| 40 killed in first major armed battle in Syria Posted: 14 Nov 2011 08:45 PM PST From Reuters: At least 40 Syrians were killed in fighting on Monday between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and insurgents in a town near the border with Jordan, local activists said, in the first case of major armed resistance to Assad in the region.
They said troops backed by armour killed 20 people — army defectors, insurgents and civilians — in an assault on Khirbet Ghazaleh in the Hauran Plain, and in fighting that ensued near the town. A similar number of troops were killed, they added.
The troops attacked Khirbet Ghazaleh, 20 km north of the border, on the main highway between Amman and Damascus, after army defectors attacked a security police bus at a highway intersection near the town, the activists said. Even though everyone is urging the activists to stick to peaceful protests, I don't think Assad would step aside without any military pressure. Meanwhile, official Syrian news reports that over the weekend Syria staged huge pro-regime rallies to protest the Arab League's censure: The photos, provided by Syria and showing large rallies in multiple cities, appear to be legit - but it is hard to know for sure. And, of course, there is no way to know what incentives or threats were offered to people to attend. 
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| Some amazing video footage from Israel Posted: 14 Nov 2011 05:40 PM PST |
| Yemen, Lebanon voted against Syria's suspension from Arab League Posted: 14 Nov 2011 01:53 PM PST The much heralded vote over the weekend calling to suspend Syria's membership in the Arab League was not unanimous. Iraq abstained: Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Monday defended his country's abstention from a vote on suspending Syria from the Arab League, emphasising that events in Syria have a direct impact on Iraq.
"Iraq's stance was not easy," Zebari told a news conference on Monday.
"Syria is a brother country. It is an important country in the area, and we have special relations with it, as it hosted hundred of thousands of Iraqis in difficult circumstances," he said, referring to Iraqi refugees who fled to Syria to escape violence at home. Yemen voted against. And Lebanon voted against: Where does one begin? In a year of so many lows, Lebanon, by choosing not to sanction Syria at Saturday's Arab League meeting in Cairo, has probably reached its nadir. For in doing so, it has torn up its much-vaunted democratic credentials and sided with the forces of repression and systematic murder. Subsequent explanations from both the Lebanese president and prime minister did little to justify the way Lebanon, along with troubled Yemen and Syria itself, voted.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati explained that the decision to side with a regime that has killed more than 3,500 protesters, and which has constantly broken all promises to embark upon a program of reform, was based upon "historic and geographic considerations and facts that take into account the Lebanese peculiarity, which we know that [our] Arab brothers understand."
Lebanon's "Arab brothers" understand only one thing: Beirut and Damascus are joined at the hip, and the March 8 forces that overthrew the democratically elected government of Saad Hariri in January of this year did so with the overarching aim to restore Lebanon to Syria's orbit after a six-year hiatus. It is for this and this reason only that Lebanon sided with one of the region's darkest forces. Iran is trying to spin the vote as if it was closer than it was, by claiming that Jordanian leaders were divided: Jordan's vote for the suspension of Syria from the Arab League earlier this week has reportedly caused a rift among the Jordanian government officials.
According to Arab media reports, senior members of the Jordan's foreign ministry have slammed the order made by the League which calls on member states to withdraw their ambassadors from Damascus.
A spokesman for the Jordanian foreign ministry has allegedly called the decision not binding and that any Arab country can choose not to follow such orders. This seems to be fiction as far as I can tell, but one of the comments in this PressTV article is too good to ignore: All these Zionist gutless puppets who call them selves Arabs have their day coming, their western stance and silence on Israel will bring their destruction by their own people , if you research that fake king abdullah you will find that his mother is a British Jew who was an actress Wow, a halachically Jewish king in Jordan? Why haven't we heard this before? (Abdullah's mother Princess Muna did convert to Islam when she married King Hussein - it is one of those racist Jordanian laws we never hear anyone complain about - but she was not Jewish in any way. Her family tree can be seen here.) 
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| Fatah official says elections will be in May 2012 Posted: 14 Nov 2011 12:39 PM PST Ma'an (Arabic) quotes Fatah Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmad as saying that he hedl a number of secret meetings in Cairo ahead of a planned meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh there next month. He says that agreements have already been made to hammer out a consensus government ahead of planned May 2012 elections, along with some agreements on restructuring security services and around the elections themselves. He said Hamas was on board with this agreement even though they have made combative statements against Fatah in recent days. I'm skeptical, to say the least. So far all the agreements have been for show, and the idea that Hamas would consider loosening its grip on power in Gaza is far fetched. It is only a little less far-fetched that Fatah would cave on the issue of security in Gaza. What seems clear is that Fayyad will be gone, and whoever replaces him will not be as popular among Western governments. Chances are pretty good that whoever becomes caretaker prime minister will have some terror background. 
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| From UN stunt to "unity" stunt Posted: 14 Nov 2011 11:35 AM PST I reported yesterday that Hamas was complaining that Mahmoud Abbas did not live up to his end of the "unity" agreement from last May and that they would not accept that Salam Fayyad stay prime minister. Now that the Fatah-led (and Hamas-opposed) UN stunt has spectacularly failed, Abbas is ready to re-consider the unity stunt. Anything to avoid real negotiations. From Al Arabiya: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad signaled on Monday he is ready to step aside to help reconcile the two rival factions of the Palestinian national movement and pave the way for presidential and parliamentary elections.
The departure of the U.S.-educated former World Bank economist, 59, would be a concession by President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the mainly secular Fatah movement which is dominant in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to his Islamist rivals Hamas, who control the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip.
Abbas will call in a speech on Wednesday for a government of independent experts to prepare for the elections, presidential adviser Nemir Hammad told Reuters.
This scenario was part of a reconciliation deal signed last April but never implemented. Elections were last held in 2006.
Abbas is also due to hold face-to-face talks in Cairo this month with his arch-rival, the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. One official said the meeting could bring reconciliation closer "should Abbas abandon his commitment to Fayyad" as his candidate to head the caretaker government. 
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| The narrative of perpetual Palestinian Arab victimhood Posted: 14 Nov 2011 09:20 AM PST At a speech given in September, Shelby Steele said: The Arab-Israeli conflict, is not really a conflict, it is a war – a war of the Arabs against the Jews. In many ways, this conflict has been a conflict between narratives. We who strongly support Israel have done a poor job in formulating a narrative which will combat the story spun by the other side. We can do better.
The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and the general animus in the Middle East and elsewhere toward Israel and toward the Jews, what are they really about? Is the Durban conference and the claim that Israel is a racist nation really about reforming the people of Israel and curing them of their racism?
I think their real interest is to situate the Palestinian people within a narrative of victimization. This is their ulterior goal: to see themselves and to have others see them as victims of colonialism, as victims of white supremacy.
Listen to their language; it is the language of colonial oppression. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that Palestinians have been occupied for 63 years. The word oppressed is constant, exploited. In this, there is a poetic truth; like poetic license, in a poetic truth a writer will bend the rules in order to be more effective.
...Focusing on the case of the Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.
The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.
...Freedom is a dicey thing to experience. When you come into freedom, you see yourself more accurately in the world. This is not unique to the Middle East. It was also the black American experience, when the Civil Rights bill was passed in 1964 and we came into much greater freedom. If you were a janitor in 1963 and you are still a janitor in 1965, you have all these freedoms and they are supported by the rule of law, then your actual experience of freedom is one of humiliation and one of shame. You see how far you have to go, how far behind you are, how little social capital you have with which to struggle forward. Even in freedom you see you are likely to be behind for a long time. In light of your inability to compete and your underdevelopment, freedom becomes something that you are very likely going to hate – because it carries this humiliation.
At that point formerly oppressed groups develop what I call bad faith. Bad faith is when you come into freedom, you are humiliated and you say, "Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead."
You develop a culture grounded in bad faith where you insist that you are less free than you really are. Islamic extremism is the stunning example of this phenomenon. "I have to go on jihad because I am fighting for my freedom." Well you already have your freedom. You could stay home and study. You could do something constructive. But "No, I cannot do that because that makes me feel bad about myself." So I live in a world of extremism and dictators.
This is the real story of the Palestinians and of the Middle East. They will never be reached by reason until they are somehow able to get beyond bad faith, to get beyond this sort of poetic truth that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.
Challenging their narrative with this explanation will enable us to be more effective. Until now, we have constantly used facts and reason and have not progressed.
...The irony and the tragedy of all this is that it keeps these groups in a bubble where they never encounter or deal with the truth. This becomes a second oppression for all these groups. They have been oppressed once, now they are free and yet they create a poetic truth that then oppresses them all over again.
How are you going to have good faith if you are raised being told that the society in which you are trying to compete is against you, is racist? It is always the Palestinians who suffer, and will continue to suffer, because all of their energy is going into the avoidance of their situation rather than into being challenged by it and facing into it. Read the whole thing. A textbook example of this kind of thinking comes from the comment pages of todays' Al Quds al Arabi (Arabic.) In an article about the Arab League suspending Syrian membership, at Al Quds al Arabi, commenter Majid Dudin says: The Jews stole all our land, language, and technology from us; they robbed and raped the Canaanite language and corrupted it into what is called the Hebrew language, and their technology is stolen from Europe at the hands of Jonathan Pollard and others. How perfectly a single comment encapsulates Shelby Steele's argument! Blame everything on the Jews - to avoid being blamed for your own inadequacies and failures. An entire culture has been raised with this kind of thinking for generations. And they are enslaved by it just as they try to enslave the rest of the world by this false and bigoted framework. (h/t CHA) 
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| Saudi Arabia bans women health workers from wearing jeans, gold jewelry Posted: 14 Nov 2011 08:22 AM PST Al Quds al Arabi reports that there are new restrictions on what Saudi women in healthcare are allowed to wear. The new restrictions include jeans, tight clothing, gold accessories, any clothing with writing or logos, nail polish, and makeup powder. No restrictions on men's clothing were announced. There have been stories lately about how Saudi Arabia is liberalizing its attitudes towards women. It may be true, but it looks like for every step forward there is also a step back. 
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| Released Islamic Jihad terrorist brags about his attacks Posted: 14 Nov 2011 07:10 AM PST Palestine Today has an adoring interview with one of the prisoners released in the Shalit deal, Ziad Salameh. (I believe his name in the official lists of those released is "Awadh Ziad Awadh al-Salaima Awad" but there are a couple of inconsistencies.)  Salameh (whose name means "peaceful") went on a stabbing rampage in Tel Aviv in March of 1993 where he stabbed two Israelis to death and injured nine others. The attack occurred near the central bus station. He murdered a 28 year old barber and a 27-year old Russian immigrant. In his interview Salamah explains that he started off his career with rock throwing - but that wasn't exciting enough so he purchased large knives. He claims that he obtained a fake work permit and exited Gaza along with a number of Palestinian Arabs who were working in Israel, and then took a bus to Tel Aviv. "My goal was to reach the area with the largest number of settlers and kills as many as I could." He even brags that he managed to stab one "settler" who was hiding behind a car. Then he was overcome by Israelis who subdued him with pipes and sticks, breaking some of his bones. Once he was in prison he received medical care for his injuries, obtained his high school diploma and attended four terms of classes at Hebrew University. He says he never lost hope that he would be freed in a prisoner swap. If anyone literally has "blood on his hands," it is Salameh. 
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| The cruel Egyptian blockade of Gaza continues Posted: 14 Nov 2011 06:10 AM PST Egypt has arrested 10 Gazans who sneaked through tunnels under Rafah into the country. The people who were nabbed had tried to enter Egypt legally through the Rafah crossing, but the severe limitations on who can leave Gaza and long waiting lists, along with the corruption of the officials in charge of the crossing, forced them to use more illicit means of entering Egypt. Three of the people caught were students, and a brother and sister were also caught. A few weeks ago another dozen or so Gazans were arrested as well in Egypt. I'm sure that the Free Gaza movement and Viva Palestina are staging noisy protests outside Egyptian embassies worldwide on the cruel, inhuman treatment by Egypt of innocent Gazans. Because we all know how much they care about the lives of Gazans in their open-air prison. 
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| Updates on Iran's "mysterious blast" Posted: 14 Nov 2011 05:01 AM PST From Time: Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.
The powerful blast or series of blasts — reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one — devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site."
[I]n Sunday's editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed what Yedioth Ahronoth called "Iran's Mysterious Mishaps." The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program — two last year and one in July.
At the very least, the list burnishes the mystique of the Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency. Whatever the case-by-case reality, the popular notion that, through the Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defense can be summed up in the word deterrence. But it doesn't mean Israel is the only country with a foreign intelligence operation inside Iran. The most recent IAEA report included intelligence from 10 governments on details of the Iranian nuclear effort. And in previous interviews, Western security sources have indicated that U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have partnered with Israel on covert operations inside Iran. Sometimes the partner brings specific expertise or access. In other cases, Iranian agents on the ground who might harbor misgivings about Israel are allowed to believe they are working only with another government altogether.
Saturday's blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb. "Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility," the resident says. "All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened, but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was." The list of Iranian "accidents" over the past few years includes: - November 2007 - Explosion in a missile base south of Tehran. Dozens of technicians are killed.
- July 2008 - Explosion in a convoy of trucks carrying missiles probably intended for Hezbollah. 15 deaths.
- August 2009 - a passenger plane crashes after takeoff from Tehran. On board were probably explosives and rockets destined for Hezbollah. 168 dead.
- October 2010 - Explosion of the Revolutionary Guard base in south-western Iran where Shahab missiles are stored. 18 dead.
- June 2011 - aircraft carrying Russian scientists who assisted in building the Bushehr reactor crashes. Dozens killed, including six scientists.
- November 2011 - Explosion at the base of the Revolutionary Guards missile. 17 killed.
And from AP: A Revolutionary Guard commander killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot west of Tehran was a key figure in Iran's missile program, the elite military force said in a statement Sunday.
Gen. Hasan Moghaddam was killed together with 16 other Guard members Saturday at a military site outside Bidganeh village, 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Tehran.
Saeed Qasemi, a Guard commander, said Iran owes its missile program to Moghaddam.
"A major part of (our) progress in the field of missile capability and artillery was due to round-the-clock efforts by martyr Moghaddam," Qasemi told the conservative news website rajanews.com.
Another Guard commander, Gen. Mostafa Izadi, called Moghaddam a "founder of the Guard's surface-to-surface missile systems."
Qasemi said Moghaddam was one of a few Guard commanders favored by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"The exalted leader had a special interest in him," he said. Mako says that Moghaddam had worked closely with Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the senior Hamas member assassinated in Dubai nearly two years ago. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, when asked to comment on the explosion, answered with the Hebrew phrase " כן ירבו" which translates roughly to "May there be many more." (h/t Yoel) 
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| IAF kills Hamas "policeman"/terrorist Posted: 14 Nov 2011 02:11 AM PST Ma'an reports: One police officer was killed and four others injured early Monday morning when Israeli warplanes targeted a naval police building in Gaza City.
Medical sources in Gaza identified the victim as Muhammad Kilani. His body was found amid the rubble.
The airstrike came hours after a homemade projectile was fired from Gaza, landing in the Shaar Hanegev area. No injuries were reported. Was the victim merely a policeman? Not according to Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades terror group: Qassam [Brigade member and] Mujahid Martyr Mohammed Zaher Al-Kilani, 23, from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, rose to be a martyr - God willing - the dawn of the day Monday, 14/11/2011, after the Zionist bombing targeted the marine police site... He had a great career as a jihadist and a supervisor, and after hard work and sacrifice and jihad, we consider him a martyr. Since the current escalation of rocket fire in late October, the IDF has killed about 16 terrorists in Gaza - and not one civilian. 
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