DID ISRAEL ATTACK SYRIA?
by David Lev (Arutz Sheva News)

Both Hizbullah and Russia condemned Israel a day after the attack on a convoy carrying Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles from Syria to Hizbullah terrorist bases along the border with Lebanon. In a statement, the Lebanese terror group said that the attack was “barbaric,” and “openly reveals Israel’s motives toward unrest in Syria over the past two years and the criminal thinking aimed at destroying Syria and its army.”

The “barbaric aggression” requires “a massive, widespread condemnation campaign by the international community and all Arab and Islamic countries,” the statement said.

The real target of the attack, Hizbullah said, was “eliminating Syria’s pivotal resistance and rejectionist role to pave the way for unfolding the chapters of a major conspiracy against Syria and against our Arab and Muslim peoples.”

On Saturday, Iran said that any attack on Syria would be considered an attack on Iran. “Syria plays a very key role in supporting or, God forbid, destabilizing the resistance front,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency as saying. “For this same reason, an attack on Syria is considered an attack on Iran and Iran’s allies.”

Russia, meanwhile, expressed “concern” over reports of the Israeli attack. “If this information is confirmed, then we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the UN Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives to justify it,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

On Thursday, Syria said that it was raising its security level on all its borders. Earlier, according to reports published in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, American officials said overnight Wednesday that Jerusalem had informed Washington about the attack. According to the reports, Israel told U.S. officials it had launched an air strike on a convoy carrying Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles from Syria to Hizbullah terrorist bases along the border with Lebanon.

Israel has not yet made any officials statement on the matter.

ISRAELI JETS STRIKE JAMARAYA ARMS DEPOT NEAR DAMASCUS LEAVING CASUALTIES
(DEBKAfile)

Israeli warplanes attack Syrian arms depot. The Syrian government, by admitting that the Israel Air Force attacked the Jamaraya “Military Research Institute” (a euphemism for an arms deport), near Damascus, broke the barrier of silence the Israeli government had clamped down on its initial involvement in the Syrian conflict. It also indicated that Bashar Assad may have decided to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Israel. The Syrian statement also refuted the report by foreign media from “Israeli sources” that Israeli jets had struck a convoy carrying sophisticated weapons from Syria to the Hizbullah in Lebanon.

The Syrian statement was detailed: It said that the “Military Research Institute” developed Syrian army and Hizbullah combat capabilities, that two Syrian solders were killed and five injured in the raid, and that a building had been leveled along with serious damage to military vehicles parked outside.

Israeli warplanes were described as coming in low from the north to evade Syrian [and Iranian] radar after flying over the Syrian peaks of the Hermon ridge. The Israeli jets were reported to have flown back to home base by the same route.

Last week, debkafile reports, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent two senior aides to Washington and Moscow with an identical message: If Bashar Assad ventures to permit Syrian arms, conventional or chemical, to reach Hizbullah, the Israeli Defense Forces will prevent their delivery by force.

Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen Aviv Kochavi handed this message to Obama Administration officials in Washington and National Security Adviser Yakov Amidror delivered it for Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the message was sent out too late and soon overtaken by events:

1. Assad has passed the point of being accessible to outside influence or receptive to international condemnation. He no longer listens even to the advice of allies, such as President Vladimir Putin.

2. The Syrian ruler is no longer interested in how the sophisticated weapons owned by Hizbullah and stored in Syria are disposed of. For years they were stored in Syrian military storehouses and kept from crossing the border into Lebanon by Israeli threats. Now, as far as Assad is concerned, Hizbullah can collect the weapons systems or leave them where they are, whatever they wish. But they will have to take charge of keeping them secure since the Syrian army has no manpower to spare for this task.

3. On the other hand, Assad acknowledges his debt to Hizbullah for the great assistance it has rendered his war against the Syrian insurgency. He will therefore not deny his Lebanese ally assistance in preparing for war with Israel.

For all these reasons, the Kochavi and Amidror missions were a wasted effort. Furthermore, two days earlier, President Barack Obama made it clear that he was not getting the United States involved in the Syrian conflict. In an interview to The New Republic, he asked rhetorically: “In a situation like Syria I have to ask: can we make a difference in that situation?”

From that point on, it was obviously up to Syria’s neighbors to pick up the Syrian ball themselves, including the threat of chemical warfare.
After the Israeli air raid, the Pentagon pointed a finger at its authors, answering reporters’ question with a terse: Ask Israel.
By publishing the Israeli air raid, Bashar Assad seems to be treating it with all the seriousness of an act of war. His next step may well be to fight back.

ISRAEL STRIKES MILITARY RESEARCH CENTER NEAR DAMASCUS
by Gil Ronen (Arutz Sheva News)

Syrian TV says “research base” at Jamraya was hit and damaged. Denies that an arms convoy was struck.

Syria accused Israel of staging an air raid on a military research center on Wednesday.

The Syrian army accused Israel of launching a dawn strike targeting a military research centre in Jamraya, near Damascus, in a statement carried by state news agency SANA and quoted by AFP.

“Israeli fighter jets violated our airspace at dawn today and carried out a direct strike on a scientific research center in charge of raising our level of resistance and self-defense,” the general command said.

The warplanes entered Syria’s airspace via Mount Hermon, Jabal el-Sheikh in Arabic, at low altitude and under the radar, the army said, adding that two site workers were killed.

“They… carried out an act of aggression, bombarding the site, causing large-scale material damage and destroying the building,” state television quoted the military as saying.

The army denied reports Israeli forces had launched a strike overnight on a weapons convoy from Syria near the border with Lebanon.

The United States declined to comment on the reported strike by Israel, whose military intelligence chief Aviv Kochavi is currently in Washington for talks with top US general Martin Dempsey.

“I’d refer you to the government of Israel for questions about deliberations or actions that they may or may not have taken,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Earlier reports said that Israel had struck a convoy carrying Russian-made antiaircraft missiles. It is not clear at this point which report is the more accurate one, and what actually happened last night.

ISRAEL MUTE OVER ATTACK ON SYRIAN ARMS CONVOY
by Herb Keinon (Jerusalem Post)

“We are not relating to the incident,” PMO spokesman says on reports that Israel attacked Syrian arms convoy; silence reminiscent of response to reported September 2007 attack on Syrian nuclear installation.

Israeli government officials steadfastly refused any comment Wednesday on the reported Israeli attack at dawn of a Syrian arms convoy.

“We are not relating to the incident,” a spokesman in the Prime Minister’s Office said, his words echoed throughout the day by spokespeople in the Foreign Ministry and the defense establishment.

Israel strikes Syrian weapons en route to Hizbullah

The Israeli silence on the matter is reminiscent of a similar silence following the reported September 2007 attack on a Syrian nuclear installation that Israel to this day still never formally acknowledged.

Former US deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams told The Jerusalem Post last summer that Israel decided to bomb the al-Kabir nuclear facility after then President George W. Bush told then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert the US had opted for a diplomatic route in trying to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to close the site.

When Bush informed Olmert of his decision to go the diplomatic route, Olmert said that strategy was unacceptable, and two months later Israel took action.

While Israel informed the US of the attack immediately afterward, Abrams said a decision was then made not to “rub the Syrians nose in the matter” by making it public, thinking that if everyone remained quiet, President Bashar Assad would not be humiliated and forced to hit back.

Indeed, news of the attack began trickling out in the Turkish media a couple of weeks afterward when jettisoned parts of Israeli fighter jets were found in Turkish territory.

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed this version of events, writing in his 2011 memoir In My Time that in the days that followed the strike, “the Israeli government asked that we not reveal what we knew about the target they’d struck in the desert. They believed that widespread public discussion about the nuclear plant or the fact that the Israelis had launched the strike might force Syrian President Bashar Assad to respond, launching a wider conflict.”

It is safe to assume that similar logic may be behind Israel’s complete silence Wednesday on what reportedly took place near the Lebanese-Syrian border in the early morning.

RESULTS OF ISRAEL’S RECENT ELECTIONS
(Article in Flame)

Israeli voters have spoken—it’s time to set aside the futile “peace process” and focus on domestic issues

While much of the world gleefully expected the Israeli election to turn out one way—and open Israel up to more media criticism—the results were quite the opposite. Josh Block, President of the Israel Project, wrote:
“Israeli voters, analysts told us, were turning rightward and even losing confidence in the Jewish state’s democratic institutions. Voter turnout would slouch toward all-time lows, and remaining voters would empower a government that was, depending on a pundit’s particular verve, ‘hardline,’ ‘extremist,’ ‘ultra-nationalist,’ –or even worse.”
To the contrary, the final tally from last week’s election shows Likud Beiteinu (Prime Minister Netanyahu’s party) winning the most Knesset seats (31), followed by Yair Lapid’s brand new centrist party, Yesh Atid (19 seats), and the Labor party coming in third (15 seats). There are 120 seats total in the Knesset and 61 needed to form a government.
Far from becoming a far-right country, Israelis actually moved toward the center, with the right and center-left separated by a mere eight seats. Another momentous aspect of this election was the departure by parties all along the political spectrum from their obsession with the peace process.

Douglas Feith, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, provides a revealing analysis of the Israeli election (though he wrote it one day before the election occurred). Feith explains that missing from the pre-election campaigning were the former battle cries of left-leaning parties: “Peace Now!” “Land for peace.” “There’s no alternative to peace.”
This shift in emphasis by Israeli parties, including left-center Labor, demonstrates a unified understanding on the part of the Israeli electorate that there is no current partner for peace. Israelis themselves realized that no change in Israeli policy would, at this point, bring about peace, since the Palestinians still refuse to take part in direct negotiations and have not reconciled themselves to a Jewish state in the Middle East.
Prior to the election, Yair Lapid’s party focused on domestic issues, such as the middle-class share of the tax burden and military service requirements, particularly of the ultra-orthodox. Indeed, as Feith so accurately points out Israelis chose to focus on internal issues, in addition to security concerns, rather than on a peace process that is for all practical purposes, at least for now, defunct.

Regardless of the ultimate makeup of the new coalition, Israel, with an impressive 73 percent of the electorate voting (compared with only 57.5 of U.S. voters in 2012) has once again provided a shining example of what a truly open and functional democracy looks like. The fact that the Israeli vote spread defied the pundits’ predictions also gives heartening proof of the vitality of Israel’s democratic institutions

ISRAEL HITS SYRIAN TARGET; ISRAELIS SCRAMBLE FOR GAS MASKS!
by Ryan Jones (Israel Today News)

Israeli fighter jets attacked an unknown target along the Syria-Lebanon border overnight, according to Western security and diplomatic sources cited in the Israeli, Arab and mainstream medias.

One diplomat told Reuters correspondent Dan Williams that “there was definitely a hit in the border area.”

That revelation came just hours after Lebanese army officials had confirmed the penetration of their airspace by Israeli jets several times in recent days.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned earlier this week that the transfer of Syria’s chemical weapons to Lebanon’s Hizbullah terrorist militia would result in preemptive Israeli action.

The Israeli fly-overs and the reported attack are believed to be connected to the monitoring and prevention of Hizbullah smuggling operations along the border.

Israel has deployed two of its vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile systems to the northern port city of Haifa should the situation spiral out of control.

Israel’s Home Front Command reports that it is receiving triple the usual number of requests for gas masks.

ISRAEL GEARING UP FOR POSSIBLE WAR IN THE NORTH
by Israel Today Staff

Reports: Syria ordered to attack Israel if Assad falls

Israel is growing increasingly concerned that Syria’s ongoing civil war is going to result in open conflict between Jewish state and either Syrian forces or Lebanon’s Hizbullah terrorist militia.

Israel has warned that if Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons finds its way into Hizbullah hands, Israeli forces will take preemptive action.

Israel’s Ynet news portal reported on Monday that Hizbullah had set up camps near several locations where Syrian weapons of mass destruction are known to be stored. The terror group apparently hopes to use the chaos in Syria to boost its own military forces.

Israel cannot accept a situation where Hizbullah holds the threat of chemical weapons over its citizens.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in consultation with top defense officials, and the army this week deployed two of its vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile systems to the northern port city of Haifa in anticipation of armed action.

Netanyahu told visiting American congressional leaders that the choices for dealing with the situation “are between bad, bad, and worse.”

EGYPT COULD COLLAPSE!
by Annie Lubin & Gil Ronen (Arutz Sheva News)

Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi warned Tuesday that Egypt could be facing collapse.

Al-Sisi explained that military units have been stationed in cities next to the Suez Canal, where riots have broken out, in order to protect the canal.

“The continuing conflict between political forces and their differences concerning the management of the country could lead to a collapse of the state and threaten future generations,” Al-Sisi said in a speech to army cadets that was also quoted on the Egyptian military spokesman’s Facebook page. Sisi said the country’s economic, political and social challenges signify “a real threat to the security of Egypt and the cohesiveness of the Egyptian state”.

Some see Sisi’s statement as an attempt to remind Egyptians about the power of the military and as a veiled threat to opposition forces.

At least 52 people have been killed in riots that broke out a few days ago, at the two year anniversary of the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Many of the casualties were in the city of Suez, where the military was sent to quell the riots.

The situation worsened when a court sentenced to death 21 soccer fans who were found guilty of causing the riot in a stadium in Port Said last year, in which 74 people were killed.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi announced Sunday that he was placing three cities under curfew because of rioting – Port Said, Suez and Ismailiya. The curfew will be in force from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM for the next 30 days, as part of a state of emergency declared in these cities.

IRAN NUCLEAR FACILITY DESTROYED
by Israel Today Staff

Reports are circulating that an important nuclear facility in Iran has been at least partially destroyed in a massive explosion. The news comes just days after an ex-Iranian diplomat who defected to the West warned that if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, it would use that weapon against Israel.

The explosion reportedly took place at the Fordo nuclear facility near the city of Qom. Fordo is buried deep under a mountain, making it nearly immune to aerial assault, and therefore a perfect location for a significant portion of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities.

According to reports in the American news website WorldNetDaily, which cited a former Iranian defense official who fled to the West, the explosion caused a collapse of the elevators that descend nearly 300 feet into the mountain facility, trapping some 240 personnel inside.

Tehran is said to be blaming the explosion on sabotage. Both Israel and the US are known to have taken various measures against Iran’s defiant nuclear program over the past several years. Though Israel did not officially respond to speculation that it was behind the blast, Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter told Yediot Ahronot that “any explosion in Iran that doesn’t hurt people but hurts its assets is welcome.”

The debate over whether or not to take decisive action against Iran’s nuclear program has been intensifying, especially after Iran’s former consul in Oslo, Mohammed Reza Hedyari, told Israel’s Channel 2 News that Iran is only one year away from fielding a nuclear weapon, which it will turn on Israel.

“If Iran is given more time, it will acquire the knowledge necessary to build a nuclear bomb within a year,” Heydari told Israeli television viewers last Friday. “If Iran gets to the point where it has an atomic bomb, it will certainly use it, against Israel or any other enemy state.”

The former diplomat suggested that it was a grave mistake for Western leaders to think that the Iranian leadership will be pragmatic with its nuclear weapons, in the way former Soviet leaders were.

Iran’s leaders “are busying themselves with ideological preparations for the arrival of the ‘hidden Imam’ (a kind of Muslim messiah),” he said. “For this purpose, they are willing to spill much blood and destroy many countries.”

Heydari defected to Norway in 2010.

AMERICA MUST STAND UP TO REIGIOUS HATE
By Cyrus Afzali and John Bachman (Jerusalem Post)

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, the ADL’s national director said he’s frightened by the rise in battles based on religious ideology, such as the struggles between Sunni and Shia.

“In Syria, it’s easy to see the results of a religious struggle. Al-Qaida is motivated by religious extremism, not by territory or property. Their desire is to impose their will, which is Sharia, or Islamic law. It’s very hard to compromise with people’s religious fanaticism,” Foxman said.

Foxman speaks not only from expertise, but personal experience of religious hatred. A child survivor of the Holocaust, his parents secreted him out of a Nazi-created Jewish ghetto and placed him with a Polish Catholic woman who had him baptized. When the war was over, Foxman was reunited with his Jewish parents.

In contrasting the current turmoil in Egypt with the reign of former President Hosni Mubarak, Foxman said today’s fanatics often desire to carry their views to a completely different level.

“Mubarak was a dictator, but he kept a certain balance. Now that he’s gone, everything is out there, but what seems to be out there more now is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is totally intolerant,” Foxman said. “They’re anti-Semitic and want to impose their will.”

When asked about the Obama Administration’s overtures to the Muslim Brotherhood, Foxman believes that the dialogue is designed not so much to align the United States with that movement, but to find a way to help create a moderate government in Egypt.

“You can’t ignore a country of 90 million that is so important and significant. You also can’t ignore the fact that Turkey has moved toward Islamists in the last 10 years,” Foxman said. “We’re struggling to find a way to keep them as allies and keep them as moderate as possible,” Foxman said.

He believes Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi needs to understand that the support and engagement of the United States is conditioned on Morsi promoting democracy, peace with Israel and an end to bigotry. Morsi himself was recently outed for a 2010 speech he gave in which he described Jews as the “offspring” of pigs and apes and urged a crowd to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” of Israel.

Broadly speaking, Foxman believes insufficient attention has been paid to the rise of religious persecution, especially of Christians by Islamic fundamentalists. He said this makes it essential for the United States to deliver the message that America is watching and that we care.

“We need to set standards and to say that persecution is unacceptable. We’re watching a world where on Sunday, they burn churches and on Friday, they burn mosques,” he said.

Turning to current events, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, who President Obama has nominated to be the next defense secretary, caused an uproar when he made references to “the Jewish lobby” in the United States. Following a private meeting with Hagel last week, Foxman believes he understands the concerns many have over those comments.

“He’s beginning to understand what concerns and troubles us. He’s trying to get into synch with some of the policies of the current government,” Foxman said. “He’s said all the right things and I want to reserve judgment during the confirmation hearin.gs. There are a lot of questions. I look forward to the hearings on the Hill and for him to have an opportunity to say publicly some of the things that has said to me privately. Then we’ll see.”

The ADL weighed in on the gun debate following an analogy that some made between gun control proposals of today and Nazi Germany in the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler confiscated weapons. Foxman strongly objected to that characterization because he believed it trivializes the Holocaust.

“People can feel passionately about things, but if you don’t understand the Holocaust, you better learn to understand the consequences of language and hate. If you do understand and you trivialize it, then you’re insensitive and maybe even bigoted,” Foxman said. “Our message is you can be passionate about what you believe, but if you compare movements in history, you need to understand them. Undermining their value in history is counterproductive to the lessons that we hope are universal and to what was achieved.”

Foxman recently authored a book titled “Viral Hate,” which will be released June 4 and is available for pre-order now. It examines the pervasiveness of bigotry and anti-Semitism on the Internet. He likens the Internet’s anonymity to the masks once worn by bigots in the Klu Klux Klan.

“People can act anonymously, hide who they are and say horrific things, which impacts civility. We do have free speech and a First Amendment, but the question is how do we balance it with privacy and civility?”

Foxman believes the Internet is spreading more anti-Jewish messages and while they may not impact civil people, they do have a role in spawning bulling and cyber bullying.

“This bigotry and bullying in the courtyard of the school has now gone global. The problem is determining who is responsible. There are issues that we struggle with for which we don’t have answers.”

When asked to grade President Obama on his Israeli policy, Foxman believes his second term should stand on its own.

“It’s a new semester now and I would wait to see how he does. I don’t want to pre-judge this one based on the other one, which had mixed things,” he said.
Foxman said the first test will be his nominations.

“They’re mixed, so (the question is) what will that represent? I’ll come back when the semester’s in a little bit and we’ll try to deal with that question.”