Konflikten i Syrien

True, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida would definitely – if they ever gained control of Syria – cause Israel fits.

True, they could turn the Golan border, so quiet under Assad and his father since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, into a living hell.

But even though the Sunni terror and jihadist groups like Hamas and al-Qaida threaten Israel and cause enormous problems, the main peril to Israel right now is not the Sunni terrorists but rather the possibility of an Iranian-led Shi’ite axis – one that soon could be armed with nuclear weapons – stretching from Iran through Iraq, Syria and into Lebanon.

But let’s look at three factors that are missing in the ongoing analysis of the Syrian crisis:


1) Israel

Ever since the two Gulf wars, America has been fighting Israelis’ wars for them. In the case of the 2003 invasion and destruction of Iraq, this was so obvious that the very same NeoCons who in 1996-7 planned war against Iraq in their “Project for a New American Century (PNAC)” think-tank - Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Bush, Douglas Feith, David Wormser and others – would later execute that war in 2003 as top officers in the George W. Bush regime. The prime reason: Saddam Hussein was then the greatest threat to “democratic and favored ally” Israel.

Several of those NeoCons – Douglas Feith, David Wormser, Richard Perle and other Bushites - had already gone so far as to prepare a strategy report for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” which, again, targeted Iraq as Israel’s key foe at the time.

So, the Iraq War was to a great extent a proxy war that only benefitted Israel, becoming a huge headache for America, which lost thousands of its sons.

As the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohammed, once famously pointed out: "The Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

2) Israel

The excessive and overpowering role that Zionism plays in American politics, American finance, American universities, American mainstream media including it Hollywood “entertainment industry,” and over American foreign policy, has been all but proven. This vital issue today lies at the heart of an increasingly far-reaching debate among America’s intelligentsia, which is, of course, being hushed up by the mainstream media.

One of its milestones was played out by two of its prestigious academics – Stephen Walt, former Dean of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and his colleague John Mearsheimer, professor of Political Science at Chicago University – who published their groundbreaking book: “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” in 2007.

In it, they show in a very convincing and well-documented manner the long reach and powerful clout that the “Israel First” lobby exercises over the US media, the banks, the Congress, the State Department and the Pentagon, whereby they are able to systematically tip the scales in favor of Israel, no matter what the cost. No matter if right or wrong.
And the cost to America has been extremely detrimental to its National Interest. Here lies one of the roots of much of the disrespect, mistrust and even hate that growing sections of global public opinion feel towards the US and its key allies.


3) Israel

President Barack Obama’s problem right now is that America’s military establishment is very much aware of the stakes involved in any “preventive attack” against Syria and, much more importantly, against Iran. Intervention against either or both countries will undoubtedly lead to massive war in the Middle East.


Look at a map: Syria and Iran lie squarely inside Russia’s vital geopolitical sphere of interest, which is already under heavy Western encroachment. Read their lips: Russia is saying, “not one step further!”


America would do very well to think twice or thrice before doing anything rash…

But here comes the problem: ever since Israel was kicked out of Southern Lebanon in July 2006 by the well-armed and trained (by Iran and Russia) forces of Hezbollah commanded by Nasrallah, Israel has been licking its wounds; dark furor and revenge burns in Zionism’s heart.

Since Bibi Netanyahu came back to power in 2011, Israel has gone into preventive war mode, using Iran’s inexistent nuclear program as a pretext. For that past four or five years, Israel has been threatening Iran with military attack almost every other day, with Washington, London and Paris nervously obliging...

The American military, however, are painfully aware that there’s some truth to former Prime Minister Mahathir’s words. They don’t want to fight yet another Israeli war this time in Iran. So, they have been acting as a brake which is reflected in Obama’s increasing “caution” regarding Iran, going so far as to dispatching his military top brass to Israel to calm Netanyahu down, trying to make sure Israel does not launch a unilateral “preventive attack” on Iran that will drag the US into a massive conflict in the Middle East, the results of which are far from clear.

Two Europeans who were abducted and held hostage for several months in Syria claim they overheard an exchange between their captors which proves that rebels were behind the recent chemical attack.

In a number of interviews to European news outlets, the former hostages - Belgian teacher Pierre Piccinin and Italian journalist Domenico Quiric - said they overheard an English-language Skype conversation between their captors and other men which suggested it was 'rebel' forces, not the government, that used chemical weapons on Syria's civilian population in an August 21 attack near Damascus.

– För att den här diplomatiska lösningen ska ha en chans att lyckas måste hotet om en amerikansk militär insats, ett trovärdigt verkligt hot, stå kvar, säger USA:s försvarsminister Chuck Hagel, enligt AP.
Fram till måndagens oväntade vändning förväntades nattens tal bli en chans för Obama att övertyga amerikanerna om vikten av en militär insats i Syrien.
Under talet i natt meddelade Obama till slut istället att han begärt att kongressen skjuter upp omröstningen om en amerikansk attack.
– Medan vi ser vad den diplomatiska vägen leder till, säger presidenten.
Som också försäkrade att det inte kommer ske någon militär insats innan FN:s inspektörer har lämnat sin rapport om vad som hände när 1 429 människor dog utanför Damaskus 21 augusti.