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Hell’s Angels. Like Bashar al-Assad, their power of deterrence comes from their reputation for ruthlessness.

Predictions of an apocalyptic Middle East war following a US attack on Syria are premature. None of the players are interested in a serious confrontation.

President Obama feels boxed in by his ‘red line’ promise, and it appears that it will be impossible to pretend that the line was not crossed. So he will, with the cooperation of the UK and perhaps France, symbolically strike some assets of the Assad regime.

This will be coordinated in advance with the Russians, who will make a lot of noise in public, but in private will not be concerned as long as Assad’s hold on power is not threatened, which it will not be.

Assad’s threats to retaliate against Israel also fall in the category of noise. His overwhelming concern is to stay in power, and although he finds it advantageous to link Israel to the ‘terrorists’ he is fighting, he knows that Israel is in fact neutral in the conflict. Why upset this applecart and risk really painful reprisals?

Assad’s gamble to use chemical weapons has thus had the following effects:

• It terrorized the Sunni civilians who are supporting the rebels. Remember, this is as much an ethnic war as a political one. Like the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club, much of Assad’s deterrence depends on his reputation for being ruthless, even ‘crazy’ (although he is actually quite rational).

• It embarrassed Obama. The weak response that will follow will prove to Assad that Western opposition will not be a significant restraint on his freedom to do as he wishes.

The downside for the regime will be a few Tomahawk impacts, possibly on empty buildings, but certainly not enough to affect the outcome of the civil war.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

Technorati Tags: Syria, chemical weapons, Bashar al-Assad

Warning: graphic video

Some say that Bashar al-Assad is viciously murdering civilians in rebel-held areas of Syria with poison gas. Others insist that maybe the rebels themselves are doing it, or perhaps aliens from another galaxy. Although it seems to me that the evidence against Assad is close to overwhelming, it is not apparently not overwhelming enough for the humanitarians of the world to do anything more than talk about it.

For example,

On Friday, Obama also cautioned against “jumping into” immediate action, saying the U.S. needs to think strategically about its long-term interest and needs to work co-operatively with its allies. He also said the belief that the U.S. can end the Syrian conflict on its own is “overstated.”

Intelligence services of US ally Israel have indicated that they think that Assad, and not an alien death star, is actually gassing women and children to death.

Obama is right that the US can’t end the Syrian conflict on its own. But the US can end the gassing. I present the following plan to President Obama at no charge. If he wants, he can do it today.

1. Bomb regime targets and inform Assad that this is punishment for his war crimes;
2. if there is more gassing, increase the number of targets and go to step 1.

Note that whether this results in regime change in favor of the rebels is entirely up to Assad. Of course nothing is more important to him than staying in power.

But wait! What if all the videos are fakes? What if the rebels or space aliens really are responsible? Simple — just add a step 0: give Assad an ultimatum that he has 12 hours to permit an inspection of the scene of the alleged crime. If he refuses, or if inspectors find that he is in fact guilty, then go to step 1. This requires even less commitment than a no-fly zone, and puts the onus entirely on Assad.

I’m quite serious. This can’t continue, both because it is atrocious and because of the precedent it sets. The West needs to act, for once, against barbarism.

Technorati Tags: Assad, chemical attack, Syria, war crimes

Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Emir of Qatar

Qatar is a tiny peninsular kingdom (the precise term is ‘hereditary emirate’) located between Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Although it has a population of 2 million, less than 250,000 are citizens — the rest are foreign workers, who are treated abominably. But those 250,000 have the highest per capita income in the world, thanks to huge reserves of natural gas and oil.

It may sound like just another crummy little Arab petrocracy, but there are several notable things about Qatar. One is that Qatar is a major supporter of Hamas, one of the few organizations of any significance that is out-front about wanting to exterminate the Jewish people. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal lives in Doha, Qatar (he formerly resided in Damascus), and the previous Emir visited Gaza last year and pledged $400 million to the terrorist group.

The other thing about Qatar is Al Jazeera.

The Al Jazeera satellite channel, owned by the government of Qatar (i.e., the al-Thani family) has enormous influence in the Arab world. It covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more closely than any of the US or European networks, and was instrumental in stirring up worldwide condemnation of Israel during the 2008-9 war in Gaza when it presented continuous footage of bleeding and dead children, much of which was from other times and places.

It is openly partisan, almost never showing Israeli deaths or injuries. It is also provocative and upsetting in a way that looks nothing like news in the West. Their broadcasts routinely feature mutilated corpses being pulled from the scene of an explosion, or hospital interviews with maimed children, who bemoan the loss of their siblings or their parents – often killed in front of their eyes. Al-Jazeera splices archival footage into the live shots, weaving interviews and expertly produced montages into a devastating narrative you can follow from the comfort of your own home.

This is news without even the pretense of impartiality. After several days of following the Al-Jazeera coverage of Gaza, I’ve never seen a live interview with an Israeli, neither a politician nor a civilian. In the Al-Jazeera version, the Gaza conflict has only two participants: the Israeli army – an impersonal force represented as tanks and planes on the map – and the Palestinian civilians, often shown entering the hospital on makeshift stretchers. There are few Hamas rockets and no Israeli families. It’s not hard to see why Al-Jazeera is accused of deliberately inflaming regional enmity and instability.

Here is what Hillary Clinton said about Al Jazeera in 2011, when she called for more effective US outreach:

Al Jazeera has been the leader in that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective.

In fact viewership of al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.

Although Al Jazeera has had an English-language service and website for some time, they had nowhere near the influence of the Arabic channel — until yesterday, when Al Jazeera America (AJA) went on the air.

Presently available in only about 40 million US households — some cable companies, like Time-Warner Cable, decided that it wasn’t in their best interest to support the network that brought us Bin Laden’s taped threats — AJA has fancy studios (including one in the Newseum in DC, not far from the White House), a plush headquarters in New York and 12 US bureaus. It is working to get more cable outlets.

Possibly it took Clinton’s advice, because the 24-hour channel will provide 14 hours of news, with only 6 minutes of commercials per hour (US cable channels have 15 minutes). It plans to do longer, in-depth stories on all kinds of national and international issues. You can bet that it will have a slant significantly different from that of Fox News, or even CNN or MSNBC.

AJA has hired some 800 to 1000 employees (sources vary), including big names like Soledad O’Brien, John Seigenthaler, Ali Velshi, Antonio Mora, Michael Viqueira, Joie Chen, Sheila MacVicar and others. Its president will be former ABC executive Kate O’Brian.

Probably none of these people would have gone to work for Radio Moscow during the Cold War, but they don’t seem to have a problem with Qatar — nor did Al Gore and his partners, who gave AJA a start by selling it the failing Current TV channel for half a billion dollars. Of course they are all ‘professionals’, which I think means people who will do whatever is necessary to make a buck.

I have often wished for an Israeli “Al Jazeera” that would tell Israel’s story, which is overwhelmed in the flood of anti-Israel propaganda from Al Jazeera, and (just a bit more subtly) from media in the US and Europe. But either Israel’s government thinks it can’t justify the expenditure, or its left-wing media establishment isn’t capable of producing pro-Israel material.

In any event, when Hizballah’s missiles begin to smash into Israeli towns and cities, and Israel’s air force takes out the launchers — which the humanitarians of Hizballah have built into bunkers under civilian homes in southern Lebanon — you will get close coverage from Al Jazeera America.

Get ready for it.

Technorati Tags: Al Jazeera America, Qatar

On Friday, I signed a contract to buy an apartment in Israel. I will be returning to live here again after 25 years. I am very happy about it for various reasons, including the fact that as an Israeli Jew I will be a member of a tiny minority of huge importance to the rest of the world.

We flew to Israel from Los Angeles. At the gate we were met by several buses which took us to a remote terminal where we boarded the plane. The buses were escorted by two airport police cars and an El Al security car, which also followed the plane as it taxied from the terminal to the runway from which it took off.

As far as I know, no other airline gets this special treatment. In a way, it is flattering to know that I am so important that many people want to kill me.

Israel is special at the UN, too, where the Human Rights Commission and the General Assembly devote so much time, effort and (mostly Western) cash to condemning it and pretending that the ‘Palestinians’ are a nation in any sense other than as a negation of the Jewish nation. They pretend that the Palestinian Arabs are important, but everybody knows that it’s all about us, especially the Palestinians themselves (this is one of the reasons that they are so angry and frustrated all the time).

There is also the special treatment we get from Europe. Did you know that one thousand legal scholars and jurists recently delivered a petition to EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton explaining that contrary to the EU position, Jewish settlements across the Green Line are legal under international law?  The EU doesn’t boycott, for example, Turkish ‘settlers’ in northern Cyprus, but we are more important, so a special policy is implemented for us.

Then there is the clever US State Department which prefers ‘illegitimate’ to ‘illegal’. Somehow this is supposed to be a meaningful distinction in this context, but all I can think of is that someone’s parents were unmarried. They include Israel’s capital, which has been the seat of its government since the founding of the state in the illegitimate part. No other nation is so honored!

I am even more proud of the fact that the great United States finds it necessary to spit on us by forcing Israel’s government to release more than a hundred terrorists, all of whom were either convicted of murder (sometimes multiple murders) or of crimes related to murders. Some of these murders were remarkably evil and gruesome, and it’s unimaginable that the US would do something similar in its own homeland. But we are really important and special, so we are required to accept this.

I understand also that the US and EU were ‘furious’ that Israel’s Prime Minister recently announced that perhaps a thousand new homes for Jews would be built someday in places that they consider illegal or illegitimate. The argument is that this construction would create facts on the ground that would prejudice a future peace agreement. Of course, not a peep was heard a few months ago when Israel announced that it would build housing for Arabs in the same area. What else does this prove except that Jews are more important than Arabs?

Speaking of Arabs, Israel’s neighbors Egypt and Syria are presently displaying their truly shocking barbarism by engaging in vicious religious/ethnic civil wars, bombing, gassing, shooting and raping each other with abandon. The status quo in Israel is peaceful, and the economy — both of Israel and the Palestinian Authority — is excellent. So you would think that the focus would be elsewhere rather than Israel.

Nope — our importance is illustrated by the fact that the ‘international community’, led by President Obama, thinks it’s worthwhile to destabilize us also!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews

Raymond Ibrahim tells us,

Indeed, the abuse of Egypt’s Christians has reached unprecedented levels in the modern era. Al-Qaeda’s flag has been raised above their churches; their pope is in hiding under threat of death; a priest was shot in front of his church, and another Copt beheaded; their children are being abducted; nary a day goes by without a church being attacked or set aflame; hate filled graffiti covers their homes and churches.

And why has the persecution reached unprecedented levels? Because the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was ousted by a revolution that saw as many as 30 million Egyptians, most of them Muslims, take to the streets. But of course, the Brotherhood does not want to admit that Muslim majorities do not favor their rule, so they scapegoat the already-hated Christians, portraying them as fundamental to the ousting of Morsi. Any number of Brotherhood leaders — from the general guide, Mohammed Badie, to the group’s spiritual father, Sheikh Yusif al-Qaradawi, all of whom publicly denounced the Coptic pope for being supportive of the revolution and supposedly even killing Muslims – are responsible for this rise in persecution of Copts.

Accordingly, among some Islamists, anti-Christian fury has taken on genocidal proportions. Recently a Libyan Muslim named Tamar Rashad called in to a talk show, saying “I want to offer the good news to [Pope] Tawadros that, Allah willing, the day is coming when no Copt will ever again tread the ground of Egypt – and no churches. We will no longer allow churches to exist.” When the TV host appeared to protest, Rashad interrupted him saying, “It’s already decided, take your cameras and go to the churches and you’ll see what’s going to happen soon, Allah willing.”

One of the reasons for the Jewish state is to be a protector and refuge for Jews worldwide. But who will protect believers belonging to the world’s largest religious group, Christians?

In the past several days, the Egyptian police and military have clashed with Muslim Brotherhood ‘demonstrators’. Hundreds have been killed, mostly (but not only) on the Muslim Brotherhood side.

My expectation is that bloody clashes will continue until the Brotherhood is suppressed. Neither side is interested in a compromise.

So here is how our Secretary of State responded to the situation:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called the bloodshed in Egypt “deplorable” and urged all sides to seek a political solution.

“In the past week, at every occasion … we and others have urged the government to respect the rights of free assembly and of free expression, and we have also urged all parties to resolve this impasse peacefully and underscored that demonstrators should avoid violence and incitement,” Kerry said.

“[Wednesday’s] events are deplorable and they run counter to Egyptian aspirations for peace, inclusion and genuine democracy. Egyptians inside and outside the government need to take a step back, they need to calm the situation and avoid further loss of life. We believe that the state of emergency should end as soon as possible,” Kerry said.

How even-handed! Or even a tiny bit pro-Brotherhood.

I think that it would be appropriate for a country one of whose founding principles is the rejection of religious persecution, and whose largest religious group happens to be Christian, to at least take into account the barbaric behavior and attitudes of the Muslim Brotherhood in its consideration of whom to support in Egypt.

The US has consistently ignored the fact that the Brotherhood is viciously anti-Christian (anti-Jewish is a given) and anti-American, as well as profoundly anti-democratic, despite the fact that it came to power through a (questionable) election. In any event, Morsi’s first acts were intended to arrogate total power to the Brotherhood and put an end to any future democracy in Egypt.

The pro-democracy protesters that began the process of bringing down Mubarak and were so admired in the US — the ones that use Facebook and speak English to CNN reporters — were never represented by the Brotherhood.

Yes, it is true that the Obama Administration did not use the word ‘coup’ and has not stopped aid to Egypt. But it is time to end the pro-Brotherhood tilt that started with Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009.

Trying to curry favor with Islamists of any stripe is stupid, unproductive and likely to cause pain for women, Christians, and many other groups that do not fit in their seventh-century worldview.

Whose side are we on, anyway?

Technorati Tags: Egypt, Obama Administration