The Holocaust and Assad: Editorial, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 11, 2018— If Syria, Russia and Iran are right and Israel did in fact carry out an attack on a Syrian air base a day and a half after Bashar Assad’s regime used chlorine gas against civilians in a Damascus suburb, the Jewish state should be proud.
The Extraordinarily High Stakes in Syria: Noah Rothman, Commentary, Apr. 11, 2018— U.S.-led retaliatory strikes on Syria are imminent.
No Country Would Tolerate What Hamas is Doing at Israel’s Border: Vivian Bercovici, National Post, Apr. 6, 2018 — Wednesday was a relatively quiet day along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
What The New York Times isn’t Telling You About Israel’s Gaza ‘Blockade’: Ira Stoll, Algemeiner, Apr. 8, 2018 — Nearly every New York Times dispatch about the recent violent pre-planned riots in Gaza has used the word “blockade” to describe Israel’s treatment of the territory.
On Topic Links
Syria to Chair UN Disarmament Forum on Chemical & Nuclear Weapons: UNWatch, Apr. 9, 2018
Report: 80% of Palestinians Killed in Gaza Border Crisis Were ‘Terrorists’: Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 11, 2018
West Bank’s Apathy Amid Gaza Chaos Shows Palestinians Becoming a Divided People: Khaled Abu Toameh, Times of Israel, Apr. 8, 2018
Palestinians: License to Kill Americans: Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute, Apr. 12, 2018
THE HOLOCAUST AND ASSAD
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 11, 2018
If Syria, Russia and Iran are right and Israel did in fact carry out an attack on a Syrian air base a day and a half after Bashar Assad’s regime used chlorine gas against civilians in a Damascus suburb, the Jewish state should be proud.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as Israel commemorates the destruction of European Jewry at the hands of Nazi Germany and its allies in Vichy France, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere, it is essential for the world – and the Assad regime – to know that indiscriminate acts of barbarism will not be tolerated.
US President Donald Trump was exercising a healthy moral sense when he responded strongly on his Twitter account to the atrocity committed by Assad’s regime against Syrians in Douma, including women and children. “President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay.”
Trump’s Tweet should be followed up by military action and it should be backed by all civilized countries, particularly the nations of the European continent on which the Holocaust was carried out. (Russia, which prides itself so much on having destroyed Nazism during World War II, is now protecting the Assad regime and spreading lies that poison gas was not used in Douma.) The point of the military action is not to change the course of the civil war in Syria. Rather, the point of a combined US, European military strike that causes significant damage to the Assad regime’s military capabilities is to make a moral statement and, one hopes, to deter Syria from using poison gas against anyone in the future.
What makes the Syrian use of chlorine gas all the more despicable is that it was motivated not by desperation but by depravity. Assad, with the backing of Russia and Iran, has all but won the civil war. Forces loyal to him have surrounded Douma. In any event, the ruthless murder of civilians is rarely if ever a deciding factor in war. In World War II the Axis powers were responsible for the vast majority of deaths – as well as for a disproportionately high rate of civilian killings, in part due to the Holocaust – yet their defeat was total and relatively speedy once the US entered the war.
Assad, apparently emboldened by Trump’s declaration that the US plans to pull its troops out of Syria, believed that the world would stand by in indifference, as it has in the past when he used barrel bombs containing chlorine against civilians. Perhaps Assad also thought that the Trump administration’s decision a year ago this month to fire Tomahawk missiles at Syrian army bases in response to his use of Sarin gas was a blip and that the US under a fickle Trump, who was now in the mood for retreat, would not act again alone among the nations. Perhaps he also thought that the US and other nations would make a distinction between the chlorine gas used this week and sarin, the nerve gas developed by the Nazis during World War II.
Syria’s Assad and Putin’s Russia must know that they are not above the moral reckoning of the community of civilized nations. The two men lied when they claimed to have handed over all of Syria’s chemical weapons to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in accordance with a deal reached between the Obama administration, the UN and Russia in 2013. Now they must pay for their lies. Failing to act will send a message to other rogue states and autocratic strongmen that it is possible to lie and deceive in international forums without consequences.
It should mean something that Syria is a signatory of a 1997 convention that bans not only the use but also the production of chemical weapons. Syria should be just as compliant as any other country, or face the consequences. Holocaust Remembrance Day is not just a time to commemorate those lost to genocidal hatred, it is a time to remember the many failures of the community of nations that made the Holocaust possible, so that they are not repeated.
THE EXTRAORDINARILY HIGH STAKES IN SYRIA
Noah Rothman
Commentary, Apr. 11, 2018
U.S.-led retaliatory strikes on Syria are imminent. The president said so himself. On Twitter. In fact, he went into wildly imprudent detail about the forthcoming military action, describing the type of ordnance that would be used and confirming that Russia has threatened to target American assets in defense of its Syrian patron. Donald Trump’s decision to accentuate Moscow’s threats and Russia’s relationship to the regime he intends to target places appropriate emphasis on the real stakes of America’s coming mission. But neither the president nor his administration is making a compelling case to the country as to why our deepening involvement in Syria is in America’s national interest. Those interests are as clear as they are critical.
The Trump administration established a precedent in April of 2017 with its strikes on Syrian targets following Damascus’s gruesome release of sarin nerve gas on civilians. Breaking with the last administration, this president made it clear that the use of prohibited and indiscriminate weapons will not be tolerated. That precedent evolved into a doctrine when the administration publicly threatened the Bashar al-Assad regime in June of 2017 following reports indicating that another mass casualty gas attack was in the planning stages. The threats worked; Assad backed down, and a mutually understood set of parameters had been established.
The tacit exemption both Trump and Barack Obama adopted for dual-use chemicals ensured that the Assad regime would deploy chlorine gas on civilian targets frequently and that stronger nerve agents would eventually be used again. In 2017, both Damascus and Moscow, which operates a number of sophisticated air-defense batteries across the country, all but consented to a relatively bloodless strike on a single target (Russia received forewarning ahead of the attack). They will likely stand down in the face of something similar in 2018. If, however, the United States is disinclined to pursue cosmetic and superficial strikes on Syrian targets—which would have no deterrent effect on Bashar al-Assad or anyone else, for that matter—Russia will face increasingly serious pressure to respond militarily.
Russia can only stand down so many times before the value of its S-400 anti-air batteries—which Moscow is right now attempting to sell to India in violation of U.S. sanctions—begins to depreciate. Russia’s envoy to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, probably expressed the prevailing sentiments in the Kremlin when he said Russia would attempt to shoot down U.S. missiles in flight if America and its allies were to attempt any broader retaliatory response to Assad’s chemical attack on civilians. More frightening still, Zasypkin also intimated that Russia would attempt to respond disproportionately, potentially targeting U.S. ships and aircraft. These may not be the empty threats of one diplomat. In the last 24 hours, Russia has begun jamming U.S. unmanned vehicles over Syrian skies, harassing French warships in the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast, and engaging in snap naval exercises near U.S. maritime assets.
Moscow has no interest in inaugurating a broader war with the West. It would almost certainly lose that costly conflict, but it does not have to limit its response to direct action in the Syrian theater. Moscow might turn up the temperature in Eastern Ukraine, increase support for Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan, augment aid to the North Korean and Iranian regimes, harass NATO’s air and sea assets, violate NATO airspace, or all of the above. Given the risks associated with a retaliatory strike on Assad, why should the U.S. chance it? Unfortunately, the Trump administration has almost no choice.
The White House now feels enormous political pressure—both at home and abroad—to maintain the precedent that the administration established last April. That means that the next round of punitive strikes will have to be more expansive to be effective, or there will be more chemical attacks and not just in Syria. That would be a disaster. American soldiers are deployed all over the world, often in nations with weak governments engaged in civil hostilities. Any number of illegitimate regimes would like to deploy with plausible deniability these cheap and relatively ubiquitous weapons of mass destruction. The erosion of the prohibitions around chemical warfare will mean that more Americans are exposed to these agents, and even casual contact can be hazardous (as U.S. soldiers who were exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq can attest).
In the last 13 months alone, two state-sponsored chemical attacks (attributable to Russia and North Korea, respectively) using nerve agents were executed on foreign soil, poisoning many civilians in the process. This is reckless, and it can lead to a spiraling crisis. Reestablishing deterrence is in America’s vital national interest. At the moment, that would likely mean disabling anything in the Assad regime’s possession that can fly, as well as targeting chemical production and storage facilities. This mission must be broad in scope if America’s strategic objective is to be achieved…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
NO COUNTRY WOULD TOLERATE WHAT
HAMAS IS DOING AT ISRAEL’S BORDER
Vivian Bercovici
National Post, Apr. 6, 2018
Wednesday was a relatively quiet day along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Israelis were out in throngs, picnicking in a national park in the northern Negev desert, enjoying spectacular spring weather during the weeklong Passover holiday. A few hundred metres to the west, small groups of Palestinians were seen scurrying a little too closely to the border fence, on motorcycles. They were likely readying for the continuation of their #MarchofReturn.
For weeks leading up to Friday March 30, Hamas had been exhorting Gazans to assemble at the fence to commemorate the Palestinians’ “Land Day,” and from there conquer all of Israel and Jerusalem. Speaking to protesters last Friday, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, fired up the crowd to storm the so-called “transient border.” This “March of Return,” he declared, “affirms that our people can’t give up one inch of the land of Palestine.” When the Gazans came, many reportedly out in large family groups with children, Sinwar added for good measure that they would “eat the livers of those besieging” them. He actually encouraged them to feast on the bodily organs of Israelis.
Since then, 20 Palestinians participating in the still ongoing march activity have reportedly been killed by IDF responses, mostly sniper fire. Scores more have been injured by riot-control techniques, rubber bullets and tear gas. The dead include Hamas fighters, whose portraits have been featured in Gaza media reports where they are hailed as “martyrs” in the ongoing struggle to liberate all of Palestine from the Zionist colonizers. These particular martyrs were reported by the IDF to have been at or very near the fence with Israel, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at soldiers, or reportedly attempting to infiltrate Israel. They ignored warning shots, flares and the firing of tear gas canisters. Each fatality will be carefully investigated.
The IDF estimates that approximately 41,000 Gazans participated in the march, with most doing so peacefully and at a safe distance from the fence. The goal of Hamas organizers and fighters, however, was clearly to provoke an Israeli military reaction. Israel’s critics claim the IDF fired recklessly on a “peaceful protest,” massacring innocents. Thing is, peaceful protests do not encourage participants to overrun an international border, or use weapons, while threatening to conquer the country and murder its people. Thousands of Israeli civilians live within a few hundred metres of this fence, in agricultural settlements that have been undisputedly part of Israeli territory since 1948. Peaceful protests are not organized by terrorist organizations and led by terrorist leaders, some of whom show up with Molotov cocktails and other weapons.
Local residents and the IDF are bracing for Friday, when the Hamas government controlling the Gaza Strip is promising a fresh offensive: for tens of thousands of “peaceful protesters” to dump masses of car tires along the fence and burn them. The plan is to create a toxic black cloud, allowing Hamas fighters to more easily breach the border. There is no doubt that Hamas’ primary raison d’être is to destroy Israel. That paramount goal is clearly stated in the organization’s charter. There is no question that Hamas places little importance on the welfare of Gazans. Hundreds of millions of dollars in Western dollars donated for civilian aid is diverted from humanitarian purposes to build Hamas’s network of tunnels burrowing into Israel, funnelled into local weapons factories and, of course, the bank accounts of Hamas leaders.
There is also little doubt that many Gazan civilians, bussed from their homes on the coastal Strip to the border fence by Hamas, actually did come to protest peacefully — and are being exploited by Hamas as human cannon fodder, to bait the Israeli military into killing civilians. Incredibly, a seven-year-old girl was sent to walk up to the fence. Alone. Was someone hoping she’d be hurt? If so, they were disappointed: She was sent back unharmed. Shamelessly exploiting civilians, especially women and children, is the modus operandi of Hamas, responsible for almost all suicide attacks against Israelis during the second Intifada. Hamas has a well-chronicled habit of storing and shooting rockets and other weapons into Israel from hospitals, UN-run schools, clinics and apartments.
When ISIL terrorists murder and maim on the streets of Europe, shock, consternation and horror ensue in the West. But Hamas is like ISIL light: they are despotic, murderous Muslim extremists who subjugate women and persecute homosexuals, while imposing an unforgiving theocracy on the Gaza Strip. If a group like that was to carry on in Europe as it does on the Gaza-Israel border, it is difficult to imagine Europeans would sit back in deck chairs with binoculars and just watch. The protesters of Gaza will not succeed in overrunning Israel, of course. But given a chance, many aspiring martyrs will storm the fence and unleash as much carnage as possible, if they can.
Yahya Sinwar and his fellow thugs promise to hold border demonstrations every Friday until May 15, culminating in a grand protest on the 70th anniversary of the declaration of Israeli independence, which the Palestinians mark as the “Naqba,” or the day of catastrophe. The response so far by the UN body, predictably, has been to vilify Israel in hastily convened emergency sessions. What the global community should instead be asking is: why are Hamas’s “peaceful protesters” carrying weapons and calling for the destruction of Israel? Aside from the United Kingdom and the United States, no one has bothered to ask the obvious questions. Canada certainly hasn’t.
WHAT THE NEW YORK TIMES ISN’T TELLING
YOU ABOUT ISRAEL’S GAZA ‘BLOCKADE’
Ira Stoll
Algemeiner, Apr. 8, 2018
Nearly every New York Times dispatch about the recent violent pre-planned riots in Gaza has used the word “blockade” to describe Israel’s treatment of the territory. “While Gaza was poor and crowded to begin with, the 11-year-old blockade by Israel and Egypt has driven it into crisis,” reports a “news analysis” by Times Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger that appears in the April 8 Times. A news article in the April 7 Times reported, “The protests are aimed at Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which began after Hamas seized control in 2007.” A news article in the April 6 Times referred to “the second round of protests against Israel’s longstanding blockade of Gaza.”
An article on page one of the March 31 Times reported that the Palestinians “were protesting against Israel’s longstanding blockade of the territory and in support of their claims to return to homes in what is now Israel.” Leave aside the inconsistencies. Some Times accounts mention Egypt’s participation in the “blockade,” while others omit it. Some Times accounts describe the riots — sorry, “protests”— as only against the “blockade,” while others also mention the “claims to return.” Let’s focus for now on the unifying thread, that term “blockade.” My authoritative Webster’s Second Unabridged dictionary defines a blockade as “a shutting off of a place or region by hostile troops or ships in order to prevent passage” or “any blocking action designed to isolate an enemy and cut off communication and commerce with him.”
Using that word overstates it to describe Israel’s treatment of Gaza. Israel’s Defense Ministry reports that in one week in March of 2018, 2,728 trucks entered the Gaza Strip from Israel, carrying 74,202 tons of supplies, including 87 tons of medical supplies, 15 tons of agricultural products, 1,506 tons of food supplies, and 51,044 tons of building supplies. Another week this year, the Defense Ministry reported 1,712 trucks entering Gaza, carrying 49,166 tons of supplies, including 43 tons of medical supplies, 92 tons of agricultural products, 5,426 tons of food supplies, and 31,356 tons of building supplies. In one single day in February, 11,485 tons of goods, in 379 trucks, entered Gaza through Israel, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry. On another February day, 12,295 tons of goods in 431 trucks entered Gaza through Israel, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry.
In addition, Israel supplies electricity to Gaza via ten power lines. And Israel supplies water to Gaza via two pipelines. Some “blockade.” You won’t read about all those trucks of supplies in the New York Times, alas. Now, it is true that Israel maintains control over its border with Gaza, as does Egypt. But nearly all countries do the same thing on their own borders. I drove across the border to Canada from the United States through Vermont earlier this month. Some Canadian border guard stopped the car and looked inside before letting us in. A friend’s parents were visiting the US from Canada for Passover. An American border guard stopped their car and inspected its contents, right down to opening up a cooler full of Passover food. Does that mean that the United States is “blockading” Canada or that Canada is “blockading” the United States? No.
And of course, the Israel-Gaza situation is different than the US Canada one, in part because Gaza is controlled by a terrorist organization, Hamas, that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and that has a proven record of using imported supplies to build tunnels and rockets for deadly attacks on Israeli Jews. Accusing Israel of a “blockade” of Gaza when in fact Israel is allowing food, medicine, building supplies, electricity, and water into the territory is inaccurate. It gives Times readers a false impression of what is actually happening, uncritically echoing Palestinian propaganda. That’s not to say that the situation in Gaza is a picnic. But the blame for it lies with the Hamas terrorist organization, not with Israel or some “blockade” imagined by Times journalists.
On Topic Links
Syria to Chair UN Disarmament Forum on Chemical & Nuclear Weapons: UNWatch, Apr. 9, 2018—Despite accusations that it perpetrated yet another deadly chemical weapons attack on Saturday, Syria will next month chair the United Nations disarmament forum that produced the treaty banning chemical weapons…
Report: 80% of Palestinians Killed in Gaza Border Crisis Were ‘Terrorists’: Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 11, 2018—Around 80% of the 32 Palestinians killed by the IDF during the ongoing Gaza border crisis were terrorist operatives or identified with terrorist organizations, an intelligence report asserts. The report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said that 26 of the 32 Palestinians fit into those categories.
West Bank’s Apathy Amid Gaza Chaos Shows Palestinians Becoming a Divided People: Khaled Abu Toameh, Times of Israel, Apr. 8, 2018—For the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Friday was another difficult day. For the Palestinians in the West Bank, Friday was just another ordinary day — a day for weddings, family gatherings, and, for some, dining at the fancy restaurants in Ramallah and Nablus.
Palestinians: License to Kill Americans: Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute, Apr. 12, 2018—Hate speech and incitement make up the core of the Palestinian narrative. For several decades now, the Palestinians have been waging a massive and vicious campaign of incitement against Israel.
