Mysterious explosion in Iranian nuclear facility

From JPost, 6 Oct 2014, by YASSER OKBI/ MAARIV HASHAVUA:

The incident occurred at the Parchin military compound, not far from the Iranian capital, according to the Iranian Students News Agency.

Satellite images of Iranian nuclear facility (file). (photo credit:REUTERS)

Two workers were killed in an explosion that took place at a military explosives factory southeast of Tehran, near the suspected nuclear reactor in Parchin, IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, reported Monday.
[Update from Jerusalem Online: one of those killed was a nuclear scientist.]

The agency quoted Iran’s Defense Industries Organization, which said a fire occurred Sunday night, killing two people. The agency did not provide additional information.

The semi-official ISNA news agency also reported that an explosion occurred at a military base near Tehran, killing two people....

The Saham opposition website reported that a huge explosion occurred at the large facility in Parchin, located 30 km. southeast of Tehran.

According to the report, the powerful explosion blew out the windows of buildings located up to 15 km. away from the base, and eyewitnesses could observe the blast from a distance.

Parchin is a controversial military base where Israel and the International Atomic Energy Agency suspect the Islamic Republic is attempting to develop a nuclear explosive device. IAEA inspectors have not been permitted to enter the site since 2005.

A statement from Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, issued a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani – the architect of Tehran’s diplomacy with the big powers – was to address the UN General Assembly, said internal neutron sources such as uranium were used in nuclear implosion tests at Parchin.

Israel, his statement said, based its information on “highly reliable information,” without elaborating.

In May, a fire broke out in an oil storage facility in the northwestern Iranian city of Qazvin. There were conflicting reports of casualties, with state news agency IRNA reporting none and the Iranian Fars news agency reporting that there were around 50 people injured, some seriously.

Channel 2 News reported that in the past it was claimed that Qazvin hosted an “unreported nuclear site” that contained stored uranium. In January of last year, Israeli intelligence officials confirmed that an explosion damaged Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, which is being used to enrich uranium.

Three years ago, Iran said a massive explosion at a military base 45 km. west of Tehran killed 17 Revolutionary Guards members, including the head of the elite force’s missile program. It said the blast was caused by an accident while weapons were being moved.

Europe's Parliament Returning to the "Schoene Zeiten"

From Arutz Sheva, 4 Oct 2014, by Giulio Meotti:

In the good old days, one could encourage killing Jews with impunity.

From 1994 to 2011, the European Union donated €4.26 billion to the Palestinian Authority through various channels – and this figure does not take into account individual EU states’ donations to the PA. Much of this money went to finance the Palestinian Arab war against Israel through daily incitement, diplomatic warfare and salaries to terrorists.

Europe has also been very careful in selecting its symbols, especially now that Jews are fleeing the old continent, plagued by anti-Semitism.  

Alaa Abdel Fattah was among the secularist leaders of the 2011 uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. He was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for violating the restrictive new protest law enacted by the regime of Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

“One should only debate human beings”, he tweeted in 2009. “Zionists and other imperialists are not human beings”. In late 2010 he tweeted: “Dear zionists please don’t ever talk to me, I’m a violent person who advocated the killing of all zionists including civilians”.

Fifty members of the European Parliament nominated Fattah for the Sakharov Prize, named for the Soviet scientist and dissident who must be spinning in his grave. The Sakharov Prize is the EU’s most important prize for human rights.

This Egyptian anti-Semite now has little chance of winnng the award, especially after a counter campaign has been launched to prevent it. But it is enlightening that so many European MPs could even consider honoring such a Judeophobic Arab.

Two years ago, many European MPs supported the nomination of “Breaking the Silence” for the Sakharov Prize. This is the NGO that undermined Israel’s efforts to destroy the terrorists’ infrastructures.

Recently, the International League for Human Rights, the glory of European pacifism, awarded Mordechai Vanunu with the medal bearing the name of Carl von Ossietzky, the German journalist who died in prison during the Nazi period. Both, in their minds,  have made “an honorable service to peace”. So it goes in the European industry of human rights: a convicted spy has been compared to a journalist held in a Nazi concentration camp and murdered. 

Then Palestinian and Israeli so-called human rights organizations Betselem and Al-Haq were jointly awarded the human rights award given by the Danish PL Foundation. The director of Al-Haq, Shawan Jabarin, is active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which killed many Israeli civilians and officials.

The NGO Betselem is awarded for spearheading the global campaign against Israel’s security fence, the one built to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of its major cities.

Many European MPs then supported Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian minister for Culture, as a candidate to lead UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency. It is the same Hosni who said that he “would burn Israeli books himself if found in Egyptian libraries”.

I can list many other examples of the European incitement against the Israeli people. But I hadn’t imagined that Bruxelles could have even consider awarding those who openly call to slaughter Israeli children in front of their mothers.

There is a German caption, “Schoene Zeiten”, taken from the photo album of Kurt Franz, Treblinka’s last commandant. It means “the good old days”.

Let’s be  honest and admit: Europe’s soul is longing for these “old good days”. 

Close Ties Between Turkey’s AKP and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Exposed

From The Tower, 2 Oct 2014:

Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during an official visit to Iran on January 28-29, 2014

Benjamin Weinthal of The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday about revelations that an Iranian backed terrorists group has strong ties with Turkey’s ruling AKP party. 

Citing the work of counter-intelligence expert John Schindler, Weinthal writes that the “dismissal of an investigation into an Iranian-linked terrorist group” suggested that “[t]he decision to pull the plug on the investigation had to have come ‘from the highest level of government.'” Though secular opponents of the government opposed the decision to drop the case, they were unable to gain any traction.

“Ali Fuat Yılmazer, former head of the Istanbul police’s intelligence unit, conducted an extensive investigation that revealed Tawhid-Salam had penetrated the Turkish government and the AKP at the highest levels, and was a tool of the Pasdaran. For this, he was thrown in jail on trumped-up charges,” he said.

Pasdaran is an informal name for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Schindler continued, “Tawhid-Salam, which also goes by the revealing name ‘Jerusalem Army,’ has long been believed to be a front for Iranian intelligence, particularly its most feared component, the elite Quds [“Jerusalem”] Force of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which handles covert action abroad.”

Schindler recounted the terror group’s record to Weinthal, noting that “Tawhid-Salam goes back to the mid-1990s and has been blamed for several terrorist incidents, including the 2011 bombing of the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, which wounded several people, as well as a thwarted bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in early 2012… It also is believed to be behind the murders of several anti-Tehran activists in Turkey in the 1990s.”

However, the ties between Turkey and Tawhid-Salam go beyond the latter’s support of terror. “Tawhid-Salam operatives have been observed surveilling an important NATO radar base in Turkey, a sensitive site that monitors possible Iranian missile launches,” according to Schindler.

Last year, ties between Turkey’s intelligence community and Iran came to attention when it was reported that Turkey had betrayed ten Israeli spies to Tehran. A boast by Iran’s ambassador to Turkey confirmed that the intelligence relationship between Tehran and Ankara was close and ongoing.

Turkey’s ties to Iran aren’t limited to matters of intelligence and terror. In Where the Shadiest Players Find a Home, published in the September 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Jonathan Schanzer recounts:

Turkey also engaged in 2012 and 2013 in a sanctions-busting scheme with Iran. Amidst global financial pressure to convince Iran’s leadership to dismantle its illicit nuclear program, Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank was executing “gas-for-gold” transactions with Iran, and helping Tehran circumvent sanctions. At the time, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan unabashedly admitted, Turkey’s “gold exports [to Iran] end up like payments for our natural gas purchases.”
The sale of gold was technically legal because the gold was going to individuals, not the government of Iran. And trade with individuals was not, at the time, in violation of sanctions. But it was undeniable that the Turks were violating the spirit of the sanctions regime. … According to a report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics, “Iran’s golden loophole” allowed Iran to receive over $13 billion before gas-for-gold slowed to a trickle.

Fighting those who use Horror as an Instrument of War

From Spengler, September 28th, 2014:

Since 9/11 ...the strategic plan of Islamist terrorism is to poison the Western soul with horror, by setting in motion atrocities too grim for the Western mind to bear. 

There is very good reason to believe that they are succeeding. Judging by the proliferation of the horror genre in popular entertainment, we are succumbing to horror by stages...

This is not simply the brutality of the pagan world employed by the Romans with their mass crucifixions as much as it was by Muslim conquerors of the Middle Ages: it is a refined and exquisite sense of horror learned by modern Muslims from the Nazis, whose example inspired the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Ba’ath Party. Strictly speaking, the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing more than the Arab-language wing of [the Nazis], and movements like ISIS a more radical version of the same thing...

We have seen this throughout, and most recently in Gaza, where Hamas used every means possible to maximize its own civilian casualties in order to horrify the world.

Whatever the circumstances, one should not rejoice in the death of civilians, but it is necessary to harden our hearts against an enemy who detects weakness in our delicate sense of humanity. Because we misunderestimated the nature of the enemy we confront, we have no means to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe on a frightful scale. We face an apocalyptic enemy, with a lot to be apocalyptic about.

... The Sunni-Shi’ite war could prove to be the grave of radical Islam if the West takes the appropriate measures. We must remember, though, that the target of radical Islam is not territory or power in the conventional sense, but the vulnerable Western soul. In this respect we should be afraid–very afraid.

... The West confronts not a throwback to medieval Islam, but a Westernized version of Islam transformed into a totalitarian political ideology. Although it draws upon Islamic sources and overlaps with some strains of Muslim belief, the ideology of Al-Qaeda [ISIS et al] has greater kinship with Nazism, another synthetic pagan religion, than with traditional Islam.

Like Nazism, it is a deadly threat. Remember that Hitler very nearly won. If Hitler (to cite one among many examples) had not declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor but instead offered himself as a mediator between Washington and Tokyo, would the US have declared war on Germany? And in the absence of US involvement in Europe, would Hitler have lost? Or if Hitler had thrown the British into the sea at Dunkirk rather than holding back his tanks? Or if Hitler had enlisted the Ukrainians and Balts as allies rather than butchering them?

... [the Islamo-Facists] might win, and by the same methods.

...[Islamo-Facists] want ...to destroy the West and happily will sacrifice millions of Muslim lives in order to do so. Indeed, the mass sacrifice of Muslim lives may lie at the heart of its battle plan...

Evil for its own sake becomes imaginable only when the Christian civilization of the West abandons Christianity and stares into the abyss of its own destruction. ...Unlike the Western adherents of Nietzsche, who cried, “God is dead, and everything is permitted!”, the Islamist radicals have invented a God who permits everything.

...The grand vulnerability of the Western mind is horror. The Nazis understood this and pursued a policy “des Schreckens” (to cause horror) and “Entsetzens” (terror, literally: dislodgement). Horror was not merely an instrument of war in the traditional sense, but a form of Wagnerian theater, or psychological warfare on the grand scale. Hitler’s tactical advantage lay in his capacity to be more horrible than his opponents could imagine. The most horrible thing of all is that he well might have succeeded if not for his own megalomaniac propensity to overreach.

...From America’s moral collapse in the face of the horror of Vietnam, there arose a repudiation of classical Western culture unlike anything seen previously in the English-speaking world. The West nearly threw up its hands in the face of the challenge from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s.

Getting down to tactics, how can [Islamo-Facists] overcome the West with horror? Let us suppose that some state or state agency over which Al-Qaeda wields influence possesses a weapon of mass destruction, with sufficient potency to cause a very large number of deaths in a Western country. If it deploys that weapon and causes a very large number of casualties, the West may have no choice but to bombard the offending country with nuclear weapons and destroy its capacity to make war. Given that [Islamo-Facists] has tendrils deep in numerous governments, even a nuclear bombardment of one rogue state might not diminish its capacities. The West would be left with the horrific fact of mass destruction of civilians combined with continued insecurity.

Time is on the side of [Islamo-Facists]. ...the West should think of itself as the underdog, fighting against the clock, and seize the tactical initiative. It should act unpredictably, with the objective of confusing and disrupting an enemy who until now has chosen his targets at leisure. ...the West should act unexpectedly and without mercy against states which allow [Islamo-Facists]. ...Doing so now offers at least the chance of gaining the respect of the Islamic world. Failing to do so makes probable a gradual accumulation of failures. It means that the war will be [the Islamo-Facist]’s to lose.

We were lucky with Hitler. We may not be so lucky again.

Turkey to host first diplomatic mission for "ISIS”

From El- Balad, 1 Oct 2014, by Basant Ahmed:

The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria “ISIS” intends to inaugurate its first diplomatic mission in Istanbul in order to provide consular services for all who wish to join the extremist group in Iraq...

Abu-Omar Al-Tunisi, the ISIS de facto head of foreign relations issued a statement, saying that the Islamic Caliphate is determined to launch its first diplomatic mission in a friendly and Muslim country.

CHP “Republican People’s Party”, a leading Turkish opposing party issued a communique condemning Turkish government decision to allow ISIS to open a legal diplomatic office in Çankaya – the central and elegant metropolitan district of the city of Istanbul...

...and from AWD News, 29 Sept 2014:

Earlier, the Turkish Prime Minster Ahmet Davutoglu acknowledged that Turkish diplomats, kidnapped by ISIS militants when Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city was seized in early-June, were released in a prisoner exchange deal with ISIS.



The Turkish government spokesperson said on Sunday in a press conference that nearly 50 Islamist merciless detainees including a family of a prominent warlord were set free in a swap deal and in return, all Turkish hostages were released and reunited with their families. The government spokesman reiterated that he is not authorized to neither confirm nor reject reports about the probable opening of ISIS consulate in Istanbul.

The Turkish omnipotent president in an interview with government-run TRT news channel dismissed many reports alleging that his government is keen to establish a formal relation with ISIS, the hardline organization which controls vast swaths of northern and western Iraq and also neighboring Syrian provinces but in a same time, he blatantly advocated the prison exchange deal with the infamous ultra-Islamist militants....

Nuclear-armed Iran would pose a far bigger threat than Islamic State

From The Australian, October 02, 2014, by Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council:

US and Australian efforts against the Islamic State seem fully justified by any serious consideration of both countries’ ­national interests. However, a significant concern is that the critical efforts to stop an Iranian bomb will be sidelined — or, worse still, Iran and its proxies will be empowered as a result.

THERE is no question that the Sunni radical group, the so-called Islamic State, is a serious threat — in terms of the global spread of ­Islamist extremism, in terms of promoting, planning, ­facilitating and inspiring international terrorism, and especially in terms of potentially destabilising many Middle Eastern states, including not only Iraq and Syria but also Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
 
Yet while the ability of this well-funded and armed terrorist entity to capture territory pro­tected by weak, ill-trained or hapless defenders is dangerous, most military analysts believe it would not be a match for organised and motivated regional armies.

By contrast, the Gulf region has a well-organised, well-resourced radical Islamist regime with hegemonic ambitions that commands a formidable army, has abundant funds, equips several proxy armies and terror groups abroad, and reportedly is also ­occupying and oppressing swaths of Iraq.

Most disturbingly, it has reached the advanced stages of developing a nuclear weapon and an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system.

That nation is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the long-term threat it poses to regional stability, global energy supplies and global non-proliferation efforts remains more disconcerting than the dangers posed by the Islamic State.

US and Australian efforts against the Islamic State seem fully justified by any serious consideration of both countries’ ­national interests. However, a significant concern is that the critical efforts to stop an Iranian bomb will be sidelined — or, worse still, Iran and its proxies will be empowered as a result.

Recent reports that Iranian ­officials are privately offering to co-operate in the fight against the Islamic State in return for concessions on their country’s nuclear program, while rebuffed by the US, underline this fear.

Talks between the P5+1 group of powers (comprising the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) and Iran continue to be unproductive ahead of a November 25 deadline, the latest round having occurred on September 19.

There is reportedly little progress on the two key issues essential for any nuclear deal to be worth the paper it is printed on: 

• greatly reducing the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges Tehran is permitted from its present stock of 20,000, and 
• stopping construction of the Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor, which will produce easily weaponised plutonium.

Meanwhile, an International Atomic Energy Agency report early last month confirmed that Iran had failed to comply with a variety of transparency requirements imposed by last year’s interim nuclear agreement.

Further, Iran continues to fan the flames of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, providing long-range rockets and rocket-production know-how to terrorists in Gaza, and recently promising to send similar weapons to the West Bank.

With the Islamic State and Gaza dominating the headlines, and the US understandably focused on building an international coalition to fight the Islamic State, it would be disastrous if, as a result, the main game were neglected. Nothing would be worse for regional or Western interests than allowing Iran to develop a fully fledged nuclear-weapons capability — through signing off on an inadequate nuclear deal or by allowing Iran to continue its bomb-building efforts without significant consequences.

While US President Barack Obama ostensibly has ruled out partnering with Iran to fight the Islamic State — which would alienate most of his Arab allies at least as much as Israel — it is clear that some in the administration see the Islamic State challenge as an area of common interest with Iran that could be the basis for a rapprochement. Thus, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently claimed he had rejected US feelers, made via diplomats based in Iraq, to discuss co-operation or co-ordination against the Islamic State.

It’s not hard to understand the Obama administration’s probable rationale for these approaches; its main goal to date has been to withdraw US forces from the region and avoid direct conflict whenever possible.

Obama told The New Yorker in February that, to this end, he was seeking an “equilibrium … between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran, in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare”.

This approach may also partly explain the administration’s largely passive position on Syria until now — effectively giving Iran and its Hezbollah proxy carte blanche to preserve the Assad ­regime, a key part of Iran’s regional axis.

Some in the US administration appear to be still nurturing hopes that, by partnering with Iran in areas of mutual interest — such as the fight against the Islamic State — and taking account of Iran’s regional interests, the US will earn goodwill in Tehran, draw it into a regional security structure and persuade Iran to agree to an ­acceptable nuclear deal.

Similarly, last weekend, British Prime Minister David Cameron met Iranian President Hasan Rowhani at the UN, the first such face-to-face meeting since 1979’s Iranian revolution. Co-operation against the Islamic State was clearly on the table, with Cameron mentioning it in his post-meeting comments.

This risks a dangerously shortsighted and naive approach.
The idea that the extremist Shia Islamist state of Iran — which has maintained a remarkably consistent policy for decades in terms of its state sponsorship of terror and other rogue behaviour — can be transformed into an ally or partner of the West may be superficially appealing but amounts to dangerous wishful thinking.

Yes, the Islamic State is certainly dangerous and must be “degraded and ultimately destroyed”, in Obama’s words. But nothing could damage long-term regional and wider global stability, and Australian and American interests in the region, more than to allow the fight against the Islamic State to become the distraction that allows Tehran to develop ­nuclear weapons capabilities or extend its regional sphere of ­influence.

Abbas has ended the sham "peace process"

From Times of Israel, 28 Sept 2014, by Dan Margalit:


Mahmoud Abbas / AP

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has done what he always does. As usual, upon arriving at a crucial junction, he hesitates for a moment before making the wrong turn...

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly over the weekend, Abbas was expected to take a semi-appeasing tone, a peacemaker's tone, and he was expected to address the U.N. in English. Instead, he acted as if he were attending an election rally in Ramallah, speaking in Arabic and taking an aggressive tone, as if he were representing Hamas.

Abbas antagonized the entire Israeli political spectrum, accept for Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On, who expressed her understanding of the circumstances that drove Abbas to use an unusually abrasive tone.

The Palestinian [Arabs]' verbal belligerence is especially discordant in a time when the majority of the world, including many Arab nations, is banding together to fight the Islamic State group. 

In his speech, Abbas has effectively debunked the U.S.-sponsored peace process. His speech was extreme enough to vex even Washington, and the entire diplomatic world had a front row seat to listen to [his] lies.

Operation Protective Edge was an Israeli attempt at "genocide"? If anything, Abbas was almost as disappointed by the caution Israel exercised during the military campaign as Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett. Abbas further complained about Israel's arrest of Hamas operatives in Judea and Samaria over the murder of three Israeli teens -- but everyone knows how relieved he actually was, as some of those operatives were part of a Hamas plot to stage a coup in the West Bank.

...Abbas traditionally plays the role of a wolf in sheep's clothing. In 2000, he incited Yasser Arafat to bolt from Camp David the moment then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak expressed willingness to discuss the future of Jerusalem; and years later he bolted back to Ramallah the moment former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented him with an appeasing peace proposal, the likes of which Israel had never devised before.

There is no doubt that at this point, Abbas has abandoned the path of negotiations. He strives to impose some sort of solution on Israel, and he fails to understand that the tumultuous developments in the Arab world, including the conflict between Ramallah and the Gaza Strip, have plunged the Palestinian stock to a new low. 

...Netanyahu is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly on Monday and respond to Abbas' speech....

THIS is Apartheid: PA University Ejects pro-Arab Journalist for Being Jewish

From Arutz Sheva, 28 Sept 2014, by Nir Har-Zahav and Tova Dvorin:

A Haaretz reporter was ejected from a pro-Palestinian [Arabs] conference at Birzeit University on Saturday, reporter Amira Hass said - simply for being an Israeli Jew. 

[Veteran anti-Zionist, Haaretz  reporter Amira] Hass attempted to attend the "Alternatives to Neo-Liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – Critical Perspectives" conference at the university, which is located near Ramallah where she lives.

But she was ejected from the hall by the organizers...after students at the admission desk noted she worked for the Israeli publication and alerted security authorities to intervene.

Birzeit University has had a policy of barring Israeli Jews from the campus for over 20 years, administrators said.... 

Her colleagues and professors told her that she was being ejected on the one hand "for her own protection" and also to give the students "a safe space" free of Jews.

...Hass - who is well-known in Arab and leftist circles for her aggressive anti-Zionism, and provoked outrage last year for justifying rock-throwing attacks against Jews - angrily noted that she was "not told" about the policy and that "...[Israeli Arabs] are not subject to the same policy." 

...The incident surfaces amid growing tension between parts of the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Authority. 

Several left-wing parties, including Labor and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni's HaTnua party, openly supported Israel's self-defense operation in Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. 

More recently, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's anti-Israel tirade at the UN General Assembly offended even Meretz Chairman Zehava Gal-On, who branded the remarks as "serious and grave."

Tomorrow the Israel Air Force may attack Tehran

From Times of Israel, 15 Sept 2014:

IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel (photo credit: Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

Israel’s air force commander gave an apparently unintended insight into his priorities and preoccupations, when he remarked during comments about the defense budget that Israel might need to send its attack planes to Tehran at very short notice. 

Speaking about the imperative for the government to allocate additional funding to the armed forces, Israel Air Force chief Major-General Amir Eshel declared that

“there’s no one in this room who’d be prepared to ride in a car as old as our planes. I’m telling you, no-one. Yesterday these planes were in Gaza, and tomorrow we may send them to Tehran.” 

The remarks were not delivered in the tone of a threat, but rather as a statement about a possible mission that would require up-to-date equipment.

Eshel’s comments, broadcast Sunday on the local Channel 2 News, came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yair Lapid sparred over the national budget, with Netanyahu earlier Sunday asserting that, in the wake of the summer’s 50-day Israel-Hamas conflict, “We need a significant increase of several billion in the defense budget.”....

Kobani - the Kurd / Sunni front

From Middle East Forum, September 27, 2014, by Jonathan Spyer*:

This week witnessed the second determined attempt by Islamic State forces to destroy the Kurdish enclave around Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) city in northern Syria. Kobani is one of three autonomous enclaves maintained by the Kurds in Syria.

As of now, it appears that after initial lightning advances, the progress of the jihadis has been halted; they have not moved forward in the last 24 hours. The arrival of Kurdish forces from across the Turkish border is the key element in freezing the advance.
Yet Islamic State has captured around 60 Kurdish villages in this latest assault, and its advanced positions remain perilously close – around 14.5 km. – from Kobani city. Around 100,000 people have fled Kobani for Turkey, from the enclave's total population of around 400,0000.

Islamic State employed tanks, artillery and Humvees in its assault, according to Kurdish sources. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have no comparable ordnance. However, their fighters were assisted by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas who crossed in from Turkey, and appear to have played a vital role in halting the advance.
Whether the current situation will hold is not yet clear. But the commencement of US and allied bombing on Islamic State in Syria probably means the jihadi forces will have more pressing issues to attend to for the moment.

The assault on Kobani indicates that Islamic State is turning its attention back to Syria. The Kurdish enclave has long been a thorn in the side of the jihadis; the Kurdish-controlled area interrupts the jihadis' territorial contiguity, separating Tel Abyad from Jarabulus and making a large detour necessary from Islamic State's capital in Raqqa city to the important border town of Jarabulus.

For this reason, the jihadis have long sought to conquer the area. Abu Omar al-Shishani, the much feared Chechen Islamic State military commander, is reputed to have made the conquest of Kobani a personal mission. With the weapons systems captured in Mosul now fully integrated, and with further progress in Iraq impeded by the presence of US air power, it appears Islamic State is now making its most serious effort to achieve this goal.
The Kobani enclave has long been an isolated, beleaguered space. This reporter visited there this past May; at the time, Islamic State was trying to block the supply of electricity and water into the city. Skirmishes along the borders were a daily occurrence.
Particularly notable also were the very strict border arrangements kept in place by the Turkish authorities to the north – in stark contrast to the much more lax regime maintained facing the areas of Arab population further west.

As of now, a determined Kurdish mobilization appears to have stemmed the jihadi advance. Unless the picture radically changes again, Kobani looks set to remain a thorn in the side of Islamic State.

Perwer Mohammed, 28, an activist close to the YPG in Kobani, sounded worried but hopeful when speaking from the city on Monday: 

"They are now on the outskirts of Girê Sipî [Tel Abyad].
But they will have to pass through our flesh to get to Kobani, and they are no longer advancing from the east."

A variety of forces contributed to the mobilization; 1,500 PKK fighters arrived in Kobani city to reinforce the YPG there, according to Kurdish sources.

In addition, forces loyal to both the Kurdistan Regional Government of Massoud Barzani and to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are set to arrive in Kobani.

The PUK forces, according to the organization's website, are currently on the Iraq-Syria border, waiting to deploy.

The YPG itself, meanwhile, is trying to push forces through from Ras al-Ain to Tel Abyad on the eastern edge of the enclave. A concerted Kurdish military effort is under way.

Suspicions remain regarding possible collusion between Turkish authorities and Islamic State. The Kurds have long maintained that at least in its initial phase, Islamic State was the beneficiary of Turkish support. Evidence has emerged of Turkish forces permitting Islamic State fighters to cross back and forth across the border during early clashes with the YPG.
The subsequent picture remains shrouded in ambiguity, as Turkey officially denies any relationship with Islamic State. But the release of 49 Turkish hostages by the terror movement this week under unclear circumstances has once more cast a spotlight on the possible complex connection between the two.

If the situation in Kobani holds, this will offer proof of the limitations of Islamic State forces. In Iraq, their advance has been stopped by the coordination of US air power with Iraqi and Kurdish forces. In Kobani, as of now at least, the jihadis appear to have been stalled by determined resistance on the ground alone. Yet the last chapter remains to be written.

Should Kobani fall, large-scale massacres of the type which befell the Yazidi communities in the Mount Sinjar area in August would inevitably follow; this is likely to result in a massive new refugee problem. Moreover, an Islamic State victory would consolidate the borders of the jihadi entity considerably.

The clash between Islamic State and the Kurdish autonomous areas also has broader ramifications than merely tactical military significance – it shows the extent to which "Iraq" and "Syria" have become little more than names.

In Kobani, two successor entities to these states are clashing. The Kurds have organized three autonomous cantons stretching east to west from the Syria-Iraq border to close to the Mediterranean coast. The Sunni jihadis, for their part, have organized their own "state," going southeast to northwest.

Kobani is the point at which these two projects collide. Hence, the outcome of the current fight will indicate the relative strength of these two very different projects.
Yet the clash itself offers a broader lesson regarding the shape of things to come, in the ethnic/sectarian war now raging across what was once Iraq and Syria.


*Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

There Really is an Aramean Nation

From Arutz Sheva, 27 September 2014, by Dr Mordwchai Kedar:

The Israeli Christians are part of the ancient Aramean people rather than Arabs

One of the last things Israel's Interior Minister Gideon Saar did before resigning from the Knesset was to recognize the Israeli Christians as members of the Aramean nation. The decision caused a media uproar, especially in the Arab sector, with most critics saying that there is no Aramaic nation and that the real reason for this step was an attempt to cause a split in the Arab population of Israel so as to "divide and conquer" and gain control of the Arab sector.

This calls for an investigation and an investigation into the veracity of an Aramean nation's existence must be conducted on two planes: the historic-lingual-religious one and the civilian one.

The Historic-Lingual-Religious Sphere
Middle Eastern history talks about an Aramean nation from the second half of the second millennium B.C.E., a Semitic people living in the Fertile Crescent of the western and northern Levant in an area that today includes the Land of Israel, northwest Jordan, Lebanon, north and west Syria, northern Iraq and lands along the Euphrates River. In the Bible and later Jewish sources there is mention of Aramean kingdoms, with geographic references: Aram Naharayim, Padan Aram, Aram Tzova, Aram Damascus and more.

The Aramaic language became the lingua franca in these areas, also spoken by other nations such as the Hebrews – even some of the books of the Tanach are written in that language.

During the first century B.C. E., the Assyrian people came onto the world stage, but their physical conquest of the area did not affect a change in language, and Aramaic continued to be the language prevalent in the Fertile Crescent for hundred of years. For example, the Babylonian Talmud that was formulated over the first five hundred years C.E., is replete with Aramaic, as is Jewish writing of the Gaonic period beginning in the ninth century. Jews, a defined religious and ethnic group, continued to use Aramaic as a language for study and prayer and still do.

Under Assyrian rule, there were clearly defined Aramean groups that preserved their lingual and religious heritage and tradition, a central fact in explaining the connection between Aramean people and Assyrians up to the present.

Greeks and Romans, who ruled the area from the fourth century B.C. E. until the fourth century C.E., did not bring about the disappearance of those Aramaic-speaking communities that embraced Christianity as a result of the Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) takeover as the fourth century C.E. came to a close.

It is important to mention that Arabic originated in the Arabic peninsula, the southern part of the Middle East, whereas the historic languages of the Fertile Crescent are Aramaic, Assyrian, Persian and Hebrew.

The Muslim Arab tribes conquered the area in the seventh century, causing most of the population to convert to Islam and melt into Arab-Islamic culture. The Muslim religion and Arabic language became the norm in the region, replacing the original identity of those groups that Islamised into the Arab-Muslim groups, and thereby lost their unique characteristics.

In contrast, groups that remained loyal to their Christian religious tradition continued to be loyal to the Aramaic language that remained the liturgical language in their churches and was preserved in the written alphabet of their religious writings.

The Syriac-Aramean people are Eastern Orthodox Christians, but over the years they split into several denominations: the Marronite-Syriac, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Assyrian Catholic and the Assyrian Orthodox of Antioch.

The different denominations are the result of geographic distances and alliances with one of the three patriarchates that developed with time – Rome, Constantinople and Antioch. This variety is an indication of the long term presence of the Aramean peoples in the Fertile Crescent.

A unique language and religion preserved these groups – each one on its own – from being absorbed into the Muslim majority, mainly due to the prohibition of marrying out of their religion, similar to that of Druze, Allawites and Jews. That is how Aramaic communities, defined by ethnic, lingual and religious practice were preserved in the Fertile Crescent, as guarding over their culture led to their survival.

That is also why there is no reason not to recognize the existence of these Aramean groups, which have unique linguistic and religious definition as well as their own folklore.

In 1942 Dr. Edmond Mayer wrote a paper on the Lebanese and Assyrian Marronites in which he clearly stated that they were descendants of Syriac-Aramean peoples who lived in the area during the seventh century Muslim conquest. In 2005 Al Azhar University published a research project by Dr. Ahmad Makhmad Ali al Jamal in which he speaks of the Syriac-Aramean people as an existing fact in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

Neighboring countries have Christian communities where the spoken language, and not only the liturgic one, is Aramaic. In Syria, there are Maalula, Bakhia, Hassake, Qamishli. In Turkey, Tur-Abdin, Mardin. In northern Iraq, Qaraqoush, Alqosh, Irbil (the Kurdish capital), Ankawa. There is evidence that until the late 10th century, the towns of Basri, Zarta, and their environs in the high Lebanese mountain area spoke Aramaic.

In an article broadcast on the Russia Today channel in 2008 about the Aramaic community of Maalula, a school for studying Aramaic was seen, and the writing on the blackboard was Assyrian square script, identical to the script introduced to the Jews by Ezra the Scribe in the early days of the Second Temple that replaced the ancient Canaanite script they had used until then.

Spoken Arabic in the Christian communities of the Levant differs from that of the Muslim, Druze and Alawite communities and emphasizes the cultural segregation of the Christian communities wishing to preserve their cultural autonomy as they managed to do throughout the period of Arab-Islamic rule in the region. These cultural attributes have given rise to the name "Syriac-Aramaic" or Syriac for short. The most famous of the Syriac groups are the Maronites, most of whom live in Lebanon. Some of their prayer texts are in Aramaic.

The Civil Sphere in the Fertile Crescent

Syriac-Aramaic communities are to be found today in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel. What they have in common is the combination of the Christian religion and the Aramaic language, the latter used mostly for prayer, and the recognition as an official, definitive group.

The modern states of Iraq and Syria, founded about 70 years ago, tried valiantly to create a sense of united nationhood, Arab-Iraqi in Iraq, Arab-Syrian in Syria. This national consciousness was expected to erase tribal loyalties, ethnic, religious and sectorial loyalties and planting in their stead a modern sense of brotherhood that would result in civic tranquility and regime stability.  For this reason, modern ideologies such as nationalism, patriotism, Arab and Baath socialism were copied from European ideologies that filled the intellectual vacuum of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Syrian attempt to erase particularistic identities and turn all the country's citizens into Arab Syrians who believe in the Baath with all their heart, is described clearly in my doctoral thesis on Syrian media, titled "The Public Poitical Language of the Assad Regime in Syria", 1998.

For the past three and a half years, from the beginning of the Arab Tempest, the ability to rule as an established modern state in Iraq and Syria declined, and it became obvious to all that the imported European ideologies were not really absorbed by the masses who stayed by and large loyal to their traditional frameworks, the tribe, the ethnic group, the religion and the sector.

Most Muslims define themselves in words that are more and more religious and ethnic, and as a result the Christian minorities have turned into strangers and heretics rather than fellow citizens. Persecution and damage to churches, property and lives have made many of them immigrate to other countries, mainly Europe.

In an attempt to stem the Christian exodus from Iraq, in 2014 the Iraqi Parliament passed a law that gives the Syriac-Aramaic language official status, parallel to that of Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmanic and Armenian. This is important for our thesis as the Iraqi government does not need to find reasons that will distance the various groups in the country from one another, it would rather stress unifying factors in an attempt to create a unified Iraqi national consciousness. With this in mind, the decision to recognize the Syriac-Aramaic language bears witness to the existence of a viable Aramean group.

The terrible conditions under which they live and the persecutions they endure have caused many of the Christian communities of the Middle East to emigrate to the West, where they continue to preserve their culture and language. Aramaic is their language for prayer and spirituality wherever they are on the globe: Sweden, Cyprus, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Romania, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, America, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, South Africa and any place with a Syriac-Aramaic community and church, whether Maronite, Orthodox or Catholic,  that hails from the Middle East and especially from Syria and Lebanon.

The Situation in Israel

In Israel, there is no unified definitive community of Arabic-speaking Christians and the state sees them as Arabs for the most part, part of the Arab sector. However, as the years passed, the state recognized two groups: the Cherkassians and the Druze. The Circassians, who are Muslim, were defined because of their language, ethnic origin and cultural heritage which originated in the Caucasian mountains. The Druze are recognized because of their religion, social norms and marriage customs that serve to isolate them from the Muslims that live in their neighborhoods. A similar situation exists within the Aramean community, where the tendency is to marry only Aramean people, 

The Aramean people do not have a unique religion, but are Christians like all other Christians. They are not a specific Christian subgroup or sect either because some are Catholic and others Orthodox. All that is left is their self-defining ethno-lingual characteristic as the communal basis for their collective existence, based on their history and not on the civilian reality in the Fertile Crescent.

They share many similarities with the Jews:

● They are a minority with deep roots in the history and geography of the region

● They are different from the demographic majority of the region in which they live

● They have their own language for liturgical purposes

● They are persecuted for being "different"

● They have the ambition to be recognized as a definitive group

That is why it would be the right thing to do if Israel recognized the Syriac-Aramean groups as an ethnic group like the Druze and Circassians and allow those Christians who belong to Eastern denominations to be recorded in the population registry as Arameans of the Christian religion, if they so wish.

Abbas disseminates his hatred and lies at the UN

From Times of Israel, 27 Sept 2014:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after addressing the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York, September 26, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/Timothy A. Clary) 

The United States on Friday slammed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations, in which he accused Israel of “genocide” against the Palestinians, saying it was “offensive” and undermined peace efforts. 

“President Abbas’s speech today included offensive characterizations that were deeply disappointing and which we reject,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.  
“Such provocative statements are counterproductive and undermine efforts to create a positive atmosphere and restore trust between the parties,” she added.

In Abbas’s address to the UN General Assembly, he demanded an end to the occupation, accused Israel of waging a “war of genocide” in Gaza and asserted that Palestinians faced a future in a “most abhorrent form of apartheid” under Israeli rule.

Earlier, Israeli leaders reacted with anger and scorn to Abbas’s address, with one official from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accusing the PA president of incitement.

In his address, Abbas accused Israel of committing genocide in its recent conflict with terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip — calling 2014 “a year of a new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people” — and said that Israel was not interested in living in peace with its Palestinian neighbors.

“It’s a speech of incitement full of lies,” an unnamed source from the Prime Minister’s Office told the Hebrew press. “That’s not how someone who wants peace speaks.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement shortly after Abbas’s speech that the PA president demonstrated that 

“he doesn’t want to be, and cannot be, a partner for a logical diplomatic resolution.
“It’s no coincidence that he joined a [national consensus] government with Hamas,” the foreign minister added. “Abbas complements Hamas when he deals with diplomatic terrorism and slanders Israel with false accusations.
“As long as he’s chairman of the Palestinian Authority, he will continue the conflict. He is the continuation of [late Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat through different means,” continued Liberman.

West Bank settler group foreign envoy Dani Dayan responded to the PA chief’s speech by saying that Abbas was the “broadcaster for Hamas” and that the Fatah party leader had delivered one of his most “libelous, defamatory and self-righteous speeches.”

In one of his most libelous, defamatory & self-righteous speeches ever, Abbas read a Hamas-inspired speech, ending with lip service to peace— DaniDayan (@dandayan) September 26, 2014 

The former Yesha Council chairman said in English on Twitter that “by using the word ‘genocide,’ Abbas gave up the empathy of the Israeli public, including most of the left.”

By using the word "genocide" Abbas gave up the empathy of the Israeli public, including most of the left
— Dani Dayan (@dandayan) September 26, 2014

Qatar supports jihadism

From The Jerusalem Center, September 23, 2014:

• Qatar is unquestionably engaged in international terrorist financing. According to the U.S. Treasury’s division for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, “Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally, has for many years openly financed Hamas.”

• Qatar aids Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Jabhat al Nusra, al-Qaeda affiliates, Libyan Islamists, and even ISIS.

• The key Qatari link to the Muslim Brotherhood has been Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who broadcasts on Qatar’s al Jazeera. In 2002, his foundation was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

• Through the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar has attempted to undermine Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family believe they are “worthy of challenging Riyadh [Saudi Arabia].” ...

Follow the link to read the full report.

Erdoğan’s Flying Carpet Unravels

From Asia Times Online, September 23, 2014, by Spengler:

...Turkey’s financial position is one of the world’s great financial mysteries, in fact, a uniquely opaque puzzle: the country has by far the biggest foreign financing requirement relative to GDP among all the world’s large economies, yet the sources of its financing are impossible to trace.

...At around 8% of GDP, Turkey’s current account deficit is a standout among emerging markets. It is at the level of Greece before its near-bankruptcy in 2011. Where is the money coming from to cover it?

A great deal of it is financed by short-term debt, mainly through borrowings by banks.

Little of this appears on the Bank for International Settlements tables of Western banks’ short-term lending to other banks, which means that the source of the bank loans lies elsewhere than in the developed world. Gulf State banks are almost certainly the lenders, by process of elimination.

Recently...the rate of growth of bank borrowing has tapered off. What has replaced bank loans?

According to Turkey’s central bank, the main source of new financing cannot be identified: It appears on the books of the central bank as “errors and omissions”.

Analysts close to Turkey’s ruling party claim that the unidentified flows represent a political endorsement from Turkey’s friends in the Gulf States. Quoted in Al-Monitor, political scientist Mustafa Sahin boasted: “The secret of how Turkey avoided the 2008 global economic crisis is in these mystery funds. The West suspects that Middle East capital is entering Turkey without records, without being registered. Qatar and other Muslim countries have money in Turkey. These unrecorded funds came to Turkey because of their confidence in Erdoğan and the Muslim features of the AKP and the signs of Turkey restoring its historic missions.”

It seems clear from the data that short-term bank lending and mystery inflows have been interchangeable means of covering Turkey’s deficit. When the growth of bank lending slowed, errors and omissions rose during the past eight years, and vice versa.

This continuing trade-off suggests that bank lending and mystery inflows have a common origin, presumably in the Gulf States. But it seems unlikely that Qatar is the main source of funds for Turkey, simply because its resources are too small to cover the gap. Qatar shares Turkey’s enthusiasm for political Islam in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, but there are alternative explanations. Despite its historical dislike for its former Ottoman overlord and strong disagreement about the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia may want to influence Turkey as a Sunni counterweight to Iran’s influence in the region.

If mystery attends Turkey’s past economic performance, the future is all the cloudier. Erdoğan’s power rests on his capacity to deliver jobs. The country’s economic performance has depended in turn on extremely rapid credit growth...

According to Moody’s, 80% Turkish corporate loans are denominated in foreign currency, which bears far lower interest rates than local-currency loans, but entails foreign exchange risk: a devaluation of Turkey’s currency would increase the debt-service costs of over-levered Turkish borrowers. Credit to Turkey’s private sector is still growing at more than 20% year-on-year, down from a peak of 45% in 2010, but remains extremely fast.

Despite the extremely rapid rate of credit growth, Turkey’s economy has stalled. Turkey reported 2% annualized growth in real GDP during the second quarter, but a detailed look at the economy shows a far direr picture. Manufacturing and construction are falling while inflation is surging.

New housing permits, meanwhile, are down by almost 40% year-on-year for single-family homes, and negative for all categories of construction (measured by square meter of planned new space).

The biggest contribution to reported GDP growth during the second quarter came from the finance sector. In short, the central bank is counting the banks’ contribution to the lending bubble as a contribution to growth. That is absurd, considering that most of the increase in lending to the private sector is to help debtors pay their interest on previous loans. A fairer accounting would show zero growth or even a decline in Turkey’s GDP....

During the run-up to the 2014 elections, construction employment increased sharply even while employment in other branches of the economy declined.

Judging from the plunge in building permits, though, this source of support for Turkey’s economy disappeared during the first half of 2014.

That leaves the mystery investors in Turkey holding an enormous amount of risk in the Turkish currency. Turkey’s currency has fallen by half against the US dollar, cheapening the cost of Turkish assets to foreign investors. The Turkish lira nearly collapsed in January, but the country’s central bank stopped its decline by raising interest rates. The lira has been slipping again, and the central bank has let rates rise to try to break the fall.

Despite the largesse of the Gulf States, Turkey is locked into a vicious cycle of currency depreciation, higher interest rates, and declining economic activity. Turkish voters stood by Erdoğan in last March’s national elections, believing that he was the politician most likely to deliver jobs and growth. But his ability to do so is slipping. If the Turkish lira drops sharply, the cost of debt service to Turkish companies will become prohibitive, while the cost of imports and ensuing inflation will depress Turkish incomes. 

By some measures Turkey already is in a recession, and it is at risk of economic free-fall.

... For the past dozen years he has made himself useful enough to his neighbors to stay in business. His magic carpet is unraveling, though, and his triumph in the March elections may turn out to be illusory much sooner than most analysts expect.

United States Attack in Syria Parallels Israel's in Gaza

From Gatestone Institute, September 23, 2014, by Alan M. Dershowitz:

The air attack by American and Arab forces against ISIS and other terrorist targets parallels Israel's air attacks against Hamas terrorist targets in Gaza. 

According to retired General Wesley Clark, the United States air attacks are designed to degrade and destroy the infrastructure of the terrorist groups, including the electricity grid, the sources of their finance and other mixed military-civilian targets.


A U.S. Department of Defense spokesman reports on the results of airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria, September 23, 2014.

When Israel attacked Hamas military targets, including some that had mixed uses, it was condemned by the same Arab nations that participated in the joint United States-Arab attack in Syria. The difference of course is that the threat posed by ISIS is not nearly as imminent as the threats posed by Hamas. This is certainly true in relation to the United States and may also be true in relation to its Arab partners.

Among the most hypocritical nations participating in the US attack is, of course, Qatar, which not only condemned Israel for defending its civilians against Hamas rockets and tunnels, but actually funded the Hamas attacks and provided asylum for the Hamas terrorist leaders who ordered them. 

Hypocrisy is nothing new when it comes to the double standard applied by the international community against Israel. The United States and its Arab partners have the right to take preemptive action against terrorist groups without fear of UN condemnation, a Goldstone report, or threats to bring its leaders before the International Criminal Court. 

Yet everything Israel does, regardless of how careful it is to minimize civilian casualties, becomes the basis for international condemnation.

If the US attacks in Syria continue, there are likely to be civilian casualties, because ISIS will embed its fighters among civilians and the many hostages it has taken. When that happens, American and Arab bombs will kill some civilians. It will be interesting to compare the world's reaction to those civilian deaths with its reaction to deaths caused by Israeli rockets hitting human shields deliberately employed by Hamas. If the past is any predictor of the future, the ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths may be considerably higher in the American-led air attacks than it was in the Israeli air attacks. In past wars, such as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and the former Yugoslavia, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths was far higher than the ratio brought about by Israeli firing into Gaza, where human shields are Hamas's tactic of choice.

It will also be interesting to see the reaction of the international community and various NGOs to US-led attacks on mixed military-civilian targets, such as electricity grid and sources of financing. The international law on these subjects is vague and open-ended, and thus subject to selective application. Doubts are always resolved against Israel and in favor of other nations engaging in similar military actions.

The joint attack by the United States and the handful of Arab countries may finally persuade the world that the laws of warfare must be adapted to the new realities of terrorism. 

If one were to literally apply the words of Section 51 of the UN Charter, no country could defend itself against imminent attacks, either by terrorists or conventional armies. That section requires an armed attack by an enemy state to have occurred before the right of self-defense kicks in. That provision was unrealistic when drafted and it is far more unrealistic now in the face of terroristic threats. The laws of war also require proportionality, which is defined as demanding that the anticipated deaths of civilians be evaluated against the military value of the target. But it does not take into account situations where the enemy hides its valuable military targets behind human shields.

It has been easy for the international community to apply these rules rigidly and unrealistically when the only country to which it applies them is the nation-state of the Jewish people. But now it will have to apply them across the board, and that will require defining them in a sensible and realistic way that does not give undue advantage to terrorists who refuse to comply with the rule of law.