Clinton is still silent on the Bush-Congress commitments to Israel - David Singer

by David Singer

Don't hold your breath.

Marco Rubio’s withdrawal from the Presidential race will not relieve Hillary Clinton from affirming or disavowing the following pledge made by Rubio during his failed campaign:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders...”

The terms of Bush’s letter - dated April 14, 2004 - were overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407-9 on June 23, 2004 and the Senate 95-3 on June 24, 2004.

The letter backed Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza and promised to support Israel’s following positions in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority over the previous 11 years:

• Israel would not cede its claims to all of  the territory captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War
• Millions of Palestinian Arabs would not be resettled in Israel and
• Israel must be recognised as the state of the Jewish people.

Israel’s insistence on these conditions had been major stumbling blocks in the PLO rejecting Israel’s offer to withdraw from more than 90% of the f"West Bank" during negotiations brokered by President Bill Clinton in 2000/2001.

The Bush Congress-endorsed letter had put America squarely in Israel’s corner.

Elliott Abrams –Middle East Affairs point-man at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009 – had no qualms about the significance of the Bush letter – when stating in July 2009:

“Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation -- the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step”. 

President Obama however sought to change the goal posts laid down in the Bush letter with this statement on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

 Glenn Kessler pointed out at the time:

“Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians have held several intensive negotiations that involved swapping lands along the Arab-Israeli dividing line that existed before the 1967 war — technically known as the Green Line, or the boundaries established by the 1949 Armistice agreements. (Click here for a visual description of the swaps discussed between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.)

So, in many ways, it is not news that the eventual borders of a Palestinian state would be based on land swaps from the 1967 dividing line. But it makes a difference when the president of the United States says it, particularly in a carefully staged speech at the State Department.  This then is not an off-the-cuff remark, but a carefully considered statement of U.S. policy.”

Given the chaos in Syria since Obama’s statement, the birth of Islamic State in 2014 and the continuing unstable political and security situations in Gaza and the "West Bank" – mutually agreed land swaps as a concept have become just another missed opportunity whose time has expired.

Michael Oren – Israel’s Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 was moved to make the following call  in January 2015:

.. it’s time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.”

Will Clinton so act – if elected America’s 17th Democratic President – to honour a former Republican President’s commitments to one of America’s longstanding allies that go far beyond personal partisan politics?

Her answer is eagerly awaited.


David Singer

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18622#.VvhBvHqzdds

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Lie of Academic Free Speech - Richard L. Cravatts

by Richard L. Cravatts

How campus brownshirts make sure only one side is heard in the Israeli/Palestinian debate.

When GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s March 11^th rally at the University of Chicago Pavilion was shut down last week by hundreds of leftist protestors, comprised of activists from Moveon.org, Black Lives Matter, Muslim groups, and even unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, the morally indignant protestors had one purpose: to disrupt the event, prevent Trump supporters from hearing the candidate’s speech, and, most importantly, suppress Trump’s ideas and beliefs. Having already decided the Mr. Trump was a veritable racist, Islamophobe, and neo-Nazi, the mob of rioters—inside and outside of the venue—took it upon themselves to decide that Trump, and those who share his vision and ideas, do not even have the right to express their opinions, that their views have been deemed unacceptable by the self-appointed moral arbiters of our day.

The disturbing campaign to suppress speech which is purportedly hurtful, unpleasant, or morally-distasteful—a sample of which was evident at the Chicago rally—is, for anyone following what is happening on campuses, a troubling and recurrent pattern of behavior by some of the same ideologues who shut down Trump: “progressive” leftists and “social justice” advocates from Muslim-led pro-Palestinian groups. Coalescing around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, this unholy alliance has been formed in a libelous and vituperative campaign to demonize Israel, attack pro-Israel individuals, and to promote a relentless campaign against Israel in the form of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. As the ideological assault against Israel and Jews intensified on university campuses, and pro-Israel individuals began answering back to their ideological opponents, the student groups leading the pro-Palestinian charge (including such groups as the radical Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)) decided that their tactic of unrelenting demonization of Israel was insufficient, and the best way to optimize the propaganda effect of their anti-Israel message was also to suppress or obscure opposing views.

The pronouncements of these groups are now frequently defined by the baleful whining of these ideological bullies intent on having only their views aired while suppressing the contradictory views of others. In fact, a leaked memorandum from the Binghamton University Students for Justice in Palestine chapter revealed that members would be required to never even engage in dialogue with pro-Israel groups on their campus, they would be prohibited from “engaging in any form of official collaboration, cooperation, or event co-sponsorship with [pro-Israel] student organizations and groups,” and  SJP members “shall in no manner engage in any form of official collaboration with any student group which actively opposes the cause of Palestinian liberation nor with groups which have aided and abetted Zionist student organizations,” meaning, of course, that the so-called intellectual debate that universities purport to promote in exactly this type of discussion will never take place when SJP is involved.

And because they cannot win an honest, open ideological debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict because they deal almost exclusively in misrepresentations and untruths (the allegation of Israeli apartheid, as the central example), just as the anti-Trump protestors wished to accomplish, SJP has characteristically tried to insure that no pro-Israel voices are heard, either by disrupting or shutting down pro-Israel events and speakers or urging administrators to disinvite speakers they deem to be Islamophobic, too pro-Israel, or critical of their own tactics and activism.

The thuggish substitution of event disruption and the shutting down of other people’s speech for what is supposed to be two-sided academic dialogue and debate occurs with increased regularity, and marks another, more pernicious, aspect of the campus campaign against Israel, Zionism, and Jews.

At University of California, Davis this month, for example, George Deek, a Jaffa-born Arab Christian, planned to give a speech entitled “The Art of Middle East Diplomacy,” when some 30 pro-Palestinian activists stood up and blocked Deek with banners and took over the event by screaming “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” meaning an Arab state in place of present-day Israel, and chanting such toxic ditties as “long live the Intifada,” “Allahu Akbar,” and “When Palestine is occupied, resistance is justified,” ghoulish calls for the murder of Jews, and “Israel is anti-Black” and “Palestine will be free, fight white supremacy,” an intellectually clumsy way of trying to frame Israel as a racist state.

In February, Bassam Eid, a Palestinian himself and the founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, witnessed very startlingly how nothing positive said about Israel is allowed to be heard, even from such a credible, though unsual, source as a Palestinian. During his speech, in which he was critical of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for their failure to seek peace, Eid was verbally attacked by a student attendee, who said in Arabic, “Dr. Bassam, do not dare talk about us [Palestinians] anymore. You have shamed our God … you’ve shamed us, disgraced us, you are a traitor, you are a traitor, in the name of God you are a traitor … You are worse than the Jews and we will hunt you down and find you in every place, be prepared . . . .” When it became obvious that his speech could would not be able to continue uninterrupted, Eid cancelled the event and had to be escorted off site by the police.

Last November, the University of Minnesota Law School sponsored a lecture by Hebrew University professor Moshe Halbertal, an expert on Israel’s military code of ethics, entitled “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare.” The lecture was delayed for 30 minutes by the unruly heckling and chants of some 100 protestors from the Minnesota Anti-War Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), who indignantly rose from the audience, interrupted, and accused Halbertal of war crimes and complicity in the 2014 Gaza incursion.

Also in November, as yet another example, the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Israeli Studies hosted an event with Stanford University’s Dr. Gil-Li Vardi, who was to present a study on “The Origin of a Species: The Birth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Military Culture.” At the event, twelve members of a so-called “Palestine Solidarity Committee,” intent on disrupting the speech, created a human wall in the back of the room with the purpose of not allowing the event to begin. The anti-Israel activists tried, without the benefit of actually knowing what the speaker would say, to prevent her from presenting her viewpoint by shrieking out such taunts as, “You are a former IDF soldier, we do not listen to you.”

Sometimes the silencing of pro-Israel voices is more subtle, but no less pernicious. A pro-Israel student group at Columbia University, Artists 4 Israel, were denied the opportunity to express views during Israeli Apartheid Week, during which the SJP chapter had erected their version of a mock “apartheid wall,” emblazoned with anti-Israel slogans and symbols. To counter the display with a pro-Israel one, Artists 4 Israel had set up a 15-foot inflatable figure, a “pro-Israel Pinocchio,” replete with a long nose and a sign that read “‘Apartheid’ Week Compassion Abuse” as an effective, sardonic swipe at SJP’s toxic campaign. The chair and vice chair of Columbia’s student government, who not coincidentally are members of Columbia’s SJP chapter and pro-BDS activists, ordered the removal of the Pinocchio figure, offering the disingenuous justification that Pinocchio’s long nose might be construed as anti-Semitic and that the pump used to inflate the figure was too loud for use on the Columbia grounds.

The university officials and student groups who now try to suppress all thought of which they disapprove, and who publicly proclaim their desire for campuses where there will be vigorous discourse, on contentious issues, from many points of view, but allow the expression of only “acceptable” opinions, couched in the language of human rights and social justice—all of these individuals have sacrificed one of the core values for which the university exists. In their zeal to be inclusive, and to recognize the needs and aspirations of victim groups, they have pretended to foster inquiry, but they have actually stifled and retarded it. And, as this otherwise noble purpose for the university has devolved, the first victim in the corruption of academic free speech has, unfortunately, been the truth.

Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, is the author of "Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews" (a David Horowitz Freedom Center publication) and President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262272/lie-academic-free-speech-richard-l-cravatts

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel and Brussels: The "merely wounded" in terror bombings - Prof. Louis René Beres

by Prof. Louis René Beres

The horrors experienced by those wounded in terrorist attacks are hardly known to the public, nor the cruel ways they are planned to inflict pain; they often mean a lifetime of physical and psychological rehabilitation.

Back in 2009, the now-infamous Goldstone Report was first released by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council. Incontestably, it took a blatantly one-sided look at Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, choosing, in its biased assessment, to ignore all antecedent anti-Israel terrorism. Perhaps most conspicuously disregarded, by Judge Goldstone, was this: Israel's purposefully limited military operation had represented an indispensable self-defense action, one that was also supported by long-standing, codified and customary, international law.

In essence, unreported by Goldstone seven years ago, was that Cast Lead had been initiated reluctantly by Israel, and then only to ward off unending and potentially still-escalating Palestinian terrorism.

Oddly, even today, even after Brussels, the legally unsupportable idea of terror-bombing as permissible “resistance” is too-widely accepted, especially in the Islamic Middle East. Usually, in such crudely supportive circles, this tactic is further celebrated as “heroic.” All such views ignore not merely the obvious violations of law, particularly violations of the basic or "peremptory" principle of discrimination or distinction (carefully avoiding harms to noncombatants), but also the authentic medical and human consequences of what these terrorists so cheerfully unleash.

For Brussels, for Europe generally, and also for America, Israel remains both a warning and a microcosm. Israel has suffered literally uncountable terror attacks since the 1993 start of the Oslo “Peace” Accords. Whether perpetrated by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, all of these attacks have intentionally killed and maimed large numbers of unprotected civilians, usually women and children. Sometimes, post-attack casualty counts have referred to these maimed victims as “merely wounded,” but this is a notably grave under-representation of what is being suffered.

To be sure, this under-representation is already understood by the surviving victims of this week's ISIS attacks in Brussels.

What does it mean to be merely wounded in an Islamic “martyrdom" attack? The answer is exactly the same for the victims of an ISIS terror attack, as for the victims of Palestinian terror groups. For the victims, of course, any differences in ideology or objective between these perpetrators are utterly irrelevant.

This means, among other things, that by looking back systematically at Israeli terror-victims, we can learn more about what actually happened to the recent terror-victims in Brussels, and also what could still be experienced elsewhere in the intersecting European and American futures.

Sometimes, the painfully human impact of terrorist bombings can be made at least partially evident on radiographic images. For too long, X-rays of terror bombing victims in Israel have shown hundreds of metallic fragments, ranging in size from millimeters to whole nails, embedded in the victims' bodies - literally, from head to foot. Here, materials that had been created originally by civilized human beings for suitably constructive purposes, have been transformed by Islamic terrorists into the cruelest of projectiles.

In Brussels, as in Israel, nails, screws, nuts, and ball-bearings were included in the attackers' plan to maximize lethal effects, and also to inflict gratuitous suffering. These objects, sometimes after being dipped in rat poison, or other available toxins, are deliberately propelled into skin, flesh, and bone with the equivalent ballistic force of bullets.

There is more. Usually, the nails fly head first, presenting themselves to the attending radiologist in a strangely surreal yet also orderly arrangement within the victims' bodies. Many are embedded "only" to the depth of their entrance sites. Others burrow their way in more deeply, and lodge palpably under the skin, where the examining physician can actually touch and feel their alien presence.

Others must be removed after hours of meticulous surgical exploration. Still others enter the body far more deeply, perforating and lacerating vital organs at random. In Israel, CT scans of these victims' heads have generally indicated blood, air, metal, and bone fragments displacing normal brain tissue.

Belgian physicians can plausibly expect the same pattern of injuries from the Brussels attacks.

The "lucky" patient who has somehow survived the initial explosive "insult" will often require subsequent surgeries to repair badly-damaged organs. Others, as we have already seen in Brussels (following more "typical" attacks in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem), may sustain fractures, burns, amputations, vascular injuries, paralysis, blindness, or brain damage. Nowadays, a collapsed lung or perforated colon - an insult that would ordinarily be considered a fully major injury - is taken by the physician as a blessing.

After all, the victim here, whether in Brussels, Tel-Aviv, or Jerusalem, is merely wounded.

Although some terror-bombing victims may recover physically, and return to a more or less "normal" life, many more will require an entire lifetime of ongoing rehabilitation. Some, of course, will be impaired permanently. All will suffer serious psychological effects that will need complex and expensive treatment. Significantly, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety will affect not only the actual victims of any such attack, but also large swaths of nearby populations.

There is more. The physical pain experienced by the merely wounded victims of terrorist-bombings may be further enlarged by the corollary destruction of human language. This ignored linguistic debasement, which cannot be captured in any precise radiographic images, can still produce a visceral reversion to certain pre-language human sounds. What Judge Goldstone had failed to hear, in his manifestly uneven assessment of Israel's earlier Operation Cast Lead,and what the rest of us may now still fail to acknowledge, from those newly victimized innocents in Brussels, are those uniquely pitiable moans that always evade statistical measurement.

In the end, it is inevitably these manifestly unscientific sounds, hideous cries and whispers that are fully anterior to any learned speech - and sounds common to all Islamic terror-victim populations - that can best explain the very deepest meanings of  "merely wounded."

         
LOUIS RENÉ BERES, Ph.D., was educated at Princeton, and is the author of twelve books dealing with terrorism, war, and international law. He is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, and was Chair of Project Daniel (Israel, 2003). For the more expressly medical aspects of this article, Dr. Beres relied upon certain technical information drawn from an earlier work he had co-authored with Michael L. Messing, M.D. Dr. Messing, a distinguished radiologist trained at Cook County Hospital, and at Northwestern University, had extensive experience in treating Israeli victims of Palestinian terror-bombing attacks.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18619#.VvhE9Hqzddt

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Putin's "Sacred Mission" in Syria - Dr. Anna Geifman

by Dr. Anna Geifman

Russia's intervention in Syria cannot be fully explained by strategic or economic factors. Russian political culture, which has been permeated since the fifteenth century by a messianic vision of apocalyptic redemption, has long been a significant guiding factor in the decision-making of Russia's leaders.

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 335, March 27, 2016


On September 30, 2015, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian warplanes into Syria to begin regular aerial bombardments of targets that Moscow defined as sources of “jihadi terror.” The intervention followed an official invitation from the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who had asked his Russian ally for help against the “jihadists.” The Kremlin’s official statements described jihadists as forces that threatened stability within and beyond Syria’s borders. Hence, many observers initially assumed that Putin’s main ambition was to destroy the Islamic State, Al-Nusra, and other terrorist organizations.

Yet from the outset, Russian warplanes primarily targeted the Free Syrian Army and other armed organizations considered by most to be moderate, but that constituted a threat to the Alawite regime’s strategic centers. Not until November 2015, weeks after the Syrian campaign had begun, did the Russians shift their military focus to the Islamic State.

Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev was unequivocal about Russia's intentions. “Russia has no plans to stop its bombing campaign against rebel positions in Syria until Moscow’s allies in Damascus can achieve peace on favorable terms,“ he said in an interview. According to Medvedev, Russia would continue to target any of Assad’s opponents, for “they are all bandits and terrorists.”  Putin wishes to present himself as a loyal friend to Assad, his only Middle Eastern ally, whose regime Moscow hopes to preserve.

Some contend that Putin decided to intervene primarily to distract the West from his aggression in the Ukraine. Still others maintain that Putin’s central aim was to offset the humiliation of having lost extensive territory following the breakdown of the USSR, a calamity Putin considers “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” According to this premise, Russia is striving in Syria to convey the image of a superpower after two decades of “submissive” foreign policy vis-à-vis the US. If we are to trust Medvedev’s most recent statements, Russia has revived the Cold War during its president’s third term in office.

Traditionally, Western scholars have explained Russia’s aggressive Middle Eastern policy initiatives by its wish to access warm water ports. While access to the Syrian port Tartus is certainly important, it is not critical, because the Crimea's Sevastopol does not freeze in winter. Thus, it appears that even key geopolitical factors are insufficient to validate the new Russian adventure.

Russia's urgent need for access to the Mediterranean, which borders on obsession, may not be explicable solely by strategic or economic factors. The tendency to intervene in foreign conflicts might have to do with patterns of Russian historical development, and might reveal more profound and essential, if unappreciated, patterns in Russian political culture. These patterns may in fact have become integral parts of the national identity, guiding its leaders and determining policy. The origins of these patterns are traceable to the fifteenth century.

In 1453, the Byzantine Empire was defeated by the Turks. In Russia, the fall of Constantinople was seen as a divine punishment to the Greeks for straying from true Orthodoxy. In 1492, Metropolitan Zosimus called Moscow “the new city of Constantine,” the original capital of Christianity. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Philotheus, a monk in the Pskov monastery, wrote a memorandum to Tsar Vasilii III in which he developed this idea further.

The “first Rome” and the “second Rome” (Constantinople), Philotheus claimed, had lapsed into heresy and ceased to be the centers of the Christian world, and should be replaced by Moscow. Because of their great sins, the “two Romes have fallen, a third stands, and a fourth there will not be.” Until the day of final redemption, Philotheus wrote, Moscow would be the spiritual center of the whole Christian world. This idea became known as “Moscow—the Third Rome.”

Russia’s role was to be properly messianic, with Moscow taking upon itself no less than the “special responsibility … [for] the salvation of all humanity.” For centuries, this doctrine remained an integral part of the Russian national mythology and the “fundamental principle of the official ideology” of the Russian state. The dogma justified Russian imperial ambitions, insofar as it legitimized the idea that it was Russia’s destiny to be a “light unto the nations” and to lead the world, which had lost true faith, to its final salvation.

Ever since this dogma crystallized in the sixteenth century, Russians have been persistently taught that their political history is “suffused with sacred significance,” representing “the culminating chapter of a sequence of historical events leading up to and including the apocalypse.” Many experts regarded the “reality of the apocalypse as an historical event . . . [that] can be seen with great frequency through the records of Russian history.”

The key here is that Russia’s messianic role is assumed, regardless of the nature of the political regime—be it tsarist, Soviet, or post-Soviet. Historians have underscored “various parallels between this conception of Russia’s special historical responsibilities as the head of the true Christian church and the Soviet Union’s special historical responsibilities as the guardian of one true (Marxist-Leninist) doctrine of communism.” Putin adapted the idea for the post-Soviet reality.

Following the 2008 economic crisis and the 2011 public protests against election fraud, Putin realized that he could not sustain his regime’s legitimacy or maintain mass support without a tradition-based messianic mission. He did not invent a new ideology but simply reformulated and popularized the vital concept of Russia’s “greatness.” That the Russian state is “great,” according to the time-honored meaning of the word, means that it directs the world along a visionary path towards a redemptive goal.

Since 2012, Putin has insisted that Western societies “have moved away from their roots” and forsaken their “Christian values,” which has led to “degradation and . . . a profound demographic and moral crisis.” Unlike those societies, Russia has returned to the path of true faith, which, according to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, has triggered Western hostility—presumably because Russia's Orthodox Christian goals are at odds with those of the apostates.

Putin’s nationalist supporters emphasize the sacred aspirations that supposedly guide Moscow’s policies in faraway lands. The ever-popular stage star Zhanna Bichevskaia, for example, sang in a hit performance in May 2014 that "[we] will recapture Russia’s Sevastopol. The Crimean peninsula will be Russian again [as well as] our sovereign Bosporus, our Constantinople, and Jerusalem, the shrine of humanity."

Putin is clearly counting on the fact that over the centuries, the Russian people have absorbed the idea that expansion is spiritually justified. To be a good (and popular) leader in their eyes means to be a messianic leader pursuing a messianic foreign policy. This, in turn, means becoming actively involved in unsettling ventures that have the potential to lead to a spectacular, apocalypse-like development.

The Syrian conflict undoubtedly contains this potential. It is an opportunity a traditional Russian leader must seize. He is, after all, the one representing the “light unto the nations.” The culture he embodies must, by virtue of its visionary mission, take up its obligation to lead human history toward its apotheosis. Viewed in those terms, the Middle East is a special attraction.

According to a national survey, conducted a few days after the beginning of Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war, more than two-thirds, or 68% of respondents, were following the developments in Syria. Of that total, 62% thought that Russia should not remain neutral in the conflict. Significantly, 56% of respondents blamed not the Syrian rebels or the Assad regime in the prolonged and bloody conflict, but the US and its allies. Sixty-six percent supported Putin’s decision to begin air raids. About a month later, “Putin's approval rating…reached an all-time high of nearly 90 percent largely thanks to his military moves in Syria, according to a new nationwide poll.”

Modern-day Russians are oppressed politically and economically, and their government’s policies at home and abroad are highly unlikely to alleviate that oppression. Yet Russians support Putin’s Middle Eastern adventures. That is because they impart the clear message that Putin’s guiding principles in Syria are in line with Russia’s traditional messianic aspirations, as outlined by the time-honored doctrine of “Moscow the Third Rome.”

Putin's sudden statements of a few days ago about partly disengaging from the Syrian conflict caused much commotion in the press and a great deal of speculation as to what the Russians might be up to now. But a partial military disentanglement does not by any means imply that Putin is about to give up on the Middle East.

As former US Naval Intelligence officer J.E. Dyer notes, Russia has already “punched a military air route to Syria through Iran and northern Iraq”—an option it has tried in vain to secure for itself since the end of WWII, and in which it was consistently thwarted by the US. Furthermore, “by not settling Syria through force of arms,” Putin is netting all the numerous advantages of fishing in the muddy waters of the Mediterranean crisis. Like the leaders of Iran, Putin sees the entire region as part of a worldwide “theater of war and influence,” and acts with long-term and visionary goals in mind.



BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family


Dr. Anna Geifman is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and Professor Emerita at Boston University.

Source: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/russia-putin-syria/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Assad’s troops enter Palmyra after massive Russian air blitz to smash ISIS - debkaFile

by debkaFile

After pulling back to the east, ISIS forces will continue to harass the Syrian army and town with sporadic raids. And government forces will stay dependent on a Russian air umbrella to hang on

Vladimir Putin after all took the momentous decision for Russian carpet bombing to level the Islamic State forces holding Palmyra since last May, and so clear the way for Bashar Assad’s troops and allied forces to enter the heritage city Saturday and Sunday, March 26-27 and take control of several districts. Television footage showed waves of explosions inside Palmyra and smoke rising from buildings, as Syrian tanks and armored vehicles fired from the outskirts.

But just as the Iraqi army, even with foreign assistance, never completely captured Ramadi or Baiji from Islamist forces, so too Assad’s forces can’t hope for complete control of the strategic town of Palmya. After pulling back to the east, ISIS forces will continue to harass the Syrian army and town with sporadic raids. And government forces will stay dependent on a Russian air umbrella to hang on.

The big question debkafile’s military and intelligence sources were asking Sunday was what brought president Putin to give this groundbreaking military success to the Syrian ruler, just days after he withdrew Russian air support in southern Syria and opened the door for an Islamic State advance. He did this in an effort to break Assad’s resistance to the US-Russian deal for a political solution of the Syrian conflict by August.

Our sources offer two likely motivations:

1. Palmyra is strategically important to the Russian command because its fall to government forces opens the way to ISIS headquarters at Raqqa, 225 kilometers away.

2. Palmyra is also the gateway to Deir ez-Zour, 188 kilometers distant on Syria’s eastern border with Iraq. For the Russian military command, the importance of Deir ez-Zour outweighs that of Raqqa, because it is the key to control of the Euphrates Valley and access from Syria to Baghdad.

While these considerations bear heavily on Moscow’s strategic calculations, they have little direct impact on Assad’s overriding objective, which is to hold on to power. While the Syrian ruler may hope for acclaim for achieving a major success against ISIS, the laurel wreath belongs to Russian pilots. His forces essentially performed  a ground operation in Palmyra in Moscow’s interest and goal, which is to strengthen the Russian grip on his country.

On Saturday, debkafile set forth the background for these events.

Cracks in the united US-Russian front over the Syrian ruler’s fate surfaced – even before the ink was dry on the joint announcement issued in Moscow Friday, March 25, by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, setting  August as the deadline for a political solution of the five-year Syrian conflict.

Shortly after Kerry’s departure for Brussels, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters, “Washington now accepts Moscow’s argument that Assad’s future shouldn’t be open for negotiation right now." However, taking exception to the phrase “right now,” State Department spokesman John Kirby immedieately snapped back, “Any suggestion that we have changed in any way our view of Assad’s future is false.”

Did this exchange spell another Washington-Moscow impasse on the future of the war and the Syrian ruler? Not exactly; Our military and intelligence analysts report that the two powers are in accord on the principle that Assad must go, but are maneuvering on the timeline for the war to end and the Syrian ruler’s handover of power.

The Americans want it to be sooner. The transition should start in August and result in adding opposition parties to the regime in positions of real influence.

President Barack Obama, when he conducts his farewell Gulf tour in April, would like to show Saudi Arabia and Gulf emirates that he has finally kept his word to them to evict Bashar Assad from power before he leaves the White House next January. The US would also be better placed for bringing the Syrian opposition into line for a negotiated deal.

But Putin prefers a delay because he has problems to solve first. The six-month long Russian military intervention in the Syrian conflict turned the tide of the war. The Syrian army and its Iranian and Hizballah allies were able to stabilize their positions and even score some important victories against rebel forces in central and northern Syria. Last year, Putin and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were definitely on the same page and fully coordinated.

That cordial relationship was thrown out of kilter by the Kremlin’s decision to work with the White House for bringing the disastrous Syrian war to an end and terminating the Assad era.

From November, Iran’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s frequent visits to Moscow on liaison duty petered out.

Khamanei is adamantly opposed to Russia and the US commandeering the decision on Assad’s departure and its timetable. He is even more outraged by the way Putin has moved in on Syria and made it Russia’s home ground in the Middle East.

The rift with Tehran prompted Putin to announce on March 14 the partial pullback of his military forces from Syria. It was a threat to pull the rug that had turned the tide of the war in favor of Damascus and Tehran.


 
Reluctant to burn those boats, Moscow has been juggling its balls in the air, trying not to drop any. At first, he suspended Russian air cover for government-led battles. The Islamic State immediately seized on this opening in the south and advanced on the towns of Nawa, Sheikh Maskin and Daraa.

Moscow hoped that this setback would teach Bashar Assad to toe the Russian line.

Then, in the second part of last week, Putin ordered the Russian air force to renew its air strikes in the east in support of the Syrian army’s march from central Syria on the historic town of Palmyra. Friday and Saturday, the Syrian army and its allies were battling for control of the UNESCO World Heritage city, nearly a year after the Islamic State overran it and vandalized its historic remains.

debkafile’s military sources stress that their capture of the reconstructed ancient Citadel perched on a hill over the city would have been beyond their strength without Russian air support. Finishing the job and recovering the entire city of Palmyra will depend heavily on Russian air strikes continuing to hammer the jihadist occupiers.

Putin faces a momentous decision. He has already taught Assad and Tehran a harsh lesson: with Russian air support, they win battles, but not without it, as their failure in the south has demonstrated.

Will he help Assad win Palmyra?

Crowning the Syrian dictator with such a striking victory would stiffen his resistance to American pressure for him to quit in short order. He would stand out as the only Syrian war leader capable of pushing ISIS back. But if the Russian leader decides to cut off air support in mid-battle for Palmyra, Assad and Iran will be forced to face the fact that without active Russian military support, they are in hot water.

The Syrian ruler would then have to accept his approaching end. That is the dilemma facing Putin.


debkaFile

Source: http://www.debka.com/article/25328/Assad%E2%80%99s-troops-enter-Palmyra-after-massive-Russian-air-blitz-to-smash-ISIS

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

ABC Affiliate Gives Airtime to Rep of Group Promoting David Duke and Hamas - Joe Kaufman

by Joe Kaufman

Offering a forum to CAIR and AMANA lawyer Wilfredo Ruiz, in the midst of bigotry and terror.

Wilfredo Amr Ruiz is a lawyer for two prominent US-based radical Muslim organizations. One, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has numerous terrorist ties, including ties to Hamas leadership. The other, the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), promotes white supremacist David Duke on social media and conducts rallies for Hamas. Given this, why would WPLG Local 10, an affiliate of ABC News, give Ruiz airtime to spout his views? But that is exactly what happened, earlier this month.

On March 13th, WPLG Local 10 news aired a segment criticizing Florida Governor Rick Scott for going on a TV talk show and refusing to answer a question regarding a statement Presidential candidate Donald Trump made about Islam. The piece featured South Florida attorney Wilfredo Amr Ruiz being interviewed by WPLG reporter Bob Norman. On it, Ruiz said that he and others “felt betrayed” by Governor Scott for not speaking out against Trump.

This was not the first interview conducted with Ruiz on WPLG. In December 2015, Ruiz was given a forum to speak on at least two other WPLG segments, both of which involved Norman as well. This is deeply disturbing, given Ruiz’s connection to two radical Muslim groups, CAIR-Florida and AMANA, for which Ruiz is respectively the Civil Rights Attorney and Legal Advisor. He is also the founder of AMANA chapters in Puerto Rico and Connecticut and a corporate director for AMANA’s sister group, American Muslims for Emergency and Relief (AMER).

CAIR was established in June 1994 as part of a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US Justice Department a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Since its founding, a number of CAIR representatives have served jail time and/or have been deported from the United States for terrorist-related crimes. In November 2014, CAIR itself was designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.

CAIR-Florida, the Florida office of CAIR, has thoroughly reflected the extremism of its parent organization. CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly, who has in the past denied that Hezbollah is a terrorist group, wrote in August 2014, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of G-d...” In December 2010, CAIR-Florida CEO and Statewide Regional Operations Director Nezar Hamze repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas, when given several chances to do so, stating “I’m not denouncing anybody. I’m not getting involved in the politics.”

AMANA, which is based in South Florida, actively uses the internet to propagate material vilifying Jews, Christians and homosexuals.  In one article previously found AMANA’s website, it is stated, “Every believer should firmly believe that the Jews and Christians are kuffaar [infidels] and enemies of Allaah, His deen, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Believers… The efforts to gain the friendship of the Jews and Christians are useless, as they will never be pleased with the Muslims until the Muslims follow their religion.”

The latest posting found on the AMANA Facebook site is an anti-Jewish conspiratorial video taken from the YouTube page of white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. The video, which features Duke, is titled ‘Will Israel Assassinate Obama?’ In July 2010, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned AMANA for posting onto the homepage of its official website another anti-Semitic video produced by and featuring Duke. The ADL described the video as being “venomous.” The video was posted right above an expose about Ruiz.

In July 2014, both CAIR-Florida and AMANA, along with AMANA’s sister group AMER, co-sponsored a violent pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers repeatedly shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, who is the President and Treasurer of AMANA and who has referred to David Duke as “a man to believe in,” wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

In the WPLG piece about Governor Rick Scott, Wilfredo Ruiz is noticeably upset at the Governor for not speaking out against Donald Trump, but where is his upset for his organization’s cursing Jews and Christians or broadcasting David Duke hate videos or sponsoring pro-Hamas rallies? All of this incitement and hatemongering took place under Ruiz’s watch and continues to this day.

And what of WPLG’s ethical and moral responsibility for enabling someone like Ruiz to promote his radical Islamic agenda on its television network without being challenged? In November, WPLG interviewed AMANA’s Sofian Zakkout – who has a lengthy history of radicalism – shortly before Zakkout posted a video to his Facebook page glorifying brutal Palestinian stabbings against Israeli civilians.

Wilfredo Ruiz is a representative for Islamist terror and bigotry and should not be given a forum by any legitimate media outlet. He and his views should be repudiated and the organizations he represents shut down.

If you are concerned about WPLG’s unwarranted promotion of CAIR and AMANA’s Wilfredo Ruiz, you can contact Bob Norman and WPLG by phone at 954-364-2500 or via email at bnorman@local10.com and newsdesk@wplg.com. Please be respectful in any and all communications with this individual and station.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

Joe Kaufman

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262274/abc-affiliate-gives-airtime-rep-group-promoting-joe-kaufman

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Turkish Hatred: When the Truth Slips Out - Burak Bekdil

by Burak Bekdil

"Let the Israeli citizens be worse, I wish they all died." — Irem Aktas, head of the women's and media division of the AKP party branch in Istanbul's Eyup district.

• Before the bodies of Israeli victims were carried to their homeland, the Turkish make-up showed signs of falling apart and the ugly reality emerged.
• Aktas's mistake was probably to express publicly what millions of Turks only thought, but did not say, in the face of a suicide bomb attack.

The bomb attack in Istanbul on the morning of March 19 was the fifth similar act of terror targeting two of Turkey's biggest -- Istanbul and Ankara -- since October.

The suicide bomber, a 24-year-old with links to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), detonated his explosives on Istiklal Avenue, one of Istanbul's busiest streets and a popular tourist attraction. Three Israeli tourists (two of them also carrying U.S. passports) and one Iranian were killed. Dozens of wounded people were rushed to nearby hospitals. The death toll since October was now at nearly 200, including 14 tourists.

Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue, in the aftermath of the March 19 suicide bombing. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

At first this author thought that his initial instinct to expect something "out of line" because the victims were now Israeli citizens was wrong. The official, diplomatic way Turkey and Israel were handling the tragedy looked impressively civilized. Even before the bomb attack, there were unusually nice Turkish gestures. A few days before the Istanbul bombing, a senior Turkish official, Ahmet Aydin, deputy speaker of parliament (from the ruling AKP party), had praised historical ties between the peoples of Turkey and Jewish citizens of the country. He described their relationship as "a unity of destiny," and underlined "Jewish citizens' contribution in founding the Republic of Turkey." Such language is too rare in Turkey, and even more rare when it comes from an official from the ruling [Islamist] Justice and Development Party (AKP).

After the suicide bombing in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- surprisingly -- did what any other president of a country hosting a terrorist attack would do. He conveyed his messages of condolences to Turkey's Jewish community and religious leaders. In a similar gesture, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "expressing his condolences to the people of Israel on behalf of the Turkish people."

In return, Israel hailed the "sincere and very helpful cooperation it has received from Turkish officials in the immediate aftermath of the deadly Istanbul attack in which its three citizens have been killed and envisaged this good as a way to help talks for the normalization of relations."

Dore Gold, Director-General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, arrived in Istanbul to meet with Istanbul's governor, Vasip Sahin, for talks on the details of the bombing; and then with his Turkish counterpart, Feridun Sinirlioglu, possibly for talks on the normalization of diplomatic ties between Ankara and Jerusalem.

So far, so good. It is not unusual in diplomacy to use tragic events as a pretext to bolster problematic ties and as an excuse to further refine any effort for reconciliation. The Turkish niceties were the "make-up," partly driven by pragmatism and designed to hide the anti-Semitic sentiments the AKP has worked hard to cultivate in the Turkish society. Before the bodies of Israeli victims were carried to their homeland, the Turkish make-up showed signs of falling apart and the ugly reality emerged.

Irem Aktas, head of the women's and media division of the AKP branch in Istanbul's Eyup district, commented on social media that: "Let the Israeli citizens be worse, I wish they all died." When she wrote that in her Twitter account, at least 11 Israeli citizens injured by the bomb were being treated at Turkish hospitals.

Aktas quickly deleted her comments and shut down her social media accounts. A party official said that disciplinary proceedings against Aktas had been initiated. But the Turkish Islamist reflex found a face-saving formula for the "heroine." Aktas would resign, instead of being expelled from the party.

Also unsurprisingly, Aktas in her Facebook account describes herself as "a fan of Erdogan" and "an Ottoman lover."

Her mistake was probably to express publicly what millions of Turks only thought, but did not say, in the face of a suicide bomb attack.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7691/istanbul-bombing-israelis-hatred

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

J. Magnes and the Orwellian Ministry of Truth - Eugene Veklerov

by Eugene Veklerov

The demonization of the word Zionism by small but vocal groups has continued unabated. Their tactics include aggressive intimidation and equating the word Zionism ad nauseam with racism, Nazism, apartheid, etc.

The University of California at Berkeley's library has a Jewish museum.  Its official name is The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.  Who was the person whose name appears on its plaque?

Here is a brief bio-sketch.  He was born in Northern California in 1877, and his name at birth was Julian Leon Magnes.  He became a rabbi and a leader of several groups known for their pacifist activities during WWI and for other progressive causes.  For example, he spoke on behalf of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, whose case was a cause célèbre of the radical left in the first half of the 20th century.  His contemporaries described him as highly articulate and influential, which makes him a Bernie Sanders of his time.

But he was also an ardent Zionist, which would make him anathema to many of Bernie Sanders's supporters.  This seeming paradox has a simple explanation.  The meaning and connotation of the word Zionism has changed.  And the history of Zionism and Magnes's life are so intertwined that his biography provides a historical context for how the world's conception of Zionism has developed.

Many words have changed over time.  For example, 200 years ago, the word inmate meant housemate.  (Try to introduce your housemate to your visiting parents as your inmate, and watch their reaction!)  Usually, this change is a natural, slow, and chaotic process in that it is not purposefully controlled by any group of people set out to change the meaning of a word from A to B.  Rather, it is driven by rank-and-file speakers of a language.

A totally different way of changing the meanings of words was narrated by George Orwell in his novel 1984.  Orwell describes the fictitious country Oceania and its Ministry of Truth.  The Ministry is in charge of two functions: rewriting history and creating Newspeak, which serves as a tool for mind control.  For example, the word rectify in the Newspeak lexicon means to deliberately alter the past.

That's what happened to the word Zionism.  It used to be a nuanced word, as Zionism has never been a monolithic movement.  It has included such factions as socialist Zionists and religious Zionists, neo-Zionists and binationalists.

A massive assault on the word was launched in 1975, and the role of the Ministry of Truth was played by the United Nations.  By a vote of 75 to 35 with 32 abstentions, the U.N. passed a resolution that determined that "Zionism is a form of racism."  This linguistic finding was short-lived.  In 1991, the U.N. revoked its own determination that "Zionism is a form of racism" by a vote of 111 to 25 with 13 abstentions.  There is something surreal about the huge difference between the two outcomes.  If anything, it attests to the U.N.'s lack of credibility.

Revocation or not, the demonization of the word Zionism by small but vocal groups has continued unabated.  Their tactics include aggressive intimidation and equating the word Zionism ad nauseam with racism, Nazism, apartheid, etc.  Thus, in February of 2016, students of the Brooklyn College interrupted a faculty meeting and demanded "Zionists off campus."  When a computer science professor told the students they were "out of order," they called him a "Zionist pig."  Similar scenes have taken place at many colleges, and it is obviously an orchestrated effort.  The students pick up their cues from many sources, but particularly from radical left-wing professors, who tend to work mostly in departments with the word "studies" in their names (American studies, gender studies, etc.) and from some media sources.

Here is an illustration of the cues that the students pick up.

In 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.  Asked by a reporter why Israel was singled out, while other countries have much worse human rights records, the then ASA president, Curtis Marez, replied, "One has to start somewhere."  We are now well into 2016, but my research has not yielded any calls for boycotts of other countries issued by the ASA.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the ASA's moral indignation will end where it began.

The ASA, which was followed by several other learned societies, treats Israel as a Jew among nations.  Marez, who is a professor at the University of California at San Diego, further justified the selectivity of the ASA's boycotts by saying that civil society groups in other countries had not asked the ASA for a boycott.  That argument is hilarious.  A professor of American studies should know that the countries with the worst human rights records have no civil society groups that are independent from the governments.  If targeting the only Jewish country in the world for vilification is not anti-Semitism, what is it?

But let us come back to Julian Magnes.  He attended a public high school in Oakland and was a star pitcher of its baseball team.  Then this all-American boy became a rabbi and a Zionist.  To symbolize his connection to Jews of the past, he changed his first name from Julian to Judah.  Judah Magnes was a prominent leader of many progressive causes.  In 1922, Magnes immigrated to British Mandate Palestine.  Along with Albert Einstein, he was instrumental in founding the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Politically, Magnes belonged to the binational faction of the Zionist movement until almost the end of his life.  The faction advocated a binational state in British Mandate Palestine, in which the Jews and Arabs would have equal rights, rather than a separate Jewish state.  As the head of the Hebrew University, Magnes looked upon the university as a perfect place for Jewish and Arab cooperation.

The dreams of the binationalists suffered a huge blow when a wave of Jewish massacres swept the country in the 1920-30s.  In a truly Orwellian "rectification," historical revisionists want us to believe that the Jews and Arabs lived in peace and harmony before the declaration of independence of Israel, but it was anything but that.  The bloodiest Jewish massacre took place in 1929 in Hebron, a city where Jews had lived for centuries.  Here is an excerpt from the report made by a British commission that investigated the violence:

About 9 o'clock on the morning of the 24th of August, Arabs in Hebron made a most ferocious attack on the Jewish ghetto and on isolated Jewish houses lying outside the crowded quarters of the town. More than 60 Jews – including many women and children – were murdered and more than 50 were wounded. This savage attack, of which no condemnation could be too severe, was accompanied by wanton destruction and looting. Jewish synagogues were desecrated, a Jewish hospital, which had provided treatment for Arabs, was attacked and ransacked[.]

Many binationalists abandoned their goal after the violent pogroms, but Magnes did not.  He kept looking for moderate Arab leaders, but as his biographer Daniel P. Kotzin notes, he never found a serious Arab partner willing to share Palestine on an equal basis with the Jews.  In the meantime, the scope of anti-Jewish violence increased both in Palestine and throughout the entire Arab world, forcing the Jews to flee Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and other Arab countries.

Magnes died in 1948.  In the final months of his life, he gave up on his dream of binationalism and supported Israel's declaration of independence.  He was a dreamer whose dreams did not come true.

This essay uses a brief description of his life to illustrate the events leading up to the declaration of Israel's independence.  These events were pivotal in the evolution of Zionism.  In many ways, they were not too different from, say, the events leading to the partition of the Indian sub-continent into India and Pakistan, when Britain dismantled its colony in 1947.  In both cases, animosity along religious lines made coexistence impossible.

Eugene Veklerov

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/j_magnes_and_the_orwellian_ministry_of_truth.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic State cell uncovered in east Jerusalem - Yair Altman

by Yair Altman

Four east Jerusalem residents indicted for trying to join Islamic State group in Syria • Cell allegedly planned to carry out attacks near foreign embassies and consulates in Jerusalem • One cell member flew to Turkey with goal of entering Syria.

Four east Jerusalem residents between the ages of 20 and 25 were indicted on Friday for attempting to join the Islamic State group in Syria. 

The four formed a study group and met several times a week to learn Islamic State ideology and watch Islamic State videos.

The cell allegedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks near foreign embassies and consulates in Jerusalem. They gathered funds for this purpose and attempted to contact Islamic State members in Syria for guidance and support. 

Last August, one of the cell members flew to Turkey with the goal of crossing into to Syria to join the fighting there. However, a local smuggler requested $2,000 to smuggle him over the border. The cell member did not have that much money and decided to return to Israel.

Another cell member managed to collect $3,200 and booked an airline ticket to Turkey, but his father found out about his plans and prevented him from going through with them. 

The indictment was filed at the Jerusalem Magistrates' Court and includes charges of attempted membership and activity in an illegal organization, attempting to join a terrorist organization, supporting a terrorist organization and attempting to leave the country unlawfully.

Yair Altman

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=32669

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic State driven out of Syria's ancient Palmyra city - Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Following a three-week campaign, Syrian government forces reportedly recapture Palmyra on Sunday, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples.

The ancient city of Palmyra [Archive] | Photo credit: Reuters

Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples.

Syrian television quoted a military source saying the army and its militia allies took complete control of the city and were clearing mines and bombs laid by Islamic State fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was still gunfire in the eastern part of the city on Sunday morning but the bulk of the Islamic State force had pulled out and retreated east, leaving Palmyra under President Bashar Assad's control.

For government forces, the recapture of Palmyra opens up much of Syria's eastern desert stretching to the Iraqi border to the south and Islamic State heartland of Deir al-Zor and Raqqa to the east.

It follows a three-week campaign by the army and its allies on the ground, backed by intensive Russian airstrikes, aimed at driving Islamic State back.

Russia's intervention in September turned the tide of Syria's five-year-old conflict in Assad's favor. Despite its announcement that it was pulling out most military forces two weeks ago, Russian jets and helicopters carried out dozens of strikes daily over Palmyra at the height of the clashes.

Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said 400 Islamic State fighters died in the battle for Palmyra, which he described as the biggest single defeat for the group since it declared a caliphate in areas of Syria and Iraq under its control in 2014.

The loss of Palmyra comes three months after Islamic State fighters were driven out of the city of Ramadi in neighboring Iraq, the first major victory for Iraq's army since it collapsed in the face of an assault by Islamic State in June 2014.

Islamic State has lost ground elsewhere, including the Iraqi city of Tikrit last year and the Syrian town of al-Shadadi in February. The United States said the fall of Shadadi was part of efforts to cut Islamic State's links between its two main power centers: the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

The Observatory said around 180 government soldiers and allied fighters were also killed in the campaign to retake Palmyra, which is home to some of the most extensive ruins of the Roman Empire.

Islamic State fighters dynamited several monuments last year, but Syria's antiquities chief told Reuters on Saturday that other ancient landmarks were still standing.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=32673

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.