been watching the Western collapse in Switzerland.

They have been watching the Iranian advance on the ground. And today all of them are wondering the same thing: When and what should we strike to minimize the threats we are facing.

Everyone recognizes that the situation is only going to get worse. With each passing week, Iran’s power and brazenness will only increase.

Everyone understands this. And this week they learned that with Washington heading the committee welcoming Iran’s regional hegemony and nuclear capabilities, no outside power will stand up to Iran’s rise. The future of every state in the region hangs in the balance. And so, it can be expected that everyone is now working out a means to preempt and prevent a greater disaster.

These preemptive actions will no doubt include three categories of operations: striking Hezbollah’s missile arsenal; striking the Iranian Navy to limit its ability to project its force in the Bab al-Mandab; and conducting limited military operations to destroy a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear installations.

Friday is the eve of Passover. Thirteen years ago, Palestinian terrorists brought home the message of the Exodus when they blew up the Seder at Netanya’s Park Hotel, killing 30, wounding 140, and forcing Israel into war. The message of the Passover Haggada is that there are no shortcuts to freedom. To gain and keep it, you have to be willing to fight for it.

That war was caused by Israel’s embrace of the notion that you can bring peace through concessions that empower an enemy sworn to your destruction. The price of that delusion was thousands of lives lost and families destroyed.

Iran is far more powerful than the PLO. But the Americans apparently believe they are immune from the consequences of their leaders’ policies. This is not the case for Israel or for our neighbors. We lack the luxury of ignoring the fact that Obama’s disastrous diplomacy has brought war upon us. Deal or no deal, we are again about to be forced to pay a price to maintain our freedom.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.