Syria Withdraws Her Bid for Human Rights Seat

Syria is withdrawing its candidacy for the UN 'Human Rights Council' as one of the four candidates from the 'Asia group.' It will be replaced by Kuwait, which was slated to 'run' for the Council in 2013. It is not clear whether Syria will take 2013 space.

Kuwait is going to replace Syria as a candidate for a seat on the U.N.’s top human rights body in what would be a victory for human rights groups and many governments opposed to the ongoing crackdown by President Bashar Assad’s security forces, Western diplomats said Tuesday.

An intense behind-the-scenes campaign has been waged to prevent Syria from being elected to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council following the government’s attempts to crush a seven-week uprising challenging the Assad family’s 40-year rule.

One Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because no public announcement has been made, said Tuesday that Kuwaiti officials told diplomats in Kuwait they will replace Syria as a candidate in the May 20 secret-ballot election in the U.N. General Assembly.

...

Syria was a frontrunner for a seat on the Human Rights Council as one of four candidates selected to fill four Asian seats.

It was considered likely to win unless another candidate entered the race or it failed to win a majority of votes in the 192-member General Assembly.

You mean it's actually possible to shame the United Nations? I didn't think they had any shame.

Labels: Kuwait, Syria, United Nations Human Rights Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem

Al Jazeera: Jewish Satellite TV

From Ya Libnan:

About 100 supporters of Syria’s president, Assad, gathered in front of the Damascus offices of Al Jazeera TV. The crowd accused the satellite TV station of supporting the opposition movement in Syria.

The Qatar network, according to Assad loyalists, broadcasts “lies” and “exaggerates” the nature and the volume of the anti-regime protests.

“Al-Jazeera, Jewish satellite TV”, was written on several banners, while others incited the, “people of Qatar, rebel against the Emir” of Qatar al Khalifa, where the network has its headquarters. .


(h/t Challah Hu Akbar tweet)

UN Security Council divided over Syria

Smart diplomacy: Syria gloating over US failure at UN

Here's some more smart diplomacy from the Obama administration: Syria is gloating over the failure of the Obama administration to get sanctions enacted and a condemnation of Syria at the United Nations.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Hot Air).

The Useless Arab Spring

Michael Totten reports that the so-called 'Arab spring' has done very little thus far to change the most vehement enemies of the US and Israel.

At least NATO is busy patrolling the skies over Libya. But the Arab League pretends there's nothing to see in Damascus as Assad warns darkly of Jewish plots, guns down demonstrators with live ammunition and takes organizers from their homes in the night, throwing them into dungeons.

And the Iranian regime looks as strong as ever. Millions of demonstrators have been trying to bring down the government for almost two years now, but they appear no more likely to prevail today than they did when they started. If Green Movement leaders don't take up arms as Libya's rebels have, and if the Revolutionary Guard remains loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, Iran may well be immune from internally-driven regime-change for now.

It's remotely possible that the Gaza Strip Palestinians will temporarily forget about Israel and remove the Hamas entity that so cruelly governs them, but there's no chance at all that nonviolent protests or even an armed rebellion will eject Hezbollah from Lebanon.

Hezbollah isn't the government, it's a terrorist army, and it controls Lebanon from the shadows, where demonstrations can't reach it. Lebanon has produced more mass demonstrations than any Arab country by far, and has been producing them since 2005. But guerrillas in hardened bunkers who can't wait to go to heaven after impaling themselves on the Zionist Entity don't care two figs what protesters in Beirut, or even ostensible government ministers, have to say.

Syria and Iran arm and equip Hezbollah, and Hezbollah controls the Lebanese-Israeli border, so that border has effectively become the frontline not only in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also the Iranian-Israeli conflict and the conflict between the West and Iran in general.

Hezbollah has more rockets and missiles -- as well as more powerful ones -- than it did during the devastating 2006 war with Israel. Indeed, it has more rockets and missiles than most legitimate national militaries. It's a real, bona-fide terrorist army -- armed not with boxcutters and improvised-explosive devices but with the heavy weaponry possessed otherwise only by states.

Yet it retains all the advantages of a nonstate guerrilla army, making it exceptionally difficult to defeat even with conventional forces, let alone street demonstrations.

NATO's low-grade intervention in Libya is dominating the headlines, but in hindsight it may look like a sideshow. If the Iranian ayatollahs develop nuclear weapons -- and it seems like being overthrown is the only thing that will actually stop them -- not only will their Syrian sidekicks enjoy a protective nuclear umbrella, so will their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Arab spring, Hamas, Hezbullah, Iran, Syria

posted by Carl in Jerusalem

Ahmadinejad Backs One Arab Dictator: Assad

Ahmadinejad accused his arch foe the United States and other Western nations of hatching a plot, singling out Tehran's ally Syria which is being rocked by anti-government protests.

"They want to save the Zionist regime (Israel) by interfering in the region aimed at creating discord among the regional nations and governments," he told a news conference.

"America and the Zionist regime want to weaken Syria's resistance by creating discord between the Syrian government and the Syrian nation," said Ahmadinejad

Consistency? Who needs consistency?

Elder of Ziyon

Assad Learns Repug Secret Policy: Do Nothing

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, faced with perilous unrest, is reaching farther into the Arab despot bag of tricks, saying in his first major statement since protests began that “conspirators” are behind the tumult. "I belong to the Syrian people, and whoever belongs to the Syrian people will always keep his head high," Assad said Wednesday. But although the government has promised reforms, there was no mention of the country’s emergency law, which has been in place since 1963 and which Assad is expected to lift. Reporters on the ground say there’s widespread demand for reform but little of the fervor for removing the leader that protesters in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya have shown.
Read it at Al-Jazeera

Two Planeloads of Basij Militia Arrive in Syria

The Beirut Observer last week reported that two planes filled with Iran's Basij militia were flown from Iran to Damascus last Saturday. (The story was picked up by Kol Israel Arabic.)

The purpose was to protect the Assad regime from continuing protests throughout the country.

Arabic news sites also mentioned a YouTube video showing a funeral for one of the people killed in Daraa this week, with the protesters chanting "Neither Iran nor Hezbollah ... only to be a Muslim who is afraid of God."

100 Syrians protested in front of the Syrian embassy in Dubai yesterday, saying that "Israel is more merciful than the Syrian regime, she [Israel] did not do what he [Assad] has done to us" and they accused Syria of importing Hezbollah fighters as well to quash demonstrations, also chanting "Neither Iran nor Hezbollah..."
Elder of Ziyon

Syria Kills 12 People - in a Mosque

From Haaretz:

Syrian forces killed 12 people on Wednesday in an attack on a mosque in the southern city of Daraa, site of unprecedented protests challenging President Bashar Assad's Baathist rule, residents said.

Those killed included Ali Ghassab al-Mahamid, a doctor from a prominent Daraa family who went to the Omari mosque in the city's old quarter to help victims of the attack, which occurred just after midnight, said the residents, declining to be named.

Before the attack, electricity was cut off in the area and telephone services were severed. Cries of "Allahu Akbar [God is the greatest]" erupted across neighborhoods in Daraa when the shooting began.

Can't wait for the UN to condemn this.

Oh, I'm sure that Iran and Hezbollah will be on the condemnation bandwagon as well since they have been so outspoken about Arab government repression lately.

(updated with latest numbers, h/t Challah Hu Akbar)
Elder of Ziyon

UN Condemns Syrian Use Water Cannon

The United Nations and the United States have criticized a crackdown on protesters by Syrian authorities in which at least four people are reported to have been killed.

The violence occurred on March 18 in the southern town of Daraa, when security forces were reported to have opened fire to disperse hundreds of protesters.

It was one of several protests in Syrian cities on March 18 calling for greater political freedoms in one of the Middle East's most repressive states.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the use of lethal force against peaceful demonstrators and the arbitrary arrests of demonstrators was "unacceptable," and urged Syrian authorities to refrain from violence.

The White House National Security Council said the Obama administration "strongly" condemned the violence, and called on the Syrian government to allow demonstrations to take place peacefully.
Carl in Jerusalem

Critics of Syria Disappear - in Lebanon

From Babylon and Beyond:

Human-rights groups are becoming increasingly concerned about the fate and whereabouts of three Syrian brothers who disappeared in the Lebanese capital about two weeks ago after they distributed fliers calling for demonstrations for democratic change in Syria.

On Thursday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called on Lebanon in a statement to immediately launch an independent probe into the matter.

The circumstances of the brothers' disappearance are murky. According to Human Rights Watch research, agents from Lebanon's Military Intelligence took at least six members of the Jasem family into custody on Feb. 23 and 24 after they handed out pamphlets calling for more democracy in Syria, a country ruled by the Assad family for decades.

One of them, construction worker Jasem Mer`i Jasem, then disappeared in the early hours of Feb. 25 along with his two brothers, who had gone to pick him up from a police station in Beirut's Baabda district, according to the rights group.

Family members worry that the brothers might have been sent back to Syria, where, rights groups say, authorities regularly arrest political and human-rights activists, block websites and detain bloggers.

I haven't checked lately, but I'm sure that college campuses worldwide have lots of programs calling on Syria to embrace freedom and liberal ideals, and to stop interfering with its neighbors.

Syria's Lovable First Family

How easy is it to play the Western media? Apparently, it is trivial.

Vogue went to Syria to show how wonderful Bashir Assad and his wife are. Without doing a modicum of research on Syria's history of ruthless oppression and mass murders, the writers fall under the spell of Bashir Assad's lovely wife, wearing a T-shirt that says "Happiness."

Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.

Let's fall in love!

Other gems:

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East.

Asma’s husband, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a startling 97 percent of the vote.

The French ambassador to Syria, Eric Chevallier, says, “She managed to get people to consider the possibilities of a country that’s modernizing itself, that stands for a tolerant secularism in a powder-keg region, with extremists and radicals pushing in from all sides—and the driving force for that rests largely on the shoulders of one couple. I hope they’ll make the right choices for their country and the region. ”

On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, Asma al-Assad opens the door herself in jeans and old suede stiletto boots, hair in a ponytail, the word happiness spelled out across the back of her T-shirt. At the bottom of the stairs stands the off-duty president in jeans—tall, long-necked, blue-eyed. A precise man who takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer, he says he was attracted to studying eye surgery “because it’s very precise, it’s almost never an emergency, and there is very little blood.”

Did the writers check out any human rights reports on Syria? Did they discuss freedom of expression? Anti-semitism? Did the word "Hama" escape their lips?

Perhaps the people from Vogue would be interested in how Bashir's father liked to spend his time...

The article is so fawning it sometimes appears to be a spoof. Unfortunately, it is quite serious.

(h/t Folderol)

Russia Sells Anti-ship Cruise Missiles to Syria

Shavua tov, Chodesh tov (we blessed the moon tonight) v'Shanna tova. A good week, a good month and good year to all. I hope you had an easy fast (I did, but now I'm exhausted) and that God will fulfill all your prayers for good.

Despite protests by the United States and Israel, Russia has decided to go ahead with a 2007 deal to sell highly accurate anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria.

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said that Russia plans to go ahead with the deal to sell P-800 Yakhont supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria. The announcement was made after the Russian official met with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other Pentagon officials.

“It is the 2007 contract. The issue of selling highly accurate missiles to Syria was raised during the talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Undoubtedly, the contract would be fulfilled by the Russian side,” Serdyukov said.

...

The P-800 Yakhont missiles, or P-800 Oniks, have a range of 300 kilometers. They carry a 200-kilogram warhead and feature a unique ability to cruise several meters above the surface which makes them very difficult to detect and intercept.

How's that 're-set' Barack?

Carl in Jerusalem

Turkey Admits to Jihadist and Other anti-west Activities

Now, finally, the Turkish Government has admitted that it supports and has worked closely with the terrorist support organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), which sponsored the Gaza flotilla. IHH has a long history of involvement with the jihadist movement, including those linked to al-Qaida, in the Balkans. This means that Ankara has admitted, finally, that it has been supporting the international jihadist movement against the West, and Russia.

Still, there is always one party at a divorce which observes: “So, you‟ve hated me for years.”

New Evidence Points to Syrian Intelligence Involvement in the “Gaza Flotilla” Incident; Links to Bosnian/Viennese Jihadi Networks Emerging
Analysis.

By Jason Fuchs, UN Correspondent, and Gregory Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign
Affairs. June 15

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources in Croatia confirmed on June 14, 2010, that a key Syrian intelligence officer had been onboard the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, during its attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip on May 31, 2010. The agent, named Jaser Mohamed Sabag, was a Syrian native and naturalized Bosnian citizen.

It is understood that Sabag works directly for the Syrian Military Intelligence Service, Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-’Askariyya.

According to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources, Sabag had worked in the Balkans liaising with regional Iranian intelligence (Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar: VEVAK) networks to coordinate support for Balkan jihadist networks, including the Turkish IHH (İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı), which purchased the Marmara for $800,000 in April 2010 and — ostensibly — spearheaded the so-called Gaza flotilla.

This had, as outlined in the Defense & Foreign Affairs report of June 7, 2010, confirmed the Turkish Government’s linkage to the terrorist support work of IHH in the Balkans, during which time the jihadist terrorist groups there, using the IHH links, had been used against Western targets. But more importantly, it highlighted the links between the Turkish Government — via the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı: MİT) — with the Syrian Mukhabarat for many years in jihadist support operations, pre-dating the break-up in Turkish-Israeli relations. [FOOTNOTE: As well, (MIT) was clearly linked to the Bosnian terrorist/jihadist movement through the Kvadrat movement, which operated terrorist training in Bosnia, moving its operatives into the Russian Caucasus, to Chechnya, via safe-havens in Northern Cyprus, controlled by the Turkish Armed Forces, and then into the Russian Federation via Turkey…]

The presence of Sabag onboard the Marmara raised a number of questions about the true nature of how the flotilla had been organized, funded and directed. It indicated, at a minimum, Syrian Government involvement, and, at most, that unwittingly many of the flotilla’s passengers had been used as cover in the intelligence gambit by Damascus and Ankara.

By the first week of June 2010, Sabag had already been deported by Israeli authorities to Turkey and GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources reported that by June 12, 2010, Sabag had left Turkey and returned to Sarajevo, along with Mukadera Tankok-Tanovic, a Turkish national and IHH “coordinator”. The daily newspaper Fokus, published in Banja Luka, Republica Srpska, Bosnia & Herzegovina, further reported that before working with jihadist networks in the Balkans, Sabag had been in charge of “intelligence affairs” for the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) where he established an effective working relationship with Halil Badia, the daughter of Abu Nidal (born Sabri Khalil al-Banna). Halil Badia, the report continues, assumed control of the ANO following her father’s death in Baghdad on August 16, 2002, and has since become “a main financier of the Wahabbist [sic] movement in B-H (Bosnia & Herzegovina)”.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources confirmed that while Badia had been unable to access her late father’s Swiss bank accounts — which had been blocked several years ago as part of Western counterterrorism efforts — she and her family “managed to withdraw a substantial part of the money from Austrian banks”. It was believed that a significant portion of this money had been redirected to Balkan-based networks.

That the money had flowed through Austria was not merely a coincidence: the Viennese Islamist community had, for some time, played a central support role in organizing jihadist activities in Bosnia.
…
The still emerging evidence of connections between Syrian intelligence operations in the Balkans, Bosnian jihadists, and the voyage of the Marmara raised serious questions for the West and particularly for NATO of which Turkey is a member about the extent to which the Turkish Erdogan Administration had been aware of these linkages when it gave permission for the Gaza flotilla to set sail. If, in fact, Prime Minister Reçep Tayyip Erdogan had known about the presence on the Marmara of a Syrian intelligence agent with deep, long-standing ties to the global jihad movement, further questions would be raised about the extent to which Istanbul has chosen to reorient its strategic posture.

However, there can be no doubt that the long-standing relationships between MIT, IHH, and the Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-’Askariyya — along with the relationships which all three have had with the various Saudi and Iranian organizations in the Balkans — facilitated, or at least led to, the Marmara provocation.

And so, in very recent news we see the shifting and/or tightening of Israel’s alliances in the Balkans. While Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Greece a couple weeks ago to discuss matters of the two countries’ military alliances, these were some of the other Israel-Balkans headlines:

Iran Starts to Feel the Heat

Iran Starts To Feel Heat
by Charles Krauthammer
Human Events
07/30/2010


"They (the United States and Israel) have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months."
-- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 26

WASHINGTON -- President Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of "Western propaganda and superstition."

But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What "two countries" was he talking about? They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear that it is in a position to start a war at any time. Fighting on this scale would immediately bring in Syria, which would in turn invite Iranian intervention in defense of its major Arab clients -- and of the first Persian beachhead on the Mediterranean in 1,400 years.

The idea that Israel, let alone the U.S., has the slightest interest in starting a war on Israel's north is crazy. But claims about imminent attacks are serious business in that region. In May 1967, the Soviet Union falsely told its client, Egypt, that Israel was preparing to attack Syria. These rumors set off a train of events -- the mobilization of Arab armies, the southern blockade of Israel, the hasty signing of an inter-Arab military pact -- that led to the Six-Day War.

Ahmadinejad's claim is not supported by a shred of evidence. So what is he up to?

It is a sign that he is under serious pressure. Passage of weak U.N. sanctions was followed by unilateral sanctions by the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union. Already, reports Reuters, Iran is experiencing a sharp drop in gasoline imports as Lloyd's of London refuses to insure the ships delivering them.

Second, the Arab states are no longer just whispering their desire for the U.S. to militarily take out Iranian nuclear facilities. The United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Washington said so openly at a conference three weeks ago.

Shortly before the 1991 Gulf War, Pat Buchanan charged that "the only two groups" that wanted the U.S. to forcibly liberate Kuwait were "the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States." That was a stupid charge, contradicted by the fact that George H.W. Bush went to war leading more than 30 nations, including the largest U.S.-led coalition of Arab states ever assembled.

Twenty years later, the libel returns in the form of the scurrilous suggestion that the only ones who want the U.S. to attack Iran's nuclear facilities are Israel and its American supporters. The UAE ambassador is, as far as ascertainable, neither Israeli, American nor Jewish. His publicly expressed desire for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities speaks for the intense Arab fear approaching panic, of Iran's nuclear program and the urgent hope that the U.S. will take it out.

Third, and perhaps even more troubling from Tehran's point of view, are developments in the U.S. Former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested last Sunday that over time, in his view, a military strike is looking increasingly favorable compared to the alternatives. Hayden is no Obama insider, but Time reports ("An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table," July 15) that high administration officials are once again considering the military option. This may reflect a new sense of urgency or merely be a bluff to make Tehran more pliable. But in either case, it suggests that after 18 months of failed engagement, the administration is hardening its line.

The hardening is already having its effect. The Iranian regime is beginning to realize that even President Obama's patience is limited -- and that Iran may actually face a reckoning for its nuclear defiance.

All this pressure would be enough to rattle a regime already unsteady and shorn of domestic legitimacy. Hence Ahmadinejad's otherwise inscrutable warning about an Israeli attack on two countries. (Said Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Fox News: "Who is the second one"?) It is a pointed reminder to the world of Iran's capacity to trigger, through Hezbollah and Syria, a regional conflagration.

This is the kind of brinksmanship you get when leaders of a rogue regime are under growing pressure. The only hope to get them to reverse course is to relentlessly increase their feeling that, if they don't, the Arab states, Israel, the Europeans and America will, one way or another, ensure that ruin is visited upon them.

Mr. Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Bashar Assad not Anxious for Peace Talks

"If anyone thinks that Syria might negotiate over its occupied land then they are mistaken," Assad said.

"The liberation of the Golan is a deeply ingrained right. Peace requires restoring all the occupied soil until the line of June 4, 1967," he added.

The Six-Day War broke out a day after this date and Israel swiftly defeated the armies of Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel, which annexed the territory in the early 1980s but did not build settlements on it as heavily as in the West Bank. A United Nations Security Council resolution declared the annexation illegal.

Assad said that while Syria was sticking to its pursuit of peace with Israel the army had to be prepared for war.

"The world is certain now that Israel is the one putting obstacles in front of peace and its requirements," Assad said.
"The specter of real peace in the region is disappearing and the possibility of war is increasing," he added.

Tension between Syria and Israel rose this year after President Shimon Perez accused Syria of supplying Scud missiles to the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah, which is also supported by Iran.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman went further, saying Assad would lose power in any future war.

Syria said it could target Israeli cities next time and that while it was not arming Hezbollah, the Damascus government will not guarantee the security of Israel.

Israeli leaders have stepped up their accusations about suspected military cooperation between Hezbollah and Syria, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel remained interested in negotiating peace with Syria.
HaAretz

Surface to Air Missiles to Syria from Russia

A report in the London-based pan-Arabic daily al-Hayat claims that Russia has supplied Syria with the S-300 air defense system.

The London daily Al-Hayat reports, citing a Russian source, that Russian President Vladimir Medvedev is to visit Syria on May 11 to discuss promoting Syria-Russia military and other cooperation.

According to the paper, in accordance with contracts signed between the two, Russia has supplied Syria with S-300 and Iskander missile defense systems, and there are contacts between the sides for the provision of new models of MiG aircraft and air defense systems.

I find it hard to believe that the IAF would have allowed Syria to get the S-300 unimpeded. Hmmm.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem, Israel Matzav

POTUS Adds to Repression in Syria

I'm amazed they took time to notice, but Human Rights Watch reports that repression has increased in Syria in the last three months, as the United States and other Western countries have expanded their outreach to the Assad dictatorship.

On March 2, 2010, Military Intelligence in Aleppo stormed the apartment of Abdel Hafez Abdel Rahman, a board member of the unlicensed Kurdish human rights group MAF (“Right” in Kurdish), and detained him with another MAF board member, Nadera Abdo. Other members of the group said that the detention is tied to Abdel Rahman’s activities for the group MAF. While the security services released Abdo on March 6, Abdel Rahman remains in detention.

Security services have also detained bloggers, journalists, and writers. On December 27, 2009, State Security called in Tal al-Mallohi, 19, a secondary school student, for interrogation, reportedly for articles she wrote and distributed on her blog. A few days later, the security services confiscated her computer and detained her. A Syrian human rights activist told Human Rights Watch that she remains in detention. Human Rights Watch was unable to determine what article the security forces deemed objectionable.

On November 22, State Security detained without explanation Ma`en `Akel, a journalist at the newspaper Thawra. Syrian activists following the case said `Akel apparently was detained for investigating government corruption. Security forces finally released him on February 23 without charging him with a crime. On January 7, security forces detained another journalist, Ali Taha, and a photographer, Ali Ahmad, in the Sayyida Zaynab neighborhood of Damascus. They were released on February 7, without having been charged. Both work for the satellite TV station Rotana, which mainly focuses on social life topics.

On February 10, border police detained Ragheda Sa`id Hasan, who had been a political prisoner in the 1990s for her Communist Action Party membership, as she tried to cross into Lebanon. Three days later, unidentified individuals entered her apartment and confiscated a copy of “The New Prophets,” a manuscript in which she describes her experience as a political detainee, as well as publications issued by various Syrian opposition parties. She remains in detention.

Human Rights Watch urges the United States and the Europeans to raise human rights issues with the Syrians at every opportunity. Good luck with that. The Obama administration has already proven time and time again that it doesn't give a damn about human rights.
Source: Israel Mazav

Syria's New War Tactic May Target Civilians

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem has issued a threat that in the next war between his country and Israel, Israeli cities will be targeted. Of course, that implies that like Hamas and Hezbullah, Syria will target Israeli civilians.
The Syrian minister's comments show the extent to which Damascus has adopted a terrorist modus operandi that is no different from that of Hezbollah or Hamas. Even though, unlike those groups, it has still not moved its rocket launchers into population centers whose residents are meant to serve as human shields, Israel is obliged to immediately issue a warning, in every important venue in the world, that Syria is acting in contravention of the laws of war. The kind of threat Syria issued requires a response that will ensure that the enemy will continue being deterred from carrying it out. Israel must also counter the ethical and legal implications of the Syrian threat.
I'm sure that warning will ensure that there is a Goldstone Commission appointed to investigate the Syrians when the war ends.

/sarc
posted by Carl in Jerusalem, Israel Matzav

One Cowboy Can Devastate His Country

One Cowboy Away from Devastation

By Ed Tubbs, OpEdNews

If we invade Iran this year it will be done using hundreds of sorties by carrier based aircraft already stationed in the Persian Gulf and from land based aircraft located in Iraq and Qatar. They will strike the known nuclear facilities located in and around Tehran and the rest of the country as well as bases containing major units of the Iranian military, anti-aircraft installations and units of the Revolutionary Guard (a separate and potent Iranian para-military organization).

Will this military action stop Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons? Probably not. It will probably not even destroy all of their nuclear research facilities, the most sensitive of which are known to be underground, protected by tons of earth and reinforced concrete and steel designed to survive almost all attacks using conventional munitions. The Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard will most likely survive as well, although they will suffer significant casualties and major bases and command centers will undoubtedly be destroyed. However, since Iran has both a functioning Air Force, Navy (including submarines) and modern anti-aircraft capabilities, U.S. fighter-bombers will suffer casualties as well. This will not be a "Cake Walk" as with the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when the Iraqi Army simply melted away and the Iraqi Air Force never even launched a single aircraft.

attacks Iran either this summer or this fall, the American people had better be prepared for a shock that may perhaps be even greater to the national psyche (and economy) than 9/11. First of all, there will be significant U.S. casualties in the initial invasion. American jets will be shot down and the American pilots who are not killed will be taken prisoner - including female pilots. Iranian Yakhonts 26, Sunburn 22 and Exocet missiles will seek out and strike U.S. naval battle groups bottled up in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf with very deadly results. American sailors will be killed and U.S. ships will be badly damaged and perhaps sunk. We may even witness the first attack on an American Aircraft carrier since World War II.

The Bush Knesset Speech

Seth Coulter Welles, HuffPost

According to 29-year CIA veteran and former NSC official Bruce Riedel, Wednesday's announcement of joint peace negotiations between Israel and Syria revealed President Bush's diminished standing in Middle East affairs.

"Think of the irony," Riedel said. "George Bush goes to Jerusalem last week. He gives an impassioned speech about never dealing with nasty regimes [that sponsor terror]. He basically says 'don't make agreements that appease [them].' And less than a week later, the Israeli government announces it is engaged in peace negotiations with the Assad dictatorship in Syria. We're talking about a rather distasteful regime that likely had a hand in the murder of [former Lebanese Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri. I guess [Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert didn't think the speech was meant for him."

Riedel, who served as a special assistant to the president until 2002 and is now with the Brookings Institution, said the lack of weight accorded to Bush's appeasement speech "shows more and more that the Middle East is not listening to him anymore, as does the deal announced in Doha for Lebanon today." In that Doha agreement, the Iranian-supported Hezbollah secured effective veto power within Lebanon's next cabinet -- an arrangement that is sure to frustrate any future efforts to disarm the political party that the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Turkey's mediation of Israel-Syria talks has been "an open secret" in the region for the last month, according to Riedel. "A lot of very serious Israeli thinkers have felt for some time that the Syria agreement could be a strategic way to break out of the logjam that Israel is in," he said. "There's no holy Jerusalem to contend with, no refugees. It's a simple land for peace swap, and everyone knows what the price is: 100 percent return of the Golan Heights, in return for which they would get a full agreement with Syria. ... If this works, it would demonstrate that negotiating with Assad's Syria can produce serious and important results for a democracy like Israel."

But not all observers are that optimistic. Independent analyst and Israeli political adviser Dahlia Scheindlin cites a recent report by the War and Peace Index that suggests Israelis are more willing to consider a compromise over certain areas in Jerusalem than they are likely to approve of any deal with Syria that involves relinquishing the Golan.

According to that study, only 19 percent of Israelis support the idea of giving up the Golan, while 40 percent are willing to consider giving up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. "It's sort of counter-intuitive and surprising," Scheindlin said, "you wouldn't think it would be quite so emotional. But the Golan has been annexed for so long, it now feels like part of Israel. The people who live there are considered regular Israelis, not settlers. Also, they've been through this many times before. Talks start and end faster than you can say 'jackrabbit.' So there's a lot of cynicism. While this story is leading the news today, it could easily be gone tomorrow."