English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 09/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 05/27-32/:”After this Jesus went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 08-09/2020
Lebanon to reduce subsidized items amid dwindling forex reserves: Official
Lebanon announces who will lead maritime border talks with Israel
France Pushes Lebanon Aid Conference to November
France to Organize Aid Conference for Lebanon in November
Army Arrests 14 Armed Individuals in North Bekaa
Aoun Slams 'Intransigence, Absence of Self-Evaluation'
Fugitive Killed after Wounding Troops at Army Checkpoint
UK Official Ends Virtual Visit to Lebanon, Urges 'New and Effective Govt.'
Ex-PMs 'Haven't Endorsed' Miqati's Initative, Hariri to 'Escalate Stance'
Hariri Says His Nomination for PM 'Not a Favor from Anyone', French Initiative 'Still Alive'
Hizbullah Bloc Says Border Talks Not 'Normalization' with Israel
Berri Hits Back at Geagea: Previous Electoral Laws were a Conspiracy
Lebanon Public Prosecution Refers Jordan’s Probe into Ammonium Ship to Judicial Investigator
Partition and Federalism: Self-Deceptive Assurance/Hussam Itani/Asharq Al-Awsat/October 08/2020
Lebanese Journalist Rami Naim: Peace With Israel Is Coming No Matter What;

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 08-09/2020

New Shelling Rocks Karabakh ahead of First Mediation Efforts
New Shelling Rocks Karabakh
Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to American poet Louise Glück
Trump says he won't participate in next debate after commission announces it will be virtual
Iran protesters chant ‘death to dictator’ after death of renowned musician Shajarian
US Treasury imposes sanctions on 18 major banks in Iran
Trump administration imposes crushing sanctions on Iran in defiance of European humanitarian concerns
Israel and Jordan sign historic airspace agreement
Former Saudi Ambassador To The U.S. Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Slams
Bahraini journalist: We're looking forward to working with Israelis
France Hints at Changing Stance Over Two-State Solution In Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Russian Conference on Syrian Refugees Stirs International Confusion
Turkey Rejects European Commission’s Report on Its Membership
Turkish, Greek FMs Hold First Meeting Since East Med Dispute
Turkish Lira Hits All-Time Low Due to Political Turmoil
Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad: Kuwait Upholds Regional, International Commitments

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 08-09/2020

L’impérialisme néo-ottoman et les vestiges de la guerre froide/Charles Elias Chartouni/October 08/2020
Turkey Rekindles the Armenian Genocide/Raymond Ibrahim/FrontPage Magazine/October 07/2020
The Battle of Lepanto: When Turks Skinned Christians Alive for Refusing Islam/Raymond Ibrahim/October 07/2020
U.S. Seizes 92 Websites Used by Iran to Spread Disinformation/FDD/October/08/2020
U.S. to Impose Sanctions to Choke Off Iran’s Financial Sector/FDD/October/Bloomberg/08/2020
Will Iran’s past become prologue for Nagorno-Karabakh?/Behnam Ben Taleblu/FDD/October 08/2020
McMaster and commander in chief/Clifford D. May/FDD/October 08/2020
Turkish Public Lender Fails Again to Scuttle Iran Sanctions Evasion Case/Aykan Erdemir/FDD/October 08/2020
Is Israel Victory Still Needed?/Yes, it offers the only path to end Palestinian rejectionism/Daniel Pipes/Jerusalem Post/October 08/2020
Turkey, Iran and Qatar have positioned themselves squarely against America’s allies in the Gulf./Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/October 08/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 08-09/2020

Lebanon to reduce subsidized items amid dwindling forex reserves: Official
Reuters/Friday 09 October 2020
Lebanon has about $1.8 billion of its foreign exchange reserves left available for subsidizing key food and other imports but could make this last for about six more months by scrapping support for some goods, an official source told Reuters. Crushed by a mountain of debt, Lebanon is facing its worst economic crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war, hammering the local currency and sending prices soaring. Many Lebanese have been plunged into poverty and are more reliant on subsidized food. Reducing subsidies risks adding to public anger in a nation that was convulsed by protests as the crisis erupted in 2019.
Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, who declined to comment for this story, has said subsidies would have to stop once the threshold for obligatory foreign exchange reserves was reached, without suggesting a timeframe.
The official source told Reuters the $1.8 billion still available could be made to last another six months by cutting support for a range of items, such as cashew nuts and vitamins. The source did not give a detailed list.
As dollar inflows have dried up, the central bank has provided foreign currency for fuel, wheat, and medicine imports at an official peg of 1507.5. Lebanese pounds to the dollar, well below the street rate that traders said was around 8,700 on Thursday. A list of about 300 other foods and basic goods have been subsidized at a 3,900. Salameh told Reuters in August that the central bank’s foreign currency reserves stood at $19.5 billion, of which obligatory reserves were $17.5 billion. Some analysts say the central bank’s reserves may in reality be lower than figures previously stated due to losses incurred amid the foreign exchange crisis. “We have known for this whole year that the reserves are eventually drying up, and yet no steps have been taken to create a social safety net,” said Nafez Zouk, lead economist and emerging markets strategist at Oxford Economics.

Lebanon announces who will lead maritime border talks with Israel
MEM/October 8, 2020
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun yesterday listed the members of the delegation that will take part in next week’s negotiations over its maritime borders with Israel, reported the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper.
This comes after officials from both countries, who remain formally at war, announced last week that they are to hold talks to end a long-running maritime border dispute. Israel and Lebanon have no diplomatic relations and each claim about 330 square miles of the Mediterranean Sea as within their exclusive economic zones. Lebanon’s Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc today said negotiating with Israel over maritime borders “is not connected to” making peace with Israel. However, in August, President Aoun said that Lebanon was “open” to peace negotiations.
The Lebanese negotiating team includes Brigadier-General Bassam Yassin, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Lebanese Army for Operations and Wisam Shbat, the head of the Lebanese Petroleum Administration. The planned talks will be the first negotiations between the two warring states on a civilian matter in 30 years, and the US could be set to mediate further negotiations over the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the border which separates Lebanon and Israel, in the near future. The talks are scheduled to take place in the border town of Naqoura and will be held under the auspices of the Unit

France Pushes Lebanon Aid Conference to November
Asharq Al-Awsat/Asharq Al-Awsat/October 08/2020
France will hold a humanitarian aid conference for Lebanon in November, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday. The conference was initially planned for the end of October. Le Drian also told the French National Assembly that the Lebanon international contact group would meet in the coming days to reiterate the need for the formation of a government. France has been spearheading efforts to push much-needed reform in Lebanon in wake of its unprecedented stifling economic crisis. French President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts have hit a wall however, with Lebanese officials failing to form a new government capable of kicking off the reform. Under the French roadmap, the new government would take steps to tackle corruption and implement reforms needed to trigger billions of dollars of international aid to fix an economy that has been crushed by a mountain of debt.

France to Organize Aid Conference for Lebanon in November
Naharnet/October 08/2020
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian declared that his country will organize a conference on humanitarian aid for Lebanon during the month of November, media reports said Thursday. The conference was initially scheduled to take place at the end of October. The French Foreign Minister indicated that the International Contact Group on Lebanon will meet in the coming days to emphasize the need to form a government in the crisis-hit country. The pace of the financial and economic crisis in Lebanon is exacerbating, with the Lebanese pound losing around 80% of its value to the dollar.
Lebanon is reeling from an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, a colossal explosion of its Beirut port and the outbreak of coronavirus. Since the Beirut port blast on August 4, Western governments have stepped up pressure on Lebanese leaders to put in place a government ready to implement sweeping reforms and unlock much-needed aid.

Army Arrests 14 Armed Individuals in North Bekaa
Naharnet/October 08/2020
The Lebanese army arrested 14 individuals who had been roaming the town of Harabta Valley in North Bekaa possessing weapons and ammunition in their vehicles, the Army Command-Orientation Directorate said in a statement on Thursday. The military confiscated the arms and ammo and the two vehicles and referred the detainees to the related authorities, the army said. As part of measures to maintain security, military units in Bekaa are conducting patrols and had set up temporary checkpoints in the area, the army concluded.
The security move comes following clashes over the weekend between armed clans in the Baalbek-Hermel area that left one person dead.

Aoun Slams 'Intransigence, Absence of Self-Evaluation'
Naharnet/October 08/2020
President Michel Aoun on Thursday lashed out at what he called the “intransigence in stances” and “the absence of self-evaluation.”“It is known that nations that lose their critical sense and refrain from reevaluating their behavior are doomed to backwardness and cannot build themselves or keep up with the times,” Aoun tweeted.“So until when will our country remain a hostage to the intransigence of stances and the absence of self-evaluation?” he added.

Fugitive Killed after Wounding Troops at Army Checkpoint
Naharnet/October 08/2020
A fugitive was on Thursday shot dead at an army checkpoint in the northern region of Akkar, the military said. In a statement, the army said the incident happened as “a patrol from the Intelligence Directorate was chasing a stolen car driven by the fugitive Rabih al-Shami.”“After he reached an army checkpoint in the Akkar area of Beit Ayyoub, the checkpoint’s members tried to stop him, but he refused to comply and tried to escape, colliding into the checkpoint and injuring two troops,” the army added. The soldiers were then “obliged to fire into the air and then at the car, which resulted in his death,” the military said.
The incident comes following a series of deadly clashes and incidents in northern Lebanon involving security forces and members of Islamic State-linked groups.

UK Official Ends Virtual Visit to Lebanon, Urges 'New and Effective Govt.'
Naharnet/October 08/2020
The UK Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Sir Philip Barton, paid a virtual visit to Lebanon in which he relayed the UK's "ongoing and longstanding support to the people of Lebanon" and called on Lebanese leaders to "put their personal interests aside and urgently form a new government," the British embassy said on Thursday. He was briefed by Country Director and Representative of the World Food Program in Lebanon Abdallah al-Wardat, World Health Organization Representative in Lebanon Dr. Iman Shankiti and World Bank Regional Director Middle East Saroj Kumar Jha, on what the U.N. is doing to help Lebanon's many challenges. "With local and international partners delivering UK funded programmes, Philip saw first-hand the UK’s immediate response to the COVID19 outbreak back in March, the devastating 4 August blast at Beirut port and the UK’s long-standing support to education, humanitarian and economic sectors," the embassy said in a statement. He also heard from a member of the UK's Emergency and Medical Team providing training to health workers at Sidon's government hospital as part of their emergency deployment to Lebanon to tackle the COVID19 outbreak in Lebanon, which has been made significantly more challenging following the devastating Beirut port explosion. Philip was also briefed on the humanitarian and education-related challenges across Lebanon and how UK development is supporting vulnerable and host communities. He also met with caretaker Foreign Minister Charbel Wehbe and discussed "the challenges Lebanon is facing, the ongoing suffering of its people and the ailing economic situation," underlining the importance of Lebanon’s political leaders working to "alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people," the embassy added. At the end of his visit, Philip said: "It was very impressive to see how the UK's support to Lebanon is alleviating some of the suffering of the people including the most vulnerable. But this is not enough on its own. A new and effective Government must be formed urgently to implement the long awaited reforms." "As I said to Foreign Minister Wehbe, there is also much work that needs to be done now by the acting Government to tackle the issues facing the Lebanese people," he added.

Ex-PMs 'Haven't Endorsed' Miqati's Initative, Hariri to 'Escalate Stance'
Naharnet/October 08/2020
Former premiers Saad Hariri, Fouad Saniora and Tammam Salam met yesterday with ex-PM Najib Miqati at the Center House and did not endorse his initiative for the formation of a new government, media reports said on Thursday. LBCI television added that Hariri is “inclined to escalate his stance by declaring that he is not nominated” for the PM post and that “he will not nominate anyone. “Let the majority name its candidate and form its government,” LBCI quoted Hariri as saying. Miqati had on Wednesday evening announced that he nominates Hariri for the premiership. He also said that he himself is not running for the post amid the current circumstances. The ex-PM’s initiative calls for the formation of a techno-political government comprised of 14 technocrats and six political ministers. President Michel Aoun has scheduled the binding parliamentary consultations to name a new PM for October 15.

Hariri Says His Nomination for PM 'Not a Favor from Anyone', French Initiative 'Still Alive'
Naharnet/October 08/2020
Ex-PM Saad Hariri announced Thursday that his nomination for the PM post would not be a “favor from anyone,” noting that he has a major parliamentary bloc and known representation.
“There are three projects in the country -- that of Hizbullah and the Amal Movement which is linked to foreign forces, another that wants to pull Lebanon out of this crisis and works according to the ‘Lebanon first’ principle, and a third for overbidders who have brought the country to its current state,” Hariri said in a live interview on Lebanon’s MTV. Noting that the the rotation of ministerial portfolios was Speaker Nabih Berri's idea during the formation of Tammam Salam's government, Hariri said the stances of Hizbullah and Amal were “escalated after the U.S. sanctions after the initial positivity towards the French initiative.”“Does the finance portfolio deserve torpedoing the rescue initiative for halting the collapse and reconstructing Beirut? We agreed at the Pine Residence that the political parties would keep away from the government and that specialists would be named ministers for the rescue mission,” he added.
“The French initiative has not fallen and (French President Emmanuel) Macron spoke of a mistake that happened but he then said that Saad Hariri had made a brave initiative,” Hariri went on to say.
He also noted that Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Progressive Socialist Party head Walid Jumblat had rejected that he be nominated to form the new government, each for his own “agenda.”
Hariri also revealed that his latest phone call with Jumblat had been “stormy,” disclosing that the PSP leader asked him during the conversation to “accept granting the finance portfolio to the Shiite sect for good.”
Separately, the ex-PM said that the issue of border demarcation with Israel “moved forward due to the sanctions that were imposed on some parties.”

Hizbullah Bloc Says Border Talks Not 'Normalization' with Israel
Agence France Presse/October 08/2020
Hizbullah on Thursday said U.S.-backed talks next week aimed at delineating Lebanon's disputed maritime border did not signify "reconciliation" or "normalization" with Israel. Lebanon and Israel, which are still technically at war, last week said they had agreed to begin U.N.-brokered negotiations over the shared frontier, in what Washington hailed a "historic" agreement. Iran-backed Hizbullah is both an armed group that has fought several wars against Israel and a major force in Lebanese politics with seats in parliament.
The talks had "absolutely nothing to do with either any reconciliation with the Zionist enemy... or policies of normalization recently adopted... by Arab states," Hizbullah's parliamentary bloc said. "Defining the coordinates of national sovereignty is the responsibility of the Lebanese state," it said in a statement, the party's first official comment on the start of the negotiations. Last month, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates became the first Arab nations to establish relations with Israel since Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric has said the Lebanon-Israel border talks, to be held at the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL in the southern town of Naqoura, would start around mid-October.
Lebanon's parliament speaker and key Hizbullah ally Nabih Berri last week announced the talks would go ahead, sparking criticism over what was perceived as being Hizbullah's tacit approval to Washington mediating despite previously opposing this over the United States having such strong ties to its arch foe Israel. The deal to start border talks follows years of U.S. shuttling between both sides. As well as the discussions on the maritime border to be facilitated by the U.S., a separate UNIFIL-brokered track is also to address the disputed land border. The issue of the sea frontier is especially sensitive as crisis-hit Lebanon hopes to continue exploring for oil and gas in a part of the Mediterranean disputed by Israel. In February 2018, Lebanon signed its first contract for offshore drilling for oil and gas in two blocks in the Mediterranean with a consortium comprising energy giants Total, ENI and Novatek. Lebanon in April said initial drilling in Block 4 had shown traces of gas but no commercially viable reserves. Exploration of the other, Block 9, has not started and is more controversial as ownership is disputed by Israel. Hizbullah is credited with ending two decades of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. The Shiite group fought a 33-day war against Israeli forces in 2006 that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and over 160 Israelis, a majority soldiers.

Berri Hits Back at Geagea: Previous Electoral Laws were a Conspiracy
Naharnet/October 08/2020
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday snapped back at Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea over a tweet related to the electoral law.
“All the previous electoral laws can be considered a conspiracy against Lebanon’s future, except for the current proposal,” Berri said in a statement released by his press office. “One should read with the spirit of triumphing for Lebanon and not against the other camp,” he added. Geagea earlier tweeted that had it not been for the presence of the LF’s bloc in parliament, “the electoral law conspiracy would have been passed yesterday.”The draft law submitted by Berri’s Development and Liberation bloc turns Lebanon into a single electoral district and is based on full proportional representation without so-called preferential votes.

Lebanon Public Prosecution Refers Jordan’s Probe into Ammonium Ship to Judicial Investigator
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Asharq Al-Awsat/October 08/2020
Lebanon’s Public Prosecution on Tuesday referred to the judicial investigator the outcome of the investigations conducted by the Jordanian judicial authorities into the Rhosus ship that carried ammonium nitrate to the port of Beirut in 2013.
Nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrates exploded at the port on Aug. 4. What ignited the nitrates remains unknown. More than two dozen people, mostly port and customs officials, have been detained so far. The judge in charge of the investigation has questioned top security officials, former cabinet ministers and port employees. The National News Agency (NNA) reported that the Public Prosecution office referred to Judicial Investigator Fadi Sawan the results of the probe conducted by Jordan into the Rhosus. State Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat had requested the Jordanian authorities to question those who had contributed to the Rhosus docking into the port and exposing it to damages that prevented it from leaving. In parallel the State Prosecution is awaiting a response from the relevant authorities in Mozambique, Africa, over a Lebanese request to investigate the ship. According to the NNA, the vessel, which was carrying ammonium nitrate, was heading from the port of Batumi in Georgia to Mozambique when it deviated from its specified course at the request of the ship’s owner. The vessel docked at Beirut port to load and transport equipment used in seismic surveys to be later unloaded at the Jordanian port of Aqaba through the maritime agent of GSC, which has offices in Jordan. However, the NNA reported that the ship was unable to load any of the additional heavy equipment. The company was subsequently forced to transport the equipment via another ship to the port of Aqaba. The Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Major General Stefano Del Col, announced that UNIFIL would leave Beirut port two weeks after the end of its mission to remove the rubble from the site of the explosion.

Partition and Federalism: Self-Deceptive Assurance
Hussam Itani/Asharq Al-Awsat/October 08/2020
The August 4 explosion shattered the already fragile links that had tied the Lebanese together. The fact that the loss of life and destruction were concentrated in Beirut’s Christian neighborhoods reinforced residents’ sentiments of having fallen victim to a scheme contrived by some among their own to impose Muslim domination, whether it be Sunnis or Shiites, over what remains of Lebanon’s Christians.
The illusion that some Christians convinced themselves in - since the agreement signed by then Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah- has shattered. It had been widely believed that the accord guaranteed Christians’ retrieval of their power after the Syrian forces withdrew and the March 14 factions failed to absorb the Aounist wave. Instead, the March 14 factions manifested a desire to contain and eliminate this wave through what had been known as the “quadripartite alliance” between the Future Movement, Progressive Socialist Party, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. The Christians saw this as an alliance among Muslim parties aiming to perpetuate the marginalization of Christians that had begun with Michel Aoun being forced out of Baabda in 1990.
The Aounists proposed a counter-alliance with Hezbollah, the strongest of their four opponents. The Aounists would provide Hezbollah with the “national” cover that ends its sectarian isolation in exchange for Hezbollah’s pledge to support all their aspirations, first to lead the Christians, then to ascend to presidency of the republic and control the Christian’s share of political and administrative posts. This is what happened, until the Christian public began to realize how little it had to gain from Michel Aoun assuming the presidency, with only a narrow circle of partisans and beneficiaries reaping massive gains, material and immaterial, from Aoun’s presence in the presidential palace.
Unprecedentedly aggressive spoil-sharing characterized the first three years of Michel Aoun’s reign, as the parties to the “presidential settlement” took corruption, embezzlement, clientelism and plunder to new extremes. Christians who did not meet the criterion of blind loyalty to the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and Michel Aoun’s son-in-law were thrown out of the Eden of the state, while their Shiite ally’s influence on state institutions and Lebanon’s foreign policy has grown to the extent that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership considers Lebanon to be among the Arab countries under their control, amid an unprecedented deterioration of Lebanon’s relations with the Arab world and international community, which had been providing significant amounts of capital that cannot be underestimated given the country’s political-economic model since its independence. Criticism of this model and explanations of its shortcomings are beside the point.
The October 17 uprising’s failure, the explosion at the Port of Beirut and the toppling of the French initiative are three developments that Hezbollah played a pivotal role in, preventing the emergence of a rescue plan that could extricate Lebanon from the disaster brought about by a corrupt and murderous political class, not to mention the general sense that there is no hope for reform or even to patch up the collapse...All of this justified Christians and non-Christians’ claims that perpetuating the governance framework has become impossible, as it has prevented the erection of a state of law and citizenship and imposed the authority of an armed group with a foreign agenda. Physical annihilation now lurks behind the door after Christian society and culture were dealt knockout blows.
In their minds, the solution is to establish a federal system in which federations have wide-ranging authority, thereby assuring minorities that they can determine their fate, enjoy their freedoms, and preserve culture. In the event of this proposal’s failure, Lebanon should be divided into independent sovereign entities. Each of the entities then chooses the path that its dominant group sees fit. There are two problems with this vision. In addition to the fact that federalism does not solve foreign policy, defense and financial policy issues, it also mandates that these are the federal state’s prerogatives, and those who present these proposals for partition and federalism disregard explaining how these sovereign or united entities would manage political life internally, make their plans for the future and elect their leaders. What is important, for those who hold the aforementioned vision, is that these entities would free themselves of the burden of the other; the "Muslim"- Sunni or Shiite. Perhaps its distinct cultural heritage (another illusion in today’s world) will facilitate a return to past economic prosperity.
Unfortunately, Lebanese groups’ history could accurately be described as a series of intra-sectarian rather than inter-sectarian wars. From the battle of Ain Dara between the Qaysis and the Yemenis, both under Druze leadership, in 1711, to the Shiite-Shiite war between 1988 and 1990, the intra-Christian war between the Lebanese Forces and Michel Aoun’s army, the wars fought among brothers were fiercer and more destructive than the wars against traditionally hostile sects.
There is no use in distorting this history, nor in conjuring up exceptions and reasons that downplay the events of these intra-sectarian wars because the reasons that create conflict between sects are exactly the same as those that lead to strife between members of the same sect: The absence of a framework for generating leadership, rotating power within the community concerned and distributing wealth. In other words, the total absence of all requisites for the Lebanese society or sectarian groups need to become a modern entity amid the dominance of every form of oriental or medieval tyranny.
Regardless of whether or not the Lebanese become convinced of federalism or division, reality will impose the same simple political truths. Who rules, how and why? The sources of conflict will be recreated at the level of each sect and clan, similarly to the events unfolding at the moment between two tribes in the Bekaa who do not differ in their views, lineage, sect or love for resistance.

Lebanese Journalist Rami Naim: Peace With Israel Is Coming No Matter What;
MEMRI/October 08/2020
Normalization Started When Speaker Berri Announced Border Negotiations
Source: MTV (Lebanon)
Lebanese journalist Rami Naim, the publisher and general manager of Lebanese news site elsiyasa.com, said in an October 2, 2020 interview on MTV (Lebanon) that Lebanon's recent agreement to border negotiations with Israel, mediated by the U.S., is a sign that Lebanon will eventually normalize relations with Israel. He said that the fact the Parliament Speaker Berri, who represents the Shiites in government, is a party to these negotiations means that Lebanon has recognized the existence of the State of Israel and that Lebanon is no longer conducting an "existential struggle" against Israel, the struggle has now become limited to border demarcations. Naim said that these negotiations spell the end of the resistance against Israel and that peace is coming even if Lebanon is the last country to sign a peace agreement with Israel.
Rami Naim: "What happened yesterday marked a new phase in the relations between the State of Lebanon and the State of Israel. Today, we have relations with and we recognize a state that we used to consider to be an enemy, which plunders and occupied the Palestinian lands. Yesterday, something else happened..."
Interviewer: "Did Parliament Speaker Berri recognize Israel yesterday?"
Naim: "Yesterday... Speaker Berri, on behalf of the Shiite Arabs... Their role in Lebanon has changed."
Interviewer: "The Shiite Arabs including Hizbullah?"
Naim: "Absolutely. Berri speaks on behalf of the Shiite duo [Amal and Hizbullah], and not just on behalf of the Amal Movement. The war [with Israel] has transformed from an existential war to a war over borders. There is no longer an existential war with Israel. Israel's statehood was accepted [by Lebanon]... This means that there will be no resistance from now on. I believe that the resistance has started to sense that it must undergo a change. It has learned the lesson of the Maronite duo – the Lebanese forces and the Aounists. When these two failed to recognize the situation, the result was that Geagea ended up in prison and Aoun in exile.
"I believe that the resistance is reading the global changes well, and it is lowering its head to weather the storm. It's only problem is how to release this change to its public that has sacrificed martyrs, has had people taken captive, and has made many sacrifices over the years. Soleimani was martyred nine months ago today. To this day, there hasn't been even a slap on the wrist in retaliation. The game has changed in the world. Peace is coming no matter what, and the normalization with Israel started with Berri's speech yesterday. I believe that Speaker Berri laid the cornerstone for normalization with the State of Israel.
"You cannot tell me that you want to negotiate with Israel over the border demarcation, and then say that you do not recognize Israel. If you do not recognize Israel, you cannot negotiate with it.
"Okay, we may be the last country to sign peace and normalization accords, but yesterday we declared that we are ready. Even if we will be the last country, we are willing to do it. I believe that what happened yesterday was the last nail in the real resistance against Israel."

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 08-09/2020

New Shelling Rocks Karabakh ahead of First Mediation Efforts
Agence France Presse/October 08/2020
Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region spilled over into Thursday, with fresh shelling in the province's capital ahead of a first meeting of international mediators in Geneva. Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov was to meet diplomats from France, Russia and the United States, who make up the "Minsk Group" that has sought a solution to the Karabakh conflict since the 1990s. Armenia's foreign minister will not be attending, after Yerevan ruled out talks between the two countries' top diplomats as long as clashes are ongoing. Zohrab Mnatsakanyan will instead meet his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Monday.Explosions and sirens sounded in Nagorno-Karabakh's regional capital Stepanakert as the city continued to face regular shelling, AFP journalists said.
Heavy bombardments have levelled many homes since fighting erupted late last month and Stepanakert is pockmarked with unexploded ordinance and wide craters from shelling. Defence officials in Azerbaijan and Armenia said fighting continued into Thursday, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy losses and accusing the other of shelling civilian areas. Alongside the new bombardments in Stepanakert, Azerbaijan said Armenian shelling on several villages near the frontline had left people dead and wounded.
Armenia's rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan told AFP on Wednesday that the renewed fighting has displaced around half of Karabakh's 140,000 residents and forced some 90 percent of its women and children from their homes.
The fighting in one of the most combustible frozen conflicts resulting from the fall of the Soviet Union erupted on September 27, with Azerbaijan insisting the region must return to its control.
Thousands forced from homes -
Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan in a 1990s war that claimed the lives of some 30,000 people. The Armenian separatists declared independence, but no countries recognise its autonomy and it is still acknowledged by world leaders as part of Azerbaijan. Dozens of civilians have been confirmed killed in the fighting and the Armenian side has acknowledged more than 300 military deaths. Azerbaijan has not admitted to any fatalities among its troops. Officials in Baku said Wednesday 427 dwellings populated by roughly 1,200 people had been destroyed.
International leaders have called for an immediate halt to the fighting and President Vladimir Putin Wednesday described the flare-up as a "tragedy", calling for a ceasefire "as quickly as possible".
But there are no signs yet of the conflict abating and Turkey's strong backing for Azerbaijan has sown fears in the West that the conflict could spiral into a full-blown war embroiling Ankara with Moscow, which has a military treaty with Armenia. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Wednesday said that Turkey's support of Azerbaijan risks fuelling the "internationalisation" of the conflict. Putin and French leader Emmanuel Macron are among world leaders to denounce the reported deployment of pro-Ankara fighters from Syria and Libya to Karabakh. and Iran on Wednesday warned of "terrorists" who had joined the conflict from abroad. Yerevan is in a military alliance of former-Soviet countries led by Moscow and any escalation of fighting over Karabakh that spills over into Armenia could risk triggering a Russian intervention. But Moscow has shown little appetite for any escalation and Putin on Wednesday noted the fighting was persisting in Karabakh, not in Armenia itself.
 

New Shelling Rocks Karabakh
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region spilled over into Thursday, with fresh shelling in the province's capital ahead of a first meeting of international mediators in Geneva.
Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov was to meet diplomats from France, Russia and the United States, who make up the "Minsk Group" that has sought a solution to the Karabakh conflict since the 1990s.
Armenia's foreign minister will not be attending, after Yerevan ruled out talks between the two countries' top diplomats as long as clashes are ongoing. Zohrab Mnatsakanyan will instead meet his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Monday.
Explosions and sirens sounded in Nagorno-Karabakh's regional capital Stepanakert as the city continued to face regular shelling, AFP journalists said.
Heavy bombardments have levelled many homes since fighting erupted late last month and Stepanakert is pockmarked with unexploded ordinance and wide craters from shelling. Defense officials in Azerbaijan and Armenia said fighting continued into Thursday, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy losses and accusing the other of shelling civilian areas. Alongside the new bombardments in Stepanakert, Azerbaijan said Armenian shelling on several villages near the frontline had left people dead and wounded.
Armenia's rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan told AFP on Wednesday that the renewed fighting has displaced around half of Karabakh's 140,000 residents and forced some 90 percent of its women and children from their homes.
Dozens of civilians have been confirmed killed in the fighting and the Armenian side has acknowledged more than 300 military deaths. Azerbaijan has not admitted to any fatalities among its troops. Officials in Baku said Wednesday 427 dwellings populated by roughly 1,200 people had been destroyed.
International leaders have called for an immediate halt to the fighting and President Vladimir Putin Wednesday described the flare-up as a "tragedy", calling for a ceasefire "as quickly as possible". French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Wednesday said that Turkey's support of Azerbaijan risks fueling the "internationalization" of the conflict. Putin and French leader Emmanuel Macron are among world leaders to denounce the reported deployment of pro-Ankara fighters from Syria and Libya to Karabakh. and Iran on Wednesday warned of "terrorists" who had joined the conflict from abroad.

Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to American poet Louise Glück
CNN/October 08/2020
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the American poet Louise Glück "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna on Wednesday. They discovered the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool for "rewriting the code of life."

Trump says he won't participate in next debate after commission announces it will be virtual
CNN/October 08/2020
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will not participate in the second presidential debate with Joe Biden after the Commission on Presidential Debates said the event will be held virtually in the wake of the President's positive coronavirus diagnosis."I am not going to do a virtual debate," Trump said on Fox Business. "I am not going to waste my time on a virtual debate."

Iran protesters chant ‘death to dictator’ after death of renowned musician Shajarian
Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya EnglishFriday 09 October 2020
A gathering of fans of the late Iranian composer and singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian in the capital Tehran outside the hospital where he died turned into an anti-government protest Thursday evening, with demonstrators chanting “death to the dictator,” according to videos shared on social media.
Shajarian, 80, died of a heart attack in Tehran’s Jam hospital on Thursday, his son Homayoun announced on Instagram.
The legendary musician had become a symbol for the Iranian opposition after he declared his support for the protests over the disputed reelection of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.
“Death to the dictator,” people outside Tehran’s Jam hospital were seen chanting in one video shared on Twitter. This chant is commonly used in anti-government protests in Iran and is directed at Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Protesters also chanted against Iran’s state broadcaster, which had refrained from playing Shajarian’s songs since 2009. “Our radio and television is our disgrace,” protesters were seen chanting in another video shared on Twitter.
Other videos showed a heavy presence of security forces, as well as clashes between protesters and security forces. Security forces beat protesters with batons and arrested a number of them, according to social media reports.

US Treasury imposes sanctions on 18 major banks in Iran
AFP/October 08, 2020
The Treasury Department said it was designating 18 major Iranian banks
The sanctions will be effective in 45 days, the department said
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran's banking sector, taking a major new step aimed at crippling the arch-rival's economy weeks ahead of US elections.
The Treasury Department said it was designating 18 major Iranian banks, a step that could largely cut off the nation of 80 million people from the world's financial system just as it tries to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Trump administration did not list specific accusations against most of the banks, instead declaring broadly that the entire Iranian financial sector may be used to support the government's contested nuclear program and its "malign regional influence."
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the action would "stop illicit access to US dollars.""Our sanctions programs will continue until Iran stops its support of terrorist activities and ends its nuclear programs," he said in a statement.
The Treasury Department said it was exempting transactions in humanitarian goods such as food and medicine. But European diplomats say that US sanctions nonetheless have dire humanitarian consequences, with few institutions in other nations willing to take the risks of legal action in the world's largest economy. The Treasury Department said its sanctions will be effective in 45 days, giving companies time to wind down transactions in Iran. The timeframe will also likely give anyone working with Iran a chance to see the outcome of the November 3 election, with polls showing Trump trailing to Democrat Joe Biden, who supports a return to diplomacy with Iran. Trump has pursued a policy of "maximum pressure" aimed at reining in Iran, the arch-rival of US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Trump administration has already moved to stop all Iranian oil exports and bolted from a deal negotiated under former president Barack Obama through which Iran curtailed its nuclear program.

Trump administration imposes crushing sanctions on Iran in defiance of European humanitarian concerns
John Hudson/The Washington Post/October 08/2020
The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Iran’s financial sector on Thursday in defiance of European allies who warned that the move could have devastating humanitarian consequences on a country reeling from the novel coronavirus and an ongoing currency crisis.
The measures target the few remaining banks not currently subject to secondary sanctions in a move European governments say is likely to diminish channels Iran uses to import humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine, officials said.
Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin challenged that assertion in a statement, saying the designation of 18 Iranian banks “reflects our commitment to stop illicit access to U.S. dollars” and that “today’s actions will continue to allow for humanitarian transactions to support the Iranian people.”
The move represents a major pre-election push on a signature Trump administration policy that has succeeded in devastating the Iranian economy, while failing to moderate Tehran’s behavior or limit its nuclear program. Since President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has exceeded the limits of the agreement and enriched more uranium than it did before the accord’s signing. U.S. officials in Iraq have also experienced an uptick in rocket fire and other attacks by Iranian-backed militias.
Thursday’s move to effectively blacklist the entire Iranian financial industry has been pushed by Israeli officials and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish U.S. nonprofit organization that has advocated for regime change in Iran. “To land a 12th-round economic knockout, it’s time for Mr. Trump to throw one more punch: Blacklist the entire Iranian financial industry,” wrote the foundation’s Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg in an Aug. 25 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
The action relies on an executive order Trump issued in January giving Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mnuchin broad authority to sanction any part of Iran’s economy.
Some Iran hawks say they hope the move will finally collapse an Iranian economy already squeezed by lost oil sales and a vast array of U.S. sanctions imposed on the country after Trump withdrew from the deal.
The Trump administration was initially cool to the idea, but the combined lobbying efforts of Iran hawks and a growing chorus of GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.), succeeded in advancing the policy, officials said.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. policy.
Opposition to the move inside and outside the Trump administration is related to the delivery of humanitarian goods to the country. Last year, Iran imported $1 billion worth of medical goods and grain worth $3.5 billion.
The governments of Britain, France and Germany, also known as the “E3,” worry that if the remaining Iranian banks are sanctioned, Iran’s foreign assets would be de facto frozen, “thus further exacerbating the shortage of foreign currency to pay for humanitarian imports,” a senior European official said.
“The concern has always been that sanctions simply criminalize all financial engagement with Iran,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. “The biggest concerns have been around medicine and medical devices. There have been shortages of basic drugs such as insulin and specialized chemotherapy and other lifesaving treatments. As the toll of sanctions has widened, this has intensified with concerns about basic poverty in Iran.”
The move is likely to further devaluate Iran’s currency, create a liquidity crunch and be viewed in Tehran as a significant escalation, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of Bourse & Bazaar, a think tank focused on Iran’s economy.
In a statement, the Treasury Department said it has issued a general license allowing for humanitarian transactions to continue. “Today’s action targets the Iranian regime and is not directed at the people of Iran,” the department said.
But European officials have doubted the effectiveness of such moves. “Even clear humanitarian exceptions could only counteract this to a limited extent,” said a senior European official.
Batmanghelidj said “the risk profile has changed” with the new measures, meaning that foreign companies and banks involved in trade, humanitarian or otherwise, “will be even more reticent than before.”
John Hudson
*John Hudson is a national security reporter at The Washington Post covering the State Department and diplomacy. He has reported from

Israel and Jordan sign historic airspace agreement
Jerusalem Post/October 08/2020
The deal allows flights crossing over one country to also fly over the other. Israel and Jordan reached an agreement allowing flights to cross over both countries’ airspace, the Transportation Ministry announced on Thursday. The deal allows flights crossing over one country to also fly over the other.
The agreement will significantly shorten the length of flights from Israel to the Gulf and East Asia, cutting the time it takes to travel between countries and cutting gas costs and pollution. It will also allow the UAE and Bahrain, which recently made peace with Israel, along with other countries in the region, to fly over Israeli airspace. Jerusalem and Amman reached the deal after several years, but peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia allowing Israeli flights to the UAE over its airspace hastened the process. The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, known as EUROCONTROL, played a major part in negotiating the agreement. Transportation Minister Miri Regev said “we are once again breaking new boundaries, and this time it is in the air. “Thanks to this agreement, Israel is better integrated into the region,” she added. “We are opening new routes for cooperation in transportation, economics and diplomacy with the states sharing borders and shared interests with us, and a partnership in the vision for regional peace.”

Former Saudi Ambassador To The U.S. Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Slams
MEMRI/08 October/2020
Palestinian Leadership For Badmouthing Gulf Leaders Over Peace With Israel: They Have Always Placed Their Bets On The Losing Side
Al-Arabiya Network (Dubai/Saudi Arabia)
Former Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al-Saud chastised the Palestinian leadership for its conduct following Israel's peace and normalization agreements with the UAE and Bahrain. His comments were made in an interview with Al-Arabiya Network (Dubai/Saudi Arabia) on October 5, 2020. Prince Bandar said that the Palestinian leaders had "the audacity to say despicable things" about the Gulf countries and their leaders. He added that while the Palestinian cause is just, the Palestinian leaders have failed at garnering support for this cause.
Prince Bandar further said that the Palestinian leaders have historically placed their bets on the losing party - from Haj Amin Al-Husseini's support for the Nazis during WWII to siding with Saddam Hussein in his occupation of Kuwait in 1990 and subsequently, his missile attacks against Saudi Arabia. He said that the Palestinians would repeatedly come to Saudi Arabia for financial aid and advice, and then they would take the aid and ignore the advice.
He added that Saudi Arabia would defend the Palestinians publicly even though it knew they were in the wrong. Prince Bandar added that the Palestinians now consider Iran to be their ally, while Iran "peddles the Palestinian cause" and wants to "liberate Jerusalem through Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria." He mocked Turkey for calling its ambassador back from the UAE while keeping the Turkish ambassador in Tel Aviv. Prince Bandar bin Sultan served for over two decades as the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., upon his return, he served as the Secretary General of the Saudi National Council and as Director General of the Saudi Intelligence Agency. His daughter, Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, is the current Saudi Ambassador to the United States.
Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al-Saud: "What I have been hearing from the Palestinian leaders in recent days is painful, to tell you the truth. It was painful because it was of such a low level. These were things that should not be said by people who are in charge of a cause they want everyone to support. They had the audacity to say despicable things about the Gulf countries and their leaders. This is not just disagreeable. It is unacceptable. However, when I consider this from a different perspective, it is not surprising that they so easily talk about 'traitors' and a ' stab in the back,' because this is their way of treating one another.
"The Palestinian cause is a just cause but it has failing advocates, whereas the Israeli cause is not just, but it has successful advocates. In a nutshell, this is everything that has happened in the past 70-75 years. There is a common denominator between the Palestinian leaders throughout history: They always place their bet on the losing side. This comes with a price. Amin Al-Husseini, in the 1930s, placed his bet on the Nazis in Germany. We all know what has become of Hitler and Germany. Fast forward [to the 1990s]. None of us can forget, especially in the Gulf states, the picture of Abu Ammar [Yasser Arafat] visiting Saddam Hussein, in 1990, after the occupation of Kuwait. An Arab people under occupation...All the Gulf States had welcomed the Palestinians, and Kuwait in particular used to welcome the Palestinian leaders. And then we saw Abu Ammar, in Baghdad, kissing Saddam, laughing with him, and congratulating him for what he did. This was very painful for all the Gulf nations.
"A few months later, the campaign for the liberation of Kuwait began, and Saddam Hussein attacked the Saudi capital with missiles. It was the first time that the Saudi capital was under a missile attack by anybody. Even Israel has never attacked Saudi Arabia with missiles. By the way, we were the ones who bought these missiles for Saddam, and supported him in his war against the Persians. Then we were astonished, once again, when we saw young [Palestinians] who had been led astray, in Nablus, dancing to celebrate the bombardment of Riyadh, holding pictures of Saddam Hussein. These things cannot be forgotten, but we decided to rise about it- not for the sake of the Palestinian leaders, but for the sake of the people.
"I believe that historically, out of good intentions, we in Saudi Arabia have repeated [our mistakes] time and again in our approach towards [the Palestinians]. In other words, they would ask for advice and [financial] aid. We would give them unconditional aid and we would give them our advice. Then, they would take the aid and do the opposite of what we advised them. Then they would fail and return to us, and we would support them even though we knew they were wrong, and knew that they know we told them the truth. Then, we would go even further, and stand up to the whole world in order to justify the actions of the Palestinians, even though we knew they were wrong.
"They have come to believe that there would be no price to pay for all their offenses against the Saudi leaders, the Saudi state, or the Gulf states and their leaders. I believe that today, the circumstances have changed.
"Who do the Palestinians consider to be their ally today? Iran that peddles the Palestinian cause at the expense of the Palestinian people? Khamenei who wants to liberate Jerusalem through Yemen, Lebanon and Syria? The road to Jerusalem is well known, if they really want [to liberate it]. The leaders of Hamas go to Turkey to thank it for its positions in support of Hamas and the Palestinian cause. Why? Because Erdogan decided to call back Turkey's ambassador in the UAE, in support of the Palestinian cause. Can anyone tell me if the leaders of Hamas asked Erdogan in that meeting...Charity begins at home. Instead of calling your ambassador back from the UAE, paying for his plane ticket, and making him come and go-why don't you expel the Israeli ambassador from Ankara? Why don't you call back your ambassador from Tel-Aviv?"

Bahraini journalist: We're looking forward to working with Israelis
Khaled Abu Toameh/Jerusalem Post/October 08/2020
“Journalists have a big impact on public opinion," the President of the Bahraini Journalists Association told "The Jerusalem Post."
Ahdeya Ahmed al-Sayed, president of the Bahraini Journalists Association, said on Thursday that she expects journalists from her country to play a very important and crucial role in promoting normalization with Israel. She said that she and many of her colleagues were looking forward to working with Israeli journalists after Bahrain became the second Gulf state to sign a peace accord with Israel. She also lashed out at the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate for attacking her and Bahrain over the peace treaty with Israel. “Journalism has always led public opinion,” Sayed said in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post. “Journalists have a big impact on public opinion. If you are living in a country where journalists are refusing normalization and are not welcoming it, it’s going to be very challenging to convince people that this political step is something positive and that they have to look at it in a positive way.”
Sayed, the first female to be elected to the 600-member Bahraini Journalists Association, won a seat for the first time for Bahrain at the International Federation of Journalists Gender Council that aims to protect and defend the rights of female journalists around the world.
Sayed, who was also appointed to the board of trustees of the Dubai-based Arab Women Federation, began her journalism career at the age of 18 by working as a junior reporter for the Gulf Daily News in 1991. Over the past 30 years she continued working in the print media until she became deputy editor-in-chief of the Daily Tribune and editor-in-chief of Al-Salam. She previously worked for Bahrain Television in English as a newsreader and later as the head of the station. In addition, she hosted weekly radio and television programs that shed light on current political issues, changes in Arab societies and women’s rights.Since she was elected as president of the Bahraini Journalists Association, Sayed has been working for the progress of women in the field of journalism by involving them in higher administrative positions. Asked how journalists in Bahrain and the UAE have been covering the peace agreements with Israel, Sayed said that she is “very satisfied” from what she sees and feels. “I’m very happy and proud at the way they are covering the peace [with Israel],” she said. “Now the journalists are talking about tolerance, acceptance and respect for other religions, countries and human rights. This suddenly appeared to be a reality. I did see a few cases of journalists who refused normalization, but a few is nothing compared to hundreds of other journalists in the television, radio and print media who have supported the peace agreements.”
Sayed said she was enthusiastically looking forward to cooperating with Israeli journalists and media organizations. “We need to have strong, people-to-people relations; we need to have an active role through what we write,” she added. “On the other hand, Israeli journalists need to help us achieve our goal. We already got to meet some Israelis through virtual meetings, but there should be face-to-face interaction. Face-to-face communication is more important so we could sit together and discuss how we should coordinate things. I feel that in the next few months we will take bigger steps.”
Asked if her views reflect those of a majority of journalists in the Gulf states, Sayed replied: “I can’t speak on behalf of certain countries in the Gulf. I can only speak about Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and I can say yes. The views of journalists in these countries are positive. Even the few negative voices that I personally interacted with in the beginning are now calming down. I think it could have been an emotional reaction from them in the beginning because people have been told all their lives that Israel is an enemy. Of course, there are also those who have political agendas and are never going to swallow the peace with Israel.”
According to Sayed, the reactions of many Arab journalists to virtual meetings she’s been organizing with Israelis in the past few weeks have been very positive. “Their reactions and responses are something that I highly appreciate,” she said, adding that journalists from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Algeria have been supportive of normalization activities with Israelis. “This shows how these journalists are embracing what Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates did and how happy they are.”
The prominent Bahraini media personality told the Post that she felt “very bad” about the reaction of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate to the normalization agreement between Bahrain and Israel, and her support for cooperation between Arab and Israeli journalists.
The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has, over the past few years, been boycotting Israeli journalists and media organizations. The Syndicate has also strongly condemned Sayed and other Arab journalists for talking to Israelis.
“A journalists’ entity should be the most respectful to freedom of expression,” Sayed said. “Political positions are personal stances, but the Palestinian syndicate was the first to issue a statement blacklisting me after I spoke in favor of the peace agreements with Israel.
They threatened to take me to court; they condemned me strongly. They accused me of criticizing the Palestinians. I said, no, I criticized the leaders of the Palestinians. I never offended any people, but it’s my right to express my opinion about the leaders of any organization, especially if one of the organizations is a terrorist group.”
She said that she has since refused to talk to any Palestinian media outlet that is involved with the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. “Another Palestinian media group was very aggressive toward Bahrain,” she said. “They called us normalizers and enemies of humanity. It was quite disappointing to see the Palestinian reactions. I didn’t expect that from the Palestinians.”After the attacks on her, Al-Sayed filed a complaint against Palestinian media groups with the International Federation of Journalists, but she maintains she still hasn’t received a response.
“I ignored the Palestinian attacks on me for three weeks, and I said let them have their emotional reactions, it’s ok,” she said. “But when I felt that I was being targeted I went to the international federation. The Palestinian journalists were angry because I criticized their leaders. They said that I should have come to them before attacking Palestinian leaders.”Asked to explain the growing criticism of Palestinian leaders by many Arabs, Sayed remarked: “Palestinians burned our flags on the streets. They have insulted us. When we were in school, we used to raise money to send to the Palestinians. We have the right to think and analyze. We have the right to say let’s see what the other side’s story is. Palestinian leaders are losing. They are losing the source of income and funding that they have had for 70 years. I think that within the next couple of months, you will see the emergence of new Palestinian faces. I hate to say that, but I think the new leaders of the Palestinians will continue to represent the same ideologies. The faces will change, but the ideologies will remain the same, unless they feel that they are now being completely isolated. If the Palestinians don’t change their leaders, their losses are going to be huge.”
 

France Hints at Changing Stance Over Two-State Solution In Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Ramallah - Kifah Zaboun/Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
The Palestinian leadership will discuss with French officials the recent reports claiming Paris has changed its position on the two-state solution, according to a top Palestinian source. The source explained that if France has another solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, then it must present it and show prove how it could be implemented. He stressed that Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the leadership still insist on a two-state solution, with Palestine as an independent state with the 1967 borders and Jerusalem as its capital.
The source stressed that it is not possible to establish a single state because it requires granting Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem equal rights with Israelis, which Tel Aviv won’t accept or allow.
This also means that Palestinians will have the same rights as Israeli citizenship holders, including candidacy and voting in any elections. Recent reports claimed that the French ambassador to Israel, Eric Danon, said that Paris is working to change its position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Speaking during a session with a research center promoting strategic relations between Europe and Israel, Danon said that France will not negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. He indicated that it is a bilateral issue and France wants to take into account the new situation and return to the negotiations.
The envoy indicated that France prefers a two-state solution, but that doesn’t mean they can’t accept something else, adding that his country will accept any solution agreed upon by the Palestinians and the Israelis.
The French ambassador added that six months ago, no one could have imagined Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain would sign a peace agreement.
He said the Middle East has completely changed because of the United States, Iran, and Turkey, adding that Israel has become a new regional power.
The Palestinians must take into account their weak position on the international and Arab arenas, stressed Danon. Diplomatic sources in Paris revealed that France does not rule out the possibility of a different solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, according to the Maariv newspaper. The diplomats explained that the French diplomacy is having difficulty backing the two-state solution because it has become unrealistic.They told Maariv that the ambassador was clear in saying that if Israelis and Palestinians reached a solution, France will not reject it, stressing the importance of resuming negotiations as soon as possible. They warned that Palestinians could lose everything now. The idea of the one-state has been discussed before among Palestinian and US officials, considering the establishment of two states is far-fetched and impossible. However, the Authority has always rejected this idea. The Palestinian leadership continues to adhere to internationally sponsored negotiations leading to an independent Palestinian state, despite the dramatic international and regional developments regarding the peace process and the ties with Israel. However, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said that the US-Israeli pressure on the Palestinians will cease after the US elections.Shtayyeh criticized “the joint US-Israeli pressure in favor of the re-election of US President Donald Trump," He called upon “some Arab brethren to learn from history,” indicating that Tel Aviv does not respect the promises made, urging them not to be deceived by Israel. He pointed out that Palestine is “still living in harsh circumstances, including the financial siege and pressures.” However, he also expressed his confidence that the Palestinians will survive the siege and achieve national unity.

Russian Conference on Syrian Refugees Stirs International Confusion
London- Ibrahim Hamidi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
The Russian Defense Ministry’s decision to hold an international conference on Syrian refugees in Damascus on Nov. 10-14 stirred various reactions from local and international parties. While the Syrian side expressed discomfort at the initiative, international organizations and Western countries were confused over the means to deal with the conference’s provisions, especially those pertaining to the conditions of return, the political path, and reconstruction.
Observers noted that the plan implemented by the Hmeimim base came after reports that the Russian Foreign Ministry was seeking to take over the Syrian file with the military intervention in Syria starting its sixth year.
Those reports were based on a recent visit by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Damascus last month, at the head of a high-level Russian delegation. In addition, changes were made to the responsibilities of Russian officials monitoring the Syrian file: Russian Envoy Sergei Vershinin, who is known to be close to the Defense Ministry, was given “lesser tasks”, while former ambassador to Syria, Alexander Kinshchak, was assigned new missions, in his capacity of director of the Middle East and North Africa Department at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Western and international officials were surprised upon receiving an invitation from the Russian side in response to the army’s initiative, to hold an international conference in the Syrian capital to discuss “the return of refugees and displaced persons in various parts of the world to their homeland.”
The invitation read that, given that the Syrian crisis was “relatively stable” and the burdens on host countries increased, the international community should redouble its efforts to provide “comprehensive support to all Syrians wishing to return to their country and create appropriate conditions for their living, especially with regard to infrastructure, living facilities, and humanitarian support.”This approach was met with a reservation from Damascus, especially with regard to the Russian talk about “a stable situation” and “ending the military operations”, as stated by Lavrov in recent remarks.
In fact, the Syrian government is “not satisfied” with the understandings between Moscow and Ankara over Idlib and between Moscow and Washington over East of the Euphrates. As the Russian plan stressed the need to “discuss providing support to refugees in the world and bringing peace to Syria,” Western diplomats expressed their countries’ reservations about a political solution outside the framework of the Geneva process, which is held under the auspices of the United Nations and within the context of UN Security Council Resolution 2254. At the same time, diplomats “questioned” the possibility of the Russian Defense Ministry’s success in this “political track.” They cited Russia’s “modest accomplishments” during the Astana process and the National Dialogue Conference in Sochi, which as held at the beginning of 2018.
A senior Western official also expressed “reservations” about the talk about “infrastructure reconstruction”, as Europe and the United States have stated their unwillingness to contribute to reconstruction unless a “credible political process” is implemented. This position was clearly expressed during the annual International Donors’ Conference in Brussels. On the other hand, representatives of the UN institutions, who were invited by Moscow, had varied reactions. While UN officials in Damascus expressed a desire to attend the “Russian conference”, others emphasized the need to “respect the United Nations standards” regarding the conditions for the safe return of refugees. No indications point to a collective intention by Western countries to enter into negotiations with the Russian side on how to deal with the upcoming “refugee conference,” at a time when overlapping regional and international files may deter some countries from “angering” Russia.

Turkey Rejects European Commission’s Report on Its Membership
Ankara- Saeed Abdulrazek/Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
Turkey rejected the European Commission’s report on negotiating Turkey’s accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said the report was a reflection of “the EU’s prejudiced, unconstructive, and double-standard approach.”
The report failed to mention the EU’s own “responsibilities and commitments” and criticized Turkey with “unfounded arguments,” the ministry said in a statement. “In particular, its biased, unfair and disproportionate criticism of Turkey's foreign, security, and economic policies, as well as our governmental system, elections, fundamental rights, certain judicial and administrative decisions, as well as the legitimate measures taken against terrorism, show how the EU is far from objective," the ministry said. The Foreign Ministry added that sections of the report on tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean had smeared the Commission's objectivity and were entirely based on Greek-Greek Cypriot claims, noting that Ankara was acting in line with democratic norms and international law. "Our sincere wish is for the EU to look at the EU candidate country Turkey, not through the selfish and narrow vision of certain circles, but through the common interest and vision of our continent," it stated. The European Union’s executive said on Tuesday that Turkey’s government was undermining its economy, eroding democracy, and destroying independent courts. In another context, Turkey's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday criticized a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to take interim measures against the country at the request of Armenia, which is locked in a conflict with Azerbaijan. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy said in a statement that the ECtHR's move dealt a blow to its credibility and reputation as it lacked any legal basis and the court did not even consult with the Turkish government. “By adopting this decision based on social media posts and press reports submitted by Armenia to promote its groundless allegations and by no means requesting our Government’s observations, the ECtHR has dealt a blow to its credibility and reputation," Aksoy said. In another development, Ankara’s military intends to test its Russian-built S-400 air defense system within the next two weeks. “Missile firing will take place” near the Black Sea coastal city of Sinop, a “notice to airmen” issued by the Turkish government read. Another notice listed civil aviation routes in the area that would be closed during the exercise.

Turkish, Greek FMs Hold First Meeting Since East Med Dispute
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
The foreign ministers of Turkey and Greece met on Thursday for the first time since a crisis emerged between the two NATO members over energy exploration and territorial rights in the eastern Mediterranean, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. Turkey's Mevlut Cavusoglu and Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias met on the sidelines of the Global Security Forum in the Slovak capital Bratislava, it said. Turkish state media said the two men discussed "bilateral and regional issues," Reuters reported. Turkey and Greece sharply disagree over rights to offshore resources and the extent of continental shelves. Tensions simmered in August when Turkish and Greek warships collided, but later eased when Ankara and Athens agreed to resume talks. Greece has accused Turkey of illegally carrying out seismic exploration in parts of the Mediterranean claimed by Athens and Cyprus, but Turkey said its operations are within international law.
Ankara withdrew its exploration vessels from contested waters last month to "allow for diplomacy" ahead of a meeting of EU leaders. After the summit the bloc said it would punish Turkey if it continued its operations in the region.
Meanwhile, Greece called on Turkey to step back from reopening an abandoned beach resort in Cyprus, warning that Athens and Nicosia stand ready to bring the issue before the European leaders meeting next week, its government spokesman said on Thursday. Northern Cyprus reopened the beach of a resort abandoned since the 1974 conflict on the island, Turkish state media said on Thursday, taking a step supported by Ankara but condemned by Greek Cypriots and causing concern internationally.

Turkish Lira Hits All-Time Low Due to Political Turmoil
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
Turkey’s lira hit a record low for the second straight session on Thursday weighed by concerns over possible US sanctions and the Caucasus conflict. The lira sank 0.7% to an all-time low of 7.9389 to the dollar, Reuters reported. This came as other emerging market stocks and currencies rose on the prospect of individual COVID-19 relief measures in the US. While the Turkish central bank is expected to step in and support the lira, doubts persist over the scale of intervention the bank will be able to provide, given that it has already been burning through its reserves to prop up the currency. The currency has been among the worst performers this year on worries about Turkey’s depleted forex reserves and sharply negative real interest rates, and was now being hit by the growing geopolitical concerns.

Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad: Kuwait Upholds Regional, International Commitments
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 8 October, 2020
Kuwait's new Crown Prince Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad al-Sabah took the oath of office in parliament on Thursday, pledging the state's commitment to democracy and peace and calling on Kuwaitis to shun divisions.
The assembly unanimously endorsed Sheikh Meshal for the role following last week's death of Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad. New ruler Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad assumed power last Wednesday. Sheikh Meshal said Thursday Kuwait would uphold its regional and international commitments and "its path of peace and democratic approach.”He pledged to "raise the banner of popular participation and promote a tolerant spirit that shuns division."

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 08-09/2020

L’impérialisme néo-ottoman et les vestiges de la guerre froide
Charles Elias Chartouni/October 08/2020
شارل الياس شرتوني: الإمبريالية العثمانية الجديدة وبقايا الحرب الباردة
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La prolifération des interventions de la Turquie islamiste sur maints théâtres opérationnels s’étendant des provinces ottomanes du monde arabe ( Syrie, Irak ), au bassin méditerranéen ( Grèce, Chypre ) et jusqu’aux confins de l’Afrique du Nord ( Lybie, Tunisie, Algérie ), et du Caucase du Sud ( Azerbaïdjan, Arménie ), nous laisse perplexes quant à l’opportunité du maintien de son adhésion à l’OTAN et du partenariat avec les États de la CEE. La politique de subversion délibérément poursuivie par le régime islamiste a déjà atteint un seuil de gravité qui remet en question le bien-fondé de ces accords et leur pertinence opérationnelle. La politique de déstabilisation est relayée par des pétitions de principe qui remettent en cause le traité de Lausanne ( 1923 ), le tracé des frontières consécutifs aux deux guerres mondiales et de la guerre froide, et mettent en relief une stratégie de destruction ouverte et insidieuse des équilibres géopolitiques en place. Nous n’avons plus affaire à des entorses de parcours ou a un opportunisme de circonstances, mais plutôt à un changement de paradigme qui conteste les fondements de la république Kémaliste et la configuration géopolitique qui lui est consubstantielle.
Nous passons de manière résolue du partenariat à déclinaisons multiples au rejet systématique de tous les ancrages institutionnel, idéologique, géopolitique et diplomatique qui ont defini jusque-là le statut de la Turquie post-impériale et islamique. La réhabilitation acharnée de l’imaginaire islamique, les marqueurs géopolitiques d’une nouvelle ère néo-ottomane, le démantèlement systématique des institutions démocratiques, la remise en état des politiques de discrimination à l’endroit des grandes et petites minorités ( alévie, kurde, arménienne et grecque ) et de la politique de terreur d’État à l’égard des oppositions plurielles, ne font qu’entériner l’hypothèse de la mutation paradigmatique dans une Turquie qui est en passe de rompre avec les amarres qui la rattachent à un passé entièrement désavoué. L’invalidation des accords Sykes-Picot ( 1916 ), et les embardées en Méditerranée et dans le Caucase la remettent, une fois de plus, en vis à vis avec la Grèce et la Russie, mettent au défi leurs sanctuaires géo-stratégiques respectifs, et démontrent la fragilité structurelle des ordres géopolitiques en place et leur volatilité.
Il est grand temps de redéfinir les axes géostratégiques de la sécurité occidentale, d’en circonscrire les paramètres idéologique, économique et territorial et de mettre fin aux incertitudes dont se nourrit cette politique ambivalente et intérimaire d’une Turquie résolument islamiste, néo-impériale et qui se joue de tous les registres et leviers de déstabilisation au sein des États et au niveau inter-étatique. L’instrumentalisation du terrorisme islamique dans les entreprises de subversion ( Syrie, Irak, Lybie, Nagorno-Karabach/ Artsakh, ... ), la manipulation des enjeux migratoires et du statut de l’islam au sein des démocraties occidentales, et la remise en cause de la géopolitique méditerranéenne ( Grèce, Chypre ) devraient à elles seules instruire le dossier, et décider du cours de la politique à venir vis à vis d’un politique impériale qui se croit tout permis. L’endiguement, les coups de semonce, les mesures de rétorsion, les sanctions économiques, l’appui ouvert aux forces de l’opposition, et la guerre font désormais partie d’un répertoire pénal qui devrait être monté en épingle sans vergogne. Il est déjà temps de faire échec et mat à un dictateur sans scrupules et qui se croit incontournable et victorieux à terme. Les menaces totalitaires sont à prendre au sérieux, évaluer à leur juste mesure et détruire sans états d’âme.

Turkey Rekindles the Armenian Genocide
Raymond Ibrahim/FrontPage Magazine/October 07/2020
ريموند إبراهيم: تركيا تعيد إحياء الإبادة الجماعية للأرمن

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As it has done in other arenas where “extremists” are attacking moderates or Christians—from Syria to Libya to Nigeria—Turkey is spearheading another jihad, this time against Christian Armenia.
Context: Fighting recently erupted in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which borders Armenia and Azerbaijan. Although it is ethnically Armenian, after the dissolution of the USSR, the territory was allotted to Muslim Azerbaijan. Since then, hostilities and skirmishes have erupted, though the current one, if not quenched—an Azerbaijani drone was shot down above the Armenian capital and Azerbaijan is threatening to bomb Armenia’s unsecure nuclear power plant—can have serious consequences, including internationally.
By doing what it does best—funding, sponsoring, and transporting terrorists to troubled regions—Turkey has exacerbated if not sparked tensions. Several reports and testimonials, including by an independent French journalist, have confirmed that Turkey is funneling jihadi groups that had been operating in Syria and Libya—including the pro-Muslim Brotherhood Hamza Division, which kept naked, sex slave women in prison—to this latest theater of conflict.
As French president Macron recently explained, “We now have information which indicates that Syrian fighters from jihadist groups have (transited) through Gaziantep (southeastern Turkey) to reach the Nagorno-Karabakh theatre of operations…. It is a very serious new fact, which changes the situation.”
The “quality” of these incoming “freedom fighters”—as the Western mainstream media, particularly during the Obama era, was wont to call them—is further evidenced by their attempts to enforce sharia, Islamic law, on some of their more secularized hosts in Azerbaijan.
After asking, “Why has Turkey returned to the South Caucasus 100 years [after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire]?” Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, answered in a statement: “To continue the Armenian Genocide.” This is a reference to the well documented massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, 750,000 Greeks and 300,000 Assyrians—a total of 2.5 million Christians—slaughtered at the hands of Turks and in the name of jihad.
While Pashinyan is correct in characterizing the latest hostilities as a reflection of Turkey’s attempt “to continue the Armenian Genocide” of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, in fact, the continuum of Turkic attacks on Armenia stretch back more than a thousand years ago, when the Turks first cleansed the Armenians from their ancient homeland, also in accordance with jihadi ideology. Then and now, Azerbaijanis participated. During one of the eleventh century jihads on Armenia, the great cross of an ancient church was torn down, mocked and desecrated, and then sent to adorn a mosque in Azerbaijan; more recently, after hostilities erupted, Azerbaijanis surrounded the Armenian embassy in Washington, D.C. this last summer, while chanting about jihad.
The Armenian prime minister continues:
For Turkey, however, continuing a genocidal policy is not only a means of implementing Armenophobia, but also a pragmatic task. Armenia and the Armenians of the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on the way of continued Turkish expansion towards the North, the North East, and the East, and the realization of its imperialistic dream. It is no longer merely the Karabakh issue, nor a security issue of the Armenian people. It is now an issue of international security, and today, the Armenian people are defending also international security, assuming what may be a new historic mission.
In other words, he is saying that only Christian Armenia (Georgia would be included too) stands between Turkey and some sort of unification with the many Muslim nations to its east (the “Stans,” e.g., Turkmenistan).
Certainly Turkey’s ambitions are not to be doubted. Whether by citing history’s most sadistic jihadis as paragons of virtue and emulation, or by transforming the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, or by helping to destabilize moderate Muslim governments and slaughter Christians with its jihadi militias, Turkey’s imperialistic dreams of resuccisitating the Ottoman Empire have been increasingly on display.
The editor-in-chief of Yeni Safak, a Turkish newspaper, recently called for as much in an article partially titled “Turkey is a global power. Now it’s time for Azerbaijan to rise.” After saying that Turkey had taken “a century-long hiatus” from its “geopolitical” ambitions and its “region-builder mind that founded very powerful empires on earth,” the Turkish daily claimed that “Our aim is not to spread conflicts but to replace, reinstate what rightfully belongs to us. Our aim is to keep alive and maintain our region, our people, our resources, our identity, and belonging.”
Despite all this and as it was during Obama’s role in the “Arab Spring,” the U.S. finds itself on the side of the jihad, even if unwittingly. “The international community, especially the American society,” Pashinyan warned, “should be aware that U.S.-made F-16s are being used to kill Armenians in this conflict.” Because both the U.S. and Turkey are NATO members, Turkey is acquiring and using against Armenians weapons from the U.S. And so history continues to repeat itself—in all ways.

The Battle of Lepanto: When Turks Skinned Christians Alive for Refusing Islam
Raymond Ibrahim/October 07/2020
ريموند إبراهيم: في معركة ليبانتو سلخ الأتراك جلود المسيحيين وهم أحياء لرفضهم الإسلام

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Drawing of the torture and subsequent flaying of Marco Bragadin, for rejecting the invitation to Islam.
Today in history, on October 7, 1571, one of the most cataclysmic clashes between Islam and the West — one where the latter for once crushed and humiliated the former — took place.
In 1570, Muslim Turks — in the guise of the Ottoman Empire — invaded the island of Cyprus, prompting Pope Pius V to call for and form a “Holy League” of maritime Catholic nation-states, spearheaded by the Spanish Empire, in 1571. Before they could reach and relieve Cyprus, its last stronghold at Famagusta was taken through treachery.
After promising the defenders safe passage if they surrendered, Ottoman commander Ali Pasha — known as Müezzinzade (“son of a muezzin”) due to his pious background — had reneged and launched a wholesale slaughter. He ordered the nose and ears of Marco Antonio Bragadin, the fort commander, hacked off. Ali then invited the mutilated infidel to Islam and life: “I am a Christian and thus I want to live and die,” Bragadin responded. “My body is yours. Torture it as you will.”
So he was tied to a chair, repeatedly hoisted up the mast of a galley, and dropped into the sea, to taunts: “Look if you can see your fleet, great Christian, if you can see succor coming to Famagusta!” The mutilated and half-drowned man was then carried near to St. Nicholas Church — by now a mosque — and tied to a column, where he was slowly flayed alive. The skin was afterward stuffed with straw, sown back into a macabre effigy of the dead commander, and paraded in mockery before the jeering Muslims.
News of this and other ongoing atrocities and desecrations of churches in Cyprus and Corfu enraged the Holy League as it sailed east. A bloodbath followed when the two opposing fleets — carrying a combined total of 600 ships and 140,000 men, more of both on the Ottoman side — finally met and clashed on October 7, 1571, off the western coast of Greece, near Lepanto.
According to one contemporary:
The greater fury of the battle lasted for four hours and was so bloody and horrendous that the sea and the fire seemed as one, many Turkish galleys burning down to the water, and the surface of the sea, red with blood, was covered with Moorish coats, turbans, quivers, arrows, bows, shields, oars, boxes, cases, and other spoils of war, and above all many human bodies, Christians as well as Turkish, some dead, some wounded, some torn apart, and some not yet resigned to their fate struggling in their death agony, their strength ebbing away with the blood flowing from their wounds in such quantity that the sea was entirely coloured by it, but despite all this misery our men were not moved to pity for the enemy. … Although they begged for mercy they received instead arquebus shots and pike thrusts.
The pivotal point came when the flagships of the opposing fleets, the Ottoman Sultana and the Christian Real, crashed into and were boarded by one another. Chaos ensued as men everywhere grappled; even the grand admirals were seen in the fray, Ali Pasha firing arrows and Don Juan swinging broadsword and battle-axe, one in each hand.
In the end, “there was an infinite number of dead” on the Real, whereas “an enormous quantity of large turbans, which seemed to be as numerous as the enemy had been, [were seen in the Sultana] rolling on the deck with the heads inside them.” The don emerged alive, but the pasha did not.
When the central Turkish fleets saw Ali’s head on a pike in the Sultana and a crucifix where the flag of Islam once fluttered, mass demoralization set in, and the waterborne mêlée was soon over. The Holy League lost twelve galleys and ten thousand men, but the Ottomans lost 230 galleys — 117 of which were captured by the Europeans — and thirty thousand men.
It was a victory of the first order, and Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestants rejoiced. Ottoman commander Ali Pasha al-Müezzinzade engaging the Christian galleys
Practically speaking, however, little changed. Cyprus was not even liberated by the Holy League. “In wrestling Cyprus from you we have cut off an arm,” the Ottomans painfully reminded the Venetian ambassador a year later. “In defeating our fleet [at Lepanto] you have shaved our beard. An arm once cut off will not grow again, but a shorn beard grows back all the better for the razor.”
Even so, this victory proved that the relentless Turks, who in previous decades and centuries had conquered much of Eastern Europe, could be stopped. Lepanto suggested that the Turks could be defeated in a head-on clash — at least by sea, which of late had been the Islamic powers’ latest hunting grounds. As Miguel Cervantes, who was at the battle, has the colorful Don Quixote say: “That day … was so happy for Christendom, because all the world learned how mistaken it had been in believing that the Turks were invincible by sea.”
Modern historians affirm this position. According to military historian Paul K. Davis, “More than a military victory, Lepanto was a moral one. For decades, the Ottoman Turks had terrified Europe, and the victories of Suleiman the Magnificent caused Christian Europe serious concern. … Christians rejoiced at this setback for the Ottomans. The mystique of Ottoman power was tarnished significantly by this battle, and Christian Europe was heartened.”No matter how spectacular, however, defeat at sea could not shake what was first and foremost a land power — so that more than a century later, in 1683, some 200,000 armed Ottomans had penetrated as far as and besieged Vienna. But that — to say nothing of Turkey’s many other jihads down to the present — is another story.
Historical quotes in this article were excerpted from the author’s Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West — a book that CAIR and its Islamist allies did everything they could to prevent the U.S. Army War College from learning about.

U.S. Seizes 92 Websites Used by Iran to Spread Disinformation
FDD/October/08/2020
The U.S. Justice Department seized 92 websites it said were used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to spread disinformation.
Four of the web domains -- Newsstand7.com, usjournal.net, usjournal.us and twtoday.net -- were disguised as genuine news outlets based in the U.S., which the Justice Department determined were controlled by the Iranian guard. The sites appeared to target Americans with Iranian propaganda about U.S. domestic and foreign policy, according to documents released Wednesday.
“Iran cannot be allowed to hide behind fake news sites,” said David Anderson, U.S. attorney for Northern California. “If Iran wants to be heard using U.S. facilities, it must reveal its true colors.”
The other 88 domains targeted audiences in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, while similarly claiming to be genuine local news sites that were actually being operated to “spread pro-Iranian disinformation,” according to a statement from the DOJ.
Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. helped with the investigation by the FBI. The seized domains were also identified by threat researchers at FireEye Inc.’s Mandiant unit in 2018. At the time, the Iranian guard’s operations were peddling anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian themes, while also promoting specific U.S. policies deemed be favorable to Iran, including the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, according to Mandiant.
In 2018, Mandiant noted that the disinformation campaign did not appear to target the U.S. midterm elections that year. But at least one account changed its Twitter name from ‘@libertyfrontpr’ to @Berniecats’ to align its messaging with that of U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
“Iran has become a prolific actor in the information operations space,” said John Hultquist, senior director of analysis at Mandiant Threat Intelligence. “Similar to their cyber-attack capability, they have evolved over a series of brash operations.”
All the domains were owned and operated by companies in the U.S. The seizure occurred under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the U.S. president broad authority to regulate financial transactions in a national emergency. This was the same tool President Jimmy Carter used in 1979 to freeze Iran’s financial assets in the U.S. during the hostage crisis.
The IRGC’s use of these domains violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act which requires foreign operatives in the U.S. to openly declare their status so the U.S. government and its residents are aware of the source of information and the identity of those “attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy and law,” the Justice Department said. The domains targeting Americans were never registered under FARA, it added.
“Fake news organizations have become a new outlet for disinformation spread by authoritarian countries as they continue to try to undermine our democracy,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General John Demers. “We will continue to use all of our tools to stop the Iranian Government from misusing U.S. companies and social media to spread propaganda covertly, to attempt to influence the American public secretly, and to sow discord.”

U.S. to Impose Sanctions to Choke Off Iran’s Financial Sector
FDD/October/Bloomberg/08/2020
The Trump administration plans to impose sanctions as soon as Thursday on Iran’s financial sector to further choke off its economy from the outside world, according to people familiar with the matter.
The move would effectively leave Iran isolated from the global financial system, slashing the few remaining legal linkages it has and making it more dependent on informal or illicit trade. Earlier rounds of U.S. sanctions have crushed its economy by curbing oil sales and most other trade.
The administration has been weighing the move for weeks, Bloomberg News reported last month. Under the measures, the administration could blacklist as many as 14 banks in Iran that have so far escaped some U.S. restrictions, using authorities designed to punish entities associated with terrorism, ballistic-missile development and human-rights abuses.
The Washington Post reported earlier Wednesday that the sanctions are expected to be announced Thursday.
The measures would have two objectives, according to people familiar with the plans, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations: close one of the few remaining financial loopholes allowing Iran’s government to earn revenue, and stymie Democrat Joe Biden’s promise to re-enter a 2015 nuclear deal if he wins the presidency in November.
Under the plan, the administration would designate the Iranian financial sector under Executive Order 13902, which President Donald Trump signed in January to clamp down on mining, construction and other industries. That would not only affect banks, but also remittance processors, money-changers and the informal transfer system used frequently in the Muslim world known as hawala.
Then the administration would blacklist roughly 14 banks in Iran that have so far escaped some U.S. restrictions, under authorities designed to punish entities associated with terrorism, ballistic-missile development and human-rights abuses. The Trump administration announced sweeping new sanctions on Iran’s financial sector, a move intended to choke off the country’s economy from the rest of the world and raise pressure on its government to enter a new deal constraining its nuclear program.
Under the measures, announced Thursday by the Treasury Department, the administration blacklisted 18 banks in Iran that have so far escaped some U.S. restrictions, using authorities designed to punish entities associated with terrorism, ballistic-missile development and human-rights abuses. The Iranian financial sector was also designated as off-limits under an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in January.
The new sanctions were revealed in a web posting by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. They had been telegraphed in advance by U.S. officials, who have been weighing the move for weeks.
“Today’s action to identify the financial sector and sanction eighteen major Iranian banks reflects our commitment to stop illicit access to U.S. dollars,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement. “Our sanctions programs will continue until Iran stops its support of terrorist activities and ends its nuclear programs.”
He said the actions “will continue to allow for humanitarian transactions to support the Iranian people.”
The move all but severs Iran from the global financial system, slashing the few remaining legal links it has and making it more dependent on informal or illicit trade. The country’s economy has already been crushed by the loss of oil sales and most other trade thanks to existing American restrictions imposed after Trump quit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said in a tweet after the sanctions were announced. “Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties. But conspiring to starve a population is a crime against humanity. Culprits & enablers—who block our money—WILL face justice.”
The sanctions proposal had initially gotten a chilly reception from several Trump officials for fear it could complicate the provision of international humanitarian assistance to Iran, which has been hard hit by the Covid-19 outbreak and existing U.S. sanctions. Two of the banks on the sanction list, Middle East Bank and Saman Bank, have been doing the bulk of Iran’s humanitarian trade transactions.
People familiar with planning for the sanctions said they have two objectives. They want to close one of the few remaining financial loopholes allowing Iran’s government to earn revenue, and stymie Democrat Joe Biden’s promise to re-enter the nuclear deal if he wins the presidency next month.
Hardliners who had pushed for the sanctions, including several Republican senators and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which had initially floated the idea, argued the humanitarian costs could be mitigated through sanctions carveouts and so-called comfort letters from the Treasury Department. They argue that that trade in humanitarian goods is largely exempt from sanctions and Treasury Department also shields such trade conducted with Iran’s central bank.
Iran has continued to do business with several countries including China and the United Arab Emirates, with total non-oil foreign trade reaching $24.6 billion in March-August, according to the country’s customs administration.
Critics of the hardline approach say Iran is already so heavily sanctioned that one more set of restrictions won’t make much difference. Indeed, the administration introduces new sanctions against Iran on a near daily basis, including Thursday, when the Treasury Department designated two Iranian judges under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
Despite all those moves, the Iranian regime has so far remained defiant and refused to meet with Trump officials. The U.S. has also grown increasingly isolated at the United Nations Security Council, where 13 of 14 other countries on the panel -- including several U.S. allies -- have rejected its bid to reimpose, or snap back, restrictions targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

Will Iran’s past become prologue for Nagorno-Karabakh?
Behnam Ben Taleblu/FDD/October 08/2020
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is calling for “stability” and an “end” to the current fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan — but should the conflict between its northern neighbors escalate, Tehran may well deepen its involvement.
What to watch
Iran’s recent history — specifically the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) — provides a model of how that escalation might happen.
The big picture
The foreign-supplied arsenals boasted by both Armenia and Azerbaijan carry the risk of missile salvos targeting one another’s population centers, as seen in the “War of the Cities” between Iran and Iraq.
Another similarity between the two conflicts is the role of proxy forces.
Iran created Lebanese Hezbollah in 1982, the same year it invaded Iraq. During the war, Tehran relied on the Badr Organization, a group of Iraqi Shiite exiles to fight Saddam Hussein’s army.
Now, there are reportedly Syrian jihadists fighting on Azerbaijan’s side, with support from Turkey, a development Iran’s Rouhani called “unacceptable.”
The Iran-Iraq War also demonstrates that new alliances can come together, and multiple conflicts can converge, over the course of a larger war.
For example, Iran unsuccessfully took on the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf during its war with Iraq.
Where things stand: Turkey is already playing an active role in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and another neighbor, Russia, clearly has interests to protect as well.
What to watch
Less attention is being played to the role of a third neighbor, Iran, which previously backed Christian Armenia rather than Shiite Azerbaijan when the two went to war in the 1990s, a decision best explained by geopolitics.
Tehran officially supports Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity (Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan’s borders), but has been accused of favoring Armenia and providing supplies to the Armenian-aligned government in Nagorno-Karabakh prior to the recent flare-up (Iran denies that).
There have been at least two indications that Iran may take a larger role now: ethnic Azeri protests in Iran in favor of Azerbaijan, and warnings by Iranian security officials that a spillover of shelling into Iranian territory won’t be tolerated.
Iran may also seize any opportunities to export weapons and offset adversaries like Israel, which is a leading arms exporter to Azerbaijan.
The bottom line
If the peaceful settlement Rouhani and others are calling for arrives soon, those calculations won’t come into play. If not, we could see shadows of another war that began four decades ago.
*Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

McMaster and commander in chief
Clifford D. May/FDD/October 08/2020
There was a simplicity to the Cold War. Free peoples, and those who aspired to that status, were threatened by communism, a totalitarian ideology aggressively propagated by the Soviet Union, an expansionist empire. The Cold War also was a “forever war”: No one knew when it would end.
And then, of course, it did end, the way a character in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” describes having gone bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.”
After that, Americans took a holiday from history, one abruptly brought to a halt on Sept. 11, 2001. Over the years since, other threats to the U.S. have emerged or, more precisely, been widely (though not universally) recognized. The response of American leaders has left much to be desired.
During the 13 months he served as National Security Advisor to the commander in chief, H.R. McMaster made a strenuous effort to bring what he calls “strategic competence” to the Rubik’s Cube that is national security in the 21st century.
He has now distilled his thinking into a book. It’s titled “Battlegrounds” (note his use of the plural), and subtitled: “The Fight to Defend the Free World” (note his conviction that there is, still, a Free World, and that it is worth defending).
Brief background: Lt. Gen. McMaster served 34 years in the U.S. Army (including deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan), picking up a doctorate in history along the way, and teaching at West Point. He’s currently the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, and Chairman of the Board of Advisors at FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).
“Battlegrounds,” Gen. McMaster writes in the preface, “is not the book most people wanted me to write.” That book would have been a gossipy tell-all, focusing on Donald Trump’s unique persona.
Instead, his purpose was to “help transcend the vitriol of partisan political discourse and help readers understand better the most significant challenges to security, freedom, and prosperity.”
Gen. McMaster begins by identifying a serious flaw in much of that discourse: “Strategic narcissism,” which he defines as “the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States, and to assume that the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans.” This can result in either “overconfidence” or “resignation,” postures that “share the conceit of attributing outcomes almost exclusively to U.S. decisions and undervaluing the degree to which others influence the future.”
Among the examples he cites: President Bush’s underappreciation of the risks of action when he invaded Iraq in 2003, and President Obama’s underappreciation of the risks of inaction when he withdrew all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011.
The corrective to strategic narcissism is “strategic empathy,” defined as “the skill of understanding what drives and constrains one’s adversaries.”
It’s comforting to believe that our adversaries want security, freedom, and prosperity as much as we do; that they prefer compromise and cooperation to confrontation. But rarely is that the case. China’s rulers provide a vivid example.
One year after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, President George H.W. Bush declared: “As people have commercial incentive, whether it’s in China or in other totalitarian countries, the move to democracy becomes inexorable.” But it doesn’t.
Arguing that China be admitted into the World Trade Organization. President Bill Clinton asserted that Beijing “is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values: economic freedom.” But Beijing wasn’t.
President Barak Obama’s China polices, Gen. McMaster writes, rested “on the belief that engagement would foster cooperation.” But that’s not what happened.
Breaking with this tradition, the 2017 National Security Strategy, written under Gen. McMaster’s direction, and signed by President Trump, recognized that China’s rulers view themselves as our adversaries and rivals for global leadership.
Gen. McMaster also understood that Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been “pursuing an aggressive strategy to subvert the United States and other Western democracies.” Pushing a little button labeled “reset” was never going to change that.
Though the Islamic Republic of Iran has been implacably hostile to the United States since its founding in 1979, Ben Rhodes, one of President Obama’s top deputies, assured Americans that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action would produce “an evolution in Iranian behavior” as the clerical regime became “more engaged with the international community.” That was a pipe dream.
One administration after another has either ignored or addressed ineffectively the metastasizing threat posed by the dynastic dictatorship in North Korea.
Lack of strategic competence has been on display in Afghanistan, too. There, Gen. McMaster writes, after the “military successes of 2001, a complex competition ensued with an unseated, but not defeated, Taliban; an elusive Al Qaeda; new terrorist groups; and supporters of those terrorist organizations, including elements of the Pakistan Army, a supposed ally.”
He describes what happened next: “Paradoxically, a short-war mentality lengthened the conflict. The war had lasted nearly two decades, but the United States and its coalition partners had not fought a two-decade-long war. Afghanistan was a one-year war fought twenty times over.”
I haven’t space here to summarize all the shifts in strategic thinking Gen. McMaster would recommend to any American commander in chief hoping to prevail on today’s multiple battlegrounds. Suffice to say he grasps that when America appears weak, America emboldens its enemies. He knows that enriching adversaries doesn’t appease them. He believes military strength can deter. And when deterrence fails, and conflict is inevitable, military strength becomes even more essential.
*Gen. McMaster also cautions that isolationism – call it “restraint” or “responsible statecraft” or “opposition to forever wars” if you like – is a siren song. As Leon Trotsky almost said: You may not be interested in national security, but national security is interested in you.
*Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay.

Turkish Public Lender Fails Again to Scuttle Iran Sanctions Evasion Case
Aykan Erdemir/FDD/October 08/2020
A Manhattan federal judge on October 1 refused to dismiss an indictment accusing Halkbank, a public lender majority-owned by the Turkish government, of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. In the event of a conviction, the potential fines the Treasury Department may issue to the bank would signal to financial institutions around the globe Washington’s commitment to full accountability for sanctions busters.
Halkbank’s alleged role in Iran’s sanctions-evasion schemes once again made headlines last month after the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network published a series of exposés proving Iran’s machinations involving Turkey “started earlier, lasted longer, extended further, and involved more people and countries” than previously known. In 2018, a federal jury found Halkbank’s then-deputy general manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla guilty on five counts, including sanctions evasion, bank fraud, and obstructing the actions of the Treasury Department, for which he received a 32-month sentence.
In their indictment of Halkbank, U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York charged the Turkish lender with “fraud, money laundering and sanctions offenses,” claiming the bank and its executives aided Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab in a “multi-billion dollar scheme to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.” According to the prosecutors, Halkbank and its executives also “illicitly transferred approximately $20 billion worth of otherwise restricted Iranian funds.”
For Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Halkbank case is personal. A 2013 Turkish graft probe into the Turkish public lender’s sanctions-evasion network revealed that key Erdogan aides, including his ministers of the interior and economy, were on Zarrab’s payroll. Consequently, Erdogan has worked tirelessly to scuttle the case. According to a Bloomberg News source, Ankara refused to accept a deferred prosecution agreement and a fine for Halkbank’s sanctions evasion, because it “believed doing so would constitute an admission of guilt.”
According to The Room Where It Happened, the memoir by President Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the Halkbank case is Erdogan’s obsession, a “favorite subject, frequently discussed with Trump.” According to Bolton, Erdogan even brought Trump a “memo by the law firm representing Halkbank which Trump did nothing more than flip through before declaring he believed Halkbank was totally innocent of violating U.S. Iran sanctions.”
The Turkish government also made numerous attempts to reach out to senior members of the Trump administration, beseeching it to block the Halkbank indictment. This approach succeeded in stalling the prosecution for almost two years but ultimately failed when U.S. authorities went forward with the charges last October.
Initially, Halkbank and its lawyers refused to acknowledge the indictment or a legal summons to appear in court. When prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in January to impose escalating fines that could total up to $1.8 billion after eight weeks if the bank failed to respond to criminal charges, Halkbank reversed course and pleaded not guilty in March.
The bank’s stalling tactics also involved a June bid pressing Judge Berman to recuse himself, which Berman denied in August. Halkbank also claimed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act shielded the financial institution from prosecution in the United States. In his 16-page opinion, Berman stated, “The court clearly has personal jurisdiction over Halkbank,” and noted that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act “does not appear to grant immunity in criminal proceedings.”
Financial institutions around the world will continue to watch the Halkbank case closely, seeing the insistence of U.S. authorities on prosecuting the Turkish public lender – as well as any potential fines the Treasury Department may issue – as a measure of Washington’s commitment to enforcing Iran sanctions. Any impunity granted to Erdogan and Halkbank short of the opportunity to persuade a jury that the charges are unfounded would only embolden sanctions-evasion networks as well as their corrupt accomplices willing to bankroll Iran’s nefarious activities.
*Aykan Erdemir is a former member of the Turkish parliament and senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he also contributes to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Aykan, the Turkey Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Aykan on Twitter @aykan_erdemir. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Is Israel Victory Still Needed?/Yes, it offers the only path to end Palestinian rejectionism
Daniel Pipes/Jerusalem Post/October 08/2020
http://www.danielpipes.org/19847/is-israel-victory-still-needed
[JP title: "Is the Israel Victory Project still needed?" plus slight differences from the published version]
Where does Israel Victory stand in this era of Arab-Israeli peacemaking? Slightly diminished, but not by much. To understand why requires starting with a step back in time.
The 1993 Oslo Accords sidelined the Arab states and focused on Palestinian-Israeli relations, expecting that this exclusivity would ease a compromise to bring each side what it most sought: security for Israelis and political fulfilment ("Palestine") for Palestinians.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership turned this hopeful "peace process" into a "war process," exploiting the opportunities it provided to attack the Jewish state in new ways, thereby undermining diplomacy and fostering greater violence.
In response to Oslo's failure, I developed the Israel Victory concept in early 2001. It accepted the sidelining of Arab states (even though I preferred to include them) and focused on Palestinian-Israeli relations. It rejected the peace-process absurdity of Israel making concessions even as the Palestinians sought its elimination. Instead, it called for Israel to take advantage of its overwhelming economic and military superiority to compel the Palestinians to accept defeat, setting the stage for their eventual acceptance of Israel.
www.IsraelVictory.org
Then, starting in 2017, the Trump administration expressed impatience with the peace process farce and brought the Sunni Arab states back into the diplomacy. This "outside-in" approach has the states take friendly steps toward Israel, then Israel reciprocate with friendly steps toward the Palestinians. It worked: the United Arab Emirates established warm relations with Israel in return for the latter's de facto repudiation of plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Bahrain tagged along and other Arab states are hoped to follow.
Imam al-Sudais speaking positively about Jews.
In the outside-in approach, Arab states partially assume Israel's role to impose defeat on the the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Note the elements of what Khaled Abu Toameh terms their "divorce process": the emerging warm peace between Abu Dhabi, Manama, and Jerusalem; the imam of the Great Mosque in Mecca (who has been banned from Western countries for his crude antisemitism) talking about Muhammad's friendly relations with Jews; the Arab Leagueunprecedentedly turning down a Palestinian initiative; and the Arab states reducing their financial support to the Palestinians by 85 percent.
Does this mean Israel Victory has been superseded? No: Sunni Arab states unfortunately make up only a portion of the Palestinians' vast and multifaceted support system. Exceptional public relations prowess combined with antisemitism transmogrified the tiny, weak, and relatively prosperous Palestinian population into the world's most prominent human rights issue, one which benefits from immeasurably more solicitude than the far more wretched Syrians or Yemenis.
A mall in Gaza.
That support system starts with Iran and Turkey, the only countries (in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo'sdescription) to have "vehemently denounced" the recent agreements. Indeed, those two regimes have largely replaced the Arab states (whose last major war with Israel was in 1973) as the Palestinians' regional stalwarts.
Second, because the foreign policies of Russia and China globally oppose the United States, Jerusalem's tight alliance with Washington makes them both significant Palestinian supporters.
Third, Israel's Left despises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pooh-poohs the recent accords, and touchingly believes that Palestinians will be content with a Palestine adjoining Israel.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, the global Left – most professors, journalists, and bureaucrats, the Durban Conference, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders – has taken up the Palestinians as a central cause, so that support for Israel now tarnishes one's progressive credentials. This anti-Zionism, it bears noting, focuses almost exclusively on the supposed suffering of the 3.2 million inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, hardly caring about such issues as Israel's income inequality, its tensions with Iran and Turkey, or its nuclear weapons.
The Left currently can do only limited damage to Israel, being out of power in most major countries (Japan, India, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the United States). But the wheel inevitably turns and when leftists reach to power, their unleashed venom will confront Israel with a great crisis. This imminent prospect renders it especially urgent that Israel address the Palestinian rage underlying and fueling leftist rancor.
The governments of Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China, plus the Israeli and global Left will most likely follow the Sunni Arab states' lead if the Palestinians have been compelled to abandon their illusion of eliminating the Jewish state. That's the role of Israel Victory, which offers the only path to end Palestinian rejectionism.
Thus does Israel Victory remain nearly as important as ever.
*Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2020 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Oct. 7, 2020 addenda: (1) Qatar partners with Iran and Turkey but is not a full-fledged enemy of Israel as they are.
(2) An anonymous Israeli diplomat is paraphrased as observing that "the ball is now in Israel's court. To preserve and expand its relations with Egypt, Jerusalem must make it clear that ties with Cairo are a priority. As such, Israeli goodwill gestures toward the Palestinians will need to be made soon."

Turkey, Iran and Qatar have positioned themselves squarely against America’s allies in the Gulf.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/October 08/2020
On the issue of fundamentalism and its subversive, destabilizing effect on the region’s politics, again Obama created greater distance with certain American allies. His accommodation with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Obama administration infamously viewed as a byproduct of democracy, was deeply damaging. With Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Manama all understanding that the Muslim Brotherhood offered a hard-line vision of intolerance rather than a democratic future, this view was greeted with considerable concern.
Therefore, it is understandable that many in the region view the prospect of a Biden presidency with some unease. A reversion to any form of acceptance of extremism or the sending of “plane-loads of cash” to Tehran risks undermining the peace we can see starting to break out among America’s key allies. In a troubling indicator of his planned Middle East approach, Biden last month suggested in a CNN op-ed that Iran had ceased being a “bad regional actor” in the aftermath of the nuclear deal. He wrote: “I will offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy. If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”
This is an easy view for someone thousands of miles away to form, but for those living on the ground, dealing with Hezbollah’s weapons caches and Syrian militias wreaking death and destruction, Iran, through its proxy network, has become a more malign actor than ever. Unless these other issues are resolved, then any efforts to render Iran a more responsible international actor are doomed to fail.
Understanding this should be central to both candidates’ approach to the Middle East. This means that Iran’s military sites, such as Parchin, which is reportedly where nuclear research and development is conducted, must be constantly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors. The dangers of Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is a core pillar of the regime’s foreign policy and appears to be linked to the nuclear program, must be adequately addressed too. And Iran’s support for terror groups ought to be confronted. Furthermore, Iran’s breakout time — the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb — must be much higher than one year.
From the perspective of the Iranian leaders, no deal with the West is going to change the core pillars of Iran. Instead, the Iranian regime generally uses international and regional agreements to advance its revolutionary ideals.
Finally, at a time when America’s military presence in the region is being reduced and other forces in the form of China, Russia and Turkey are looking to fill the vacuum, it is more essential than ever to work in lockstep with the Gulf states. The geopolitical sands have fundamentally shifted. Turkey, Iran and Qatar have positioned themselves squarely against America’s allies in the Gulf, pushing an increasingly hard-line narrative that seems to be part of a grander strategy to destabilize the region.
Both presidential candidates must look to build on the good work of the Abraham Accords in fighting back against this hard-line narrative. Naively hoping the forces of radicalism can be contained, as the last administration once did, simply is not an option in the quest for future regional stability and the protection of America’s interests in the Middle East.
It may be too much to hope given the chaotic nature of the first presidential debate, but hearing the analysis and Middle East vision of the two men competing to have huge influence over the region would be a welcome change of pace.

* Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh