Good News Friday

This week, in contrast to previous weeks, I present you with a bumper-pack Good News Friday installment, chock-full of good news.

My first item comes from last week when we took part in a reunion Shabbat of British Olim, most of whom made aliya in the 1970s-80s, and all from a religious Zionist background. We had a fantastic time over a Shabbat full of reminiscences, looking at funny old photos, laughter, comparisons of aliya stories, and a competition over who had the worst (or best) Israeli bureaucracy story. I think my brother’s “getting 2 dishwashers through Israeli Customs” took the gold medal.

The tefillot (prayers) were wonderful, full of enthusiastic singing, as were the meals, and many old friendships were renewed and strengthened. We were also inspired by two very interesting talks: one by David Newman (of Ben Gurion University) who has a regular column in the Jerusalem Post and with whom I rarely agree on political opinions, and who surprised us with a very interesting insight into the British academic boycott of Israel (it is apparently nowhere near as bad as it is made out in the media) and one by Judge Philip Marcus on the biased Scotland Commission investigating Israel’s purported mistreatment of Palestinian children.

David Newman used his regular JPost column this week to write a beautiful article about our 30-year Aliya reunion:

British Aliya reunion

A small group, some 20-plus couples, assembled for a Shabbat at a hotel in Netanya to revive memories and share experiences of having lived most of our adult lives in Israel. Being in our late fifties and early sixties, many are already thinking about impending retirement and beginning to make plans for that period.

[...]

Put together by veteran olim Larry and Judy Freedman, residents of Hashmonaim, the group came together from the width and breadth of the country.

From Kibbutz Bet Rimon in the north to Pardes Hanna to Petach Tikva and Hashmonaim in the center of the country, to Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and south to Metar in the Northern Negev.

The group remained largely, but not exclusively, homogeneous in its religious Zionist character, and it was clear that the common characteristics far outweighed the individual differences which have developed – be they in family lifestyles, political beliefs, or levels of religious practice – over the years.

Black-and-white photos of those years long gone, sharing youth movement experiences at summer camps in the UK, or hachshara experiences on kibbutzim in Israel, brought a great deal of laughter. Almost all of us had a lot more hair back then, smaller stomachs and – as we suddenly realized – were much younger at that time than most of our adult children are today.

The stories we regaled each other with, especially reliving the bureaucracies of our respective aliya experiences, were enough to create a script for an entire comedy series – and were it not for the fact that the stories were true, an outsider looking in would have put it all down to farfetched imagination.

Beyond the humor and the laughter, a number of common points were clear to all.

None of us, even for the slightest moment, regretted our decision to come and live in Israel. We did not have negative experiences growing up in the UK, and all of us – well educated with good professions – had the easy option to remain in the countries of our birth.

But the socialization of the youth movement in which we were active, and the desire to be part of a much greater Jewish experience, had spurred us on at the time, and 30-40 years down the road, had not dissipated in any way. On the contrary, we were all convinced that we had had the privilege of bringing up our own children in a more independent, open and self-confident society than the one in which we had grown up. Almost without exception, all of our children (and their children) lived in Israel, and have absolutely no intention to move elsewhere.

[...]

All of us would recommend, without any hesitation, to those acquaintances, friends and relatives in the UK to repeat our experience and to come live in Israel.

[...]

But the reason for our advice to come join us in Israel had little to do with the threats – real or perceived – that may exist among the Jewish communities of the free world. Our advice is based on our own positive experience, the feeling that, whatever we may think about Israeli politics, about the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, about the new threats emanating from Iran and elsewhere, Israel was – and remains – the place to be and to raise our families.

And, given the positive experience of our own lives and those of our children, we would strongly recommend that they come now, rather than wait for retirement when the experience is only half of what it is for people who create their entire adult lives here.

David has expressed my thoughts, and probably everyone else’s, perfectly.  The positive experience of our aliya cannot be stressed strongly enough and should be promoted amongst Western Jews who do not feel a necessity to make aliya out of fear, escaping antisemitism and persecution.

My thanks go to Larry and Judy and all the organizers of the weekend and I look forward to the next one, hopefully a bit sooner than in 30 years time!

Har Bracha Winery, winner of 2 Decanter Awards medals

What better way to celebrate friendship and aliya with some good Israeli wine? Happily, the Decanter Awards have recognized several Israeli wines and awarded them medals. Amongst the winners is the Har Bracha winery with a bronze medal for its Cabernet Sauvignon Gold 2009, and a silver medal for its Petite Syrah 2011 wine.

This award is a double win since Har Bracha is a community (aka a settlement) in the Shomron region; thus it makes a great big Fail to the BDS movement.

Arutz Sheva has the story in Hebrew (h/t Zvi) from which I will translate an excerpt:

In the last few years there has been growing interest in growing grapes and building wineries in the communities of the Shomron Regional Council, along with communities in the Binyamin and Yehuda areas.The height, the climate, quality of the earth and the precipitation create wines of a quality that are becoming the best in Israel, even better than Golan Heights wines. In the Shomron Regional Council this great potential has been understood and much help is being granted to wine agriculturists in broadening and developing this endeavour in the region.

It should be noted that in the Shomron alone there are seven wineries: Tura winery in Rechelim; Har Bracha winery in Har Bracha; Porat Yosef winery in Yitzhar; Gat Shomron boutique winery in Karnei Shomron; Givat Arnon boutique winery in Itamar; the winery in Givat Tekuma in Yitzhar; and another boutique winery in Shaarei Tikva which concentrates on wine for export.

The Har Bracha winery was set up by Shira and Nir Lavi about 10 years ago after they discovered that the large grapes that they produced were in great demand by eh big national wineries. That was when they understood that they own the best grapes in the country and decided to set up a boutique winery of their won. since they began producing wine, the wine is snatched up even before marketing, and they produce about 30,000 bottles a year.

Kol hakavod to Har Bracha winery and all the other Israeli wineries who won awards at the Decanter Awards. Thank you too to Decanter for not allowing politics and BDS to interfere with recognizing great Israeli quality wines and giving awards where they are due.

Le’chaim!

A lechai’im would also be appropriate to mark how we shepped huge nachas (untranslatable Yiddish for deriving intense enjoyment from the children) from our granddaughters who performed in the Karnei Shomron school orchestras concert.  The children in the orchestras are those who excel in their regular music lessons so we are extra-proud of their achievements.

Our elder granddaughter played the mandolin and her younger sister played the recorder.

Watch and enjoy!

At the risk of boring you, I will also post here a video of all the 5 schools’ orchestras playing a piece by Handel (I think. Correct me if I’m wrong). Apologies for the sound quality. It sounded beautiful in real life at close quarters.

(As an aside, I would also point out that one can see that not all the children are religious. Contrary to media rumours, not all settlers are religious ideologues. Settlers come from all segments of society).

Kol hakavod to all the children and their teachers, and the local council for encouraging this musical education for the children.

May you all shep nachas from your children and grandchildren, and drink a toast to them with Israeli wine!

Shabbat shalom everyone!

Middle East news catch-up

Over the last few days there have been several news items from local Israeli news and the wider Middle East which got lost amongst the welter of other news, so here’s a quick round-up:

IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz touring the Israel-Syria border on Tuesday

After several incidents of cross-border shooting it appears that at least one if not more of these cases were not simple stray bullets but deliberate shooting at Israeli positions. IDF Chief of Staff issues stern warning to Syria over the rapidly heating border, and the IDF returned accurate fire at the Syrian position:

Israel’s military chief issued a severe warning to Bashar Assad on Tuesday, saying the Syrian leader would “bear the consequences” of any more attacks on Israeli forces near the Syrian border.

Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz issued his threat hours after an Israeli jeep came under fire during a patrol in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Syria claimed it destroyed an Israeli vehicle that crossed the ceasefire line in the Golan Heights overnight. A statement issued by the Syrian Armed Forces said its troops destroyed the vehicle “with those in it.” It did not elaborate, but said any attempt to infiltrate Syria’s territory will face “immediate and firm retaliation.”

The IDF said the vehicle, which had not entered Syrian territory, suffered light damage. It said that the Israeli troops reported a “direct hit” from their return fire — a Tamuz missile, fired seven minutes after the Syrian fire.

Gantz said there was no doubt whatsoever that the routine IDF patrol was inside Israeli territory, and no doubt either that it was deliberately fired upon by Assad’s forces — “from a clearly marked Syrian position… not once, not twice, but three times.” Israel, he said, “cannot allow the Golan Heights area to become a comfortable space for Assad to operate from. If he causes [the situation on] the Golan Heights to deteriorate, he will have to bear the consequences.”

Although Israeli analysts said Tuesday’s incident was apparently a local initiative, “Assad encourages and directs the widening of different operations against Israel, including the Golan Heights,” Gantz told a conference at the University of Haifa.

Tuesday’s was the latest in a string of incidents in which gunfire and mortar shells have struck the Golan in recent months. Israel believes that most of the fire has been spillover from the Syrian civil war, but that several cases, including Tuesday’s, were intentional.

That was bolstered by the fact that Tuesday marked the first time the Syrian army has acknowledged firing at Israeli troops across the frontier, in what appeared to be an attempt by Assad’s regime to project toughness following three Israeli airstrikes near Damascus this year.

Ehud Ya’ari, a leading Arab affairs analyst, told Channel 2 news on Tuesday night that the situation between Israel and Syria was now “several times more explosive than it was this morning.”

He noted that a Syrian member of parliament, Sharif Shehadeh, warned after the Golan exchange of fire that Syria would respond to any future Israeli attacks; Shehadeh also spoke of “other regional forces” allied with Syria — in reference to Iran and Hezbollah.

“This marks a serious change of policy by Assad,” said Ya’ari. Assad has  now “tied his own hands… committing himself to respond” to any future Israeli attacks.” This was something the Syrian president had avoided doing for two years, because he didn’t want direct confrontation with Israel.

UN – Useless Nations

Meanwhile, as Syria’s citizens are being viciously slaughtered by both sides of the civil war, and while Assad is trying to heat things up on Israel’s border, the Syrians had the gall to accuse Israel in the UN World Health Organization (WHO) of burying nuclear waste on the Golan Heights, placing “nuclear land mines” on cease-fire line and conducting medical experiments on Syrian prisoners!

In an act of macabre political theater, Syria presented a report to the U.N.’s World Health Organization on Monday slamming what it says is the “deterioration of the health conditions of the Syrian population in the occupied Golan as a result of the suppressive practices of the Israeli occupation.”

Under the rubric of “Health Conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan,” the conference featured four reports scrutinizing Israel, and a brief reply from the Jewish state. According to U.N. Watch, nowhere in the WHO agenda or supporting documents is there any mention of the more than 80,000 civilians slaughtered in Syria, the tens of thousands more who have been injured or disfigured, the 2.5 million refugees, including 600,000 children, strewn across the region, or the 2 million children internally displaced.

In a report to the WHO’s 66th World Health Assembly, Syria’s Health Ministry said that Syrians were being deprived of medical treatment for rejecting Israeli citizenship, and there was an “acute shortage of primary and tertiary health care services owing to the lack of integrated medical centres in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

The Syrian report accuses Israel of torturing Syrians held in Israeli prisons, saying they “continue to be held in inhumane conditions of detention.”

It also accuses Israel of using Arab and Syrian detainees for “testing medicines,” after which they are “brutally tortured and coerced into confessing crimes they never committed. Prisoners are also injected with dangerous viruses that cause them to develop diseases and disabilities, even with a fatal outcome.”

The report also accuses Israel of burying nuclear waste in the Golan and “planting the cease-fire line with nuclear and radioactive land mines.”

[...]

In a statement, Israel’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. and other international organizations in Geneva said: “The position of the State of Israel has always been that a politically motivated debate and resolution on the item ‘Health Conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan’ has no place on the agenda of the World Health Assembly. The Health Assembly should not discuss the health situation of a population in a specific conflict, as it is not of a general public health nature.

The chutzpah of Syria is simply breathtaking. First of all, it is patently obvious to everyone that not one of these accusations is true. Secondly, the exact opposite is the case. The only people doing the torturing, mistreating and using WMD are the Syrians themselves. And the only people providing medical care to the Syrians are the Israelis.

Shame on the UN for even allowing the Syrians to present this paper in the first place. But of course for anyone who has been following the UN’s antics over the years, none of this should come as a surprise.

Still on the subject of terrorism, the UK and the US are struggling to convince the EU to include Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations:

Britain said on Tuesday it had asked the European Union to put Hezbollah’s military arm on its list of terrorist organizations, urging Europe to respond robustly to evidence of the Islamist group’s involvement in an attack that killed five Israelis.

Britain’s request came after Bulgaria accused the Lebanese terrorist movement in February of carrying out a bomb attack on a bus in the Black Sea city of Burgas that killed the Israelis and their Bulgarian driver in July last year.

Britain also cited a four-year jail sentence handed down by a Cypriot court in March to a Hezbollah member accused of plotting to attack Israeli interests on the island.

[...]

In an email, U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told AFP the U.S. was “increasingly concerned about Hezbollah’s activities on a number of fronts — including its stepped up terrorist campaign around the world, and their critical and ongoing support” for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Countering these activities has been, and will remain, one of our highest priorities,” Ventrell said.

[...]

The United States already lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and U.S. and Israeli authorities want the EU to do likewise. But many European governments are cautious about imposing sanctions on Hezbollah, arguing it could fuel tensions in the Middle East, but the real reason could be fear of reprisals against their troops serving with the UNIFIL peace keepers in southern Lebanon.

In Europe, only the Netherlands lists Hezbollah as a terrorist group, while Britain blacklists its military wing.

European governments and companies must cease any financial dealings with groups on the list.

[...]

France has traditionally been cautious about backing steps to sanction Hezbollah, fearing it could destabilize Lebanon and potentially put U.N. peacekeepers at risk, but in recent weeks it has said it would consider all options. France, Lebanon’s former colonial power, has contributed about 900 troops to the U.N. peacekeeping force, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

Over to the east, Iran is making rapid progress on its nuclear programs according to the IAEA:

The U.N. atomic agency on Wednesday detailed rapid Iranian progress in two programs that the West fears are geared toward making nuclear weapons, saying Tehran has upgraded its uranium enrichment facilities and advanced in building a plutonium-producing reactor.

In a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tehran had installed close to 700 high-tech centrifuges used for uranium enrichment, which can produce the core of nuclear weapons. It also said Tehran had added hundreds of older-generation machines at its main enrichment site to bring the total number to more than 13,000.

Iran denies that either its enrichment program or the reactor will be used to make nuclear arms. Most international concern has focused on its enrichment, because it is further advanced than the reactor and already has the capacity to enrich to weapons-grade uranium.

But the IAEA devoted more space to the reactor Wednesday than it has in previous reports. While its language was technical, a senior diplomat who closely follows the IAEA’s monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities said that reflected increased international concerns about the potential proliferation dangers it represents as a completion date approaches.

[...]

The IAEA first reported initial installations in February. It said then that agency inspectors counted 180 of the advanced IR-2m centrifuges at Natanz, Tehran’s main enrichment site, less than a month after Iran’s Jan. 23 announcement that it would start mounting them.

Diplomats said none of the machines appeared to be operating and some may only be partially set up. But the rapid pace of installations indicates that Iran possesses the technology and materials to mass-produce the centrifuges and make its enrichment program much more potent.

Iranian nuclear chief Fereidoun Abbasi said earlier this year that more than 3,000 high-tech centrifuges have already been produced and will soon phase out its older-generation enriching machines at Natanz, south of Tehran.

The report also noted Iran’s decision to keep its stockpile of uranium enriched to a level just a technical step away from weapons-grade to below the amount needed for a bomb.

The only small comfort in this story is that the US Senate backs Israel in the event of a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities:

In a show of force, the United States Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution urging an uncompromising US stance against Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, calling for Washington’s support should Israel strike the program. “If the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence,” the resolution reads.

It also calls for the US to take “such action as may be necessary” to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability.

[...]

“The bottom line: Israel should always understand that the United States has its back, that we will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capability, and, if we are forced to, we will take whatever means necessary to prevent this outcome,” he said.

The resolution itself “declares that the United States has a vital national interest in, and unbreakable commitment to, ensuring the existence, survival, and security of the State of Israel, and reaffirms United States support for Israel’s right to self-defense.”

I hope this commitment will still stand firm when and if the time comes that Israel does feel the need to strike.

In local Israel news, an IDF soldier was tragically killed this week while clearing old mines in the Golan Heights:

The soldier was named as Roi Israel Alphi, 19, from Gan Yavne near the southern coastal city of Ashdod.

[...] The mines were laid in the 1990s. The Israel Defense Forces said it has detailed maps with the exact locations of the mines. The mine that exploded had been located by the squad, but exploded unexpectedly during the identification process. Alphi was killed immediately. Two additional soldiers in close proximity to the anti-tank mine were flung into the air by the explosion but were not injured. Routine searches were due to continue Wednesday morning.

Friends and relatives of the slain soldier said that the “shock was absolute.”

[...]

A senior IDF officer on Tuesday said that the soldier’s company had completed all the necessary preparations before entering the field, although this was the company’s first mine-clearing exercise. An anti-tank mine packs 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of explosives and should only be triggered by at least 120 kilograms (265 pounds) of weight pressed on it. The official said it was still unclear whether the soldier had begun handling the mine, adding that he was equipped with the appropriate protective equipment.

“We’re talking about a mine that was marked and uncovered in the exercise along with other mines,” the official explained.

[...]

OC Ground Forces Maj. Gen. Guy Tzur has appointed a team of specialists headed by a colonel to investigate the incident. All minefield clearing exercises have been suspended pending the preliminary conclusions of the investigation.

May the memory of Roi Alphi be for a blessing. יהי זכרו ברוך

A much more heartening news item from today tells us of Muslim clerics from around the world who were highly moved on visiting the Nazi death camps and learning about Jewish history in Europe:

Thirteen imams from Indonesia, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bosnia and other Muslim lands, along with five American imams, visited the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw on Monday.

The imams, many of whom are teachers at Islamic universities, came to learn more about the history of the Jewish people, including Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust.

The group visited Auschwitz on Wednesday and conducted a traditional Islamic prayer for the dead at the site.

“When I saw what happened for the people here, I tried to prevent my tears from my eyes because it’s very difficult to see how many people were killed without any reason,” Barakat Hasan, an imam from Ramallah, told the AFP.

“I am from Palestine and my people are suffering now since 65 years until now, so of course I feel for others who have suffering,” he said.

“What can you say? You’re speechless. What you have seen is beyond human imagination,” said Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America. “Whether in Europe today or in the Muslim world, my call to humanity: End racism, for God’s sake, end anti-Semitism, for God’s sake, end Islamophobia for God’s sake, end sexism for God’s sake… Enough is enough,” he added.

[...]

The imams also were scheduled to visit places connected to the Warsaw and Krakow ghettos, and to meet with Polish Righteous Among the Nations, as well as Catholic, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders. The imams also will eat a kosher dinner with Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich.

If only this visit could be the beginning of a proper rapprochement between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome in London

UK terrorist with bloody hands still holding a meat cleaver talks to passers-by

A shocking act of sickening violence occurred today in London when two terrorists butchered a soldier in the street near his barracks in broad daylight by axing him to death with a meat cleaver. There are reports that the soldier was beheaded.

As an aside, the picture above bears a strong resemblance to the picture of the infamous lynch of Ramallah in 2000 when two Israeli reservists were torn to death by a blood-thirsty mob.

Ramallah lynch perpetrator waves his bloody hands

Ynet reports on the London attack:

A man was hacked to death in a street near an army barracks in London on Wednesday in what Prime Minister David Cameron said appeared to be a politically motivated attack.

The victim was a British soldier killed in broad daylight by unidentified assailants who tried to behead him while shouting “God is greatest” in Arabic, media reports said.

“It is the most appalling crime,” Cameron said in Paris. “The police are urgently seeking the full facts about this case but there are strong indications that it is a terrorist incident.”

Video footage filmed by an onlooker and broadcast by Britain’s ITV news channel showed a man with hands covered in blood and holding a bloodied knife.

 

According to the Daily Telegraph, an eye witness said the attackers had three knives, including a machete, and said: “”They seemed to be encouraging people to take photos and waited there until police arrived as if they wanted a fight. that they encouraged bystanders to take photographs.”

Another eye witness said the attackers prayed as if it was a ritual sacrifice.

Later a video was broadcast by the ITV News channel showing a man with bloodied hands, apparently one of the attackers, holding a knife and a machete.

According to the Daily Telegraph, he can be heard saying in a London accent: “I apologize that women had to witness that, but in our lands our women have to see the same thing.

“You people will never be safe. Remove your Government, they don’t care about you.”

According to the report, he then walks off, still carrying his weapons, back towards the body of the victim who is lying in the middle of the road.

In other parts of the video, according to the Daily Telegraph too shocking to show, it is claimed he says: “This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

A British government official who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the investigation said the details that had emerged were indicative of a “terrorist-motivated attack.”

Police confirmed that one man was found dead at the scene and that two men were shot by police and taken to separate London hospitals. One of them is in serious condition, according to London Ambulance Service.

The BBC has more details and some eye-witness reports:

• Both shot men were taken to hospital, one by air ambulance
• One of the men is in a serious condition, the other is also being treated for injuries
• A crowd of 100 – including members of the English Defence League – gathered in Woolwich town centre and were met with a heavy police presence including officers wearing riot gear.
• The Daily Telegraph has spoken to a woman it says was pictured confronting one of the men; cub scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett said she tried to persuade him to hand over his weapons
• Downing Street said Mr Cameron, who had been planning to stay in Paris overnight after meeting the French president, would be returning to the UK later on Wednesday
• At a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee, Cobra, it was decided to tighten security at Woolwich and other barracks in London
• In a joint press conference, Mr Hollande said he wanted to express his solidarity with the UK after the “murder of a British soldier”, but Mr Cameron did not confirm the victim had been a serviceman
• The Ministry of Defence said it was urgently looking into reports the incident had involved a soldier
• Another Cobra meeting will be held on Thursday morning, chaired by Mr Cameron

[...]

One witness, identified only as James, said two men had attacked another man, aged about 20, who was wearing a T-shirt of military charity Help for Heroes.

“These two guys were crazed. They were just animals. They dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road and left his body there,” he told LBC radio.

He said after the “horrendous” attack, the two men, who were also in their 20s, stood around, waving knives and a gun, and asked people to take pictures of them “as if they wanted to be on TV or something”.

“They were oblivious to anything, they were more worried about having their photo taken, running up and down the road,” he said.

Witness Graham Wilders told the BBC he had arrived on the scene to find a car crashed into a wall and a man on the ground.

“Two people were lying over him and I thought they were trying to resuscitate him,” he said.

But Mr Wilders said he had driven on to park his car, and when he had returned another witness had told him the two men had been stabbing the man on the ground.

Thomas, another witness who contacted the BBC, said: “I got there minutes after it happened because you could hear gunshots from Woolwich High Street.

“Basically two men carried out an axe attack on a young army cadet walking along the street, by the looks of things the police responded and then shot them in front of the public, at the same time I couldn’t really tell if the cadet was fatally or not hurt as police were crowded around him.”

According to senior Whitehall sources the people carrying out the attack were heard to say: “Allahu Akbar [God is Great]“, BBC political editor Nick Robinson reported.

Besides the nauseating and senseless violence, and the gall of carrying out such an attack right outside a military barracks in broad daylight, what struck me about this incident was the apparent calmness of the public. There doesn’t seem to be any running about or screaming despite the horrific scene. Passers-by can be seen approaching the attackers and trying to reason with them. We read about this also in the eye-witness reports. I don’t know whether to admire their bravery or be appalled at their foolhardiness. I know that if I were in that situation I would be running for my life, trying to find a place to hide. Is this typical British stoicness or an ignorance of terrorism?

Also the attacker who speaks to the camera appears to be relatively calm despite the crazed violence that he has just committed. He doesn’t seem to want to attack anyone else, and “just wants his picture taken”. And then he apologizes that “women had to see such a sight”. It sounds more like the work of a psychopath than a jihadist (though I think the two are closely related).

And yet he clearly enunciates his reasoning for the attack, and the two terrorists were heard shouting “Allahu Akhbar”, which together with the method of murder makes it look like an Islamic terror attack.

Incidents like these, “lone wolf” terror attacks have been nick-named Sudden Jihad Syndrome, when seemingly normal citizens suddenly turn into jihadist killers. Is there a way to stop them before they turn into murderers? Was there a way for their communities to spot the psychopaths lurking within?

I wonder if we’ll ever know.

My condolences go out to the murdered soldier’s family and sympathies go out to the people of London – who ought to be made aware of the danger of  jihadist extremists hiding amongst the regular Muslim population.

Only 13 years late, Israel officially refutes the Al-Dura hoax

A screen capture of the video showing the Muhammad al-Dura incident.

This week, only thirteen years too late, when all the damage has long been done, Israel officially announced that according to its investigations, Mohammed al-Dura was not hit by Israeli bullets, and in fact didn’t die in the incident.

“Contrary to the report’s claim that the boy was killed, the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive,” the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy report stated regarding the television report.

[...]

Minister of International Affairs and Strategy Yuval Steinitz called the accusations baseless and said the affair was “a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel.”

The 55 seconds of edited footage, filmed two days after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, contributed to the October 2000 protest in which 13 Arab citizens of Israel were killed and quickly became the defining image of the second Palestinian intifada uprising and terror war against Israel.

The picture of al-Dura, apparently dead across his father’s knees, was shown for days on Arab and international TV stations and was cited as inspiration by both Osama bin Laden and the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

[...]

Sunday’s report embraces what is known as the maximalist approach, asserting that not only was al-Dura not killed by IDF bullets but that, at the end of the raw footage, he was categorically alive. “Contrary to (France 2 reporter Charles) Enderlin’s claim, the raw footage shows clearly that in the final scenes, the boy is not dead. In the final seconds of the footage, the boy raises his arm and turns his head in the direction of (cameraman Talal) Abu-Rahma in what are clearly intentional and controlled movements. This should have been readily-apparent to Enderlin. Yet rather than reconsidering the claim before producing the report, or providing viewers with the full picture so that they could fairly judge the credibility of his declaration that ‘Muhammad is dead’, Enderlin edited out these last scenes from the report, thereby creating the false impression that the footage substantiated his claims.”

The committee’s report, issued by the Director General of the ministry, Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, who heard presentations from a leading electro-optics professor, a physicist and a former deputy head of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute among others, found an array of inconsistencies and contradictions.

State-owned France 2′s raw footage, as shot by Palestinian cameraman Abu-Rahma, shows no sign of blood on the wall, ground, or barrel, the report stated. Reporters brought to the scene on October 1, however, were shown large blood stains in the vicinity of the barrel.

In addition, the report noted that no bullets, from either the father or the son, were ever produced; the time of admission to Shifa Hospital –10 a.m. — was well before the incident at Netzarim Junction occurred; and the 45-minute-long incident was oddly not noticed by any of the other reporters or cameramen in the area.

[...]

Kuperwasser’s report comes in advance of an anticipated May 22 ruling in a Paris Court of Appeals, where France 2′s bureau chief Enderlin sued Philippe Karsenty, a French Jew, for defamation. Karsenty wrote publicly that Enderlin should be fired for his broadcast of the confrontation at the Netzarim junction, which Karsenty called “a media hoax.”

Professor Richard Landes, a Boston University medievalist who runs the Al Durah Project, agreed with Karsenty and said that “Enderlin should retire in disgrace.”

“He not only edited out critical footage that undermined the story he wanted to tell,” — of Israeli troops killing Palestinian children — “but once the story hit and inspired horrific violence, he doubled down and tried to protect his reputation instead of re-examining his work, as a journalist with integrity should do,” Landes told The Times of Israel.

To recap:  thirteen years ago, at the outset of the murderous Second Intifada, Mohammed al-Dura, a Palestinian boy, appeared to have been killed in crossfire between the IDF and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.  The boy became an inflammatory icon in the Arab war against Israel, and the emotive image of a terrified boy cowering behind his father became a cudgel with which to beat Israel for their ostensibly inhumane actions and purported “war crimes” against the Palestinians. The word was out that al-Dura was deliberately targeted by the IDF, although this would have made no sense militarily (why would an army target an unarmed boy?), and in any event the picture was clear enough that the boy and his father were accidentally caught in crossfire.

Notwithstanding all this circumstantial evidence, Israel was quick – much too quick – to admit fault, perhaps in the hope that an admission of guilt would make the picture go away. However this only compounded its assumed sin. As we all know, and readers of this blog will have learned long ago, Israel’s legal and moral standing is constantly under fire by very many hostile NGOs and international institutions, and the picture of Mohammed al-Dura served to crystallize its moral turpitude.

Doubts about the responsibility for the killing of al-Dura arose very quickly after the event, but the Big Lie was out there, and a biased world had no interest in digging up the truth.

However there were several Tzaddikim (righteous people) with a great interest in uncovering the truth, about whom I have written before.  A short reminder:

The “killing” was eventually exposed as a hoax by Richard Landes, Philippe Karsenty and others.  (h/t CiFWatch which has extensive coverage of the Al Dura affair here).  None of this exposure and rebuttal has stopped the Israel-haters from continuing with their libel.

Today’s Honest Reporting daily newsletter has brought us an excellent round-up of the multiple reports on Israel’s revised official stance on the Al-Dura shooting:

Big Media’s interest in the Mohammed al-Dura affair continued. Martin Fletcher’s report for NBC News especially impressed me. More coverage at the Daily Mail, BBC, The Independent, Times of London, Irish Times, and UPI. Thumbs up to The Lede for embedding the Kuperwasser report.

One report that stood out for the worse was the Daily Telegraph. It quoted a very critical comment by Yitzhak Be’er, of Keshev, an Israeli media-monitoring site. But as HonestReporting pointed out, the Telegraph didn’t disclose that Charles Enderlin — the France 2 reporter at the heart of the al-Dura affair — is a member of Keshev’s board of directors.

See also al-Dura commentary/analysis by photographer and imagery adviser David Katz, plus Israel HaYom, Jerusalem Post, The Guardian, and AP.

Here are some excerpts from a couple of the links in the Honest Reporting post. (All emphases are mine).

First, from David Katz’s item, “Palestinian Fairytales”:

In 1917 in a village in the north of England, two young cousins named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths borrowed the quarter plate camera of Elsie’s father Arthur Wright – one of England’s earliest qualified electrical engineers.

When he went to develop the pictures, Mr. Wright got more than his daughter playing with her friends, instead, he saw fairies. A rational man, he dismissed them as fake, and banned his daughter from using the camera again, however Elsie’s mother had very different ideas.

[...]

It was not until the early 1980’s that the cousins admitted that the pictures were fakes; Frances said ‘I don’t see how people could believe they’re real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins when the photo was being taken.”

Fast forward 83 years to September 30, 2000, and the start of the second Palestinian ‘Intifada.’  France2 TV broadcast footage of an episode that occurred earlier that day at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. The footage was by a Palestinian stringer — a freelancer — named Talal Abu Rahma, who claimed that even though the incident occurred over the course of an hour and numerous other cameramen were around who had not witnessed it, he alone had captured footage of a young Palestinian boy cowering behind his father, being shot to death by the Israeli army.

Charles Enderlin, France2 Jerusalem bureau chief, who during the incident had been more than 100 kilometers away in Ramallah, edited and added commentary to the piece that went out that night on France2, and then on networks and news outlets across the world, as the tale of Mohammed al-Dura went from being legend to history.

Yet even then, doubts over the authenticity of the footage were raised, as American professor Richard Landes labeled it a classic case of Palestinian media manipulation, or ‘Pallywood’.

This is a brief description of the events that took place that have led to where we are 13 years later.

Indeed, the research into and debate around the incident has filled the web and even impacted upon the French legal system. The website aldurah.com chronicles  the incredible efforts of Prof. Landes and French media analyst Philippe Karsenty to prove this modern day blood libel was a staged fake.

However, as a photographer and imagery consultant, this image and its use over the past 13 years has been key to my motivation to use every bit of knowledge and experience I have to show how imagery is being used so effectively in the campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel.

It is said that the camera never lies. Whoever coined that term could not have been more misinformed. As a photographer of nearly 30 years, I can tell you that any half decent photographer can make a camera do anything he or she wants.

[...]

The moment the al-Dura image hit the screens it became iconic, and while a picture is worth a thousand words, this one cost a thousand lives.

Al-Dura became the poster child for the Palestinian wave of terrorism that followed over the next few years.

It is only really due to the persistence of Richard Landes and Phillipe Karsenty and a few others that fought tooth and nail that we are at the stage we are today, and that the Israeli Government has investigated and officially denounced the incident as fake.

Unfortunately, the damage is done, no matter what court rulings prove that the images were faked, the al-Dura image is forever etched in people’s minds, and to this day is still used in the Arab world to incite violence, and will continue to be.

The best we can do is hope at least we learned from it, as now with the advent of social media, this is going to become an even greater issue that we have to deal with, as images are being posted instantaneously across the world. In order for us to be able to challenge staged imagery we need to have experts at hand in the form of a dedicated imagery monitoring unit – something I have been advocating for years – to be able to identify and highlight fake or staged imagery, and deal with it in real-time, rather than once the damage is irreparable.

Read the whole of Katz’s excellent and thought-provoking article from the informed viewpoint of a photographer to understand how a sympathetic media and an iconic image can be manipulated to undermine Israel’s moral standing.

From the NBC News article:

A video showed the young Mohammed hiding behind his father, who himself was sheltering behind a barrel, as Israeli soldiers and Palestinians fought it out on a Gaza Strip street corner.

[...]

However an Israeli investigatory committee found that “contrary to the [France 2] report’s claim that the boy is killed, the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive,” according to a statement issued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The review was begun last year at a request of the prime minister.

[...]Media organizations in France and elsewhere have also cast doubt on the Palestinian’s narrative.

It is relevant today because Israel believes it is suffering from a campaign of “delegitimization” that ultimately is a strategic threat to its existence.

Netanyahu said in the statement that the incident had “slandered Israel’s reputation.”

[...]

Israel’s Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence Yuval Steinitz described the claims that Israeli troops had shot the child as “a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel.”

The term “blood libel” is used to refer to historic allegations that certain Jewish sects murdered Christian children in order to use their blood in rituals.

In an appendix to the Israeli report, an orthopedic surgeon said injuries to Jamal al-Dura’s arm that the father claimed to be from the shootout were actually incurred years earlier when he was attacked by members of the Palestinian Hamas party.

But this reporter, who met al-Dura days after the shooting in an apartment in Amman, Jordan, was shown his bandaged arm and told that he was undergoing medical treatment in a hospital paid for by Jordan’s King Hussein.

[...]

One reason Israel is so insistent that its case be accepted may be that a previous, iconic picture of Palestinian suffering turned out to be false.

In 1982 a photograph issued by the UPI agency showed a nurse holding a baby girl and carried a caption saying an Israeli bomb had blown off the child’s arms in South Lebanon.

The picture was reportedly placed on President Ronald Reagan’s desk as a symbol of the Palestinians plight. But Israel investigated and found that the supposedly armless baby girl was in fact a four-year-old boy with a broken arm. UPI apologized.

While it all may look obvious to us, the NY Times quotes Barak Ravid at Haaretz who doubts that anyone outside Israel is going to be convinced by Israel’s new claim:

It seems as though the report was written for use within Israel alone. The evidence and arguments that were presented might convince the already convinced, but no more than that. The committee could not present any “smoking gun” evidence showing the 25-year-old al-Dura sunbathing on a Gaza beach. Not even close. Any thought of getting such a report to change the globally accepted narrative after 13 years is akin to trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube.

That may be so, but that is still no excuse for not trying. If we just sit back and accept global media bias without countering it, our battle is lost.

Read all the links in the Honest Reporting article for an excellent overview of the whole sorry incident.

CiFWatch also has an excellent fisking of the original Guardian report about the al-Dura incident.

The major lesson that Israel must learn from this whole affair is firstly that we should never be quick to take the blame. There is always time to admit fault when and if it is found afterwards. And more importantly, Israel must get its public relations act – its hasbara – together. There must be better communication between all of Israel’s institutions: the IDF, the Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister’s office, the diplomatic corps and the Government Press Office. Without coordination and correlation of facts we will end up, Heaven forbid, with another blood libel in our times.

Hezbollah fights for Assad; and how a US leak endangers Israel

The violence in Syria has spilt over not only into Israel, (a further incident occurred today) but is threatening to spread into Lebanon with the increasing involvement of Hezbollah terrorists fighting on the side of Assad against the rebels:

[...] Al-Arabiya TV reported that at least 20 Hezbollah fighters were killed in battles in the Syrian rebel-held town of Qusair. Their bodies were transported to hospitals in Beirut. One of those killed was senior Hezbollah official Fadi al-Jazar.

According to the report, al-Jazar had previously been held in Israel and released as part of a prisoner exchange deal. In addition, 62 wounded, many of them Hezbollah combatants, were taken to hospitals in Lebanon.

On Sunday, Syrian troops aided by Hezbollah launched a massive assault on the rebel-held city near the Lebanese border.

Speaking from Qusair, activist Hadi Abdallah said Syrian warplanes bombed Qusair in the morning and shells were hitting the town at a rate of up to 50 a minute. At least 52 people were killed, he said.

“The army is hitting Qusair with tanks and artillery from the north and east while Hezbollah is firing mortar rounds and multiple rocket launchers from the south and west,” he said.

“Most of the dead are civilians killed by the shelling.”

The region near the Orontos River has been segregated into Sunni and Shiite villages in the civil war that grew out of protests against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It is vital for Assad, who belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to keep open a route from Shiite Hezbollah’s strongholds in the Bekaa to areas near Syria’s Mediterranean coast inhabited by co-religionist Alawites.

According to this New York Times report, the war has already hit Lebanon:

Tensions have risen in Lebanon as Syrian rebels have shelled Hezbollah-controlled areas. On Sunday, they hit the Lebanese town of Hermel with Grad rockets, activists said.

Once again I reiterate my prayer “May both sides lose”.

On a related subject, if you were surprised that the air-strikes over Damascus were so immediately pinned on Israel, when Israel usually takes a “plausible deniability” course, it emerges that it was a leak from the US Administration that revealed this information (even if it wasn’t a surprise).  Amazingly, the Obama Administration has apologized for this leak:

… the Obama administration has reportedly apologized to Israel for another leak of classified information to the media, one that occurred earlier this month and which Israeli officials are concerned could place Israeli lives at risk.

Israel Radio’s diplomatic correspondent Chico Menashe reported Sunday morning (via the Jerusalem Post):

American officials apologized to their Israeli counterparts for confirming that Israel was behind the airstrikes on the Damascus airport earlier this month, Israel Radio reported on Sunday.

The confirmation reportedly came from the lower ranks at the Pentagon, and the reasons for the leak are being investigated.

Menashe tweeted: “The U.S. has apologized to Israel for leaking details of the attack in Syria. Senior administration officials said to their [Israeli] counterparts that they are examining the issue and that low-level [officials] were responsible for the leak.”

Menashe also wrote, “US officials told that they [will] review the matter. The leak forced Assad to react harshly.”

U.S. apologized for leaking details of Israel. US officials told that they review the matter.The leak forced assad to react harshly.

Indeed, the initial reports of the air-strikes all quoted “US officials”, as the article continues:

The New York Times attributed its report about the bombing on May 3 to an Obama administration official: “Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night,

[...]

CNN, which broke the story first on May 3, quoted two unnamed U.S. officials:

“The United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, two U.S. officials first told CNN.”

Two weeks later, Israel still has not officially taken responsibility for the bombings, which allegedly targeted Iranian Fateh-110 missiles intended to bolster Hezbollah’s arsenal.

Israeli security analysts suggest that confirmation of Israel Defense Forces involvement – even if leaked via American sources – not only could potentially endanger any agents still on the ground in Syria, but would also put pressure on embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad to retaliate against the Jewish state.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, told TheBlaze, “It requires the Syrians to react officially rather than deny that it happened or that it was an accident. It forces Syria and Hezbollah and Iran to react officially and say they want to seek revenge, which makes things more dangerous for Israel.”

“Can you imagine if things were reversed and somebody did that to the U.S.?” he added.

A shot from a video purporting to show a Tishreen missile being test fired.

Assad may already be responding. Britain’s Sunday Times reported that the Syrian military has placed advanced weapons on standby to strike Israel, in the event Israel strikes targets again in Syria.

The report said that reconnaissance satellite images show Syria has surface-to-surface Tishreen missiles ready for use and aimed at Tel Aviv. Each can carry a half ton payload, according to the paper.

In an interview with CNN shortly after the airstrikes, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al Mekdad called the attack a “declaration of war,” adding that Syria would retaliate in its own time and way.

In WWII there was a saying “Loose lips sink ships”. Here we have a case of “loose lips launch missiles” (I apologize for not being able to make that rhyme.)

Russia is the major spoiler for Israel and the West in Syria

S-300 missile

As I wrote earlier this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to Moscow to plead with President Putin to cancel his missile sale to Syria. Well, that went down like a lead balloon with a resounding “No” from Putin. The deal will go ahead as planned although future sales might very well not go through. Small comfort.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced Thursday that Russia would remain committed to previously signed arms deal “regarding agreements pertaining to aerial defense weapons.”

Despite the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew for a lightning visit to Russia with the clear intent of preventing the sale of S-300 missiles to Assad’s regime, the Russians reiterated two days later that they refused to budge from their commitments.

According to Lavrov, Russia will not sign any new deal with the Syrian government, but is nonethless obligated to previous commitments.

[...]

While Lavrov announced that Russia would in fact supply Assad with S-300 missiles, and while US President Barak Obama met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Syria, the security assessments and deliberations regarding the Syrian conflict and Israel’s influence in its regard were still underway within the defense establishment.

CIA Director John Brennan, currently in Israel, met Thursday with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon in the Kirya to discuss the security developments in the Middle East, specifically in Syria.

Ya’alon expressed to Brennan the Israeli concerns regarding the transfer of advanced arms from Syria to radical terror forces like Hezbollah.

Besides the S-300 ground-to-air missiles, which could seriously complicate Israel’s efforts by air-strikes to prevent Syria’s missiles from reaching Hezbollah, Russia is reported also to have sold Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria, which would prevent Israel and other foreign countries from intervening in Syria from the sea:

Russia sold advanced Yakhont antiship cruise missiles to Syrian President Bashar Assad, outfitted with an advanced guidance system that makes them more effective than the older version of the missile Russia sold to Syria, The New York Times cited two American officials as saying on Thursday.

These missiles will allow Syria to thwart any attempt by international forces to reinforce Syrian rebels by imposing a naval embargo or no fly zone, Nick Brown the editor in chief of IHS Jane’s International Defense Review told The New York Times.

“It enables the regime to deter foreign forces looking to supply the opposition from the sea, or from undertaking a more active role if a no-fly zone or shipping embargo were to be declared at some point,” Brown said, “It’s a real ship killer,” he added.

According to the Times report, Syria ordered the coastal defense version of the Yakhont system from Russia in 2007 and received the first units in early 2011.

Jeffrey White, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior American intelligence official, told the Times that by strengthening Syria’s arsenal Russia was signalling its “commitment to the Syrian government.”

Russia has further intervened on behalf of Assad by sending at least 12 warships to Syria:

In a move considered aggressive by US and European officials, Russia has sent at least 12 warships to patrol waters near its naval base in Tartous, Syria.

The deployment appears to be a warning to Israeli and Western officials against military intervention in Syria’s bloody civil war, which has now claimed the lives of over 80,000 people.

[...]

“It’s a show of force. It’s muscle flexing,” a top US official told the Journal.

Russian news sources reported earlier Thursday that five warships had entered the Mediterranean Sea to bolster the country’s new regional task force. The vessels were scheduled to dock in Limassol, Cyprus.

In March, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the naval task force was needed in order to protect Russian interests in the region.

The Russians themselves admit that the weapons sales are a message to America in a statement to Walla, an Israeli website:

Russia’s decision to send S-300 missile systems to Syria is, in part, a message to the United States, according to the head of the Russian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Alexei Pushkov.

Russia opposes outside interference in Syria’s ongoing civil war, he explained, according to Walla. “We’re opposed to no-fly zones, because they are the first step toward aerial attack,” he said.

“Syria asked Russia to help it defend itself from aerial assault,” he added.

This Russian hyperactivity on behalf of Syria is as much a by-product of America’s self-induced weakness under the Obama administration as it is an actual taking of sides in the Syrian civil war.

The question remains whether Israel will dare to attack Russian interests in order to protect its own. Israel Hayom reports that indeed we should expect Israeli strikes on Russia’s arm shipments to Syria:

U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that another round of Israeli airstrikes could target a new Russian transfer of advanced anti-ship missiles in the near future. Israeli and Western intelligence services believe the Yakhont missiles, which have been sold by Russia to Syria in recent years, could be transferred to Hezbollah within days, the newspaper reported on its website Friday.

At the same time, The New York Times reported Friday that the Yakhont missiles have already been delivered to Syria’s armed forces. Israel has repeatedly reinforced, with words and actions, its stated red line: that it will not allow the transfer of “game-changing” weaponry to Islamic terror groups such as Hezbollah. Israel has also relayed messages that it is not seeking a confrontation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, but will act against transfers of weaponry through his territory.

[...]

The unofficial response from Israeli government officials to Lavrov’s statements amounted to saying that actions will be the deciding factor and not declarations. A senior government official noted that the deal between Russia and Syria had been signed in 2010 and was delayed multiple times, despite numerous Russian statements that it would be carried out.

“We relayed the message [to Russia]. Bringing weapons to Syria destabilizes the area and carries the risk of seeing them transferred to Hezbollah,” a government official said.

In a sign of the growing tension in the region, CIA Director John Brennan arrived in Israel Thursday and met with the top officials in Israel’s defense establishment, with a central focus on the developments in Syria. It was Brennan’s first trip to Israel since assuming his position two months ago. The CIA chief went straight into a meeting in Tel Aviv with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, a senior Israeli official told AFP.

Channel 10 TV said that Ya’alon reaffirmed during the talks that Israel “will not permit the transfer of weapons” from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to local press reports, Brennan’s visit is aimed at coordinating U.S. and Israeli positions over the escalating crisis in Syria, specifically as international diplomatic momentum between the U.S. and Russia gathers for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

According to the reports, the U.S. is concerned that Israel will act independently to strike any advanced arms shipments in Syria it believes may be headed to Hezbollah, potentially scuttling the international diplomatic maneuvering.

If the United States had shown more a bit more nerve and more willingness to intervene, we might not have been in this situation today and the Russians might have had second thoughts about their weapons sales. As things stand, these sales have made Israeli intervention only more likely, not less.

According to this Times of Israel report, Israel has threatened it will bring down Assad if he retaliates to future airstrikes:

Israel has warned Damascus that if President Assad chooses to hit back at Israel for any further Israeli military strikes, Israel will bring down his regime.

An Israeli official confirmed Wednesday night that a dramatic and unprecedented message to this effect had been conveyed to Damascus, Channel 2 news reported.

The report said that Israel’s position to this effect also came up during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency meeting in Russia on Tuesday with President Vladimir Putin, during which Netanyahu also told Putin of Israel’s profound opposition to Russia’s sale of sophisticated S-300 missile defense batteries to Assad.

The warning came hours after mortar shells hit the Mount Hermon area for the first time in the two-year Syrian civil war, and as Arabic newspapers reported talk of Hezbollah opening “a new front” against Israel on the Golan Heights.

Syria vowed last week to respond “immediately and harshly” to any further Israeli airstrikes, after Israel carried out two early morning attacks earlier this month on weapons consignments being stored in and around Damascus en route from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The shipments contained highly sophisticated Fateh-110 missiles.

Confirmation of Israel’s warning to Assad came soon after the New York Times quoted an Israeli official issuing the same threat. The New York Times said Israel was “considering further military strikes on Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants,” and that an unnamed Israeli official had contacted the paper to warn: “Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah. The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region. If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”

The New York Times report speculated that Israel “could be trying to restrain Syria’s behavior without undertaking further military action, or alerting the international community to another strike. That would ratchet up the tension in an already fraught situation in Syria, where a civil war has been raging for more than two years.”

An interesting analysis by Boaz Bismuth in Israel Hayom explains how Assad and Putin can feel so confident because of America’s weakness and the Administration’s concentration on domestic affairs at the expense of foreign affairs. Read it all for a good insight into the diplomatic background to the Syrian crisis.