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In these days of rumors about American or Israeli plans to attack Iran, mysterious holes in the Syrian desert, and so on, we have to be especially careful to keep in mind the old saw “those who know don’t tell, and those who tell don’t know”. Nothing is more true about the Middle East. Barry Rubin discusses this phenomenon.

Mythmakers About the Middle East

By Barry Rubin

People don’t often threaten to murder me face to face. But in the spring of 2007, Alexis Debat, director of the terrorism program at the Nixon Center and consultant to ABC News, did just that.

Precisely why is not clear to me even now, but it seemed to be part of a pattern of bizarre instability that he emanated. I had never met anyone who struck me as a more obvious fabulist. Yet after thirty years of studying the Middle East it was not surprising to meet people like that. The region is full of them, even at the highest political and intellectual levels, and they are by no means absent from the field of studying that area in the West.

I met Debat at the insistence of Robert Leiken, a former Central American expert who reinvented himself quickly as an expert first on immigration and then on Islam, also at the Nixon Center. It was in the period before Leiken decided that the Muslim Brotherhood was a moderate democratic group which should be engaged by U.S. policy. You have to meet Debat, he insisted, and it was clear that this guy was his guru and a great influence on him in his new pretensions to knowing something about the Middle East. Later, it would be clear Debat played a key role in his foolish fantasy that the Muslim Brotherhood was a bunch of liberal reformers who detested violence.

At the lunch, Debat went on and on about his inside links with terrorism and its key figures, providing lots of details. Of course, no one could verify these details, which meant one was given free reign to make them up. I applied the old Arab proverb: “How do you know it is a lie? Because it is so big.” His claims were just too good to be true. And his bragging about having worked with French intelligence only added to my suspicions, since that organization is known for its tendency to, shall we say, get a little too enthusiastic in claiming fabulous inside information.

Perhaps I made my feelings a little too clear, for as we walked from the restaurant, Debat insisted on going along with me to the subway. And there on the corner of Q Street, he said: “I am a great admirer of your work. Some day I might have the great honor of killing you.”

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The UN Secretary-General apparently believes that Israel must continue to supply electricity to the Qassam rocket factories in Gaza:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel on Wednesday to reconsider its decision to declare the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity,” warning that any cutoff of vital services would violate international law and punish the already suffering civilian population.

In one of his toughest statements aimed at Israel since taking the reins of the UN on Jan. 1, Ban said he was “very concerned” at the Israeli government’s declaration earlier Wednesday “and its announced intent to interrupt essential services such as electricity and fuel to the civilian population.” — Jerusalem Post

The Secretary-General should direct his warning to Hamas, which is currently violating international law every day by permitting Qassam missiles to be fired into Israel.

If Hamas’ (sometimes successful) attempts at murder and mayhem were to stop, there is no doubt that Israel would continue to supply electricity to Gaza. And Hamas could stop the rockets in a minute.

There is no reason that a country should allow its citizens to be sitting ducks. The decision to keep the lights on is up to Hamas, not Israel.

Technorati Tags: Ban Ki-moon, Israel, Hamas, Gaza

It’s funny how anti-Syrian members of the Lebanese Parliament keep having accidents:

A powerful bomb killed a pro-government lawmaker and six others Wednesday in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut, threatening to derail Parliament’s already deeply divided effort to elect Lebanon’s next president in voting due to start in days.

Antoine Ghanem, a 64-year-old member of the right-wing Christian Phalange party, was the eighth anti-Syrian figure and fourth lawmaker from the majority assassinated since 2005, reducing the ruling coalition’s margin in Parliament…

The assassination of anti-Syrian figures began in 2005 with the death of [Rafik] Hariri, the former prime minister. Hariri’s death sparked massive protests that helped bring an end to Syria’s nearly 30-year domination of Lebanon. Damascus was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in 2005, and a government led by anti-Syrian politicians was elected.

Government supporters have accused Syria of seeking to end Saniora’s slim majority in parliament by killing off lawmakers in his coalition. — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

Syria denies everything, of course. This sort of thing has been going on for a lot longer than the last few years. According to Barry Rubin in his book “The Truth About Syria“, Syria was responsible for the 1977 murder of Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, as well as the 1982 bombing which killed President Bashir Jumayyil, torpedoed a peace treaty with Israel, and provoked the Christian Phalangists — who blamed the Palestinians — to massacre scores of them in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

If the UN were worth anything, it would force Syria to leave Lebanon alone. Instead, it has rewarded the murderous Assad regime with a seat on the Security Council.

Technorati Tags: Syria, Lebanon

If you have been wondering what sort of activities the peace-loving Syrians have been involved in recently, here’s one example:

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane’s Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas and VX gas. — Jerusalem Post

Syria has been developing chemical and biological weapons since 1973. Some details on their chemical weapons program, from GlobalSecurity.org:

…Syria has developed a robust chemical weapons program, perhaps one of the most advanced in the Middle East, and a variety of delivery methods. The country is still very depending [sic] on outside assistance in procuring important precursor chemicals and equipment….

The Syrian arsenal is said to be comprised mostly of large amounts of Sarin in addition to tabun, mustard gas and is reportedly producing and weaponizing VX.

…Syria’s principle [sic] suppliers of CBW production technology were reported to be large chemical brokerage houses in Holland, Switzerland, France, Austria and Germany.

Syria also apparently has a close relationship with North Korea, from which it has obtained Scud missiles, components, and blueprints — and now possibly nuclear material.

The Syrian desire to commit mass murder of Jews is not surprising. They had good teachers:

Israeli military intelligence reports during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war were filled with references to the presence of Nazis among the Syrian forces attacking northern Israel. Some of them served as commanding officers.

The names of prominent Nazis living in Syria began to surface during the 1950s and 1960s. One was SS Captain Theodor Dannecker, who helped Adolf Eichmann implement Hitler’s genocide policy in France, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Another was Karl Rademacher, a senior Eichmann aide who had been involved in the mass murder of Jews from Belgium, Holland, Croatia, and elsewhere. After World War II, Rademacher escaped Allied capture by fleeing to Syria, where he became an official in the Syrian Secret Service.

The most notorious of the Nazis granted asylum in Syria was another top Eichmann aide, SS Lieutenant Alois Brunner. After being convicted in France in 1954 of responsibility for the murders of more than 100,000 Jews, Brunner disappeared. Two decades later, the famed French Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld tracked down Brunner in Damascus, where he was making a comfortable living as an adviser to the Syrian intelligence services. And he is apparently still there. — Dr. Rafael Medoff, ‘Why Syria welcomed David Duke’

Consider all of the above, and then ask yourself why Israel has developed atomic weapons.

Technorati Tags: Syria, Israel, WMD