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Bible Quotation For Today/Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters
Matthew 12/29-32: "How can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven."

Bible Quotation For Today/I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Book of Revelation 03/14-22: "‘To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation: ‘I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, "I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing." You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 30-October 01/15
Comment: Across Middle East, 'Obama Doctrine' shows signs of failure/By REUTERS/September 30
Report: Russian fighter jets strike Syrian rebel strongholds/Reuters and Roi Kais/Ynetnews/September 30
Saudi Arabia is Not Our Friend/Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/September 30/15
The Abbas "Bombshell"/Barry Shaw/Gatestone Institute/September 30
Deceit, not Justice: Palestinian Lies Peddled AgainDenis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/September 30
No more speeches at the General Assembly boxing ring/Chris Doyle/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
Japan’s diplomacy to vulnerable publics at home and abroad/Nancy Snow/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
Netanyahu in the ‘axis of resistance’/Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
What form will Russian involvement in Syria take?/Maria Dubovikova/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
The Russians are in Baghdad too!/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/September 30/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on September 30-October 01/15
Yaalon Warns Israel Won't Tolerate Transfer of Advanced Weapons to Hizbullah
Presidential Elections Delayed to Oct. 21 as Harb Laments 'Postponement Farce'
Police Arrest Palestinian Would-be Migrants in Tripoli
Sarcastic Berri Says on the Verge of Joining Protests over Waste Crisis
Akkar Protesters Vow to Stand in Way of Waste Trucks
Iran's Former Lebanon Envoy Roknabadi Still Missing after Hajj Tragedy
Lebanon Remains a 'Priority' but World Response for Refugee Aid Remains Weak
Israeli Spy Device Found in Outskirts of Southern Town
Man Lands in Hospital over Stray Cow in Naameh
Lebanese Man Shot Dead, Syrian Hospitalized in Arsal Attacks

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 30-October 01/15
Head of Italian Bishops Conference hits West’s silence on Muslim persecution of Christians
Saudi FM: Assad must go or face ‘military option’
Arab coalition foils Iranian bid to smuggle arms
Church says Russia fighting ‘holy battle’ in Syria
Russian parliament grants Putin right to use military force in Syria
Russia enters Syrian war with air strikes, jolts the Mid East into new era
US official: Russia strikes not targeting ISIS areas in Syria
Iraqi historian claims 'Jewish mafia' behind antiquities theft in Middle East
France launches war crimes inquiry into Assad regime

Yaalon Warns Israel Won't Tolerate Transfer of Advanced Weapons to Hizbullah
Associated Press/Naharnet/September 30/15/Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has warned that Israel will not tolerate advanced weapons reaching Hizbullah, which has fought alongside Syrian troops. “Those who try to violate our sovereignty – we will strike them, and those who try to transfer advanced weapons to terror elements, with an emphasis on Hizbullah, we will strike them, and those who try to transfer chemical weapons to terror elements, we will strike them,” Yaalon said on Tuesday during a visit to Gaza-border communities. “We have no intention of giving up our ability to defend our interests. And I suggest that no one tests us,” he warned. Yaalon said Israeli warplanes on Monday targeted two Syrian artillery guns suspected of shelling inside the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. He said Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Moscow that "we are not involved and we don't have any interest to intervene in the civil war in Syria, but we have to keep our interests." Moscow has been ramping up its involvement in Syria in recent weeks by ferrying weapons, troops and supplies to an airport near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia in what the U.S. sees as preparations for setting up an air base there. Yaalon said Russia's presence in Syria is near the coast, far from Israel. Retired Israeli army Col. Jacques Neriah said Russia has a "moderate presence" in Syria. "It will help in stabilizing the area, and especially if Russia has the intent to fight the Islamic State together with the United States and the Western coalition," said the former deputy head for assessment of the Israeli army's military intelligence. Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of Hizbullah, which has sent fighters to help Syrian President Bashar Assad, said Tuesday that "Russia intervened by its weapons and capabilities because there is someone that stood on his feet," referring to Assad, who is at war with an array of rebel and Islamic militant groups. Qassem said "the world today admits that a solution in Syria can be only achieved with President Assad."

Presidential Elections Delayed to Oct. 21 as Harb Laments 'Postponement Farce'
Naharnet/September 30/15/The presidential elections were postponed for the 29th time on Wednesday after a lack of quorum at parliament. Speaker Nabih Berri scheduled the next session for October 21. Following the meeting, Telecommunications Minister Butros Harb deemed the ongoing postponement of the polls as a “farce”. He condemned linking the elections to regional developments, saying that the ongoing vacuum is an “insult” to the Lebanese people. The minister stressed that the election of a head of state should be a top priority for officials, adding that he will propose it during the next national dialogue session. Head of the Mustaqbal bloc MP Fouad Saniora later stated from parliament: “We should elect a president who enjoys the support of the rival political camps.”“We have stated at the national dialogue that we cannot resolve any issue without the election of a president and Berri agrees with us,” he added. Settlements are a part of politics on condition that they respect the constitution, he continued. “It is time that we return to respecting the constitution,” demanded the MP. “Resolving problems should take part through communication, not boycotts,” stressed Saniora. “There can be no substitute to dialogue. We will continue on communicating with rival parties until we reach an agreement,” he remarked. This will ensure that Lebanon's system and constitution are respected, he added. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of successor. Numerous electoral sessions have been scheduled, all but one were postponed over a lack of quorum. Disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls. There are several candidates but none of them is willing to make compromises that would allow lawmakers to attend a session aimed at electing a head of state. The presidential vacuum has hindered the government's ability to tackle growing security, economic and social problems.

Police Arrest Palestinian Would-be Migrants in Tripoli
Naharnet/September 30/15/The Internal Security Forces arrested on Wednesday scores of Palestinians while trying to leave the port of the northern city of Tripoli on a migrant boat, the state-run National News Agency reported. The ISF Intelligence Branch made the arrest of 40 Palestinians, including women, who reside in the southern refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, said NNA. Police also apprehended the boat's owner, it said. The final destination of the migrants was Germany, the agency added. Last month, nine people, including women and children, were killed when a boat smuggling Palestinians from Tripoli sank in Turkey's territorial waters, one of the survivors said. The survivor told his relatives that the boat was carrying 40 Palestinians from Syrian camps, mainly Yarmuk in Damascus, who had taken refuge in Palestinian shantytowns in northern Lebanon. But Tripoli Port authorities denied the vessel started its journey from the facility and it was not clear if the final destination of the migrants was Turkey.

Sarcastic Berri Says on the Verge of Joining Protests over Waste Crisis
Naharnet/September 30/15/Speaker Nabih Berri has mockingly said that he was on the verge of joining civil society activists in anti-government demonstrations sparked by the garbage crisis. In remarks to his visitors, Berri said: “Let no one talk to me about any issue before we settle the waste crisis.” “I am on the verge of resorting to the street to join the movements,” he said in reference to civil society groups that have been holding protests since the Naameh landfill that lies south of Beirut was closed in July.“What we're seeing is unacceptable. Where are we heading?” asked Berri, whose remarks were published in local newspapers on Wednesday. “Is it possible for the state not to have a single piece of land to dump the waste there?” he wondered. “Enough negotiations on the issue of garbage,” Berri said. Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, who has taken over the file from the environment minister, has been holding talks with civil society representatives and officials from different areas to get the approval on his waste management plan. Earlier this month, the cabinet approved the plan under which the trash that has been dumped in makeshift areas would be moved to the Naameh landfill, which will open for only seven days, and fresh waste would be taken to four other locations in the eastern Bekaa Valley, the northern Akkar district, Bourj Hammoud near Beirut and a waste processing facility in the southern city of Sidon. Shehayyeb said that the plan could be implemented within the next 24 hours. He made the announcement following talks with environmentalists and civil society representatives that ended late Tuesday.

Akkar Protesters Vow to Stand in Way of Waste Trucks
Naharnet/September 30/15/Akkar anti-trash activists organized a new sit-in on Wednesday to reject government plans to set up a so-called sanitary garbage landfill in the Akkar town of Srar. The sit-in that was held in the Akkar town of Shir Hmayrin was organized by the “Akkar is Not a Dump” campaign and other activists amid a participation by a number of municipalities and mayors from the region. “The towns and villages in the vicinity of the Srar landfill reject the dumping of additional quantities of garbage in this site, which has caused major environmental and health hazards,” a municipal chief said at the sit-in.
Speaking in the name of the “Akkar is Not a Dump” campaign, the activist Bernard Obeid stressed that “Akkar will not be a dump and Akkar's sons will stand in the way of the trucks that will transport the garbage” from other regions. He also declared an open-ended sit-in and pledged that all garbage trucks will be sent back to the areas they may come from, underlining that “it is unacceptable to put the burden of the garbage of entire Lebanon on Akkar's shoulders.”A plan devised by Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and a team of experts calls for reopening the Naameh landfill, which was closed in mid-July, for seven days to dump the garbage that accumulated in random sites in Beirut and Mount Lebanon. It also envisions converting two existing dumps, in the northern Akkar area of Srar and the eastern border area of al-Masnaa, into “sanitary landfills” capable of receiving trash for more than a year. After he announced his plan earlier this month, the civil society and local residents of Akkar, Naameh, Majdal Anjar, and Bourj Hammoud protested against the step. Experts have urged the government to devise a comprehensive waste management solution that would include more recycling and composting to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills. Environmentalists fear the crisis could soon degenerate to the point where garbage as well as sewage will simply overflow into the sea from riverbeds as winter rains return. The health ministry has warned that garbage scattered by seasonal winds could also block Lebanon's drainage system. The trash crisis has sparked angry protests that initially focused on waste management but grew to encompass frustrations with water and electricity shortages and Lebanon's chronically divided political class.Campaigns like "You Stink" brought thousands of people into the streets in unprecedented non-partisan and non-sectarian demonstrations against the entire political class.

Iran's Former Lebanon Envoy Roknabadi Still Missing after Hajj Tragedy
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/September 30/15/A senior Iranian diplomat and former ambassador to Lebanon is missing after the deadly stampede at last week's hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, officials in Tehran said on Wednesday. The news comes as tensions intensified when Iran threatened a "fierce" response to rival Saudi Arabia over delays in repatriating victims of the tragedy, in which at least 769 pilgrims died. Ghazanfar Roknabadi, 49, who was attending the annual Muslim gathering, is among 241 Iranians Tehran says are still missing after the stampede, which killed at least 239 of the Islamic republic's citizens. Until last year, Roknabadi was Tehran's envoy to Beirut, a highly sensitive post. Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham denied reports by some Arab media that he had traveled to Saudi Arabia under a false name. "He entered with a normal passport to perform the hajj" and "his identity and that of other missing pilgrims have been provided to Saudi Arabia," she said. Iranian media published a photo of his passport with a Saudi visa.On Tuesday, Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and an adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said "high-ranking" Iranians were among the missing and the dead. He called on Riyadh to take the "necessary actions" regarding them.

Lebanon Remains a 'Priority' but World Response for Refugee Aid Remains Weak
Associated Press/Naharnet/September 30/15/The U.N. chief's Deputy Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Philippe Lazzarini, has lamented that the response of the international community to the needs of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and other countries is weak. In an interview with An Nahar daily published on Wednesday, Lazzarini said: “The response does not meet the needs.” He said the World Food Program has recently warned that it would suspend its operations starting November not just in Lebanon and Jordan but in Syria too if it does not receive new funding. An Nahar did not expect for Lebanon to receive additional aid to help it confront the refugee burden during the meeting of the International Support Group for Lebanon that is scheduled to take place in New York on Wednesday. Lazzarini said the meeting is aimed at sending a message that Lebanon remains a “priority on the agenda of the international community.”But he lamented that several international grants have been frozen because of the government's failure to approve them. Nineteen countries said Tuesday that they are donating $1.8 billion to the top U.N. aid organizations to help alleviate the suffering of migrants and refugees in camps near Mideast areas of turmoil. The initiative organized by Germany was announced by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Thanking donor countries, Guterres said U.N. aid agencies "were financially broke" because of the growing burdens caused by the conflicts in the Mideast. The aid will primarily help refugees in camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The donors include the U.S. and other members of the G-7 group of leading industrial states, other European countries and wealthy Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Israeli Spy Device Found in Outskirts of Southern Town
Naharnet/September 30/15/An Israeli spy device was discovered Wednesday in the outskirts of the southern town of Bani Hayyan in the Marjeyoun district, media reports said. Hizbullah's al-Manar television said the device was found in the town's al-Arid area. It said it consisted of “a camera fixed inside an artificial rock and wired to a number of batteries.”Later in the day, state-run National News Agency said the device was found during excavation works, adding that it was dismantled by the army after a security cordon was imposed in the area.
NNA noted that the site had been an Israeli military post prior to Israel's withdrawal in the year 2000. Several similar devices were discovered in the South in recent years, some of them booby-trapped. In September 2014, Hizbullah military expert Hussein Haidar was killed as an Israeli drone remotely detonated a spy device he was dismantling in the southern coastal town of Adloun.

Man Lands in Hospital over Stray Cow in Naameh
Naharnet/September 30/15/A stray cow has left one person injured after two vehicles collided on the Naameh highway south of Beirut, the Traffic Management Center and Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) said. Several cars collided as the cow was crossing the highway, said VDL. TMC only mentioned that a crash caused the injury of one person and that traffic came to a halt. It was not clear if the cow came from a nearby farm or had escaped from a cattle truck.

Lebanese Man Shot Dead, Syrian Hospitalized in Arsal Attacks
Naharnet/September 30/15/Gunmen killed a Lebanese man while a Syrian was hospitalized in separate attacks in the northeastern border town of Arsal, the state-run National News Agency reported Wednesday. NNA said that Talal al-Braidi, also known as Talal Zino, was shot dead by armed men near his house in the Arsal area of al-Shafaq. Unknown assailants also tried to kill Syrian Fadi Shafaa in a separate incident in Arsal, said NNA. Shafaa, who hails from the Syrian town of Qara in the Qalamoun region, was taken to al-Rahma hospital in Arsal where he underwent surgery, the agency added. Such attacks are common in Arsal, which lies on the border with Syria, where jihadists from al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State group have taken shelter.

Head of Italian Bishops Conference hits West’s silence on Muslim persecution of Christians
September 30, 2015 /Jihad WatchBy Robert Spencer
“Why, we ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and injustice?” asked Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI).
The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III has also said: “I do not understand why the world does not raise its voice against such acts of brutality.”
Here is why: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” — Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013
That’s right, it’s all for the sake of the spurious and self-defeating “dialogue.” Bagnasco should ask his colleagues in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He should ask bishops like McManus, Kevin Farrell, Jaime Soto and others why they move actively to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about this persecution. He should ask them why they tolerated dissent from so many core Catholic dogmas for decades, but move as ruthlessly as any Grand Inquisitor to suppress dissent from the idea that Islam is a Religion of Peace, which isn’t even a dogma of the Church. He should ask them why they are abandoning their Middle Eastern brethren and keeping their own people ignorant and complacent about the jihad threat.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is desperately corrupt and compromised, and needs a thorough housecleaning. But no such thing is on the horizon.
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, talks to the media during a press conference at the Vatican, Thursday, May 21, 2015. (ANSA/AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
“West silent on ‘cull’ of Christians – Italian bishops’ head,” ANSA, September 30, 2015 (
(ANSA) – Vatican City, September 30 – “The cull of Christians continues” in the Middle East and Africa where it “seems somebody has decided to uproot them to cleanse the territory,” Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) head Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco said Wednesday.
“Why, we ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and injustice?” Bagnasco asked opening a CEI Council meeting in Florence.

Saudi FM: Assad must go or face ‘military option’
By AFP | United Nations/Wednesday, 30 September 2015/Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad must leave office or face being removed by force, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said, rejecting Russia’s bid to build support for its ally. Speaking in New York after meeting Saudi Arabia’s allies, Jubeir on Tuesday dismissed Russia’s call for a coalition to defend Assad against ISIS as a “non-starter.”He warned that other countries would step up support for rebels from Syria’s moderate opposition, leaving Assad with no choice but to step down or face what he called the “military option.”Sometime between the formation of [an executive] council and elections - whether it’s a day or a week or a month, I don’t know - President Assad would sail into the sunset. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir And he scorned Iran’s involvement in Russia’s putative alliance, describing Tehran as an “occupying power” in Syria and accusing it of fomenting “terrorism and extremism” across the region. “There is no future for Assad in Syria, with all due respect to the Russians or anyone else,” Jubeir told reporters in New York after meetings with Saudi Arabia’s allies. He spoke of only two possible outcomes for a settlement in Syria, saying a transitional council reached through a political process would be the “preferred option.”A second, military option “could be a more lengthy process and a more destructive process, but the choice is entirely that of Bashar al-Assad,” the Saudi foreign minister said. Jubeir would not be drawn on specifics of what the military option would look like, but noted that Saudi Arabia is already supporting “moderate rebels” in their battle against Assad. “Whatever we may or may not do we’re not talking about,” he said, but quickly added: “There is a Free Syrian Army that is fighting against Bashar al-Assad. “There is a moderate Syrian opposition that is fighting against Bashar al-Assad and this opposition is getting support from a number of countries,” he noted. “And we expect that this support will continue and intensify.”Jubeir said the best solution would be for Assad to accept the principles of the Geneva I agreement signed at a peace conference in 2012, laying the groundwork for a transitional government.
‘Sail into the sunset’
Under this plan, he said, Assad would immediately cede power to an executive council with full powers made up of both members of his regime and opposition figures. “And, sometime between the formation of this council and elections - whether it’s a day or a week or a month, I don’t know - President Assad would sail into the sunset,” he said. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s President Hassan Rowhani came to the UN General Assembly in New York this week to urge the world to support Assad and defeat the ISIS.Putin proposed a Security Council resolution to govern foreign military action in Syria, but Saudi Arabia, a key member of the existing US-led coalition against the ISIS rejects this. “I think if the Russians were serious about fighting Daesh, they could join the existing international coalition,” Jubeir said, using the Arabic acronym for the ISIS.

Arab coalition foils Iranian bid to smuggle arms
By Staff Writer | Al Arabiya News/Wednesday, 30 September 2015/Arab coalition forces have announced on Wednesday the capture of an Iranian boat carrying weapons last Saturday near southeast of Oman’s Salalah coast, Al Arabiya News Channel reported. When the boat was first inspected and seized, a number of rockets and missiles were found on board intended for Houthi forces, a coalition statement said. Among other arms, 18 armor-piercing shells, 54 anti-tank missiles, 15 battery kits designed for military projectiles and weapons guidance systems were found. The Arab coalition forces also announced the arrest of 14 sailors on board the ship. The boat was seized on the third day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Saudi Ministry of Defense official spokesperson Gen. Maj. Ahmed Asiri said the attempt to smuggle weapons illustrates Tehran’s frustration and confusion over the conflict in Yemen. The weapons convoy is the largest shipment intercepted since a naval blockade was imposed in March, Asiri told Al Arabiya’s sister channel Al Hadath.

Church says Russia fighting ‘holy battle’ in Syria
By AFP | Moscow /Wednesday, 30 September 2015/Russia’s powerful Orthodox Church on Wednesday voiced support for Moscow’s decision to carry out air strikes in Syria against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, calling it a “holy battle.”“The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it,” said the head of the Church’s public affairs department, Vsevolod Chaplin, quoted by Interfax news agency. Russia on Wednesday launched its first air strikes in Syria after President Vladimir Putin won parliamentary approval to use force abroad.
“The only correct way to fight international terrorism.... is to act preemptively, to battle and destroy fighters and terrorists on the territories they have already seized, not to wait for them to come to us,” Putin said in televised comments. In an official statement, the Church’s Patriarch Kirill said “Russia took a responsible decision to use military forces to protect the Syrian people from the woes brought on by the tyranny of terrorists.”The Patriarch, who often weighs in on political matters in support of the Kremlin, said armed intervention was necessary since “the political process has not led to any noticeable improvement in the lives of innocent people, and they need military protection.”He cited the suffering of Christians in the region, the kidnapping of clerics and the destruction of churches, adding that Muslims “are suffering no less.” Church spokesman Chaplin said that the decision on military action “corresponds with international law, the mentality of our people and the special role that our country has always played in the Middle East.”A senior Muslim cleric also backed the military intervention, saying Syrians are “practically our neighbors.”“We fully back the use of a contingent of Russian armed forces in the battle against international terrorism,” said Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia, in comments to RIA Novosti state news agency. A council representing Russia’s main religions -- Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism -- will release a joint statement on Russia’s role in Syria that will “support the decision that was taken by our government,” said Orthodox spokesman Chaplin. Russia’s Orthodox Church, after years of repression under the Soviets, has regained much of its influence and built up close ties with the government despite a formal separation of Church and state. President Vladimir Putin is regularly depicted attending services. The Church has sought to increase its influence in the armed forces and achieved its goal of reintroducing religious chaplains banned by the Soviets.

Russian parliament grants Putin right to use military force in Syria
By REUTERS/J.Post/09/30/2015
MOSCOW, Sept 30 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday secured parliament's unanimous backing to launch air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria, paving the way for imminent Russian military intervention in its closest Middle East ally. The move, which sets the stage for Russia's biggest play in the region since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, was announced as Syrian government warplanes conducted heavy strikes in Homs province and the United States and its allies struck Islamic State targets. Russia, which has been steadily dispatching more and more military aircraft to a base in Latakia, declined to say when it would launch its own strikes, but made it clear it too would be targeting Islamic State militants. As part of its preparations, Moscow has already sent military experts to a recently established command centre in Baghdad which is coordinating air strikes and ground troops in Syria, a Russian official told Reuters on Wednesday. The Russian Defence Ministry said the center is used to share information on possible air strikes in Syria. Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief of Staff said Russia's missions would be limited and not open-ended and precluded the use of ground troops. "As our president has already said, the use of ground troops has been ruled out. The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS (Islamic State)," he said. The decision to get involved militarily in Syria will be a further challenge for Moscow, which is already intervening in Ukraine at a time when its economy is suffering from low oil prices and Western sanctions. A US-led coalition has already been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but Russia has been highly critical, saying it has only yielded meager results so far. France announced at the weekend that it had launched its first air strikes in Syria. Ivanov said the upper house of parliament had backed military action by 162 votes to zero after President Bashar al-Assad had asked for Russian military assistance. The Syrian presidency confirmed that in a statement, saying Assad had written to Putin and Russia was increasing its military support as a direct result of that appeal. Ivanov said Russia was only acting to protect its own interests in Syria, where it maintains a Soviet-era naval facility at Tartous, its only access to the Mediterranean. "We're talking specifically about Syria and we are not talking about achieving foreign policy goals or about satisfying our ambitions ... but exclusively about the national interests of the Russian Federation," said Ivanov.
MILITARY ACTION
Russian military action would not be open-ended, he added, declining to say which aircraft would be used and when. "The operations of the Russian air force can not of course go on indefinitely and will be subject to clearly prescribed time frames." Russia's decision to intervene in Syria was prompted by a panicky realization that the Syrian government was being turned over on the battlefield, diplomats have told Reuters. When it saw several months ago that Syrian government forces were retreating on several fronts at a rate that threatened Assad, its closest Middle East ally, the Kremlin quietly decided to dispatch more men, weaponry and armor, diplomats and analysts told Reuters. Putin's spokesman said the vote by the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, meant Moscow would be practically the only country in Syria to be conducting operations "on a legitimate basis" and at the request of "the legitimate president of Syria".The last time the Russian parliament granted Putin the right to deploy troops abroad, a technical requirement under Russian law, Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine last year. Analysts said Putin needed to get parliament's backing to ensure that any military operation was legal under the terms of the Russian constitution. "If there will be a united coalition which I doubt, or in the end two coalitions -- one American and one Russian -- they will have to coordinate their actions," Ivan Konovalov, a military expert, told Reuters.
"For Russian forces to operate there legitimately ... a law was needed."

Russia enters Syrian war with air strikes, jolts the Mid East into new era
DEBKAfile Special Report September 30, 2015
That Russia launched its first air strikes in Syria Wednesday, Sept. 30 was confirmed by the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow and criticized by US officials. Moscow stressed that it acted in support of Bashar Assad’s war on the Islamic State, assisted by other foreign powers including Iran and Iraq working together from an allied command center in Baghdad. Its targets were described as stores, ammunition dumps and vehicles, located according to US sources around Homs and Hama. The Russian communiqués did not indicate which organizations were bombed. The Russian aerial offensive marks a turning point in Middle East affairs. Russia is emerging strongly as the number one power in the region. The governments which hitherto coordinated their military polices with the US, like those of Israel, Jordan and Turkey will have to reassess their orientation and affinities in a hurry. For Israel it is the end of years of freedom for its air force to strike its enemies from the skies of Syria or Lebanon. It also marks the end of any plans Turkey and Jordan may have entertained for setting up buffer and no-fly zones in Syria to protect their borders. Washington quickly criticized the air strikes, but said Moscow’s moves would not change the US-led air campaign targeting the Islamic State in Syria. That remains to be seen. Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the Russian air strikes are “not helpful,” and ran counter to the effort to make sure mishaps do not happen inadvertently in the air.
DEBKAfile earlier reported on the fast-moving developments of Wednesday, Sept. 30.
A day after the White House said that “clarity” on Russian intentions in Syria had been achieved at the Obama-Putin summit in New York, the Russian President Vladimir Putin notched up the military tensions around Syria Wednesday, Sept. 30. A senior US official said that Russian diplomats had sent an official demarche ordering US planes to quit Syria, adding that Russian fighter jets were now flying over Syrian territory. US military sources told Fox News that US planes would not comply with the Russian demand. "There is nothing to indicate that we are changing operations over Syria," a senior defense official said.
Earlier, Putin sought from the Russian upper house, the Federation Council, authorization for the use of military force abroad. He did not specify the country or region, but the only part of the world where Russia is currently building up its ground, air and naval forces outside the country is Syria.
A short time after the request, the Federation Council announced that it had unanimously authorized the use of Russian military force in Syria. The last time Putin sought this authorization was in early 2014 when he decided to annex the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. His action now contradicts his assertion to CBS on Sept. 28: "Russia will not participate in any troop operations in the territory of Syria or in any other states. Well, at least we don't plan on it right now.”DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Russian preparations for military action in Syria are clearly not limited to that country. They are being run by a joint coordination forward command and war room established a few days ago by Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria in Baghdad. It is designed as the counterpart of the US Central Command-Forward-Jordan war room established north of Amman for joint US-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli-Jordanian and UAE operations in support of Syrian rebel operations against the Assad regime. Two rival power war rooms are therefore poised at opposite ends of the Syrian arena – one representing a US-led alliance for operations against Assad, and the other a Russian-led group which is revving up to fight on his behalf.
Conspicuous in the swiftly evolving Syrian situation is the detailed advance planning which went into the Russian military buildup and partnerships, and the slow perception of what was going on, on the part of the United States and Israel. Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter instructed his staff to establish a communication channel with the Kremlin to ensure the safety of US and Russian military operations and “avoid conflict in the air” between the two militaries. The Russian defense ministry shot back with a provocative stipulation that coordination with the US must go through Baghdad, an attempt to force Washington to accept that the two war rooms would henceforth communicate on equal terms. Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon denied Tuesday night that Israel was coordinating its operations with the Russian army, stressing that Israel reserves the IDF’s right to freedom of action over Syria and would continue to prevent arms supplies reaching terrorist organizations such as Hizballah. Meanwhile, six advanced Russian SU-34 strike fighter jets landed at Latakia’s Al-Assad international airport, after flying to their destination through Iraqi airspace.
The Russian military buildup is assuming far greater proportions than either imagined, far outpacing US or Israeli efforts at coordination.

US official: Russia strikes not targeting ISIS areas in Syria
REUTERS/J.Post/09/30/2015
MOSCOW/WASHINGTON - Russia said it launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin secured his parliament's unanimous backing to intervene to prop up the Kremlin's closest Middle East ally. Moscow gave Washington just an hour's notice of the strikes, which set in train Russia's biggest play in the region since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, a US official said. The US official told Reuters that Russia's airstrikes in Syria so far do not appear to be targeting Islamic State-held territory, a crucial detail which could complicate any potential cooperation with the United States in the war. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Russia was carrying out the strikes in the vicinity of Homs and perhaps other areas in Syria as well, noting that all US information on Russian activity was still preliminary. Russia cautioned the United States to clear Syrian airspace ahead of the strikes, the US official said, adding, however, that the US-led coalition was "continuing to fly missions in Syria." The Russian Defense Ministry said however that its attacks were directed at Islamic State military targets. Putin said the only way to fight "terrorists" in Syria was to act preemptively. Russia's military involvement in the Middle East would only involve its air force and would be temporary. The Homs area is crucial to President Bashar Assad's control of western Syria. Insurgent control of that area would bisect the Assad-held west, separating Damascus from the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, where Russia operates a naval facility. A US-led coalition has already been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but Putin derided US efforts to end the Syria war at the United Nations on Monday, suggesting a broader and more coordinated coalition was needed to defeat the militants.
"The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS (Islamic State)," Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief-of-Staff, said before reports that the strikes had begun. Russia has been steadily dispatching more and more military aircraft to a base in Latakia, regarded as an Assad stronghold, after the Syrian government suffered a series of battlefield reverses.
MILITARY EXPERTS
Moscow has already sent military experts to a recently established command centre in Baghdad which is coordinating air strikes and ground troops in Syria, a Russian official told Reuters. Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief of Staff, said Russia's missions would be limited and not open-ended. He precluded the use of ground troops. "As our president has already said, the use of ground troops has been ruled out," said Ivanov. Russia's involvement in Syria will be a further challenge for Moscow, which is already intervening in Ukraine at a time when its own economy is suffering from low oil prices and Western sanctions. Opinion polls also show Russian voters have little appetite for a long campaign, with painful memories of the Soviet Union's 1979-89 intervention in Afghanistan, in which thousands of Soviet troops were killed, still fresh. But as Russian real incomes fall for the first time since Putin came to power, the spectacle of the country flexing its military muscles overseas, could also be a useful distraction for the Kremlin. Ivanov said the upper house of parliament had backed military action by 162 votes to zero after Assad had asked for Russian military assistance.
The Syrian presidency confirmed that in a statement, saying Assad had written to Putin and Russia was increasing its military support as a direct result of that appeal. Ivanov said Russia was only acting to protect its own interests in Syria, where it maintains a Soviet-era naval facility at Tartous, its only access to the Mediterranean. "We're talking specifically about Syria and we are not talking about achieving foreign policy goals or about satisfying our ambitions ... but exclusively about the national interests of the Russian Federation," said Ivanov.
MILITARY ACTION
Russian military action would not be open-ended, he added, declining to say which aircraft would be used and when. "The operations of the Russian air force can not of course go on indefinitely and will be subject to clearly prescribed time frames." Russia's decision to intervene in Syria was prompted by a panicky realization that the Syrian government was being turned over on the battlefield, diplomats and analysts have told Reuters. When it saw several months ago that Syrian government forces were retreating on several fronts at a rate that threatened Assad, its closest Middle East ally, the Kremlin quietly decided to dispatch more men, weaponry and armor. Putin's spokesman said the vote by the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, meant Moscow would be practically the only country in Syria to be conducting operations "on a legitimate basis" and at the request of "the legitimate president of Syria".
The last time the Russian parliament granted Putin the right to deploy troops abroad, a technical requirement under Russian law, Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine last year. Putin needed to get parliament's backing to ensure that any military operation was legal under the terms of the Russian constitution.

Iraqi historian claims 'Jewish mafia' behind antiquities theft in Middle East
JPOST.COM STAFF/09/30/2015
An Iraqi historian and archaeologist, as well as the director of Syria's Palmyra Museum, both claimed on Wednesday that an "international Jewish mafia" was conspiring to steal the Middle East's most precious antiquities in an effort to destroy the region's Arab heritage. "The Jews are always looking for antiquities" historian and archaeologist Ali al-Nashmi said in an interview posted on Youtube and translated by MEMRI, adding that "they extort, steal and establish gangs," as a means to pilfer the area of its historic treasures. Al-Nasmi claimed that "this ancient theory from the days of the Babylonian captivity 2,500 years ago" could be traced all the way to the 19th century, where it "was reinforced following the 1897 Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland." This lead to the formation of the Zionist effort to steal antiquities in which "a mafia connected to the Jewish capital was born," he added. Also featured in the video was Walid Al-Assad, director of Palmyra Museum, whose 82 year-old father was beheaded by ISIS in late August. Al-Assad referred to the Jewish conspiracy as an effort "to erase the Arab origins of the antiquities in the area" and "to destroy the city [of Palmyra] and wipe it off the face of the Earth."In August, Islamic State (IS) militants beheaded antiquities scholar Khaled Asaad in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site. ISIS, whose insurgents control swathes of Syria and Iraq, captured Palmyra in central Syria from government forces in May and have a reputation for destroying artifacts they view as idolatrous under their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

France launches war crimes inquiry into Assad regime
AFP/Ynetnews/Published: 09.30.15/Probe into alleged war crimes to be based on 55,000 photos of a former Syrian army photographer who defected in 2013, and display the regime's 'unbearably cruel' conduct.French authorities have recently launched a criminal probe of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime for alleged war crimes committed between 2011 and 2013. "Faced with these crimes that offend the human conscience, with this bureaucratic horror, with this denial of humanity's values, it is our responsibility to act against the impunity of these assassins," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement sent to AFP. Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary war crimes inquiry on September 15, a source told AFP. A diplomatic source confirmed the launch of the probe. The investigation is focusing on evidence provided by a former Syrian army photographer known by the codename "Caesar," who defected and fled the country in 2013, bringing with him some 55,000 graphic photographs of scenes from the brutal conflict. "The César report - thousands of unbearable photos, authenticated by many experts, that show corpses tortured and starved to death in the prisons of the regime - demonstrates the systematic cruelty of Bashar Assad's regime," said Fabius, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Fabius called on the UN and notably the International Commission of Inquiry on Syria "to continue with enhanced determination" its investigations. The Foreign Ministry reported the incident to the Prosecutor of Paris. Investigators from the Central Office of the fight against crimes against humanity, genocide and war crime were tasked with conducting the investigations. At a press conference in Paris in March 2014, several photos of unbearable cruelty, from a memory card carried by "Caesar" were projected at the Arab World Institute. Written in English with blood-colored letters and entitled "Assad's secret killings", the photo essay was intended for international bodies including the UN, to build up a file of the regime's responsibility for "mass torture."The photos showed eyes gouged out, people with lesions on their backs or stomachs, emaciated bodies and also a photo showing hundreds of corpses lying in a hangar in the middle of plastic bags to be used to bury them. Damascus had then described the report as "political". The announcement comes as the four-year war in Syria takes center-stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have clashed over how to bring an end to the crisis. French President Francois Hollande has joined Obama in insisting Assad cannot play a role in the country's future, against opposition from Damascus's allies Russia and Iran. "Russia and Iran say they want to be part of a solution," Hollande said. "So we must work with these countries to explain to them that the route to a solution does not go through Bashar al-Assad."

Comment: Across Middle East, 'Obama Doctrine' shows signs of failure
By REUTERS/09/30/2015
WASHINGTON - In Syria, US-trained rebels surrender supplies and ammunition to al-Qaida-linked insurgents. In Iraq, the battle by American-backed government forces against Islamic State is at a stalemate. In Afghanistan, the Taliban seize a provincial capital for the first time since their ouster in 2001.
Less than a year and a half after President Barack Obama used a West Point speech to lay out a strategy for relying on local partners instead of large-scale US military deployments abroad, there is mounting evidence that the so-called "Obama Doctrine" may be failing. Despite the US investment of at least an estimated $90 billion in these counter-terrorism efforts, Obama has found few reliable allies to carry the load on the battlefield - and he seems to have few good options to fix the situation. Obama also appears hemmed in by his deep aversion to seeing America drawn back into unpopular Middle East wars after pulling US forces out of Iraq in 2011.
Russia's sudden moves to seize the initiative in the Syria and Iraq crises in recent weeks have stunned US officials and laid bare the erosion of Washington's influence in the region. Faced by the mounting setbacks, Obama will probably only make modest changes in strategy, according to current and former US officials. That strongly suggests that Obama will leave some of the world's most intractable conflicts to his successor when he leaves office in January 2017. "Things aren't looking good in these places and they're not getting get much better anytime soon," said Douglas Ollivant, former senior US National Security Council official on Iraq for Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush. "That's the problem of working through partners. They're not always capable." Options could include stepping up support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, cooperation with Russia to seek an end to the conflict there, and a slowdown of the planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The administration is also weighing a proposal to scale back its failed $580 million program to train Syrian rebels to battle Islamic State, US officials said.
The Obama doctrine has floundered partly due to weak national governance in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the failure of moderate Syrian opposition groups to overcome their rivalries. Still, many critics put the blame squarely on Obama for what they see as an overly cautious approach that has given the perception of a White House lurching from crisis to crisis. The image of Obama as a sometimes passive world leader has been fed by perceptions that he has allowed the civil war in Syria to fester and has not acted forcefully enough to halt Islamic State's onslaught there and in neighboring Iraq. Fresh concerns about Obama's Afghanistan policy have been ignited by the fall of the northern city of Kunduz to Taliban fighters this week. US officials say the Taliban's sudden gains against Afghan forces add a new dimension to discussions about whether to upend current plans and instead keep a sizeable force in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2016. Obama and his aides have staunchly defended his approach even as problems have escalated on multiple war fronts. "We've never been under the illusion that our strategy of partnerships would be a short-term fix," a senior administration official told Reuters. "In fact, we've always been clear this will need to be a long-term commitment."The official took Obama's critics to task for failing to offer good alternatives."Is the solution to every Iraq and Syria to insert 150,000 U.S. troops? That is not something this president will do, nor is it something the American people want," the official said.
"CORE INTERESTS"
Undergirding Obama's overall strategy is a speech he gave to graduating West Point cadets on May 28, 2014. There he carefully circumscribed the rationale for use of US military force - only "when our core interests demand it" - and made clear his effort would be to "partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold." That has proven far from a fool-proof method in the fight against Islamic militancy. On Syria, the failure of the US effort to build a rebel fighting force became clear this month when the Pentagon acknowledged just four or five of the fighters were in combat. The White House insisted that Obama was not to blame since he had always been reluctant while others, including Republican critics, had pressed him to approve the training program. "The train and equip program was never anything but a box-checking exercise by a White House eager to be seen as 'doing something'," said Frederic Hof, a former State Department adviser on Syria now at the Atlantic Council. "'The devil made me do it' is this administration's response to policy failure."Russia's swift build-up in Syria stands in contrast to what Obama's critics say is a reluctant, slow-moving US military strategy in Syria.
"In an absence of American leadership, the vacuum is going to be filled by bad people," said Republican US Senator John McCain, a frequent critic of Obama's foreign policy, referring to the gains made by militants across the arc of conflicts.In Iraq, the Shi'ite-led government, locked in sectarian tensions with the country's Sunni minority, is still struggling to make headway against Islamic State. The security forces are trying to rebuild after melting away last year in the face of a militant offensive that captured Mosul, the country's second-largest city. US officials privately have voiced frustration with the pace of Iraqi operations, including preparations for a campaign to retake the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, which Islamic State seized in May. US officials have pointed to more positive results from military support given to Kurdish peshmerga forces in Iraq as well as Syrian Kurdish fighters on parts of Syria's border with Turkey. Another bright spot, they say, is progress made with local partners fighting the violent extremist group Boko Haram in west Africa. However, in Afghanistan, the loss of Kunduz dealt another blow to Obama's policy and raised questions whether Afghan forces will be able to secure the country on their own, despite the $65 billion invested by Washington to build them up.
Critics say a 2016 withdrawal plan may be premature.
Some analysts suggested that even though US warplanes had begun bombing Taliban targets in an effort to take back Kunduz, the US military may not have provided enough support early enough, particularly for airlifting in troops. Even if Kunduz is recaptured from the Taliban, "the damage is done," said James Dobbins, Obama's former Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and now a senior fellow at the RAND Corp. think tank. "Everybody living there now knows they're vulnerable."
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Report: Russian fighter jets strike Syrian rebel strongholds
Reuters and Roi Kais/Ynetnews/Published: 09.30.15
Russian fighter jets launched strikes on rebel-controlled areas in Syria on Wednesday, Sky News quoted Syrian opposition sources as saying. According to the report, the Russian aircraft attacked in the vicinity of the cities of Homs and Hama, starting at midday. Earlier on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria was unanimously backed by the parliament in Moscow. The move, which sets the stage for Russia's biggest play in the region since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, was announced as Syrian government warplanes conducted heavy strikes in Homs province and the United States and its allies struck Islamic State targets.
A French diplomatic source said on Wednesday that Russia's airstrikes appeared to be directed against Syrian rebels and not the Islamic State. As part of its preparations, Moscow has already sent military experts to a recently established command center in Baghdad which is coordinating air strikes and ground troops in Syria, a Russian official told Reuters on Wednesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the center is used to share information on possible air strikes in Syria. Limited operation with no boots on the ground
Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief of Staff said Russia's missions would be limited and not open-ended and precluded the use of ground troops.
"As our president has already said, the use of ground troops has been ruled out. The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS," he said.
The decision to get involved militarily in Syria will be a further challenge for Moscow, which is already intervening in Ukraine at a time when its economy is suffering from low oil prices and Western sanctions. A US-led coalition has already been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but Russia has been highly critical, saying it has only yielded meager results so far. France announced at the weekend that it had launched its first air strikes in Syria. Ivanov said the upper house of parliament had backed military action by 162 votes to zero after President Bashar Assad had asked for Russian military assistance.
The Syrian presidency confirmed that in a statement, saying Assad had written to Putin and Russia was increasing its military support as a direct result of that appeal. Ivanov said Russia was only acting to protect its own interests in Syria, where it maintains a Soviet-era naval facility at Tartous, its only access to the Mediterranean. "We're talking specifically about Syria and we are not talking about achieving foreign policy goals or about satisfying our ambitions ... but exclusively about the national interests of the Russian Federation," said Ivanov.
Russian military action would not be open-ended, he added, declining to say which aircraft would be used and when. The operations of the Russian air force can not of course go on indefinitely and will be subject to clearly prescribed time frames."
Russia's decision to intervene in Syria was prompted by a panicky realization that the Syrian government was being turned over on the battlefield, diplomats have told Reuters. When it saw several months ago that Syrian government forces were retreating on several fronts at a rate that threatened Assad, its closest Middle East ally, the Kremlin quietly decided to despatch more men, weaponry and armour, diplomats and analysts told Reuters. Putin's spokesman said the vote by the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, meant Moscow would be practically the only country in Syria to be conducting operations "on a legitimate basis" and at the request of "the legitimate president of Syria". The last time the Russian parliament granted Putin the right to deploy troops abroad, a technical requirement under Russian law, Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine last year. Analysts said Putin needed to get parliament's backing to ensure that any military operation was legal under the terms of the Russian constitution. "If there will be a united coalition which I doubt, or in the end two coalitions -- one American and one Russian -- they will have to coordinate their actions," Ivan Konovalov, a military expert, told Reuters.
"For Russian forces to operate there legitimately ... a law was needed."

Saudi Arabia is Not Our Friend
Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/September 30/15
Prime Minister Stephen Harper (left), Liberal leader Justin Trudeau (center), and NDP leader Tom Mulcair leave the stage following the Munk Debate on Canada's foreign policy in Toronto on September 28. At the vigorous foreign affairs debate between the major Canadian national party leaders at the Munk Centre Monday night, one subject was conspicuous by its absence — Saudi Arabia. A week earlier, during the French-language debate, when prodded by Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe to explain why Canada was arming a country that many political and military strategists consider our enemy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper sheepishly claimed, "Saudi Arabia is our ally."That remark was met by a sarcastic rebuke from Duceppe, who shot back, "So Saudi Arabia is your ally. Oh good, I've taken note." Harper's explanation is cause for concern. He could have said, "in trade sometimes one has to deal with the devil," or that, "we traded with the USSR as well," but he stuck to his "ally" rhetoric. Defending Canada's $15 billion military deal with Saudi Arabia to supply light armoured vehicles, Harper told reporters, "This is a deal, frankly, with a country (that), notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant ... is an ally in the fight against the Islamic State."
Saudi Arabia is not our ally in the fight against Islamic State.In fact, Saudi Arabia is not our ally in the fight against Islamic State. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say, Saudi Arabia is, metaphorically speaking, the ultimate "Islamic State." As early as 2002, Laurent Murawiec, the late French-born geostrategist with the Rand Corporation, warned an advisory committee to the United States Department of Defence that the "Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader ... Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies."Murawiec resigned from his job at Rand shortly after. While he insisted at the time he wasn't fired, many suspected the parting was an example of the lobbying power of the Saudis in the George W. Bush administration, one that continues with President Barack Obama today.
To my astonishment, neither Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau nor NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair were willing to criticize the Saudi government or promise to tear up the deal with the Saudis.
Perhaps they were not well briefed on the subject when it first came up, I thought, so I waited for the Munk foreign affairs debate on Monday for the subject to emerge. It didn't. Neither the moderator nor the leaders themselves brought up the subject of Saudi Arabia, the arms sale, the case of political prisoner Raif Badawi, whose wife, Ensaf Haider, is now a resident in Canada, or anything critical of the Saudi kingdom. There is something clearly wrong when no Canadian leader dares to censure Saudi Arabia. Instead, we witnessed Trudeau mounting an unabashed defence of the rights of convicted Islamic terrorists to hold on to their Canadian citizenship; jihadis who share the same political worldview propagated by many in Saudi Arabia. Trudeau's self-righteous rant seemed to suggest revoking Canadian citizenship was a racist act against immigrants.
This prompted Harper to give the following retort:
Are you seriously saying, Mr. Trudeau, we should never be able to revoke citizenship from somebody? We revoke the citizenship already of war criminals, and why would we not revoke the citizenship of people convicted of terrorist offences against this country? There is something clearly wrong with Canadian politics when no leader dares to censure Saudi Arabia, let alone call for sanctions against it. Where are the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trumps of Canadian politics? How long will we have to suffer the mediocrity in Canada of puppeteer consultants, Teleprompters, contrived rage and fake self-righteousness?
Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

The Abbas "Bombshell"
Barry Shaw/Gatestone Institute/September 30, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6603/abbas-bombshell
If one person can stand at the UN and unilaterally declare a state, I advise the leader of the Kurds, the Catalans, the Druze and any other ethnic groups that feel entitled to have their independence to make their way to the building and do so.
It is, therefore, the European Union and several European governments, including France and the Netherlands, that are complicit with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in knowingly and purposefully violating their own, signed agreements. Moreover, according to the Oslo Accords, the PA was designated as an interim body, not a permanent one.
If one really wants to help the Palestinians, one will try to help rid them of their corrupt and repressive leaders; not reinforce them. The Palestinian people deserve better than this.
The "bombshell" that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas threatened he was going to drop on the United Nations during his speech did not materialize.
This bombshell turned out to be a planned announcement of a Palestinian state "under Israeli occupation."
If one person can stand at the podium of the UN and unilaterally declare a state, then I advise the leader of the Kurds, the Catalans, the Druze and any other ethnic groups that feel entitled to have their independence to make their way to the building and do so.
Apparently the U.S. Administration advised Abbas against the announcement, and Abbas backed down.
Abbas has had limited success playing the official forums of the United Nations and the European Union. They seem aligned with his agenda, but with no thought to the regional devastation that supplanting Israel -- the region's only democracy that that grants full human rights and equality with to all its citizens, including its Arab ones -- with a corrupt and repressive regime would entail. Polls repeatedly show that Israel's Arabs -- about a fifth if its population, and with their own political parties and members of parliament -- would evidently, if secretly (for communal loyalty), rather remain in Israel than be in any Arab country, including one of their own. The international community also does not seem to take into consideration what displacing Israel would do to furthering the agendas of political Islamists and creating even more instability in the area.
Had Abbas gone ahead and made his announcement, not only would it have been an empty gesture, it would also have been a clearly illegal breach of the Oslo Accords and other internationally approved agreements that gave validity to the Palestinian Authority in the first place.
Abbas made three false claims in talks with UN officials during his New York visit.
He blamed Israel for ongoing tensions on the Temple Mount, when the violent riots were, in reality, perpetrated by Palestinian Muslims; they have been desecrating their own mosques by wrecking the furniture and using it for barricades to hide behind, while hurling rocks, firebombs and other missiles at non-Muslims on the Mount. Abbas also accused Israel of not reviving peace negotiations when it was Abbas himself who continually stalled and walked away from consecutive Israeli Prime Ministers and declined to respond to repeated pleas by Israel's current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to meet with him "anytime, anywhere." Netanyahu, in fact, invited Abbas to meet him while they were both in New York this week. The invitation was again declined. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the United Nations General Assembly, on September 26, 2014. (Image source: UN)
Abbas also complained about Israel's alleged failure to implement agreements with the Palestinians, but without specifying which agreements.
Ironically, it is only the constant protection by Israel's security forces that is keeping Abbas alive while rivals from Hamas and defectors from his own party attempt to kill him and take over the territories under his control. At bottom, it is the European Union as well as the Palestinian Authority that are in violation of the many signed international agreements. Everyone is invited to come to Israel to witness the illegal construction of buildings in what, under the Oslo Accords, is known as "Area C." Area C means, according to the official Oslo Accords, that Israel has full administrative and military control of that area until such time as a permanent peace agreement is signed between the two parties. In other words, during that interim period, neither the PA, Israel, nor anyone else, has the right to construct or plant a flag anywhere designated as Area C. There have been, regrettably, countless breaches of this protocol. It is, therefore, the EU and several European governments, including France and the Netherlands, that are complicit with the PA in knowingly and purposefully violating their own, signed agreements. It is Abbas's Palestinian Authority with the collusion of European governments that are failing to implement signed agreements with Israel. Moreover, according to the Oslo Accords, the PA was designated as an interim body, not a permanent one.
Lately, Abbas has been saying repeatedly that he will resign -- an empty threat directed at the international community, to suggest that without him, there would be chaos. The international community would do well not to fall for this or other ruses, often echoed by the BDS and other movements, which care more about hating Israel than helping Palestinians. If one really would really like to help the Palestinians, one would try to help rid them of corrupt and repressive leaders; not reinforce them. The Palestinian people deserve better than this.
*Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of "Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism."

Deceit, not Justice: Palestinian Lies Peddled Again
Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/September 30, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6584/palestinian-lies
Ali Kazak knows perfectly well that his narrative is deceitful in the extreme. Kazak's fantasy about a Greater Israel is false, yet he does not mention a word about the most popular slogan used by Palestinians and their supporters: "Palestine will be free From the river to the Sea." All Palestinian maps show this same thing: a Palestine stretching from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. The slogan and the maps show one thing: no Israel. To call for the extinction of a people and country is a threat of genocide, something the Jews of all people have never called for and will never urge.
"The Jewish settlement is not designed to undermine the position of the Arab community; on the contrary, it will salvage it from its economic misery, lift it from its social decline, and rescue it from physical and moral degeneration. Our renaissance in Palestine will come through the country's regeneration, that is: the renaissance of its Arab inhabitants." – David Ben Gurion, 1906, later to become Prime Minister of Israel.
Why does Kazak not address the genuine threats of extremist Muslim sheikhs and organizations that say Islam will conquer the world, Muslims will dominate, and the earth will become a single umma [community]?
In 1947, the United Nations decided to partition the land. One slender part was given to the Jews, who accepted the space allotted to them without grumbling, but the Arabs rejected the arrangement, refused to establish a state of their own, and have gone on since then fighting, turning down generous peace offers, using terrorism on a vast scale, and doing all in their power to destroy Israel. That is why they do not have a state today.
The "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza was not an occupation of Palestinian territory. It simply retook these two areas from the Jordanians and the Egyptians, who had been occupying them since 1948. Today, Gaza has been wholly restored to the Palestinian people. The Israeli administration of the West Bank is totally legal under international law and is endorsed by UN Resolution 242 (1967), and which makes it clear that Israel has to move out from only some of the territory, and that only once the Palestinians have agreed to secure final and secure borders for Israel and recognized the state of Israel -- something they have never done. It is also legalized under the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1987 and the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords.
A revelation of Palestinian diplomatic tactics came to light recently in the form of a diplomatic response to an article that opposed the formal acceptance of a Palestinian state, at least at this time.
In an important article last July, titled "The Case against Recognition of Palestine," the Director of the British Israel Communications and Research Centre, Professor Alan Johnson, argued that the Australian Labour Party's proposal to recognize the so-called State of Palestine would be a grave error that would harm the ALP itself. Johnson made a reasoned and informed plea for ALP members to reject the motion, reminding the public that Israel has always been open-handed in its offers of peace, unlike the Palestinians, who have consistently refused to accept even the most generous proposals. It is important to note that Johnson, an authoritative writer and speaker, with a longstanding reputation as a political theorist, is a moderate left-winger and British Labour Party member, a former Trotskyite. In other words, he would seem to be the last person to argue Israel's case and oppose Palestinian statehood.
Rather than respond to Johnson's scholarly arguments by issuing a serious piece by a pro-Palestinian academic of similar stature, the journal published just one week later a diatribe by a Palestinian diplomat named Ali Kazak, titled "Justice, not Deceit, will achieve Peace."
Kazak is probably the leading Palestinian lobbyist in Australia, (where he moved in 1970, after being raised in Syria). He set up the Palestine Information Office (later the General Palestinian Delegation), recognized by the Australian government, and has gone on to obtain recognition in New Zealand. He is treated as the Palestinian ambassador in several Pacific states such as Vanuatu. He writes copiously for the Australian press in English and Arabic, and for Arabic-language papers across the globe.
Kazak may be little known outside his region, but his response to Alan Johnson is not a presentation of one man's opinions; it is an official document that one may take as a formal statement of Palestinian views. As such, it merits close analysis.
In over forty years as an academic and writer on Islam and the Middle East, there has rarely come to my attention a more misguided, distorted, exaggerated, and factually incorrect article than Ali Kazak's. It is so filled with deliberate distortions that it might take several articles to show all of them for the ahistorical garbage and brazen polemic they are.
It is hard to know where to start. In his first page, Kazak uses a straw man argument to tar all Zionists as unashamed colonizers who demand a Greater Israel far beyond the modern boundaries of the state of Israel: "The aims of Zionism since its creation in 1897... was (sic) never for coexistence, nor was it to establish a Jewish state on part of Palestine. Instead, the aim of Zionism been to colonize all of Palestine and parts of the neighbouring Arab states, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people."
Kazak quotes at length passages from a letter -- written on October 5, 1937 by David Ben-Gurion to his son, Amos -- which contains such gems as "We must expel Arabs and take their place... I am confident that the establishment of a Jewish state, even if it is only a part of the country, will enable us to carry out this task." This quotation has been taken from an erroneous transcription of the letter and uses a bad English translation from that. Fortunately, the handwritten original still exists and has been compared with the transcription. Ben-Gurion never wrote "We must expel Arabs and take their place." This is nowhere in the letter. What Ben-Gurion wrote was, in fact, the exact opposite:
"We do not want to and we do not have to expel Arabs and take their place."
The letter continues in similar vein:
"All of our ambitions are built on the assumption that has proven true throughout all of our activities in the land [of Israel] — that there is enough room for us and for the Arabs in the land [of Israel]. And if we will have to use force, not for the sake of evicting the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but rather in order to secure the right that belongs to us to settle there, force will be available to us."
Here are some further passages:
"The greater the Jewish strength in the country, the more it will be possible for the Arabs to benefit enormously from the Jews, not only materially but politically as well. ... the Arabs will realize that it is better for them to become our allies ... They will derive benefits from our assistance if they, of their own free will, give us the opportunity to settle in all parts of the country. ... the Jews could be equal allies, real friends, not occupiers or tyrants over them.... It is very probable that they will agree that we undertake the development of the Negev and make it prosper in return for our financial, military, organizational, and scientific assistance." As far back as 1906, the young Ben Gurion wrote that "The Jewish settlement is not designed to undermine the position of the Arab community; on the contrary, it will salvage it from its economic misery, lift it from its social decline, and rescue it from physical and moral degeneration. Our renaissance in Palestine will come through the country's regeneration, that is: the renaissance of its Arab inhabitants."[1]
Throughout his life, Ben Gurion made many such comments, constantly pleading with the Arabs to live and work alongside the Jews to create a flourishing state. Why does Kazak mention none of these, but substitutes a falsified, mistranslated, and deceitful quotation to "prove" that the Jews were intent from the beginning on expelling the Arabs? Written while a civil war launched by the Arabs still raged, and as five Arab nations prepared to invade the new state, Israel's Declaration of Independence reads in part:
WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
It must have stuck in Kazak's throat to cite this, yet further evidence that he is peddling a lie. There is more. Kazak's view (reflecting a long-standing Palestinian myth) is that the whole Zionist enterprise was aimed at the colonization of much of the Middle East. He even manages to dredge up some statements by Theodor Herzl and other Zionists to enforce this view. In truth, there has been and still is a tiny minority of Zionists who cling to the fantasy of a Jewish state embracing the Biblical region from eastern Egypt to northern Arabia. But to present this as evidence that Zionists as a whole hold such views is deeply misleading. When I say "a minority," I really mean it. After 1967, a movement and political party named The Movement for Greater Israel emerged, and in 1969 it stood in a general election. It received 0.6% of the vote, below the electoral threshold of 1%, and collapsed.
Kazak weaves a fiction of malign Zionist aims to take over territories beyond the borders of Israel, when all the Jewish people as a whole ever wanted to do was have a state of their own.
By 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made the country's position clear when speaking to his cabinet: "Greater Israel is over. There is no such thing. Anyone who talks that way is deluding themselves." It is not hard to conclude that Ali Kazak is one of the deluded.
Kazak's fantasy about a Greater Israel is false, yet he does not so much as breathe a word about the most popular slogan used by Palestinians and their supporters abroad: "Palestine will be free From the river to the Sea." All Palestinian maps show this same thing: a Palestine stretching from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. The slogan and the maps show one thing: no Israel. To call for the extinction of a people and country is a threat of genocide, something the Jews of all people have never called for and will never urge.
Palestinian Authority leaders, official television, schools and media outlets often display maps showing Palestine stretching from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. The maps do not show the existence of Israel.
The notion that all Zionists and Jews want to build a Greater Israel has disturbing echoes of one of the hoariest and most frequently dismissed myths of anti-Semitism: that the Jews control everything and have taken over everything from banking to the film industry, to all the wars and revolutions, even entire governments. This was an evil conspiracy theory constructed by the Russian secret police to justify their pogroms and later promulgated by the Nazis to explain their extermination of six million human beings. It is shameful even to hint at it.
Not only that, but the claim falls flat when compared to what Israel has actually done down the years. In 1979, Israel reached a peace treaty with Egypt and, as a gesture to improve relations, it pulled out of the Sinai Peninsula entirely, tearing down every last Jewish settlement there. Today, Egyptian forces are fighting ISIS on the peninsula.
On May 24, 2000, Israel completed its withdrawal from Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425, thus ending a 22-year military presence there since the First Lebanon War began in 1982. All IDF troops were pulled out of the region and all IDF and South Lebanon Army (SLA) outposts were evacuated and destroyed. In August 2005, Israeli troops dragged Jewish settlers screaming out of their homes in Gaza and totally ended any Israeli presence there. The Jews left behind greenhouses and other advanced equipment and buildings to help advance the Gazan economy. Within days, everything had been destroyed by local Palestinians. The next year, Hamas took control and has since used Gaza as a base from which to fire thousands of rockets into Israeli towns. And some days after the Gaza pullout, Israel also closed down four settlements in the northern West Bank and expelled their Jewish inhabitants. How does all this fit Kazak's accusation that Israel wants to expand its borders? Are pullouts from territory won in defensive wars a sign of irrendentism?
Finally, why does Kazak not address the genuine threats of extremist Muslim sheikhs and organizations that say Islam will conquer the world, Muslims will dominate, and the earth will become a single umma [community]? These people fight actual offensive wars, destroying whole countries and massacring their inhabitants. I would have thought that a greater worry to Kazak and his people than a tiny handful of Jewish fantasists who are rejected by their own society. But Kazak's article goes beyond this fiction to re-write history. As a historian, I can only goggle at the effrontery of his version of events. He leaves out far more than he adds, and does so knowing perfectly well that his narrative is deceitful in the extreme and with so many howlers. Here is one: Kazak claims that "the United Nations has no jurisdiction to partition any country against the wishes of the majority of its people." Even if that were true, it is completely irrelevant to the case of Israel and the Palestinians. The will of the majority was meaningless and there has never been, at any time, a sovereign state of Palestine.
Since the Islamic invasions of the 7th century, the entire region has been a province of a sequence of empires from the Umayyads to the Ottomans, and it has been known as al-Sham or Syria. What became the Palestinian Mandate was originally southern Syria. But when the Ottoman Empire fell to pieces in 1918, the world powers had to do something to create new states where the provincial peoples could rule themselves, and to do this they had to create mandates. The French were given northern Syria, from which they created modern Syria and Lebanon. Britain held the mandates for Iraq and Palestine. Part of the Palestine Mandate required by law under the League of Nations was the creation of a Jewish homeland there.
But here is something Kazak does not tell us. The British divided the original mandate of 120,466 square kilometres into two distinct halves. The section to the east of the Jordan River was declared a purely Arab state known as Transjordan, which took 77% of Palestine. The remaining 23% (28,166 sq. km.) was set aside for equal Jewish and Arab settlement. When Kazak claims that "On May 14 1948 the Zionists declared the establishment of a Jewish state on 78% of Palestine and renamed it Israel" he is talking through his hat and really needs to go back to school and attend some lessons in mathematics.
In November 1947, the United Nations, which acquired the legal responsibilities for the mandates from the League of Nations, after years of trying to convince the Arabs in the 23% territory to live alongside the Jews, decided to partition the land. One slender part was given to the Jews, who accepted the space allotted to them without grumbling, but the Arabs rejected the arrangement, refused to establish a state of their own, and have gone on since then fighting, turning down generous peace offers, using terrorism on a vast scale, and doing all in their power to destroy Israel. That is why they do not have a state today.
Let us turn to the supposedly historical events Kazak lists in the rest of his screed. First, this:
"On April 1, 1948, the Jewish underground terrorist groups, the Haganah, Stern Group and Irgun, which became the Israeli army, launched a war putting Plan Dalet into force, with two objectives:
* To establish a Jewish state beyond the boundaries demarcated by the United Nations.
* To establish a state devoid, as much as possible, of its indigenous Palestinian population by expelling them, in order to turn the Palestinian majority into a minority and the Jewish minority into a majority."
Where to begin? Kazak provides no context at all for this, and no sources. In fact, when the UN General Assembly voted for partition in November 1947, it was the Palestinian Arabs who rejected the state they were given and started a major civil war against the Jews. That war was still in progress in April 1948, when five Arab states were mobilizing to attack Israel once the British left in May.[2] The Haganah was never "an underground terrorist group," but was an open force for the defence of the Jews in Palestine and was later merged into what became the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
The Stern Group (properly "Lehi") and the Irgun ("Irgun Zva'i Leumi") were indeed terrorist groups, but they were greatly disliked by the Jewish community. In September, the Israeli government declared them to be a terrorist outfit and arrested and imprisoned most of the members. Even then, the Stern Group had the decency, as is still uniquely done by the IDF today, to warn the British who were camped out in the King David Hotel, that there were plans to blow up a part of it, so that they would have a chance to evacuate the building. Regrettably, the British chose to ignore the warning.
The Irgun was a breakaway from the Haganah, and was, from the start, condemned for its terrorist tactics. At the start of Israel's War of Independence in 1948, however, the Irgun abandoned these and later merged with the Israel Defense Force, which acted as a regular army under legal state control.
The document containing Plan Dalet (Plan D), according to historian Benny Morris, nowhere speaks "of a policy or desire to expel 'the Arab inhabitants' or of any of its constituent regions; nowhere is any brigade instructed to clear out 'the Arabs'."[3] Nor does Plan Dalet refer to a goal "to establish a Jewish state beyond the boundaries demarcated by the United Nations." Quite the opposite, in fact. While Palestinian Arabs and, weeks later, thousands of troops from Arab states were trying to destroy Israel and the Jews, Plan D "called for securing the areas earmarked by the United Nations for Jewish statehood and several concentrations of Jewish population outside those areas (West Jerusalem and Western Galilee)".[4] Morris's information is based on contemporary archival documents that are open to researchers to consult. Kazak cannot back up his claims with a single document.
Kazak follows this nonsense with an even more fantastic paragraph:
"Through terror and the perpetration of tens of massacres against unarmed and unprotected Palestinians, Jewish terrorist groups eradicated, under the watchful eyes of the British troops, between 800,000 and 950,000 Palestinians from their homeland (about 70% of the Palestinian population)."
Here, we are truly in the realm of fiction. None of this is true. He is merging events of the civil war of November 1947 to May 1948 with the succeeding Israeli War of Independence fought against Palestinian Arab partisans and armies from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Many histories of this event may be consulted.[5] Once the underground Jewish groups had been disbanded or merged with the IDF, the only terrorism came from the Arab side. There were no "tens of massacres"; just one attack, against armed Arabs, after they had cut off a supply route for Jews, at Deir Yassin. Arabs later admitted they had greatly exaggerated the number of dead.[6]
During the earlier civil war, large numbers of mainly wealthy Arabs took flight, to wait abroad until it was safe to return. Once the war proper started, the British forces were gone, so little of this happened "under the watchful eyes of the British troops." As the war continued, the Arab Higher Committee and the Arab Liberation Army ordered thousands of Palestinians to leave. This happened during the civil war in Haifa, when the Jewish authorities offered peace to the Arabs and even pleaded with them to stay.[7]
Some Arabs were expelled by Israeli forces fighting for their survival against Arab states, and forced out in a war they themselves had started. In the end, those Arabs who stayed were welcome, and now number well over a million people, or more than 20% of the population. Those who left were not considered loyal, and were not allowed to return. With the partial exception of Jordan, none of the Arab countries has ever granted citizenship to them or their descendants, or freed them from their refugee camps -- the only group of refugees to remain for political reasons from that period, and now multiplying with every passing generation. And Kazak forgets to mention that the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa expelled some 900,000 Jews in retaliation -- Jews who had taken no part in the fighting.
Kazak continues:
"On May 14, 1948, the Zionists declared the establishment of a Jewish state on 78% of Palestine and renamed it Israel. On the same day, the British government declared the end of its mandate and Palestine disappeared from the maps of the world."
As explained earlier, the 78% (or 77%) figure is a mistake -- 77% of the territory of the Palestine Mandate was allocated by Britain to the Arab state of Transjordan (later Jordan). The UN partition plan had taken the remaining 23% that had been earmarked for wide Jewish settlement and split it, giving the Arabs in the West Bank (occupied by Jordan in 1948) about 80% of the territory, leaving the Jews with 17.5%, of which most was desert (the Negev). "Palestine" did not "disappear from the map": Jordan is a Palestinian state created from the Palestine Mandate, and if the remaining Palestinians ever make peace with Israel, they will either merge with Jordan or create another state for themselves, which they are perfectly entitled to call "Palestine." Again, Palestine never existed as a state, only as a Mandate territory that was designed to be dissolved under international law.
Next, Kazak fictionalizes the purpose of UN Resolution 194 (11 December 1948): "The United Nations passed resolution 194 calling on Israel to allow the Palestinian refugees to return, but Israel refused to comply. Instead, they destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages to prevent the refugees from returning to their homes."
The resolution, however, was not primarily concerned with refugees. It was issued to bring about a truce in the middle of a war. Eli Hertz has summarized the resolution as follows:
Of the 15 paragraphs, the first six sections addressed ways to achieve a truce; the next four paragraphs addressed the ways that Jerusalem and surrounding villages and towns should be demilitarized, and how an international zone or jurisdiction would be created in and around Jerusalem. The resolution also called on all parties to protect and allow free access to holy places, including religious buildings.
One paragraph has drawn the most attention:
Paragraph 11, which alone addressed the issue of refugees and compensation for those whose property was lost or damaged. Contrary to Arab claims, it did not guarantee a Right of Return and certainly did not guarantee an unconditional Right of Return – that is the right of Palestinian Arab refugees to return to Israel. Nor did it specifically mention Arab refugees, thereby indicating that the resolution was aimed at all refugees, both Jewish and Arab. Instead, Resolution 194 recommended that refugees be allowed to return to their homeland if they met two important conditions:
That they be willing to live in peace with their neighbors
That the return takes place "at the earliest practicable date"
The resolution also recommended that for those who did not wish to return,
"Compensation should be paid for the property ... and for loss of or damage to property" by the "governments or authorities responsible."
Although Arab leaders point to Resolution 194 as proof that Arab refugees have a right to return or be compensated, it is important to note that the Arab States: Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen voted against Resolution 194. Israel is not even mentioned in the resolution.
It was not Israel that refused to comply with the resolution, but the Arab states. Referring to the clauses that suggested the Arabs would have to resettle or compensate the Jews, Efraim Karsh writes: "It was just these clauses in Resolution 194 that made it anathema to the Arabs, who opposed it vehemently and voted unanimously against it."[8] Why, then, does Kazak blame Israel for something the Arabs did?
But it gets worse. Karsh follows that remark with this:
Not that the Palestinian leaders were eager to see their hapless constituents return to their homes, lest this be interpreted as implicit recognition of Israel. On September 21... Hajj Amin [al-Husayni, former ally of Hitler and chairman of the Arab Higher Committee] argued that repatriation could only be achieved through the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine. So did his AHC [Arab Higher Committee] colleague Emile Ghouri. "It is inconceivable for the refugees to return to their homes, for the Jewish occupiers will capture and torture them.... The very suggestion to do so is an attempt for those culpable for the problem to shun responsibility, and will serve as a first step to Arab recognition of the state of Israel and the idea of partition."
Kazak's claim that the Israelis destroyed 531 villages "to prevent the refugees from returning to their homes" is open to question. Only one source gives that high figure, Salman Abu Sitta; others are lower. But most of these locations were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed in fighting during the war -- a war that the Arabs, including the Palestinians, had started. As with Germany in 1945, if you start a war you must expect destruction. Since the state of Israel gave full citizenship to its Arab population, it is mere bias that interprets their motives in this way.
Perhaps the worst statement in Kazak's screed is this:
"In 1967 it [Israel] launched another act of aggression, occupying the whole of Palestine and parts of neighbouring Arab states, killing another 325,000 Palestinians, subjecting three million Palestinians to brutal military occupation, and refusing UN resolutions calling for its withdrawal."
I'm afraid to say, this is beyond fantasy. Not one word is true. The Six-Day War of 1967 was not an act of aggression by Israel (and certainly not "another," since Israel was not the aggressor in 1947 and 1948 either). Just so we understand who the aggressor was, let us look at a string of statements made by Arab leaders, notably, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, the Egyptian president, in the run-up to hostilities. And we shall follow that by mentioning some of the acts of aggression committed by Egypt and its allies, acts that provoked a war for Israel's very survival.
As far back as 1965, Nasser announced, "We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand; we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood."[9] A few months later, he said, "We aim at the destruction of the state of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel."[10] This is hardly what one might call a peaceful overture.
As documented by Isi Leibler in his book "The Case for Israel,"[11] on May 18, 1967, Sawt al-'Arab ("Voice of the Arabs") radio station announced, "We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence." Two days later, the Syrian Defence Minister Hafez Assad (later to become a brutal dictator) stated, "Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united.... I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation."
Nasser ratcheted up the aggression on May 27: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel" (Leibler, p. 60). The next day he declared, "We will not accept any... coexistence with Israel... Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel... The war with Israel is in effect since 1948". (Leibler, p. 18) On May 30, the Jordanians signed a defence pact with Egypt, and Nasser proclaimed "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived". (Leibler, p. 60) Joining the Arab military alliance, the president of Iraq, 'Abd al-Rahman 'Arif, joined in the verbal fray: "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map." (Leibler, p. 18) Does any of this bellicose rhetoric sound as if the Israelis were the aggressors and that they attacked peace-loving neighbours?
On May 15, Egyptian troops moved into the Sinai and massed along the Israeli border. The following day, Nasser ordered the UN peacekeeping force (UNEF) out of the Sinai Peninsula. Two days later, Syrian troops prepared for battle on the Golan Heights overlooking Israel.
On May 22, Nasser confirmed his aggression by blocking the Straits of Tiran, cutting off Israeli access to the Red Sea. A major breach of international law, this act was described by American President Lyndon Johnson as the true casus belli, the cause of the war. "If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Strait of Tiran would be closed."[12]
As the threat to Israel escalated over the following weeks, on June 5 the Israeli air force attacked the Egyptian air force squadrons on the ground and began what was to be a massive victory over the aggressor states in the space of six days. If Israel had not been quick off the mark, there was every likelihood that the Jewish state would have been destroyed and its Jewish inhabitants massacred in a second Holocaust. Kazak's claim that Israel killed 325,000 Palestinians is the most egregious error in his entire article. Some 300,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank during the war, but only some fighting men were actually killed. This statement alone demands an apology from Kazak. It is every bit as malicious and uninformed as any of the blood libels that have pursued the Jews for centuries. The "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza was not an occupation of Palestinian territory. It simply retook these two areas from the Jordanians and the Egyptians, who had been occupying them since 1948. Today, Gaza has been wholly given over to the Palestinian people. The Israeli administration of the West Bank is totally legal under international law and is endorsed by UN Resolution 242 (1967), which makes it clear that Israel has to move out from only some of the territory, and that only once the Palestinians have agreed to final and secure borders for Israel, and have recognized the state of Israel -- something they have never done. It is also legalized under the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1987 and the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords.
Kazak compounds his nonsense when he talks about the 1968 PLO proposals, which he, with unerring stupidity, describes as a "peace proposal":
"In October 1968 the PLO, with the support of all resistance groups, proposed the establishment of a democratic, secular, non-sectarian state in the historic land of Palestine, where Jews, Muslims and Christians would live equally side by side, as an acceptable solution to the conflict. Israel rejected the PLO peace proposal."What this proposal actually said was that a single state should be established, but since it would have an Arab majority, Israel would cease to exist and there would no longer be a Jewish state. Given the high level of anti-Semitism among Muslim Arabs then and today, life would quickly become intolerable for Jews in a unitary Palestine, and most would leave -- precisely the aim behind the proposal.
It is hard to take the proposal seriously in the first place. Several months earlier, in July, the PLO had published its first National Charter, much influenced by the growing strength of its military wing, Fatah. Has Kazak actually read the charter? It has been widely published, in Laqueur and Rubin's The Israel-Arab Reader (pp. 117-121), Charles Smith's Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents (pp. 338-40) and elsewhere, and online in many places, including Yale University Law School's Avalon Project. There is no space here to study the whole document, so a few citations will suffice. You can decide for yourself whether this is the basis for a "peace proposal." [Author's emphases in bold] Article 1. Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
(Note that this contains no mention of the Jews. Article 6 stipulates that only Jews resident before the "Zionist invasion" may become citizens and be regarded as Palestinians.)
Article 8 reads in part:
The phase in their history, through which the Palestinian people are now living, is that of national (watani) struggle for the liberation of Palestine... the Palestinian masses, regardless of whether they are residing in the national homeland or in diaspora (mahajir) constitute – both their organizations and the individuals – one national front working for the retrieval of Palestine and its liberation through armed struggle. It is followed by Article 9:
Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it.
This theme continues in Article 10:
Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution. It also requires the achieving of unity for the national (watani) struggle among the different groupings of the Palestinian people, and between the Palestinian people and the Arab masses, so as to secure the continuation of the revolution, its escalation, and victory.
Article 15 makes it clear just where this armed struggle will lead:
The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine. Article 21 refuses to accept any international proposals for a peaceful settlement:
The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all proposals aiming at the liquidation of the Palestinian problem, or its internationalization.
Article 30 states unequivocally that this armed struggle is a war to be fought by a popular Palestinian army
Fighters and carriers of arms in the war of liberation are the nucleus of the popular army which will be the protective force for the gains of the Palestinian Arab people.
The PLO Charter removes all the rights granted to Israel under international law. Article 19 reads:
The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations; particularly the right to self-determination.
And again, Article 20:
The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.
Here, the Jewish origins of the Holy Land are swept from under the feet of the Jews, and the Nazi slaughter of Jews based not on their religion, but on their ethnicity, is totally ignored as a factor in the Jewish desire for a state of their own from which to protect themselves from the devastating consequences of anti-Semitism. Is it surprising that the Israelis might not have been comfortable with the PLO's "peace proposal"? And given the thousands of terrorist attacks made by Palestinian fighters on Israeli civilians since then, we may ask exactly which side works hard to reject peace on any terms and which bids for peace again and again. Kazak writes that, "In September 1988 the PLO accepted the two-state solution in the historic land of Palestine and recognized all related the UN partition resolutions. Israel again refused the second Palestinian peace initiative." The documents to which he refers seem to be the PLO Political Resolution (November 15, 1988; Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 349-53) and the PLO Declaration of Independence of the same day (pp. 354-358). The complexities involved here would require a separate article of their own. Suffice it to mention that, in the PLO Political Resolution, the first section is entitled "On the Escalation and Continuity of the Intifada." The Intifada (later, the "First Intifada") was an armed uprising against Israel from 1987 to 1993. The Intifada was violent from the start. During its first four years, more than 3,600 firebomb attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 attacks with guns or explosives were reported by the Israel Defense Force. The violence was directed at soldiers and civilians alike. During this period, 16 Israeli civilians and 11 soldiers were killed by Palestinians in the territories; more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers were wounded, and approximately 1,100 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
But here is what the PLO Political Resolution says about it. It resolves
A. To provide all the means and capabilities needed to escalate our people's intifada in various ways and on various levels to guarantee its continuation and intensification.... C. To bolster and develop the popular committees and other specialized popular and trade union bodies, including the attack groups and the popular army, with a view to expanding their role and increasing their effectiveness... H. To call on the Arab nation, its people, forces, institutions, and governments, to increase their political, material, and informational support for the intifada.
Why would Israel trust Palestinian intentions? Especially since 1988 was also the year in which terrorist group Hamas issued its infamous Charter, in which it states (in Article 13) la hall li-'l-qadiyya al-Filastiniyya illa bi'l-jihad, "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except through Jihad," and that "Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement," and that "initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors," while calling for the slaughter of all Jews in the world. Why does Kazak ignore this?
That evidence should be more than enough. The rest of Kazak's article is full of further distortions, putting words into people's mouths, and deliberately misrepresenting the Israeli position. Given the errors and misrepresentations exposed here, and that this information has been in the public domain for decades, one can only conclude that Mr Kazak has been knowingly dishonest and deceitful in his portrayal of historical and political information. Alan Johnson and everyone who has read Kazak's diatribe deserve an apology, but I fear none is likely to be given.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has turned out to be one of the most resistant to compromise and solution in history. It has cost thousands of lives; exposed Israelis to wave after wave of terrorism; denied Palestinian Arabs a future free from hatred and self-destruction; and resulted in wars, suicide bombings and endless anger. Countless generous offers of peace and co-existence from Israel have been turned down, out of spite or simple intransigence. Palestinians insist that they will never recognize a Jewish state; will never agree to secure borders for Israel, and that they will continue to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their children. At the heart of this unending strife lies a body of historical and political facts that, properly understood, could lead in time to a result that will give freedom to the Palestinians and a guarantee of survival to the Jews. But when a writer on one side distorts, conceals, and refashions those facts and dares to title his invective "Justice, not Deception," those who seek peace feel trapped in a cycle of bias and culpable enormities. If we cannot escape from Orwellian misdirection and double speak, we can never find the truth and act on it. Ali Kazak may never understand that. He will, no doubt, continue to peddle lies.
**Denis MacEoin PhD, is a former lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Britain's Newcastle University and currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, New York.
[1] Cited Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, New Haven and London, 2010, p. 22.
[2] The best account of the ensuing war is Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, New Haven and London, 2008, p. 121
[3] Morris, 1948, p. 121
[4] Morris, 1948, p. 119
[5] The best is Benny Morris, already referred to. Others include Uri Milstein's 4-volume History of Israel's War of Independence, the most detailed; Chris Hayhurt's short Israel's War of Independence; and Chaim Herzog's The Arab-Israeli Wars.
[6] Sharif Kanaana, "Reinterpreting Deir Yassin," Bir Zeit University, April 1998.
[7] Morris, pp. 145-147; Karsh, pp. 124-42.
[8] Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, p. 227.
[9] Samuel Katz, Battleground – Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, Taylor Productions, 2002, pp. 10-11, 185.
[10] Netanel Lorch, One Long War: Arab versus Jew since 1920, Herzl Press, 1976, p. 110.
[11] Isi Leibler, The Case for Israel, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, 1972, p. 60.
[12] Yehuda Lukacs, Documents on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 1967-1983, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 17-18; Abba Eban, Abba Eban, Plunkett Lake Press, 2015, p. 358.
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No more speeches at the General Assembly boxing ring
Chris Doyle/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
It is quite some menagerie in New York as ever for the 70th edition of the U.N. General Assembly. Hotel prices shoot up every year as the world's leaders - that motley crew of despots, Kings, Presidents and Prime Ministers compete for airtime and attention. Typically, there is enough hot air to launch a thousand Zeppelins. This is when minnows can get a stage, when major Presidents can grandstand. For sure there are many heads of state but how few leaders. As I have argued before one wonders if the U.N. General Assembly achieves much at all? But it always delivers entertainment and theatre. We have had the 11-year-old son of Alexander Lukashenko's turning up to represent Belarus. San Marino, with slightly more than a third of the population of Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, gets a meeting with Lithuania. And how can you beat Robert Mugabe, even at the age of 91 (he was 21 when the U.N. was founded), for his "we are not gays" diatribe.
Putin
The ‘star’ act for 2015 has been, of course, Vladimir Putin. He smartly positioned himself and Russia as the go-to-power for resolving Syria just at the key moment when Europe and the US finally realized that the crisis was actually hitting them and their interests. Vladimir is offering to sort out Syria with his grand bargain putting the crushing of ISIS before any power transition in Damascus. His price is to maintain his grip on Damascus. His post-Crimea isolation, much to the chagrin of the Ukrainian leader, Petro Poroshenko, is pretty much all over. Barack Obama grudgingly acknowledged Putin’s revival with their chilly 90-minute summit.
Despite not addressing the U.N. for a decade, Putin had lost none of his confident brio on stage. "The United Nations is a structure that has no equal when it comes to legitimacy, representation, and universality…. Whatever actions a state takes bypassing this procedure [of passing resolutions] are illegitimate, run counter to the U.N. Charter and defy international law." Where were the hecklers when you need them to scream Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine? One wonders whether Vladimir has ever bothered to read the U.N. Charter let alone stick to its principles. This is a man who understands power and how to wield it. Does anyone seriously believe he will ever give the Crimea back to Ukraine? (Perhaps if Ukraine becomes a part of Russia)
Obama
Contrast Putin’s speech to Obama’s - the latter still seems idealistic and detached, with fine words and intentions but is there an end product? "Laws and agreements mean something", he proclaimed. He left out the word ‘should’. (As with Putin, there was no heckler to chant Israel and Gaza) His words were skewed to criticize Russian expansionism but he offered no solutions to global challenges not least Syria. Obama may or may not like this, but those that argue that the world has to engage with President Assad appear to be winning the debate to the delight of the Russian leader. The British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and even President Erdogan of Turkey have now acknowledged that there could be a role for Assad in a transition.
Rowhani
And Hassan Rowhani has found out what it means not to be in the limelight. The auditorium was only half full for his speech and there were no mass walkouts. Nevertheless a heckler was needed when Rowhani proclaimed that Iran was “prepared to bring about democracy in Syria and Yemen”. He did not explain why his own country should not get this privilege. Iran has not been such a divisive issue at the U.N. this year. Netanyahu will of course make up for this in spades when he speaks on Thursday in his annual war dance. But Rowhani’s speech epitomized the dangers and pitfalls of the U.N. General Assembly debate. This was the perfect opportunity for him to grandstand for domestic Iranian consumption. From the first sentence he tore into Saudi Arabia’s handling of the Hajj, “the incompetence and mismanagement of those in charge.” Whatever the rights and wrongs of the horrific events at Mina, publicly pillorying Saudi in such a fashion is hardly an effective let alone diplomatic way of increasing Iranian influence or the much needed rapprochement with Riyadh.
If ending speeches is too radical, why not at least reduce the number of speeches every year. So as all these worthy and not so worthy orations take place, a wide range of meetings on the margins foster the real work and arguably make the General Assembly worthwhile. So as ever it is the sidelines not the headlines that matter. If the public speeches were removed from the agenda and the bilaterals retained my suspicion is that far more would be achieved. In a world, oversaturated with crises and conflicts, it is often wiser to restrict the opportunities to grandstand and point score against opponents. And this is what the General Assembly debate has become - a boxing match with no knock-outs. It is Putin versus Obama, Netanyahu versus Abbas, Iran versus Saudi and so forth. Most of the worthy speeches are ignored for the jousts and barbs from conflicting leaders.
Are the world’s problems solved? How relevant were these speeches to the 60 million refugees and displaced peoples across the planet? Putin ludicrously suggested that once ISIS was crushed, Syrian refugees could just return home, no doubt dodging the barrel bombs as they cross the border. And on the refugees, Obama’s straight face was impressive when saying “in the faces of suffering families, our nation of immigrants sees themselves” knowing that the US has only offered to take an extra 10,000. For the first time in his U.N. speeches Obama made not one mention of Israel nor Palestine.
So my humble proposal is to end these set piece speeches. Are they needed in a world where unlike in 1945, the public views of Presidents, Kings and leaders are well aired not just locally but across the globe in multiple languages? Most of salient points get trailed in the media beforehand. We have yet to hear ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu’s speech but mix and match his Congress speeches with previous U.N. General Assembly efforts, and I suspect we shall hear little fresh. If ending this is too radical, why not at least reduce the number of speeches every year.
Perhaps other leaders could follow the example of the star of the show, and speak just once every ten years.

Japan’s diplomacy to vulnerable publics at home and abroad
Nancy Snow/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
Last year, 5,000 people applied for refugee status in Japan. 11 were accepted.
This past March, the Economist ran a headline, “No entry: As the world’s refugee problem grows, Japan pulls up the drawbridge.” The article included an image of the red circle (Rising Sun) that is the flag symbol of Japan with a white bar through it, the symbol for “Do Not Enter” signs in Europe. That same month, Tokyo lawyer Hiroshi Miyauchi filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Syrian men against Japan’s Ministry of Justice, seeking to oblige the Japanese government to approve the men’s applications for refugee status, arguing that the rejection of 61 applications filed by Syrian refugees since 2011 is “appalling.” The four had been granted “special permission to stay,” but had been denied refugee status.
In September, The Washington Post weighed in with an article headlined, “As Europe makes room for refugees, some in Japan ask why not us?” Japan is a strong target for refugee criticism because of its modest engagement in social media and global communications. Typically, it doesn’t proactively make its case to the world, largely allowing the international press and the Twitterverse to frame its issues for it. The Washington Post article, comparing the refugee response of Europe to Japan’s closed doors, quotes heavily from Twitter messages that argue for opening the doors to refugees in Japan, including @robotopia, who wrote, “It's insane that Japan, which has enough abandoned homes to house all Syrian #refugees TWICE over, took in only 11 asylum seekers in 2014.” The comment sparked a debate, including from me (@drpersuasion) about the feasibility to open abandoned houses in rural areas of Japan to refugees from Syria. @GoodandbadJapan responded, “But they don’t speak Japanese and might put the rubbish out on the wrong day.”Advocates in Japan and foreign media have rightly called this discrepancy outrageous. But does Japan really have the capacity to accept large numbers of refugees on the same level as other developed nations?The focus on Syria may carry with it a bitter memory for many Japanese
Japan doesn’t have the social infrastructure to accept large numbers of refugees, even though refugees are able to work in Japan. It might be very difficult for adults and their children who didn’t speak the language to find a place at school or in the workplace. Unlike Western countries that have a history of immigration, most Japanese businesses and schools don’t have a support system in place. That could cause conflict with refugees feeling marginalized, which, in turn, may cause Japanese citizens to become opposed to accepting future refugees.
Accepting refugees to Japan is not unprecedented, just very limited. Japan accepted over 11,000 Indo-Chinese refugees (1978-2005) fleeing the Vietnam conflict. Japan was the first Asian country in 2010 to participate in UNHCR’s resettlement program, a pilot program to bring 90 Myanmar refugees from Thailand over the course of three years. Other than Myanmar and the Indo-Chinese, the Japanese government doesn’t have much experience in targeting a specific group for refugees to come to Japan, especially from a vastly different culture. Japan has recognized 577 refugees (1982-2010) under the 1981 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1982 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.
The Cinderella and the Evil Stepmom
Where Japan shines is in providing assistance as a leading humanitarian nation. It is a top Official Development Assistance (ODA) country, just below the U.S., UK, and Germany. International aid ostensibly greatly improves the lives of refugees. But because Japan is not a top host nation for refugees, it is vulnerable to critical global media stories singling it out as a rich country that takes in the least refugees. In contrast, Germany is celebrated for opening arms wide to take in up to half a million refugees. Germany may be facing incredible burdens from this population infusion, but its liberal refugee policy blowback may take years. Germany was the Cinderella of the refugee crisis and Japan the Evil Stepmom before Abe’s address to the United Nations on September 29. Abe announced a tripling of the budget from last year to $810 million in assistance to refugees and internally displaced people in Syria and Iraq. He also announced $750 million “to help build peace and fully ensure this peace across the Middle East and Africa.” But that is what Japan is doing “over there” and Japan may still be subjected to criticism for not taking in the most vulnerable publics fleeing conflict.
The refugee criticism of Japan risked threatening an image that Japanese leaders have attempted to cultivate in developing nation brand Japan as a compassionate leader in the world. One of Japan’s most honored citizens, Madame Sadako Ogata, high commissioner of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees for a decade (1991-2000), remains one of the country’s most honored citizens. At age 88, she remains president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, a Tokyo-based developmental organization which works to alleviate poverty, as one mission.
The focus on Syria may carry with it a bitter memory for many Japanese. This past January, Prime Minister Abe announced a $100 million donation to help the countries of the Middle East fighting ISIS inside their borders. Within a few days, Muslim militants with ISIS beheaded Kenji Goto, a journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, the Japanese hostage that Goto had gone to Syria to attempt to rescue. At the time, public opinion in Japan supported Abe and many wondered, with bewilderment, why Goto left his wife and new baby in Tokyo to go to Syria. The propaganda images of both men in orange jumpsuits, to mimic the uniforms prisoners wear in Guantanamo, being beheaded, shocked much of the nation.
A better case for Japan outside of increasing international support is to perhaps sponsor another pilot program, a group of child refugees to be placed here with their families to receive free education. Imagine if these young people were able to grow up in the K-12 system, attend university and become citizen ambassadors for their refuge nation. It would be difficult to learn the language and to adjust to Japanese society, but not impossible, and given the alternatives of war and strife, it would be an excellent public diplomacy gesture on the part of a government that has recently lost political capital over its collective security bills. This more recent bitter memory cannot be ignored. While Mr. Abe’s tripling of humanitarian assistance for refugees and internally displaced people in Syria and Iraq is notable, what cannot be ignored is Japan’s continuing identity crisis and a native population of internally displeased people who were greatly opposed to the collective security measures passed just after midnight on 19 September. Abe’s U.N. speech made passing reference to the collective security measures that were couched by a brawl in the Diet and hundreds of thousands who took to the streets. He framed the security summer of our discontent as a picture postcard contribution “to peacekeeping operations.” This part of his U.N. speech may become as frequently cited as his positive public relations surrounding doing more for the most vulnerable publics.

Netanyahu in the ‘axis of resistance’
Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
It is really entertaining to follow the headlines and analyses of media outlets affiliated with the “axis of resistance” as they try to justify Israeli-Russian military coordination in Syria. The West was surprised by Russian President Valdimir Putin deciding to intervene in what looks like an operation to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, using the same units that fought the filthy war in Ukraine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow after this development, and returned with official reassurances that the Syrian regime will not open the Golan front. The talks highlighted the intersection of interests in maintaining the Assad regime.
Justifications
The media of the “axis of resistance” are struggling to overcome this public Russian-Israeli consensus. They have made desperate and confusing attempts to justify it, such as Putin deterring Israel from violating Syrian airspace, and Netanyahu trying to save face by claiming a major understanding with the Russian president. Moscow is providing Israel with the kind of stability that former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad granted it 45 years ago. Why do we expect Israel to object to the Russian military role in Syria as long as this does not oppose its interests? Moscow is providing Israel with the kind of stability that former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad granted it 45 years ago. Perhaps it would have been better if the media affiliated with the “axis of resistance” claimed that they do not know what is going on, instead of comically cheering these developments. The Putin-Netanyahu meeting subjects those affiliated with the “axis of resistance” to contradictions that they cannot overcome. Congratulations to “axis of resistance” supporters, as it seems that Netanyahu is now at its forefront! However, one question remains: Who are you resisting? Most probably your societies, all for the sake of Netanyahu!

What form will Russian involvement in Syria take?
Maria Dubovikova/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
When Russian involvement in Syria is viewed in the context of supporting President Bashar al-Assad, reaction is totally negative. When it is considered as part of the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the perception is mostly positive. The difference is determined by the fact that some players are mostly concerned by ISIS, others by the bloodshed of the Syrian civil war. Some - such as Moscow - consider Assad the key force to fighting ISIS, even though only 10 percent of his army’s battles are with ISIS. Others consider Syrian rebels the main force to fight ISIS, though the credibility and origin of most rebel fighters raise valid concerns. Russian support to Damascus is nothing new. Military contracts were not signed yesterday. Moscow intensifying its activities in Syria is quite predictable. So with regard to whether Russia will get involved, it already is. But should we expect direct military involvement in the form of ground combat or airstrikes?
Risk and reward
The risks for Russian national security are extremely high, as ISIS has made threats against Russia, which has more than 2,700 citizens fighting for the jihadist group. To make direct involvement happen, the dividends should outweigh possible losses, but Russia will never send troops to fight on the ground.
To make direct involvement happen, the dividends should outweigh possible losses, but Russia will never send troops to fight on the ground. Direct involvement depends on whether the West and its regional allies come to accept Assad as part of the solution in Syria, or whether they maintain that he is part of the problem. Partially accepting Assad as part of the solution against ISIS would mean Moscow becoming a key mediator between Damascus and the U.S.-led coalition, as well as coordination between various forces. The key feature of any broad anti-ISIS cooperation is that any action should be U.N.-mandated and correspond to international law. The role of mediator would be sufficient for Moscow’s ambitions. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s U.N. General Assembly speech shows that his position is unchangeable. He would most likely prefer to remain the great supporter of Iraq and Syria in their fight against ISIS, without taking part in airstrikes, unless he is forced by circumstances or if the stakes dramatically rise. Russian mediation in talks with Damascus, along with military and humanitarian aid to Syrians on condition that delivered weapons never be used against rebels, could be the best scenario for all players. This will avoid confrontation, encourage cooperation, and lay a reliable foundation for common resolution of regional and global crises on the basis of mutual trust.

The Russians are in Baghdad too!
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/September 30/15
The Kremlin has been marching toward Syria and Iraq for months now, expedited by the West and Iran reaching a nuclear deal that ends international sanctions on the latter. Recent developments provide a clear picture of the scale of Russia’s and Iran’s military presence in Syria and Iraq. Russia alleged that weapons shipped to Syria were military purchases previously agreed upon with the regime of President Bashar-al-Assad. It was only a few weeks before the truth surfaced, that the shipments included different specifications than those mentioned. For example, they included temporary housing units as well as equipment to expand airports. Moscow’s justification is that these are training facilities for Russian consultants. Some two weeks ago, we found out that there was a huge number of applications submitted by the Russian military to pass through certain countries' airspace to head to Syria, implying that Moscow is shipping ammunition for the Russian army. After it was no longer possible to deny the truth, Moscow made its first confession: it was sending combat forces to help the Assad regime fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist groups. Satellite images of Bassel al-Assad Airport in Latakia, and facilities in Tartus and Damascus, showed Sukhoi fighter aircrafts, T90 tanks, attack helicopters and a missile system. Amid surprise and tension in Washington, U.S. officials continued to naively speak of the possibility of cooperating with the Russians to fight ISIS.
Syria to Iraq
Last week, despite doubts regarding Russian intentions, the Americans presented a dangerous concession, announcing their acceptance of a Russian political solution in which Assad is president but gives up governance in the future. Neither Iran nor Russia intend to resolve the humanitarian tragedy of the Syrian and Iraqi peoples - all they care about is strengthening Assad, who has become a mere front for Tehran, and completing their domination over Iraq. It then turned out that Russian intelligence opened an office in the heart of the Iraqi capital, specifically opposite the Defense Ministry in the Green Zone! The Americans were shocked, realizing that the Russians have entered Iraq as well as Syria. To justify the betrayal of its American ally by allowing the Russians to work in American strategic areas, the Iraqi government confessed that it agreed to share intelligence information regarding ISIS with the Iranian and Russian governments. The White House has for two years been repeating that it does not care about Syria because it does not view it as a country with strategic value, unlike Iraq. It has also said that its interest in Syria was a response to a purely humanitarian case. This reveals that President Barack Obama has not learnt the lesson that his predecessor George W Bush learnt late, that Syria is the source of a major threat to Iraq and was behind the American defeat. Syria was the headquarters of the gathering of Al-Qaeda fighters, and of what was known as Iraqi resistance, and it became the path from which they passed to Iraq after 2004. These years have proven that it is not possible to govern Iraq without guaranteeing Syria. The Iranians are fighting there because they know that he who governs Damascus can threaten or protect Baghdad. The Russians did not move toward Syria then Iraq until their ally Iran signed the nuclear deal. It seems the Iranians succeeded in deceiving American negotiators by convincing them that stopping their nuclear program, which had already been struggling, was a gain that deserves all these Western concessions, including remaining silent over their military activities and interventions in Iraq and Syria.
The Russians have decided to quickly move forward and solidify their presence in Mesopotamia. Neither Iran nor Russia intend to resolve the humanitarian tragedy of the Syrian and Iraqi peoples - all they care about is strengthening Assad, who has become a mere front for Tehran, and completing their domination over Iraq. Fighting ISIS has become a Western problem, and an umbrella to grant Iranian forces and their Afghan, Lebanese and Iraqi militias legitimacy for a military presence under the pretext of cooperating with the U.S.-led international coalition to fight terror. This paved the way for them to take over two important countries within this geopolitical struggle of the Middle East.

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006 Click Here to go to the LCCC Daily English/Arabic News Buletins Archieves Since 2006

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