Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

U.S.: Al Qaeda Poised for Bio - Chemical Strikes from Syria on Five Mid-east Countries
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Commentary;Warning

Syria’s chemical arsenal is emerging as the weapon of choice in a Middle East war predicted to be just around the corner. This was the assessment that US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey conveyed to outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak when they met at the Pentagon Tuesday, March 5.
(A separate item in this issue discusses the appointment of Moshe Yaalon as Barak’s successor.)
These top US defense figures warned the Israeli minister that Syrian rebel militias associated or identified with al Qaeda have laid hands on sufficient chemical bombs, shells and warheads – together with missiles and other launching systems – to conduct strikes against seven targets: Assad government centers, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.
The best known Islamist militia, Jabhat al Nusra, has distinguished itself as Al Qaeda’s most able and best organized rebel fighting arm in Syria as well as Iraq and Lebanon. By now, this and other Islamist militias make up roughly two-thirds of Syrian rebel forces.
The Syrian civil war has allowed al Qaeda, for the first time in the two decades since is first attempt in 1993 to blow up New York’s Twin Towers, to get hold of a large enough chemical arsenal to attack whole countries across a broad geographical area.

Al Qaeda smuggles chemical arms to affiliates in Iraq

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report that Hagel and Dempsey made several more points of striking significance:
1. Al Qaeda’s affiliates may also be setting their sights on US strategic and military targets in the region.
2. They have transferred chemical weapons from Syria to armed Al Qaeda bands lurking just 40 kilometers from the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
3. Al Qaeda is funneling poison chemicals to its armed groups on Iraq’s borders with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for strikes against those countries.
4. The trail of chemical weapons from Syria through Turkey has been picked up in Jordan, where they have reached Islamist groups fighting the monarchy. Some bands have infiltrated Amman, the capital, and await orders to go on the offensive; others have fanned out across northern Jordan and are poised to hit the US, British, French, Czech and Polish special forces deployed there.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say that Israeli Prime Minister Binymain Nanyahu's secret visit to King Abdullah in Amman last week, his second in recent months, was to coordinate Israeli-Jordanian military operations if their countries suffered chemical attack.

A multiple chemical offensive of unequalled scope, lethality

5. Although both President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have warned repeatedly that the transfer of Syrian chemical weapons to Hizballah in Lebanon would not be allowed, Gen. Dempsey disclosed that a "certain amount" has already crossed the border and Hizballah is preparing to use them against Israel.
6. The Americans have learned that if the rebels start using their looted chemical weapons, they will suffer an attack in kind by the Syrian army.
7. Secretary Hagel informed the Israeli minister that the administration is in direct and continuous touch with Moscow on a shared mechanism for securing Syria’s WMD arsenals. Moscow says there is nothing to worry about because Russian intelligence has ascertained that Syria’s chemical and biological stores are secure and in safe hands. When questioned about their transfer into rebel hands and terrorists in neighboring countries, the Russians deny knowledge.
Washington now lives in fear of the various Al Qaeda elements bearing chemical arms going after multiple targets in different countries. Such an assault would break all previous terrorist records in terms of scale and casualty figures even of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

U.S. Puts Iran’s Nuclear Program and Other Crises on Hold
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

When all sides of any world crisis, their policy makers, military chiefs and advisers, all agree to hold action until a certain date – in this case, June 2013, when Iran votes for its next president - it usually means two things:
1. None of them know how to get out of a hole before that date, whether it is Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb or the interrelated North Korean nuclearization.
2. Even worse, they have no notion how to manage this after that date either, because the United States and Europe – especially France, the most aggressive opponent of a nuclear Iran - are busy cultivating economic and military ties with the Gulf states and can’t tell how those plans may fit in with the Iranian situation that far ahead.
The United States has stepped out of inaction mode for the single purpose of embracing a complex diplomatic ploy: Russia’s initiative for ending the Syrian civil war. President Barack Obama and his White House strategic advisers are counting heavily on accruing benefits from giving Moscow and Tehran a free hand on Syria as well as leaving their ally, Bashar Assad, in power for the next two or three years. The payoff they hope for would be a Russian-Iranian recipe for resolving the Iranian nuclear impasse in a way that is acceptable to Washington, though not to Israel.

Boosting Assad and Shiite Crescent

Jerusalem, Dubai (UAE) and Riyadh believe Washington is again building castles in the air, with menacing consequences for the region: One – Tehran will end up with a nuclear arsenal. Two – the Middle East nuclear arms race will heat up with Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Turkey and Israel participating (See a separate item on the appointment of a new defense minister in Jerusalem). Three – Assad will emerge as the neighborhood strongman with dominant influence over his strategic partner, HIzballah’s Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad.
By letting Moscow and Tehran have a clear run in Syria, the Obama administration is seen in Middle East capitals as letting the Shiite Crescent plan - only dreamed of by the Iranian Shiite revolutionary Ruhollah Khomenei - become a solid reality.
And still, the Obama administration in Washington persists, as did its predecessor under George W. Bush, in turning a blind eye to the way the intense interplay between Iran and North Korea boosts the military prowess and standing of the two burgeoning nuclear powers, preferring to treat them as separate challenges.

Translate Pyongyang’s threats into Farsi

When former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman, after a pioneering attempt at “basketball diplomacy,” said Monday, March 4, that all Kim Jong Un, whom he pronounced “an awesome guy”, wants is for President Obama to call him, the White House pretended not to understand that what goes for North Korea, goes for Tehran. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was putting out a signal that he too wants Obama to pick up the phone and call him.
But since this “simple action” is not on the Obama agenda, threats soon followed. While issuing from Pyongyang, they were meant to be translated also into Farsi.
For instance, North Korea’s official suspension Tuesday, March 5, of the KPA office in Panmunjom (truce village) tentatively operated by North Korea army as the negotiating body for the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean civil war, may be read as a threat by Tehran to suspend the Six-Power nuclear talks resumed last week in Kazakhstan.
And when Pyongyang said in the same announcement that it would scrap the Korean armistice and sever its military hotline with Washington if the US and South Korea went through with plans for two months of joint war games, Tehran was threatening to cut short its interminable dialogue with the international nuclear watchdog IAEA) in the first instance. The next step would be Iran’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Tehran blows hot and cold

All the same, two events, disclosed exclusively by debkafile’s military and intelligence sources, persuaded President Obama to hold his horses on Iran’s nuclear program until the magic date of June 2013.
a) On Tuesday, Feb. 26, the day Chuck Hagel was confirmed as the new US Secretary of Defense, the British Daily Telegraph carried satellite images showing signs of activity at the Arak heavy water plant, including a cloud of steam. This was taken as demonstrating that Iran was on the way to producing plutonium - and not just enriched uranium - for fueling a nuclear bomb. Therefore, it was implied, the new US defense secretary was too late to stop Iran’s nuclear weaponization process.
debkafile’s military sources added that the small cloud of steam did not necessarily attest to the start of production at the Arak plant; it could simply be a sign of preliminary tests.
This estimate has just been verified by our intelligence sources: All that was going on at the plant was to experimentally heat up water in the cooling pools of the plant and this is what produced the steam.
The British are correct in assessing that Iran has gone a step further toward making plutonium bombs, but there is still has a long way to go, at least two to three years, from heating up water in the plant’s cooling pool to production.
Like the Arak pool, Tehran was blowing hot and cold at the same time.
b) Five days earlier, on Friday, Feb. 22, the IAEA in Vienna was allowed to “discover” that new fast centrifuges of the IR2M type had been installed at the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. They would shorten Iran’s timeline up to the red line drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly in September 2012. That red line was 250 kilograms of 20-percent military grade enriched uranium.

Inter-power consensus for punishing NKorea – not Iran

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources say Iran is currently believed to have 167 kilograms, but no one knows if this number is correct. And, moreover, when we closed this issue, no Western or Israeli intelligence official had proof that the new fast IR2M centrifuges were actually working. They were certainly installed in Natanz, but there is much doubt that they are already operating smoothly at industrial capacity.
In this case too, Tehran was blowing hot and cold – first showcasing nuclear advances in defiance of the West for domestic consumption, then quietly downplaying the boast as a message to President Obama not to take the hot air seriously and continue to be patient until after Iran’s June 2013 presidential election.
UN Ambassador Susan Rice said Tuesday, March 5, that a US-China draft resolution to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test would impose some of the toughest sanctions ever ordered by the United Nations. She told reporters when the draft circulated among Security Council members. that “the breadth and scope of these sanctions is exceptional” and would further impede the growth of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs. “We hope for a unanimous adoption this week,” Rice said.
Significantly, there is no such consensus among the world powers on Iran’s nuclear violations.

Rocks and Firebombs on the Temple Mount
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Ernie Singer
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Worshippers started throwing rocks at security forces, Friday afternoon, at the end of Muslim prayers at Temple Mount mosques in Jerusalem's Old City.

Police stationed at the Mughrabi gate broke in and began to throw stun grenades to disperse the stone throwers.

The rioters responded with firebombs. One policeman was lightly injured and taken to hospital. A number of demonstrators were also injured.

Report: Five Million Dutch Have a Satanic View of Israel
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily NewsArutz Sheva Staff
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel;Antisemitism

Yesterday, the major Dutch news site Dagelijkse Standaard published an article by Israeli anti-Semitism expert Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld in which he wrote that there are currently more people with neo-Nazi views in the Netherlands than the number of Dutch collaborators with the Nazis during the Second World War.

Gerstenfeld wrote: “At least five million Dutch have a satanic view of Israel. This can be concluded from a study undertaken by the University of Bielefeld for the German Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2011. This study was ignored in the Netherlands.

"The study’s authors asked people if they believe that Israel is conducting an extermination war against the Palestinian Arabs. About 39% of the Dutch polled answered in the affirmative.

"Already in 2003 in a Euro barometer study, it was asked which countries are dangers to world peace. Israel came in second place after Iran. This was the opinion held by 59% of the Europeans. In the Netherlands, the percentage was the highest at 74%.”

Gerstenfeld added: “With such a diabolical opinion of the Jewish state, millions of Dutchmen are thus back in the Middle Ages mentally. Today, there are more Dutchmen with this insane viewpoint than the number of Nazis in the Netherlands during the Second World War.

" At present these views are largely latent, as were Dutch Nazi views before the war. Today there is actually more hostility against Jews than before the Second World War in the Netherlands. But if the atmosphere is ripe, violence can increase, as has happened in the past.”

Most talkbacks to the article supported it, but some were anti-Semitic in nature and even promoted Holocaust revisionism.

Let the Headlines Speak
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Fidel Castro tells Ahmadinejad: Stop denying the Holocaust
Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro has urged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop slandering the Jews, according to an article published on the U.S. website The Atlantic on Tuesday.

Rand Paul: 2016 Presidential Run Under Consideration
A freshman senator, Rand Paul is a growing political force in his own right. The eye doctor challenged the Republican Party's establishment in his state to win his seat in 2010 and now commands attention as a defender of limited government.

Rocks and Firebombs on the Temple Mount
Worshippers started throwing rocks at security forces, Friday afternoon, at the end of Muslim prayers at Temple Mount mosques in Jerusalem's Old City.

UFO sightings on the rise in South Africa
"Though meteors do glow orange, some of the sightings reported radical change in direction and speed. Some objects even remained stationary for five minutes or so. There might be some UFO phenomena occurring in areas around Cape Town,"

Islamic supremacist enabler John Brennan confirmed as CIA director
During his time as a White House advisor, Brennan displayed a disturbing tendency to engage with Islamist groups which often are hostile to American anti-terrorism policies at home and abroad.

5.6-magnitude earthquake shakes Taiwan
The epicenter of the quake was located in Xiulin Township at a depth of about 19,700 feet, the Chinese earthquake center said. A local meteorological authority in Taiwan said the epicenter was located at a depth closer to 49,900 feet. Residents in Taipei reported feeling a strong tremor, the official Chinese Xinhua news agency reported. No injuries or deaths were reported.

The Dollar Is Undergoing A Major Change In Behavior, And Almost No One Has Noticed
While the market has focused on how the change in global monetary policy is impacting the JPY and GBP, we would also suggest that the USD is undergoing a significant change in behavior as a result of global monetary policy shifts. Until now, this has been largely overlooked, but we are increasingly of the view that investors will start to see the US has an investment destination, reducing the USD’s traditional funding currency status.

Obama Said 'I Don't Believe People Should Be Able to Own Guns'
Obama said, "I don't believe people should be able to own guns." Obama's current lip service to the Second Amendment was part of an overarching Democrat strategy set forth by pollster Mark Penn, which instructs Democrats to say they support the Second Amendment in order to get elected and then chip away at it via regulation and legislation once they are in office.

China Preparing To Impose Bretton Woods II Gold Standard
the Chinese accumulated a remarkable 1,500 tons of gold last year, and they are preparing to demand a second Bretton Woods type meeting. This is a stunning interview because it lays out how the bulls will win the gold war, and how China will force that victory.

N. Korean general says Pyongyang has nuke-tipped ICBMs on standby
Colonel General Kang Pyo-yong said soldiers are already positioned to launch a war of reunification if the order is given by its leaders. The paper said the general made clear at a speech given at a rally in Pyongyang that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other rockets capable of attacking pre-set targets have been armed with various types of atomic warheads.

Millions of Indians facing worst drought in decades
Central areas of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, are facing a water shortage worse than the severe drought in 1972, the state's chief minister Prithviraj Chavan told AFP. "In recorded history the reservoirs have never been so low in central Maharashtra," he said. "With every passing day the reservoirs are drying up."

.......U.S. warns health officials to be alert for deadly new virus
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday warned state and local health officials about potential infections from a deadly virus previously unseen in humans that has now sickened 14 people and killed 8. Most of the infections have occurred in the Middle East, but a new analysis of three confirmed infections in Britain suggests the virus can pass from person to person rather than from animal to humans, the CDC said in its Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report on Thursday.

Bright comet 'lighting sky' as it flies by Earth
Stargazers could enjoy a rare spectacle as a bright comet swings into the Northern Hemisphere. The icy mass, called C/2011 L4 Pan-Starrs, should be visible with binoculars or a telescope from 8 March. But in the following days, it will become even brighter and could be seen with the naked eye.

Pope conclave: Last cardinal arrives at Vatican
The last of the 115 cardinals who will elect the new pope has arrived in Rome. Vietnamese Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man joined his colleagues in closed-door discussions at the Vatican. His presence means a date can now be set for the conclave to choose a successor to Benedict XVI as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

North Korea ends peace pacts with South
North Korea says it is scrapping all non-aggression pacts with South Korea, closing its hotline with Seoul and shutting their shared border point. The announcement follows a fresh round of UN sanctions punishing Pyongyang for its nuclear test last month. Earlier, Pyongyang said it had a right to carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike and was pulling out of the armistice that ended the Korean War.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith to be tried in New York
A man described as a spokesman for Osama Bin Laden has been arrested and will be tried in New York City, the US has confirmed. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was captured within the last week in Jordan, Congressman Peter King said on Thursday. Mr Abu Ghaith is Bin Laden's son-in-law and played a role in plotting the attacks of 9/11, US officials said.

Obama meets privately with Jewish leaders
Jewish leaders urged President Obama on Thursday to make clear during his upcoming trip to Israel that he will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons — and to correct an early diplomatic misstep when he appeared to trace Israel’s historic claim to a modern state to the Holocaust rather than to the Bible.

U.N. nuclear chief presses Iran on access to military base
The U.N. nuclear watchdog raised pressure on Iran to finally address suspicions that it has sought to design an atomic bomb, calling for swift inspector access to a military base where relevant explosives tests are believed to have been carried out.

Arab League says members free to offer Syria rebels arms
Arab states are free to offer military support to rebels fighting the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if they wish, a final statement of Arab League ministers said on Wednesday.

Egypt cancels parliamentary vote dates after court ruling
Egypt's election committee has scrapped a timetable under which voting for the lower house of parliament should have begun next month, state media reported on Thursday, following a court ruling that threw the entire polling process into confusion.

North Korea can't hit America, but South Korea and Japan in range
North Korea has plenty of military firepower even if its threat this week of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States is a hollow one, with South Korea most at risk from the isolated regime's artillery and rockets. Japan, separated by less than 1,000 km (625 miles) of water and a frequent target of North Korea's ire, is also in easy range of Pyongyang's short- and mid-range missiles.

Israel prepares for next war with Hezbollah
On a dusty field in Israel's southern desert, the military is gearing up for the next battle against a familiar foe: Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. As the Syrian civil war intensifies, military planners are growing increasingly jittery that the fighting could spill over into Israel, potentially dragging the Islamic militant group that is allied with President Bashar Assad into the fray. After battling Hezbollah to a stalemate in 2006, the Israeli military says it has learned key lessons and is prepared to inflict heavy damage on the group if fighting begins again.

Ken Ham - Christian Theologians Are, What He Calls, Compromising the Word of God.
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily NewsChristian Press - Russ Jones
Categories: Commentary;Exhortation

A noted biblical apologist and expert on creationism is calling out several of his colleagues. An audience of some 300 people at the recent National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Nashville were shocked to learn of the number of evangelical leaders who don’t believe in a literal 6 days of creation narrative.

At the recent NRB convention Ken Ham, president and founder of Answers in Genesis and the Cincinnati-based Creation Museum, gave a lecture entitled, “The Age of the Earth, Biblical Authority, and the Downfall of the USA.”

During his presentation Ham showed video clips of prominent evangelicals to illustrate how some modern Christian theologians are, what he calls, compromising the Word of God.

He believes in a literal interpretation of the creation account found in the Book of Genesis.

“I’m not attacking these people personally and I’m not saying they aren’t Christians or preach the Gospel or I don’t respect them,” Ham told Christian Press News. “I’m dealing with a particular issue that is important in which God’s Word is being undermined. Wittingly or unwittingly many of these famous Christian leaders are really undermining the authority of the Word of God.”

Ham mentioned, in particular, John Piper, founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary, co-pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla. Dr. R.C. Sproul and Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, as Christian leaders who have drifted away from teaching a young earth perspective.

“Many Christian leaders today will say ‘who cares what Genesis says and what does it matter about the age of the earth as long as you trust in Jesus. We need to go out there and preach the Gospel,’” said Ham. “But the point we need to understand is the Gospel comes from this book called the Bible and if generations of people have been led to believe they can’t really trust the Bible or lead to doubt that you can trust its authority or doubt its history – eventually they will reject the Bible and won’t listen to the Gospel.”

During a recent interview on the Bill O’Reilly show, Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, acknowledged his belief that the earth could have been created 13.7 billion years ago.

“I think it very well could have been,” Jeffress told O’Reilly. “One of the things fundamentalist Christians mess up on is they try to say the earth is 6,000 years old. The Bible never makes that claim.”

Ham denounced Jeffress statement maintaining the Bible makes no such claim that the earth is billions of years old.

“Pastors need to be told that when you do that, you undermine the authority of Scripture,” Ham said. “They are helping atheism by undermining the authenticity of the word of God.”

Jewish Settlers: Tagging Our Products will Force Palestinian Dismissals
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

The Jewish settlers’ West Bank Council reports that their industries supply one-tenth of Palestinian jobs. Marking their product as the Netherlands government has recommended will lead to dismissals. “The Hague would do well to encourage rather than deter consumption of our products to promote economic coexistence in a turbulent region.

Israel Gets a New Defense Minister After Obama Folds on a Nuclear Iran
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman arrived in Israel Friday, March 1, to a cold-to-freezing reception from leading the US delegation to the Six-Power nuclear talks with Iran in Kazakhstan. For her briefing on the two-day session, she had to make do with an audience of one, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s National Security Advisor, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror - i.e. an official of sub-ministerial rank – because Israel regards the positions American put forward in Almati as a betrayal.
This harsh word is almost unheard-of in government circles in Jerusalem and the defense establishment in Tel Aviv. However, it reflects the feelings in both places that President Barack Obama has gone back on his pledges to prevent Iran ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Israel’s take on the new US position, as reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, falls into four parts:
1. Obama has reneged finally on the US demand to shut down and dismantle the Fordo underground uranium enrichment plant. In Almati, Sherman told this to chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili, adding that Washington accepts the continued production and accumulation of 20-percent grade (a short step from weapons grade) uranium in quantities agreed between the US and Iran.
For Israel this has one meaning: Washington is reconciled to Iran acquiring a stock of enriched uranium sufficient for building a nuclear bomb.

Obama gives Iran a free hand to keep its enriched uranium

2. If that is so, what are President Obama’s pledges worth and what is the point of the conferences ongoing between top US and Israeli officials and officers on plans for a joint attack on Fordo?
In Kazakhstan, the US delegation gave Iran a promise not to attack Iran’s underground enrichment facility at Fordo. This promise was conveyed on behalf of Israel too, albeit without approval from or even consultation with Jerusalem.
3. Sherman went on to inform Jalili that Washington has also backed down from proposals to export low-enriched (3.5-5 percent grade) uranium stocks to a third country for conversion into nuclear plates, from which it almost impossible to produce fissile fuel.
Obama has thus given Tehran a free hand to hold onto as much enriched uranium as it wants.
From Jerusalem's perspective, five years of adjusting its Iran policies to those of the Obama administration, while making endless concessions, have gone down the drain, because, during all that time, Israel counted on the United States sticking to its strict 1,100 kilogram cap on Iran’s low-enriched to uranium and having any surplus removed to another country.
Worst of all, the relations of trust between Jerusalem and Washington on the Iranian nuclear issue have gone by the board.

Israel left out in the cold

4. Iran’s preparations for going into the production of plutonium by means of the heavy water plant going up in Arak never came up at all in Kazakhstan, although, according to Israeli intelligence, it will be ready to go with plutonium for bombs in 2014.
This is taken to mean that a plutonium bomb is now a non-issue for the Obama administration which has come to accept Iran’s two routes to a nuclear bomb - enriched uranium plus plutonium – leaving Israel out in the cold.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military, Jerusalem and intelligence sources report that Prime Minister Netanyahu, appreciating that this is the most serious falling-out and loss of trust he has ever experienced with the Obama White House, has responded with two steps.
a) At the end of last week, he gave Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon, former IDF Chief of Staff (2002-2005) the appointment of defense minister in the new coalition government he is in the process of forming.
Yaalon will step into the shoes of Ehud Barak, who led the five years of give-and-take with Washington on the Iranian nuclear question and on whose watch Israel suffered a letdown.
Our military sources note that whereas Barak was long in favor of preempting Iran’s nuclear program by military force, he changed his mind in recent months.
Yaalon, who long objected to military action against Iran, has reversed in the opposite direction: He now sees the military option as the only remaining feasible course for keeping the Islamic Republic of Iran out of the world’s nuclear club.

Moshe Yaalon assigned to lead Israeli strike on Iran

This week, the Netanyahu government began preparing the ground for a solo operation against Iran.
Our military sources report exclusively that Yaalon is not letting the grass grow under his feet. He has assembled the team to man his new bureau at the defense ministry and packed them off to Washington this week for introductions to their opposite numbers at the Pentagon.
So, as outgoing defense minister Ehud Barak was closeted with new US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, in one part of the defense department, incoming minister Yaalon’s aides were paying their respects in other sections.
b) Netanyahu’s second step was to send out an army of pro-military option advocates for sales talk to the public. They were all instructed to pitch the same message: Israel will not permit the Islamic Republic of Iran to arm itself with a nuclear weapon and will pursue military action to prevent this happening.
One of the first of these spokesmen was former Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin. In an address Monday, March 3, to the annual convention of the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC in Washington, he said the US and Israel are divided by three different Ts: "A different trauma, a different trigger, and maybe not enough trust," he said.
"We, the Israelis, carry the Holocaust. We are six million Israeli Jews who listen when Ahmadinejad calls for Israel's destruction. You carry a different trauma, Iraq. You don't want another war, understandably," he said.
When he referred to military action against Iran, Yadlin stressed it would not be a full-scale war. “This is a one-night operation…" he said.

Holland Calls to Label Products from 'Settlements'
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Elad Benari
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

The Dutch government has issued a first of its kind directive to retail chains in the country, telling them to mark Israeli products that were manufactured in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, according to a report Thursday by Haaretz.

This makes the Netherlands, considered one of Israel's closest friends in Europe, the second country in the European Union, after Britain, to ask retail chains to mark products made in areas beyond the 1949 ceasefire line.

According to the Haaretz report, the Dutch Ministry of Economy and Trade issued the directive on Wednesday to all retail chains in the country.

“The decision was made after consulting the European Commission,” the document, quoted by the newspaper, said.

The letter states that the government is recommending the label change but that no steps will be taken against retails who do not comply, and that it is not illegal to import products from these areas.

The document calls for the labeling of the following products: fresh fruit and vegetables, wine, honey, olive oil, fish, meat, chicken, eggs and cosmetics.

These products should no longer state on their packaging that they are made in Israel, says the document. Rather, they should be labeled as originating in “Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the West Bank or in Palestinian territories,” the directive states. Retailers, not importers, will be responsible for the labeling.

According to the report, the Netherlands’ foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, said in a speech to parliament Wednesday that “the settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace.”

He said that the labeling of products by retail chains in Holland will allow consumers to know whether they want to purchase these products. “We do not want to contribute to the economy of the illegal settlements,” Timmermans said, according to Haaretz.

The Dutch decision comes one week after the EU formally recommended that its 27 member states “prevent” Israeli activity in Judea and Samaria through an economic boycott of Jewish communities in those regions.

The EU's latest boycott recommendation came to light in the publication of the EU’s Jerusalem Report 2012, in which the European body recommends its members avoid financial transactions with Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

In the report, the EU suggests its member states “prevent, discourage and raise awareness about problematic implications of financial transactions, including foreign direct investments from within the EU in support of settlement activities, infrastructure and services.” The recommendation followed an internal report which alleged that Israel had used construction in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to prevent the possibility of a two-state solution.

The EU said back in September it was considering imposing a ban on products from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Assad Hardens His Negotiating Position
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Everything was in place for the most promising dialogue so far for ending the two-year old Syrian war. Representatives of the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition were scheduled to meet in Moscow Tuesday, March 5 under the Russian aegis, with the Obama administration looking on benignly.
Nevertheless, the talks were delayed, for reasons listed here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly:
1. The moment for introducing chemical and biological weapons into the war is close at hand. Both sides now possess these deadly systems (as the lead-article in this issue revealed) and both have chosen to await the outcome of a round of unconventional warfare between them before sitting down for talks.
Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, whose army retains the bulk of the weapons and has trained units in their use, is confident he will have the upper hand and be able to push rebel forces out of their captured territory.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources disclose that Assad may be in for an unpleasant surprise. At least 1,500 rebel fighters have received training in chemical warfare from US, French, Czech and Polish instructors.
2. Potential military intervention in Syria’s chemical war by outsiders, the US, Israel, Jordan and Turkey, may tilt the outcome of the Syrian conflict one way or the other. Both sides prefer to wait and see which side benefits.

The rebels get new arms paid for by US and Russia alike

3. Washington has strongly advised Syrian opposition representatives not to rush to the Moscow talks but rather take their time. US Secretary of State John Kerry was careful when he met with rebel and Syrian opposition representatives this week not to tell them to cut their appointment in Moscow, only to delay their arrival by a few days and so improve their bargaining position against Moscow and Assad and obtain more concessions.
To this end, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report Kerry applied two means of persuasion: publicly-announced financial, technical and medical aid for the rebels and secret funding to buy arms in Serbia and Kosovo and have them shipped to the Syrian rebels.
To speed delivery, Jordanian Air Force transports delivered the arms from the Balkans, passing over Israeli air space.
4. But this Western-Arab air lift is a double-edged sword. John Kerry said in Riyadh Tuesday, March 5: "The United States will continue to work with its friends to empower the Syrian opposition." Asked about reports of arms being sent to Syria's rebels from countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Secretary of State replied: "The moderate opposition has the ability to make sure that the weapons are getting to them and not to the wrong hands."
However, as the Americans ease the financing of weapons for the Syria rebels, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals that the Russians are also furnishing wherewithal for buying arms to the rebel groups which they favor.
There may be some coordination between Washington and Moscow on this, although lines in the Syrian conflict tend to be blurred. At any rate, the Syrian rebel movement has no difficulty these days in replenishing or even upgrading its weaponry, paid for either by the US or Russia.

Assad hardens his terms for talks

In keeping with fluctuations on the battlefield, Assad too constantly changes his terms for opening talks with the opposition.
When this issued closed Thursday night, March 7, the Syrian ruler had withdrawn his acquiescence to the Russian core demand (first reported in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 577 of Feb. 22) for the demarcation of ceasefire lines between the rival forces.
"We're not going to split Syria between law-abiders and lawbreakers who are backed by outside foreign elements," Assad told the Russians. He now refuses outright - not just to discuss stepping down – a refusal seconded by Moscow – but also rejects the Russian demand to dismantle the ruling Syrian Ba'ath party.
In a word, the Syrian ruler has hardened his position in the last couple of weeks.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that in mid-February, he was wiling to look at the Russian proposal to disband his army's command structure and replace it with "a neutral command system" manned by professional, apolitical officers. Today, he refuses to hear of any such plan. The Syrian ruler is not only dead against US positions for the negotiation with the opposition, he has taken against those of his sponsor, Moscow, into the bargain.

No room for Alawites in partitioned post-war Syria

It is in this regard that he is trying to get rid of one of the Assad clan’s most loyal generals, Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian National Security Bureau, our intelligence sources exclusively report. This general might qualify as a consensual US-Russian candidate for heading the restructured Syrian army command, which would take over the management of the war and its outcome and remove it from Assad’s hands. The ruler is therefore bent on removing Gen. Mamlouk from their sight, despite his incalculable value to the war effort as top gun of the inner body termed in Damascus “the crisis management cell.”
The general stepped into the breach when most of Assad’s inner war cabinet was wiped out by a bombing attack on July 18, 2012.
6. Assad is determined at all costs to put a spoke in the US-Russian cooperative effort to partition Syria into three sectarian entities for Sunni Muslims, Kurds and Druzes – but no separate enclave for his own Alawite sect

Assad & Tehran Veto Allawite State, Druzes Join Up With… Al Qaeda
Mar 8th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Until recently, the conventional wisdom among Western and Middle East experts on Syria was that the Assad clan and its Alawite loyalists would retire to their last redoubt in the Alawite Mountains and home town of Qardaha if the rebels “liberated” Damascus.
In late 2012, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports that this theory was exploded by closer study and ongoing events: The rebel movement was not going to liberate Damascus, Aleppo, Hama or Homs. And even it did, the Alawites were too numerous and scattered to retire in a body to any one place.
In Damascus, Alawites make up one-fifth of a population of 1.8 million; in Aleppo, they are the majority of its 2 million inhabitants; and in Homs, they represent a third of nearly one million people.
Could all these millions of Alawites be seriously expected to pull up stakes and head for the country’s western coast and mountains to build themselves a state along a narrow strip of land and abandon the rest of the country to the rebels?
Last month, members of the Iranian government policy desk on Syria (similar desks specialize on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip) met with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and informed him that separate Alawite statehood was a non-starter.
The unanswered questions they posed were: Who exactly would establish the new state? Who would bankroll it and build new cities for resettling the displaced communities? And who find them jobs?

Syrian Alawite state is non-starter

Iran like Bashar Assad decided to write off the Alawite statehood plan. Clearly, the members of Assad’s sect are going to stay where they are.
Then, Wednesday, March 6, the overall Druze leader Walid Jumblatt floored Western and regional capitals by announcing that his community had thrown in its lot with the Syrian rebel Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group listed in Washington as a terrorist organization. “I support Al Nusra Front against the Syrian regime,” said Jumblatt in an interview with the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper.
The estimated 1.5-2.5 million clansmen of Syria, most of whom inhabit the rugged Jebel al-Druze mountainous region in the southwest of the country, are closely tied by kin and their unique religion and culture, to brethren in Lebanon (some quarter of a million) and the 150,000 Druzes of Israel. The 20,000 Jordanian Druzes of Jordan owe their first loyalty to the Hashemite throne.
Walid Jumblatt is accepted as uncrowned leader by all these communities.
“I am acting to protect the (Syrian) Druze,” he explained in the interview. “The Alawites will go back to their mountain, but the Druze live in a sea of Sunnis.”
The Druze leader’s meaning was clear: He anticipates the Sunni-dominated revolt against the Alawite Assad regime in Damascus to catch fire and result in Sunni Muslim extremist dominaton of Syria, Jordan and the Palestinians.
To draw a defensive buffer line around Druze enclaves in those countries, he has forged a pact with al Qaeda.

US-backed Russian partition plan for Syria – a writeoff

There go US-Israeli-Jordanian hopes of establishing a pro-Western Druze entity in a partitioned Syria. In fact, there goes the entire partition plan, which was the core of the US-supported Russian proposition for settling the Syrian conflict and was to be put before the warring sides when they met for negotiations in Moscow. Those talks have meanwhile been delayed indefinitely.
Looming over this uncertainty is the opportunity Jumblatt has presented al Qaeda for shooting new tentacles into new terrain. Already, Jordan and Saudi Arabia face the al Qaeda menace from Iraq and Syria, whence the jihadists also threaten Lebanon. Their secret cells are already taking over sections of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and their militias threaten Israel from across its borders with Syria,Jordan and Sinai.
Al Qaeda has moved into new and powerful strike positions not just in Africa; it is crisscrossing the Middle East as well.