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The ARAR model for toppling governments

Mehr News Agency | July 21, 2012

TEHRAN — The recent political and military turmoil in the region is following a predictable pattern, which starts with so-called activism and ends with military intervention to topple sovereign governments.

Following is a brief scenario of the chain of the events:

“A” phase: The pseudo-prodemocracy movement builds up steam and starts to develop. This development is either in the streets or in the media or both. The participants in the movement in this phase are called “activists” and the media starts to call the target government a “regime”.

“R” phase: After weeks and months of trying soft techniques to topple the government, the main approach is escalated to the militaristic stage and those once called “activists” are now called “rebels”. They usually receive assistance from regional military channels. The targeted government starts to react militarily, and the media starts labeling it a “brutal regime” or some other similar tag.

Second “A” phase: The usually decentralized rebel-guerrilla style movement upgrades to the “army” level. The “new army” receives intelligence and military support from extra-regional powers and/or their proxies, a massive amount of disinformation is disseminated, and military personnel are encouraged to defect or join the new army. The media starts comparing the opposition army to the conventional state army.

Second “R” phase: If the opposition army fails to topple the government by itself, plan B is put into effect, in which the media pushes the need for international intervention and the NATO/UN Security Council “raid” starts.

This ARAR formula — Activism/Rebelism/Army building/Multilateral Raid — was first implemented in Libya and is now in its final stages in Syria. The main players behind the game are the media — in this case, Qatari and Saudi media outlets in cooperation with Western media outlets — extra-regional powers such as the United States and Britain and their European allies, and finally, regional proxies such as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

The key to foil the plan is both hard and simple: know the phase, inform public opinion about it, build up a coalition, discredit biased media outlets, cut and weaken regional procurement and logistics channels, balance the power, and “resist”.

July 21, 2012 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

How leftist “anti-Zionists” are allied with Israel against Syria

By Mimi Al Laham (aka “Syrian Girl”) and Lizzie Phelan | July 19, 2012

The Myth

There has been a ridiculous notion amongst numerous left groups and those opposed to the Syrian government, that the Israeli regime does not want to see Assad fall. As self-professed “anti-zionists”, many in these groups are content to delude themselves into believing that both their enemies are on the same side. In the case of several socialist groups, they believe that this forcing of the Syrian crisis into their blanket “anti-authoritarian” narrative (regardless of the state in which they are applying that narrative to) enables them to maintain a façade of anti-imperialism.

London based socialist newspaper The Socialist Review writes: “Israel, although hostile to Syria, could depend on the Baathist regime to keep the frontier quiet. Thus criticism of Bashar is more muted in Tel Aviv.”

And Simon Assaf of the SocialistWorker writes:

The notion that ordinary Syrians struggling to change their country are the pawns of a ‘Western plot’ is absurd… In fact the Arab League is attempting to throw the regime a lifeline.

This view is also pervasive amongst the Islamic opposition to the Syrian government. Rafiq A. Tschannen of the The Muslims Times writes:

Israel believes that it would be safer under Assad regime than the new government whose credentials are unknown or the new Islamic extremist regime that would open a new war front with the Jewish state.

Israeli state media has actively fuelled this manipulation, as it has been beneficial to the Israeli state to both discredit the Syrian government in the eyes of Syrians and Arabs amongst whom cooperation with Israel has historically been a red line. Therefore the goal of these reports has been to create the false perception that Israel is uninvolved in the insurgency against the Syrian government. Similarly to how the NATO powers were keen to portray the Libyan insurgency as a “home-grown revolution”.

In this early 2011 Haaretz article entitled Israel’s favourite dictator, great lengths are taken to paint the Syrian president as a weak stooge of the Israeli state. The article regurgitates common Syrian criticisms and sources of frustration about the Syrian government’s failure to take back the Golan Heights. It even goes as far as to chastise Assad for not attacking Israel.  The irony that an Israeli paper would be critical of a president’s failure to attack Israel is apparently lost on many. All the more incredible that these anti-Zionist groups have chosen to believe the spin of Israeli state media.

The Turkish based Syrian opposition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), also jumped on this bandwagon. The now deposed leader of the SNC, Burghan Ghallion told the Israeli paper Ynetnews “We are convinced that the Syrian regime’s strongest ally is Israel”.

Debunking the Myth

However the following facts expose all of the above as merely a part of the psychological warfare machinery directed from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the NATO countries, which is an essential part of the overall aggression against Syria, and that such leftists have willingly become a part of:

Israel’s most important ally, the US, has been amongst its other allies repeatedly calling for regime change in Syria

Israel’s strongest ally the United States has been pushing for regime change in Syria since before the first signs of insurrection began. Most famously in 2007, General Wesley Clarke, who served as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander between 1997 and 2000 said he had received a memo from the US Secretary of Defense’s Office which read that the Syrian Government would be one of the seven governments the US would destroy in the subsequent five years.

The Guardian’s recent headline “Saudi Arabia plans to fund Syria rebel army” is in the typical style of the liberal media based in the NATO countries, a malignant manipulation. The text of that article is specifically about plans by the US’ and by extension Israel’s most important regional allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to pay the salaries of insurgents. But, buried further down, the very same article also reports that such support began months before. A less misleading headline therefore would replace “plans to fund” with “increases support for”, however a truthful headline would suggest external control over Syria’s insurgency has existed since its onset.

Indeed both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have a long history of hostility to the Syrian Ba’ath Party and Syrian foreign policy, a fact which is reflected in both of their leading medias (Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya respectively) severely distorted coverage of events in Syria from the outset.

But to highlight this context would give too much weight to the Syrian government’s consistent analysis that the crisis within its borders is externally created. A fact which leftist groups also fall over themselves trying to downplay or dismiss with the result of boosting the opposing narrative which imperialism has made dominant through its media machinery.

Why did that same Guardian article, and western leftists who claim that Assad is good for Israel, fail to mention that for example in early April, the US openly pledged to double its assistance to the insurgents to the tune of an additional $12 million, under the cover of “humanitarian aid”? Or the recent US admission that it is actively arming the insurgency using Qatar as a proxy? Or that in February, solid Israeli ally British Foreign Minister William Hague pledged more equipment to the insurgents, insisting there was “no limit on what resources” Britain would provide?

It shouldn’t have to be explained to anti-Zionists that US and Israeli foreign policy is one and the same.

Axis of Resistance

Syria is a member of the Axis of Resistance, which is the only effective military resistance to Israel left. It is made up of Syria, Iran and the resistance inside Lebanon with Hizbullah at the helm. Far from being a ‘safe’ option for Israel, as Al Akhbar writer Amal Saad-Ghorayeb sets out in her three part critique of the third-way position that has seized much of the western left, Syria has consistently put itself on the front line, risking its own survival, and has been involved in every Arab-Israeli conflict since they took power. Syria has been the strongest supporter of the Lebanese resistance movements against Israeli occupation; Hizbullah has repeatedly unequivocally attributed its ability to effectively win the 2006 war against Israeli invasion of Lebanon to its support from Syria and Iran.

A year since the beginning of the insurrection in Syria, the ridiculous notion that Israel was not pursuing regime change in Syria began to crumble. Israeli Intelligence Minister, Dan Meridor was quoted on Israeli radio, pointing out what was obvious all along: Regime change in Syria would break the Iran-Syria mutual defence pact thereby isolating Iran and cutting the supply of arms to Hezbollah. Finally, Israel’s greatest adversary, Syria, would be crippled.

This was not reported in Israeli mass media, which ensured that the lid was kept on the obvious, clearly in the knowledge that it would make the position of the insurgent’s self-professed anti-Zionist cheerleaders in the west and Arab world more untenable. Yet those cheerleaders who maintain that Assad is good for Israel have been unable to reconcile then why Israel relentlessly beats the war drums against one of Syria’s most important allies, Iran.

Aside from wanting to get rid of Assad to secure military hegemony of the region, Israel also has an economic interest in scuppering the Syria, Iran, Iraq oil pipeline which would rival both Israel’s BTC pipeline and the eternally fledgling plans for Europe’s Nabucco pipeline.

Pro-Israel Opposition

With increasing momentum, the already tenuous facade of being pro-Assad in the Israeli media began to crumble and increasingly, voices within the Syrian opposition have been crossing the red line of sounding friendly towards Israel.

MK Yitzhak Herzog, who has previously held ministerial posts in the Israeli parliament, said that Syrian opposition leaders have told him they want peace with Israel after Syrian President Bashar al Assad falls.

Indeed, SNC member Bassma Kodmani attended the 2012 Bilderberg conference where regime change in Syria was on the agenda. Kodmani has previously called for friendly relations between Syria and Israel on a French talk show, going as far as to say: ‘We need Israel in the region’.

Another SNC member, Ammar Abdulhamid  declared his support for friendly relations between Israel and Syria in an interview with Israeli news paper Ynetnews.

Earlier this year a telephone conversation between the SNC’s Radwan Ziyade and Mouhammad Abdallah emerged where they begged Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barack for more support.

Outside the SNC the children of former leadership figures now in opposition have joined the pro-Israel rat race. Ribal al-Assad, the son of Bashar Assad’s uncle and exiled former vice-president Rifaat al-Asaad welcomed the possibility of Syria making peace with Israel. And son of former Syrian prime minister Nofal Al-Dawalibi, said in an interview on Israeli radio that the Syrian people want peace with Israel. Dawalibi formed the “Free Syrian Transitional National Government”, another external opposition group rivaling the SNC for power in a situation where the Syrian government falls. The sectarian infighting and disunity, that is a mirror of post-Gaddafi Libya, is now threatening to plague Syria.

Lower down the opposition hierarchy, pro-Israel voices are still to be found.

Syrian Danny Abdul-Dayem, the almost one-hit-wonder unofficial spokesman for the FSA, appeared on CNN begging Israel to Attack Syria.

And in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2, Sheikh Abdullah Tamimi, an exiled Imam from the Syrian city of Homs, said that the Syrian Opposition does not have any enmity towards Israel. Tamimi proceeded to request monetary and military support for Sunnis in Syria and Lebanon.

Anti-Assad Zionists and Israeli Leaders

Socialists have chosen to be blind to the fact that prominent Zionists have been backing the Syrian insurgency since its inception.

US Senator John McCain and Joe Lieberman, both well known to be close friends of the Zionist entity, met with the SNC and Syrian insurgents on the Turkish border, then called for the US to arm them. In fact Joe Lieberman has been calling for war against Syria since 2011.

Another well known Zionist Bernard Henri-Levy, who spear-headed the destruction of Libya by NATO aerial bombardment, has also called for an attack on Syria.

More recently voices within the Israeli government have been more vocal and demanding in their desire to see the Syrian government’s replacement with a more friendly puppet regime.

Israeli President Shimon Peres, upon receiving the ‘Medal of Freedom’ from US President Barack Obama, said that the world had to get rid of Assad. That he was receiving such a medal requires its own article dedicated to psychoanalyzing such an event, but that he could also claim, while being part of a system that is responsible for some of the gravest abuses to humankind in history, that from a “human” point of view Assad must go, should really get so-called anti-Zionists thinking.

Other members of the Israeli government, such as Israeli Vice Prime Minister, Shaul Mofaz, urged world powers to mount a Libya style regime change in Syria.

And Israeli defense minister Ehud Barack called for the ‘world to act’ to remove Assad.

Finally, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon accused the ‘world’ of wrong doing for failing to act against the Syrian government and then offered Israeli ‘assistance’ for Syrian ‘refugees’.  Thin euphemism for arming insurgents on the border.

Conclusion

In spite of the overt desire of the US government for regime change in Syria, which they have made clear time and time again, Israel has obvious economic and military interests for pursuing regime change in Syria, most notably the the break up of the Axis of Resistance and the destruction of plans for rival oil pipelines. Despite numerous public statements by Syrian opposition members that they are pro-Israel and the multitude of Israeli government officials calling for the fall of the Syrian government as well as Zionist lobbyists and key Zionist figures like Bernard Henri-Levy backing the insurgency, so called ‘anti-Zionist’ socialists and Islamic groups persist in their claim that Israel has no stake in regime change in Syria and that the insurgency inside Syria is from the grass roots. Though all information contrary to this delusion is in clear sight, it seems that the socialist and Islamic groups are willfully blind.

This position has become increasingly untenable however, most recently in light of the murder of Syria’s Deputy Defence Minister Asef Shawkat, which along with the simultaneous murder of Defence Minister Raoud Dajiha and Assistant to the Vice President Hassan Turkomani, which the Syrian government laid the responsibility for squarely at the doors of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as new information has come to light as revealed by Al Akhbar editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin.

In an article published today, Amin writes of Shawkat, that in spite of the incessant attempts by the US, Israel et al to demonise him, he in fact,

played a major role in resisting Israeli occupation in and around Palestine. Right to the end, he took practical charge of meeting the needs of the resistance forces in Palestine and Lebanon, and of their members and cadres in Syria. He oversaw everything from their accommodation and transportation, to their training camps and provisions, and arranging for cadres from inside Palestine to come to the country secretly for training.

For the resistance in Lebanon, Shawkat was a true partner, providing whatever assistance was needed without needing orders or approval from the leadership. He was a central player in the June 2006 war. He spent the entire time in the central operations room that was set up in line with a directive by Assad to supply the resistance with whatever weapons it wanted, notably missiles, from Syrian army stocks. Shawkat and other officers and men of the Syrian army – including Muhammad Suleiman who was assassinated by the Mossad on the Syrian coast in 2008 – spent weeks coordinating the supply operation which helped the resistance achieve the successes that led to the defeat of Israel.

Despite the accusations levelled against Asef Shawkat regarding security, political or other matters, for Imad Mughniyeh, the assassinated military leader of Hezbollah, he was just another comrade, a modest man who would bow when shaking hands with Hassan Nasrallah, and liked to hear the news from Palestine last thing at night.

However anti-Zionist one proclaims to be, there are few in this world that can claim to have done as much as the above for the Palestinian resistance to the Zionist entity. But having proven to willfully ignore all of the facts and history of Syria’s long history of resistance to Israel, it is a great tragedy that those who cling to the argument dealt with in this essay, would only perhaps be able to let go of it should Syria fall and then the reality of Palestine’s total military abandonment would be all too devastatingly clear to see.

Update by Aletho News:

The Ziocons promoting wars for Israel have been abetted by these self described “intellectuals” on 8 April 2013:

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011. We call on people of the world to pressure the Syrian regime to end its oppression of and war on the Syrian people. We demand that Bashar al-Asad leave immediately without excuses so that Syria can begin a speedy recovery towards a democratic future.

Tikun Olam MongersSince March 2011, Asad’s regime has steadily escalated its violence against the Syrian people, launching Scud missiles, using weapons banned by the Geneva Convention such as cluster bombs and incendiary munitions, and using aerial bombardment. The regime has detained and tortured tens of thousands of people and committed untold massacres. It has refused political settlements that do not include Asad in power, and it has polarized the society through strategic acts of violence and by sowing seeds of division. The regime has also, since the early days of the uprising, sought to internationalize the crisis in order to place it within geopolitical battles that would only strengthen the regime. Staying true to the logics of an authoritarian regime, Asad could never accept the legitimate demands of the Syrian people for freedom and dignity. Thus, there is no hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria so long as his regime remains in power. … Full text

Frederic Jameson (Duke University, United States)

Tariq Ali (British Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker, United Kingdom/ Pakistan)

Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)

Etienne Balibar (Columbia University, United States/ France)

Nigel Gibson (Emerson college, United States/ Britain)

Norman Finkelstein (American researcher and writer, United Sates)

John Holloway (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, United States/ Mexico)

Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, United States/ India)

Salameh Kaileh (Intellectual, Syria/Palestine)

Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States)

Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University, United States)

Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University, United States/Palestine)

Lieven de Cuater (Philosopher, Belgium)

Jihane Sfeir (l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, Lebanon/ Belgium)

Jean-Pierre Filiu (Institut d’études politiques de Paris, France)

Farouk Mardam Bey (Intellectual, Syria)

Faraj Bayrakdar (Poet, Syria)

Ziad Majed (American University of Paris, Lebanon/ France)

Kamal Bandara (Intellectual, Tunisia)

Francois Burgat (CNRS, France)

Adam Shapiro (Activist, United States)

Razan Ghazzawi, (Activist, Syria)

Yassin el-Haj Saleh (Intellectual, Syria)

Thierry Boissière (Institut français du Proche-Orient, France)

Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (universitaire, France)

Jens Hanssen (University of Tornoto, Canada/ Germany)

Ghassan Hage (The University of Melbourne, Australia/ Lebanon)

Hani al-Sayed (American University of Cairo, Syria/ Egypt)

Hazem al-Azmeh (Intellectual, Syria)

Sadri Khiari (Intellectual, Tunisia)

Oussama Mohamad (Film maker, Syria/ France)

Jihad Yazigi (Journalist, Syria)

Saad Hajo (Cartoonist, Syria)

Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley, United States)

R. Radhakrishnan (UC Irvine, United States/ India)

Ann Ferguson (Philosopher, United States)

Samir Aita (Le Monde Diplomatique editions arabes, Cercle des Economistes Arabes)

Santiago de Rico Alba (Philosopher, Spain)

Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, USA)

Chela Sandoval (University of California, Santa Barbara)

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July 20, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

French journalist killed by Syrian opposition: Report


Slain French journalist Gilles Jacquier (file photo)
Press TV – July 19, 2012

French journalist Gilles Jacquier, who lost his life in central Syria earlier this year, was killed by the Syrian opposition’s mortar fire, a report says.

“This investigation was carried out by French intelligence and based on a ballistic study carried out in the area. According to my contact, the mortar fire came from the Sunni rebel zone,” wrote Georges Malbrunot, a member of the editorial board of Le Figero, in the French newspaper.

This is while Western reports have put the blame on Damascus, saying Jacquier was killed by a Syrian army shell.

On January 11, Jacquier, 43, was killed in the central Syrian city of Homs.

The Western journalists were on a government-authorized trip to the city at the time of the attack.

Gilles Jacquier, working for France 2 TV, was the first Western reporter to die since the beginning of the unrest in Syria in mid-March 2011. He had covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

The Syrian government had previously blamed armed groups for the attack.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.

While the West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing protesters, Damascus blames ”outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.

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July 19, 2012 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Nasrallah: US manipulated Syria grievances

Al Akhbar | July 18, 2012

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday accused the US and Israel of using legitimate grievances in Syria as an excuse to destroy the country and the resistance to Israel’s control over the Middle East.

Speaking after the death of three senior Syrian politicians in a bomb attack on Wednesday morning, Nasrallah hailed the men and warned that Syria risked destruction if it slid further into civil war.

“(The West and Israel) took advantage of the legitimate demands of the Syrian people…they put Syria into a war, they forbade negotiations,” he said.

“What is required (by the US) in Syria is to divide it, to destroy it, to rip it apart just like Iraq,” he said, referring to the chaos left behind after 10 years of US occupation in Iraq.

Nasrallah said that Israel had been concerned by Syria’s increased military capabilities and had sought to sow discontent in the country.

“They looked at Syria and saw over the past years… first of all a new military strategy began in Syria,” he said, adding that before the uprising the country was “a real military power that (was) capable of presenting a real military threat to Israel.”

Speaking on the sixth anniversary of the 2006 war with Israel, in which the Jewish state suffered defeat at the hands of Hezbollah, Nasrallah said Hezbollah’s victory had increased concern about Syrian strength.

“There is only one army left that is not connected with the Americans. Its the Syrian army. Since the July (2006) war they have been working on destroying this army,” he said.

Nasrallah also confirmed that the “most important” weapons used against Israel in the war were supplied by Syria.

“Syria is a real supporter of the resistance… on the military level as well,” he said. “The most important missiles that landed in occupied Palestine were manufactured or made in Syria.”

Call for calm

Referring to Lebanon Nasrallah called for calm in the country which has seen an upturn in violence in recent months, much of it related to the Syrian crisis.

“I call for calm and patience. You have heard a lot of curses and you will hear a lot of curses in the future,” he said.

“This doesn’t concern only the Sunnis and the Shia… amongst all sects there are some who are trying to rip apart our community.”

The Shia leader also urged all sects in the country to move away from provocative language, calling for a new document dealing with sectarianism.

Under the new rules, he said, “if a Shia person, whether he be a politician or a religious person, if he says anything offensive then we, the Shia, will stand against him. Same goes for the Sunnis, the Druze and the Christians.”

“Can we go ahead and adopt such a document in Lebanon?”

He also backed the current government to continue despite ongoing tensions between rival factions, saying such debate was healthy.

“In the government we have disagreements… but there are positives as it shows it is a coalition government, not a government of Hezbollah,” he said.

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July 18, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Operation on Syria Successful, but the Patient Died

By Philip Giraldi • The American Conservative • July 16, 2012

Reuel Marc Gerecht, the Wall Street Journal’s always available advocate of “let us reason together before we bomb Iran,” is now urging an immediate US surrogate attack on Syria by “unleashing the CIA.”  Gerecht, a former CIA officer who served in Istanbul and Paris, once described the Agency disparagingly as a mixture of Monty Python and Big Brother, so it is particularly ironic that now he wants to go about unleashing it.  He apparently hopes that the Big Brother component will prevail because Monty Python would no doubt prefer to execute a silly walk.

Gerecht, who currently perches at the neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, argues that unless there is a “muscular CIA operation” to arm the rebels with “paralyzing weaponry” and other support that would provide them with a military advantage there will be between 200,000 and 4.5 million deaths in Syria.  The numbers appear to be plucked out of the ethosphere and it should also be noted that Gerecht’s knowledge of paralyzing weapons and their deployment is limited as he never served in the US military.

The call for a humanitarian intervention in Syria comes oddly from Gerecht, who has never hesitated to call for the killing of any Iranian civilians who might get in the way of a US/Israeli assault, using inter alia the argument that Iranians have “terrorism in their DNA.”  It also ignores the dismal record of various US interventions over the past fifty years and conveniently avoids the subject of blowback.  The operation would be eerily reminiscent of the support for insurgents in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, an initiative that drove the Russians out to be sure, but also produced chaos in Afghanistan and created al-Qaeda.  The situation in Syria is somewhat similar, at least in terms of potential downside, as Assad’s departure would create a power vacuum and no one really knows who the rebels are and what they represent.

But perhaps Gerecht is not really thinking about what is good for Syria and the Syrian people at all.  He is a former employee of Doug Feith’s Pentagon Office of Special Plans that produced the disastrous war against Iraq and is also a close friend and associate of Richard Perle, who, together with Feith, drafted the 1996 proposal “A Clean Break”, which recommended specific policies to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  “A Clean Break” endorsed encouraging Arab states hostile to Israel to splinter along tribal and ethnic lines, similar to what has been happening in Iraq.  What could be better than replacing a unified and hostile Syria with a chaotic civil war in which Alawites, Sunnis, and Shia are at each others’ throats while the Christian minority frantically looks for a way out?  The Washington based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), apparently agrees, noting that the disruption caused by the Arab Spring has actually been good for Israel in strategic terms.

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July 17, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

JINSA: ‘Israel is winner of Arab Spring’

Rehmat’s World | July 17, 2012

In April 2011 – Turkish President Abdullah Gul in a New York Times Op-Ed, warned both Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama that the “Arab Revolution is aimed at Israel”. However, later events in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria proved that Abdullah Gul was totally wrong.

Last week, Gabriel M. Scheinmann, a visiting Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), admitted that the Zionist entity is in fact the winner of the so-called “Arab Spring”.

“The so-called “Arab Spring” has, paradoxically, made Israel stronger as Israel’s enemies have turned on each other. While Arab capitals burn, Jerusalem has calmly and carefully steeled itself against the possible immediate deleterious effects, building fences along its Egyptian and Jordanian borders and accelerating the deployment of its Iron Dome anti-missile system,” wrote Scheinmann. He then added: “Even as it rightly plans for the changes wrought by the “Arab Spring”, Israel should also recognize that as the Middle East convulses, it is more likely to be left alone. As Alawites battle Arab Sunnis and Kurds in Syria, as Kurds target Turks in Turkey, as the Imazighen fight Arabs in Libya, as the Army contends with Islamists in Egypt, and as Sunnis and Christians confront Shiites in Lebanon, people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to fight the Jews in Israel. The more the region tears itself apart, the more Israel floats to the top, unscathed economically, militarily, or diplomatically. While an Islamist ascent is undesirable, the intervening disorder only makes Israel stronger.”

Karen DeYoung, in Gen. Colin Powell’s biography, ‘SOLDIER: The life of Colin Powell’, has quoted Powell twice saying that “the Iraq war was the product of Donald Rumsfeld’s absorption in the “JINSA crowd.” By the way, Dick Cheney was on JINSA’s Board of Advisors before becoming vice president, where he was joined by Ledeen, Feith, Perle, James Woolsey, and John Bolton.

Both AIPAC and JINSA are behind Washington’s regime change in Tehran.” So far the Israel lobby has failed to make its dream come true, as Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival, wrote: “The wars of 2001 and 2003 have fundamentally changed the Middle East to Iran’s advantage.”

Lebanon’s interior minister, retired Maj. Gen. Marwan Charbel in a recent interview with RT has claimed that the Zionist entity is the only country which has benefited from the so-called “Arab Spring”.

The so-called “Arab Spring” is the defacto working of Zionist elements in the United States. The brainchild is within the Israel-Firsters, and by extension the Zionist entity.

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July 17, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria: Treimsa Incident Clashes with Terrorists, Not Massacre

Al-Manar | July 15, 2012

Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdissi told a press conference on Sunday that UN and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan had sent a letter to Syria’s foreign minister that did not conform with the facts on heavy weapon use.

“We received a letter from Mr Kofi Annan addressed to Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. The least that can be said about this letter about what happened in Treimsa is that it did not rely on facts. As diplomatically as possible, we say that this letter was very rushed.”

The spokesman denied that Syrian forces used tanks and helicopters in the assault on Treimsa, saying what happened in the central village was the result of clashes with terrorists and not a massacre.

“Government forces did not use helicopters and tanks,” Maqdissi told a news conference in Damascus, adding: “What happened was not an attack by the army on innocent civilians.”

The Syrian foreign minister said the aim of this news conference was to tell people that what happened was not a massacre. “It was a clash between regular forces and armed groups who do not believe in a peaceful solution. This is the reality, politically and militarily.”

Maqdissi staunchly denied reports suggesting that the Syrian army used aircraft in the assault on Treimsa. “This is absolutely not true. Only troop carriers and lights weapons were used, the most powerful of weapons being RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades),” he said.

Only five buildings were attacked by the Syrian forces during the assault on Treimsa that only lasted a few hours and was aimed at getting rid of the terrorists, Maqdissi said, adding that the five buildings were used to launch attacks against the army and they also contained various kinds of weapons and explosives.

July 15, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Iran Ready to Host Syrian Government, Opposition Meeting

Al-Manar | July 15, 2012

The Islamic Republic offered to host a meeting between Damascus and the opposition aimed at solving the Syrian crisis.

“Iran is ready to host the Syrian opposition for dialogue with the Syrian government,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told Arabic-language Al-Alam television on Sundy. “We believe that the Syrian issue should have a Syrian solution,” he said.

Earlier on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said the Islamic Republic will use all its capacities to resolve Syria’s crisis and establish security in the region.

He added that the security of the region and all regional countries depends on the security of Syria and said, “We believe that in case of [adopting] an unrealistic approach towards the issue of Syria, not using influential countries with complete capacity to resolve the crisis in this country and also not taking necessary actions in various international summits to stop the violence, no result will be achieved and these summits are doomed to failure.”

Mehmanparast said grounds for dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition in an atmosphere away from foreign interference and violence must be provided so that they could make their demands clear.

The Iranian official said Tehran supported the UN-Arab League joint envoy’s plan, adding that in the current situation, the best solution to resolve Syria’s crisis is that all countries and governments also support Kofi Annan and his six-point plan.

July 15, 2012 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria: FSA ziothugs murder 17 Palestinian fighters

“A true Islamic Resistance will never be fooled or defeated by the servants of Zion“

Rehmat’s World | July 14, 2012

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance, Hamas, condemned on Thursday, the kidnapping, torture and murder of 17 soldiers of Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) by the Zionist collaborators, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) armed thugs. It looks as though Hamas leaders are learning from their mistake of betraying their long-time ally, the Assad regime in Syria.

In April 2012, two Israel-Firster US Senators, Joe Lieberman (a Zionist Jew ) and John McCain (a Zionist Christian) paid a surprise visit to the Turkish-Syrian border to meet with the leaders of the USrael-backed FSA. In a joint statement, both of them urged US and its allies to arm the Syrian rebel militants.

PLA chief of staff Major General Mohammad Tareq al-Khadraa told Syrian TV SANA: “The fact that the armed terrorist groups kidnapped and killed 17 troops from the Palestinian Liberation Army in Syria proves the criminal, dirty role that these groups play and their links to Western and Zionist agendas.”

The PLA is a battalion in the Syrian army, although it is made up of Palestinians living in Syria and who are conscripted to the armed forces. Roughly 470,000 Palestinian refugees live in Syria.

Faruk Logoglu, former Turkish ambassador in Washington, was quoted saying recently: “Turkey’s hosting armed FSA fighters and allowing them to carry out attacks in Syria – is against all international norms; against all neighborly relations. It’s a basic rule that countries must respect the sovereignty of others“.

Some Turkish commentators believe that Washington expects Turk soldiers to die in Syria to topple Bashar al-Assad, while some want Ankara to exploit the downing of the Turkish spying aircraft by Syria overflying Syrian airspace – to isolate al-Assad’s three main supporters; Russia, Iran and Hizbullah.

It would be better if Hamas and the rest of the Muslim leadership come out of its mindset of; “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. They must judge their “newly found friend” by its past which has proven, again and again to be poodle of Zion. It wants to destabilize and breakup every Muslim nation-state which the Zionist regime thinks may pose a threat to Israel’s survival in the future.

Gen. Robert Mood, chief of UN monitoring mission in Syria has already confirmed that the arms deliveries from abroad (the US, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) is the main reason the bloodshed is on the rise.

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July 14, 2012 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Invents Syrian WMD Threat, IDF Commanders Threaten Intervention

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | July 13, 2012

Syria appears to be entering an even more chaotic and dangerous period in its civil war now that Israeli officials are concocting potential threats that must be addressed by Israeli intervention.  The latest series of stories derives from U.S. and Israeli intelligence circles and suggests that Syria has a “vast stockpile” (Wall Street Journal) or “hundreds of tons” (Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News) of chemical weapons that could fall into the hands of Al Qaeda, Iran’s ayatollahs or God knows who, should Bashar al-Assad’s regime fall.  Naturally, Israel would have to protect its interests and intervene to prevent this from happening:

Hundreds of tonnes of Syria’s stockpile of deadly nerve gas could fall into the hands of terrorist groups if the regime of Bashar al-Assad falls apart amid widening concerns that Israel could go to war to try to stop this ‘Doomsday threat‘.

The fact that this would give Israel a further opportunity to tweak its Iranian enemy and ensure the installation of a pro-Israel puppet regime in Syria would of course be entirely incidental and unintentional.

The Sky News report in particular seems to be pure garbage, claiming to know the locations of all chemical warfare labs in the country plus additional storage sites.  The report provides no attribution or source, not even an anonymous one.  According to Sky, Al Qaeda is not only active in Syria, but has specifically told its member to get their hands on chemical weapons.  Again no quotations or source offered to bolster the claim.  To hear Sky tell it, missiles filled with Sarin and other potent nerve gases are sitting on launching pads waiting either for Assad to launch them or for the rebels to get their fingers on the button.  And of course the rockets can hit “any location in Israel,” the required hysteria inducing phrase harkening back to Saddam’s SCUDs and other visions of Zionist apocalypse.

Here is former Mossad chief Danny Yatom nicely hitting all the grace notes of hasbara interventionism :

Israel is deeply concerned that Assad may deliberately give Hezbollah chemical weapons – or that they could end up in the hands of other terror groups. In either case, this could lead to a regional war, Danny Yatom, the former head of Mossad warned.

“The conventional wisdom should be that we cannot exclude a non-conventional attack on Israel. We would have to pre-empt in order to prevent it. We need to be prepared to launch even military attacks… and military attacks mean maybe a deterioration to war,” he told Sky News.

Though on its face, Yatom is advocating for Israeli intervention, it’s also possible he’s playing the not so subtle game of pressuring the U.S. and its allies to act by threatening to act if they don’t do so first.  The operative thinking would be saying to the Americans: if you don’t do something, we will; since you won’t like how we’ll handle this, you better take care of it yourself.”

Israel seems to be laying down its marker and saying it too has an interest in determining the nature of the next Syrian regime.  Israel will go to very great lengths to ensure it does not have a proto-Iranian regime on its front doorstep, even to the extent of directly intervening.  All of which would be devastating not just for Syria, but for the entire region.  Israeli “intervention” into affairs in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza has greatly destabilized those countries and wreaked general mayhem.  More of this sort of “help” the Middle East does not need.

Here’s more unfounded hysteria on behalf of interventionism:

There are widespread fears that a Gaddafi-style collapse of Syria into chaos, would mean that chemical weapons would spread around the globe.

Yes, of course widespread fears.  So widespread we don’t even have to tell you who specifically is afraid and of what.  People, we’ve seen this movie before and it was a stinker the first time.  Do we need to see it again to know just how bad the sequel is?  The original was called Bush Brings You Iraqi WMD.  Remember those mushrooms clouds Condi Rice pictured for your visual delectation?  Isn’t it a bit like having déjà vu all over again, to paraphrase Yogi Berra?

No less a Hero of Zion than Yair Naveh, IDF deputy chief of staff, is also getting into the act:

Major general Yair Naveh, the deputy chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Force, recently warned a private congregation at a Jerusalem synagogue that Syria’s chemical weapons posed a mortal threat to the Jewish State.

“As for Syria, we all hear the news … (if)  Syrians … behave this way to their people it is clear … how they will behave towards us – to our sons – when they get the opportunity against us, with the largest chemical weapons arsenal in the world, with missiles and rockets that cover all of Israel”.

Naveh is also quoted more extensively in this AFP article.  If the name sounds familiar, this is the same Yair Naveh who ordered the execution of unarmed Palestinians in contravention of Israeli Supreme Court rulings.  News of which was leaked by Anat Kamm to Uri Blau, all of which landed both of them in court (and her in prison), while Naveh earned a promotion for his trouble.

Though the WSJ is also a Murdoch media trophy, it has slightly higher standards and actually notes how problematic this entire issue can be:

Because of the faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction that were used to justify the Iraq war, U.S. officials are extremely cautious about using reports of Mr. Assad’s chemical stockpiles to support military intervention.

But note that this is precisely what the WSJ, Sky, and similar media reports are doing: ratcheting up pressure for regime change.  The war hawk camp in the Obama administration makes no bones about this and beats the drums of war using every available weapon to do so:

“The regime has a plan for ethnic cleansing, and we must come to terms with this,” the first U.S. official said. “There is no diplomatic solution.”

But the statement simply has no basis either in fact or even in fantasy.  But “ethnic cleansing” does have such a nice genocidal ring to it.  Just the thing to rouse the quiescent world from its moral slumber.

Unnamed “opposition leaders” (and you know how reliable those folks have been lately) further buttress the ethnic cleansing meme:

Opposition leaders maintain there are increasing indications that the Damascus regime is trying to cleanse strategic areas, such as Hama and Homs, of Sunnis in order to set up an ethnic state that could be defended by the Assads’ Allawite [sic] ethnic minority.

No word on who these opposition leaders are or what the “increasing indications” specifically are.  Of course not.  What do you expect?  Facts, evidence.  C’mon.

To be clear, I harbor no affection for Assad and his regime.  If there was an effective way to end his rule and guarantee the Syrian people would have a genuine representative government–I’d be all for it.  But as it is, Syria is likely to get a domestic version of Ahmad Chalabi, rather than a real Syrian nationalist patriot to run its government.  At least, that’s what I fear will happen if the west and Israel try to cast their typical spell on the country, bringing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East” as Israel did to Lebanon in 2006 (remember Condi’s infamous line?).

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July 13, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syrian rebels aim to use chemical weapons, blame Damascus – report

RT | June 10, 2012

The armed Syrian opposition has got their hands on chemical weapons, which they acquired from Libya, a media report claims. They allegedly plan to use it against civilians and pin the atrocity on the Bashar al-Assad regime.

­The report by DamPress claims the opposition group in possession of the weapons is being trained in its use inside Turkey. No further detail on the alleged conspiracy is given.

The Libyan stockpile of chemical weapons was a matter of great concern during last year’s civil war in the country. There were fears that they may end up in the hands of the terrorists and used elsewhere in the world. However unlike Libya’s portable surface-to-air arsenal, no reports of the weapons going missing was made public.

Syria has a greater number of chemical weapons than Libya. Military experts say the agents in the Syrian stockpile is also more modern that what Gaddafi had produced for his military. Syria also didn’t join the Chemical Weapons Convention and is not obliged to declare what chemical weapons it possesses.

The chemical framing plot allegations come days after British journalist Alex Thomson from Channel 4 news accused a Syrian opposition group of trying to set him and his crew up to be killed by government forces. He said a western journalist death would give bad publicity for Damascus.

Syria is sliding back into violence after a UN-brokered peace plan failed to bring the rival forces in the country to negotiation table. The worst of the incidents of renewed bloodshed were two massacres of civilians in the villages of Houla and al-Qubair.

Opposition blame the killings on pro-government paramilitary forces, while Damascus says both incidents were provocations carried out by terrorist groups. The UN observer mission currently deployed in Syria failed to establish for certain who committed the atrocities.

The conflict in Syria has been raging for 15 months now, with the exact death toll difficult to establish. UN estimates that about 10,000 people have been killed in the violence.

July 13, 2012 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Syria: Terrorists Commit Al-Treimsa Massacre

Al-Manar | July 13, 2012

Dozens of civilians were killed and wounded when terrorists overran the village of al-Treimsa in Hama Countryside yesterday, SANA news agency reported.

“The terrorists, according to eye witnesses who appeared on Syrian TV to narrate the reality of events on the ground, ransacked, destroyed and burned scores of the village houses before the competent authorities arrived to the village,” SANA said.

Abo Arif al-Khalid, an eye witness from the targeted village, stated in a phone call to Syrian TV, that the village of al-Treimsa lived a nightmare when armed terrorist groups attacked it and opened random fire on its inhabitants and houses, killing more than 50 persons, and exploding houses, among which was the house of his cousin, it added.

A woman and her child were killed by the terrorists before the eyes of all the people there, added Abo Arif al-Khalid, regretting the absence of the Syrian Army or security personnel from the village.

”Had the Army or security personnel existed in the village, the terrorists wouldn’t have been able to overrun the village and perpetrate their massacres,” cried al-Khalid.

The security units, in response to al-Treimsa inhabitants’ pleas, clashed with the terrorists, inflicting massive losses upon them, capturing scores of them, confiscating their weapons, among which were Israeli-made machineguns, SANA revealed.

Three security personnel were martyred during the clashes, according to SANA reporter in Hama.

Meanwhile, an information source cited by SANA blasted the news circulated by some bloody media outlets, like al-Jazeera and al-Arabyia, as a bid to manipulate public opinion against Syria and its people and to bring foreign intervention in Syria on the eve of a UN Security Council session.

July 13, 2012 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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