US Govt's Assessment of Assad's Chemical Weapons Attack

Here's the damning U.S. government report on Assad's chemical weapons attack on August 21, in full. The report contains all of the declassified intelligence collected about the attack.

The questions now are: how forceful will Obama's response be? What targets will the U.S. hit and why? Obama has already stated today that his response will be "a narrow act." What exactly does that mean? Why is Obama tipping his hand? So that Assad's wife can continue swimming in the presidential pool?

I believe there is an overwhelming need for the U.S. to decimate the capabilities of the Syrian Air Force. It is time to shut down Assad's air power. I say this not because I believe the U.S. should pick sides in this civil war, but instead, because it is time to level the playing field. If Syria's civil war is truly a popular uprising, then a levelled playing field should reveal the true extent of the support for the (disparate) rebel opposition groups. Otherwise Assad will continue bombing the rebels into oblivion, and the bloodshed will continue unabated.

This is a horrific scenario in which the West is rightfully reticent to get involved. But the reality is that Assad has just committed an unthinkable atrocity, in a region fraught with men willing commit atrocities on a daily basis. The precedent that the UK's Parliament just set -- of sitting out of the action when the U.S. and France are ready to attack Syria -- is simply untenable and cowardly. The West has a moral duty and imperative to act and react when a nation crosses all international mores and norms, such as through the use of WMD's.

The impending U.S. attack on Syria (however limited it might be) is designed to convey one message: the use of WMD's is wholly, completely and eternally unacceptable, and will always be universally condemned by the West. Importantly, this is a crucial message that will be heard loud and clear in Tehran. You can be sure that the Iranians are watching and waiting with wide eyes to see whether or not the West has the backbone and resolve to stop reckless regimes from using WMD's (as Iran has promised to use on Israel, numerous times).

As Iran races to complete its nuclear weapons program, the world is witnessing the opening acts of what will eventually become a broader war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria makes certain that the Iranian regime will not hesitate to do the same. Hence the need for the West to punish Assad. However, Russia's intransigence and blind support of Assad, even in the face of nearly incontrovertible evidence of Assad's chemical attack, also sends a signal to Israel that Russia will similarly stand behind Iran until the very end. These are complex times.

Should the day ever come when Israel feels it must act to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program, unilaterally, Russia's unwavering support of Iran is indeed a brutal reality that the entire world will have to face. We are certainly in for some fireworks. Bring your gas mask.

Settling Israel's Ancient West Bank Roots

Here's my latest article for the Times of Israel based on my first-hand report from a pro-settlement political event that I attended in the West Bank in July: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israels-right-to-re-settle/

Enjoy.

-R.O.
--------

Settling Israel's Ancient West Bank Roots
By: Robert D. Onley - August 22, 2013
Times of Israel

The uproar emitted by the Palestinian Authority and the international community after Israel approved new housing blocks in East Jerusalem - on the eve of renewed peace talks - caused many people to seriously question the logic of the State of Israel.

However the casually and widely accepted proposition that any Israeli construction in the West Bank is somehow indisputably wrong is based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of present realities and Israel’s ancient history.

One only has to travel about 45 minutes outside of Jerusalem to have this conclusion become abruptly clear. In mid-July I had the privilege of attending the opening of a new cultural center and synagogue on the historic hilltop in Ancient Shiloh, an area deemed 'occupied' by the international community.

Located in the Ephraim hill-country in the Samarian countryside, the village of Ancient Shiloh was the religious capital of Israel for 300 years before Jerusalem and the existence of the first Temple. Ancient Shiloh was also home to the first tabernacle, Judaism’s earliest holy site, and at one point held the Ark of the Covenant. Both iconic Jewish artifacts pre-date the existence of Islam by over a millennium, and yet the reflexively anti-Israel proletariat in Europe and in the West summarily dismiss the centrality of these artifacts to Jewish identity.

Consider a basic comparative example to appreciate Israel’s alleged defiance of international law when building in Shiloh: in the same way that the ummat al-Islamiyah rightfully upholds the sanctity of the site at the Dome of the Rock, the Jewish people justifiably lay claim to the historic significance of geographic locations such as Ancient Shiloh, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and numerous other areas integral to the Jewish faith.

The Ancient Shiloh area was re-settled in 1978 and officially recognized by the Israeli government a year later. Just like the local Muslim populations in East Jerusalem near the Dome of the Rock, a Jewish population too has gradually grown up around Ancient Shiloh.

In the last few years, efforts by various pro-settlement groups were undertaken to establish a permanent structure to commemorate ancient Israel’s ties to the land at Ancient Shiloh. Embodying this effort is the multi-purpose synagogue and cultural building that opened there in July. The building features a sweeping panoramic view and a super-widescreen theatre displaying a top-notch reenactment film which uses the natural Samarian hillside as a real-life backdrop for the film.

Commemorating the opening of this unique facility attracted the who’s who of Israel's political settlement movement, including politicians Naftali Bennett, leader of The Jewish Home party, and Moshe Feiglin, leader of Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud party and the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. Their respective political identities and electoral success are based on an unshakeable belief in the historicity and veracity of the Jewish lineage in the land of Israel, including, of course, at places such as Ancient Shiloh.

However, the existence of a factual Jewish lineage does not matter to those whose understanding of Jewish history extends strictly to June 10, 1967, when the borders between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan were transformed by the Six Day War and Israel’s subsequent occupation of formerly Jordanian land. To many observers, Israel’s decision then to capture additional Jordanian territory still constitutes “theft” of Palestinian land, today.

All of which is problematic because the European Union’s recent decision to boycott Israeli investments in the West Bank is also predicated on this flawed logic. The E.U.’s logic disregards any actual or potential historic Jewish connection to any of the land in the West Bank.

Further, with its latest directive, the E.U. instead dismisses ancient Jewish history as irrelevant, and alternately is implicitly accepting the totality of the P.A.’s assertion of sovereignty over all of “Palestine”. Meanwhile repeated Israeli governments have sacrificed Israeli territory in the pursuit of peace, only to receive rockets and relentless intransigence in return.

Unanswered by the P.A., is that if the 1967 borders are essential to peace for both the P.A. and the E.U., why then were these borders not acceptable in 1967 immediately prior to the Six Day War? Tracing this reasoning further back in history: why were the 1948 borders not acceptable for the creation of a Palestinian state? Legally and objectively, at both points in history – May 1948 and June 1967 – Israel was not “occupying” a square inch of territory in the “West Bank”.

The P.A.’s inability to address these simple yet challenging questions, and the resultant 65 years of bloodshed between Israel and the various Palestinian entities that have expressed vitriolic hatred toward the Jewish people, together raise alarming concern about the fundamental ideological underpinnings of the current and future Palestinian government.

Further, the P.A.’s silence in the face of legitimate objective inquiry exposes its radical agenda, reliance on historic revisionism and perpetual strategic hypocrisy. More than anything, this silence effectively legitimizes Israel’s construction activity, particularly in areas of ironclad historic prominence to Judaism.

At the Ancient Shiloh event, Naftali Bennett, a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s governing coalition, made explicitly clear his response to the paradox above, stating:

“The world says that these ‘settlements’ are terrorizing the Palestinian people. I say that not building on this land is terrorism against the Jewish State.”

Bennett’s new party won 12 seats in the 2013 national elections, and he is widely considered an up-and-coming political leader. With peace negotiations now underway, Bennett’s ideological ambition and rising popularity are worth bearing consideration in the context of Israel’s future.

In many respects, Bennett’s vision for Israel’s growth (into the West Bank), emerges from the perception in Israel that the Palestinian government is systemically and intractably divided, riven with venomous jihadi ideologies, and simply incapable of the intellectual maturity required to accept both Jews and the Jewish State on a secular, humanistic, civilizational basis.

That the P.A.’s anti-Semitic political positions are granted hearing in the highest global forums only entrenches Bennett’s belief that Israel must take matters firmly into its own hands, both now and for the foreseeable future.

The reality is that Israel has agreed to come to the negotiating table in 2013 without preconditions. That means: without the basic condition that Israel be accepted as a Jewish State. Is it really any wonder to the international community precisely why Israel continues to build in areas of vital historic importance?

None of this means that Israel has the right to build absolutely anywhere in the West Bank that it deems fit. Nearly all Israelis agree that sensible limits should be placed on construction in areas that will directly impact the ability to create a contiguous Palestinian state - indeed such limits are in Israel's interest when they can lead to definable final status borders.

Yet as the construction at Ancient Shiloh demonstrates, Israel's "settlements" are not necessarily unreasonable or baseless land grabs, but rather are often rooted in ancient, verified history. If only the rest of the world, particularly the E.U. and P.A., would stop to appreciate and construct that conclusion on their own.

Ontario Throws a Bucket of Cold Water on Iran

By Avi Benlolo
President and CEO, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre   
August 2, 2013
 
This week marked an important turning point in Ontario's awareness of determined and well-funded efforts to undermine the values and conceptual underpinnings of Canadian society by groups hoping to import a toxic and foreign ideology to our nation.
 
Nowhere was this effort more evident than the staging of the 'Al Quds Day' rally, held for the past two years on the grounds of Queen's Park. Al Quds Day was proclaimed on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran to spread the demonization of western values of freedom and democracy around the world.
 
In past rallies, participants carried Hezbollah flags, flaunted pictures of despotic Iranian leaders and promoted anti-Semitism by referring to Israel as a "cancer." Chants of "Death to Israel and Death to America" are typical features of Al Quds celebrations. Irans's new "moderate" president-elect, Hasan Rouhani, today re-iterated the same genocidal phrases as his predecessor when he noted, "the Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed."
 
Hundreds of protesters had planned to gather this Saturday on the grounds of the Ontario legislature, the heart of our provincial democracy, to support a regime that stones women to death, hangs homosexuals, funds the ongoing slaughter of thousands of Syrian civilians and exports terror around the world. From failed terror plots in such disparate locations as Azerbaijan, Thailand and Cyprus, to tragically successful bombings which killed and maimed scores of innocent people in countries including Bulgaria and Argentina, Iran is working to further its influence and ideology through terror. Chillingly, it is gaining support for these goals through Al Quds Day rallies, now held annually around the globe.
 
It is not only Jewish communities and Israelis - threatened repeatedly with annihilation by Iran, who are alarmed by the subversion of our democracy and the staging of this annual pro-Shariah rally. A large percentage of the ex-patriot Persian community, - men and women who escaped the atrocities of the Iranian government and now find themselves battling the same hatred and intolerance they sought to escape, are similarly troubled.
 
I have always believed it is morally wrong to sanction a rally in support of a demagogue and an ideology that is diametrically at odds with the basic Canadian values of freedom and democracy. Ontario is a free society, and its citizens have a right to march, to speak, and to protest freely. However, supporters of a genocidal regime which aims to fundamentally reshape western democracies by exporting the values of Shariah law should not and do not have to receive the blessing of the state to exercise this right. The fundamental values cherished by all Canadians must not be discarded so cavalierly with the acquiescence of our government and the permission of our laws.
 
Ironically, it is this very same right to freedom of speech which is denied to millions of Iranian men and women persecuted by their own government; it is the right to think and speak freely which led so many Iranians to come to Canada, and the fear of losing these precious rights through the negligent support of this rally, and all it stands for, which causes such great alarm.
 
In the words of Marina Nemat, an Iranian-Canadian author who has written and spoken extensively about her imprisonment and torture in Iran's Evin prison by the Khomeini regime at the age of 16, "Freedom is like water in the palms of your hands; take your eyes off it, even for a little while, and it drips through your fingers, leaving nothing but thirst."
 
And so it was a welcome surprise to learn that Ontario's Sergeant-at-Arms has refused permission for organizers to hold the Al Quds day rally tomorrow. It seems discussions I had last year with the Sergeant-at-Arms, as well as meetings he held with other leaders in both the Jewish and Iranian communities, have forced government officials to pay attention to this treasonous event happening in their own front yard.
 
As the Iranian foreign ministry condemns the fledgling peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and alarm grows in Washington about the increasing influence of Iran in Latin American countries such as Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, I am proud to see that our government, and the individuals elected to protect the fundamental and indispensable principles upon which our province and our nation are based, finally have their eyes on a truly essential matter.
  
CLICK HERE to read FSWC's letter to the Ontario Speaker of the House re the Al Quds Day Rally