Wednesday, September 18, 2013

13 reasons to build a Sukkah

Obama- Kerry take a week to destroy US Middle East policy

World Jewish Digest

The United States spent nearly seven decades building a Mideast foreign policy that attempted to limit Russia's influence in the region. President Obama and John Kerry have destroyed all that in a week.

Writing for the National Interest, academics Tom Nichols and John R. Schindler agree the recent decision to allow Syria to avoid attack by acceding to a plan that will supposedly see them give up their chemical weapons is one of the worst foreign policy decisions of the past few decades.

In less than a week, an unguarded utterance by a U.S. Secretary of State has undone those efforts. Not only is Moscow now Washington’s peer in the Middle East, but the United States has effectively outsourced any further management of security problems in the region to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
It will be nearly impossible to move chemical weapons anywhere in the midst of a pitched civil war; moreover, the idea that the Putin regime cares anything for international norms or global citizenship beyond its own crudely defined interests is laughable on its face. By gaining American certification of the most important role Moscow has ever played in the Middle East, Putin has achieved in a week what no Soviet or Russian leader managed to do in a century. There should be little wonder that Putin pressed his advantage with a shameless lecture to America in the pages of The New York Times in one of the most appalling and hypocritical public relations stunts by a Kremlin boss since the Soviet era.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Isreal wants Assad gone

By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public stance on its neighbor's civil war.
Even Assad's defeat by al Qaeda-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus's current alliance with Israel's arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
His comments marked a move in Israel's public position on Syria's two-and-1/2-year-old war.
Though old enemies, a stable stand-off has endured between the two countries during Assad's rule and at times Israel had pursued peace talks with him in hope of divorcing Syria from Tehran and Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long avoided openly calling for the Syrian president's fall. Some Israeli officials now worry that radical Sunni Islamist insurgents fighting Assad will eventually turn their guns on the Jewish state.

But with Assad under U.S.-led condemnation for his forces' alleged chemical attack on a rebel district of Damascus on August 21, Oren said Israel's message was that he must go.

"We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran," Oren said in the interview, excerpted on Tuesday before its full publication on Friday.

Obama dithers and Hezbollah get the chemical weapons

Nightmare Scenario?

Arab media reports Assad smuggling his chemical weapons to Hezbollah

8:30 AM on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - Tishrei 13, 5774

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is smuggling his chemical weapons stockpile to Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, Arab media outlets reported on Monday.
According to the Jerusalem Post, an official from the Syrian opposition, Kamal Labwani, has told a Saudi newspaper that large amounts of Assad's stockpile of chemical weapons are being transferred to Lebanon in "trucks carrying vegetables."
They are to be given to Hezbollah, which has long been allied, funded, and armed by Assad, and then "stored in Hezbollah-controlled mountain areas of Lebanon, where it will be difficult to find and monitor them."
Assad's goal, of course, is to preserve his chemical weapons arsenal despite his recent agreement to dismantle it and hand it over to international inspectors.
There is no confirmation of the report from other sources, but if true, the move would represent what Israeli officials have long described as a nightmare scenario.
Hezbollah controls the south of Lebanon and is positioned on Israel's northern border. It controls a large stockpile of long-range missiles and has used them in the past to attack the Galilee region. It is now believed that the terrorist group may have missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Should Hezbollah prove capable of fitting these missiles with chemical warhead, it would represent an intolerable threat to the Israeli population, and would likely precipitate a massive military retaliation.