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A Most Discreet Israeli Intervention in Syria :: Spyer in Jerusalem Post

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A Most Discreet Israeli Intervention in Syria

by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
May 29, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/3835/a-most-discreet-israeli-intervention-in-syria

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Since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israeli officials have observed events to the north with caution and concern. The concern has derived from the presence of anti-Israel paramilitary and terrorist elements on both sides of the fighting lines in Syria.
The caution, meanwhile, relates to the very deep aversion felt in the Israeli system toward the possibility of Israel's being sucked in to the morass of the Syrian war. Israel's Lebanon experience has left a deep institutional memory warning against overly ambitious incursions into the affairs of neighboring states.
Nevertheless, evidence is emerging of an increasing, though still modest Israeli involvement in events beyond the separation of forces line on the Golan Heights.
The least ambiguous evidence of Israeli activity related to Syria is the series of air raids against weapons convoys headed for Lebanon. These have been attributed by foreign media to Israel, and were carried out to prevent the transfer of certain weapons systems from Syria to Hizballah.
However, the latest emerging indications relate not to activity deep within the skies above Syria. Rather, the contacts in question are happening, discreetly, very close to the ground, and very close to the border.
Israeli officials have observed with concern the recent ebb and flow of the fighting in the Deraa and Quneitra provinces in southern Syria. The rebel fighters in this area, as elsewhere, are a varied and disparate group. The southern front is the focus of the limited western and Arab support offered the rebels.
A western command center at which US, Jordanian, Saudi, British and French personnel are present has been established to coordinate aid to the rebels in the south.
But the 'moderate' rebels of the Supreme Military Command and the related Syrian Revolutionaries Front, who benefit from the modest flow of western and Saudi aid, are not the only anti-Assad fighters in the south.
Jabhat al-Nusra, the official Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, is also playing a major role in the fighting in the south. The Salafi Ahrar al-Sham group is also present in force among the southern rebels. These groups operate in coordination with the western supported fighters.
In recent weeks, forces led by al-Nusra have made major territorial advances. In late April, these forces captured eastern Tel al-Akhmar (the red hill). This hill is situated five kilometers from the Israeli border on the Golan Heights. Western Tel al-Akhmar, which is just 2km from the first Israeli positions, was captured earlier in the month.
Rebel forces hope to push on to Quneitra itself. Their intention is to establish a contiguous strip of rebel-controlled territory in across western Deraa and Quneitra provinces – just 100km southwest of Damascus.
For Israel, the possibility that al-Qaeda linked jihadis should establish themselves along one of its borderlines represents a nightmare scenario. In a video released after the capture of the hill, a Nusra spokesman was heard to praise Osama Bin-Laden as the 'lion of Islam', and to vow continued war on 'Jews and crusaders.'
So the problem is clear. What is Israel doing to respond to it?
In addition to increasing drone surveillance and intelligence gathering across the border, the evidence suggests that Israel has established contact with non-jihadi, western supported rebel elements, with the intention of ensuring that the jihadis are prevented from establishing themselves along the ceasefire line on the Golan.
The medical care afforded wounded Syrian fighters has served to facilitate this process. 1000 or so Syrian fighters have received this, with the more lightly wounded being treated at the IDF field hospital established close to the border, and others in hospitals in northern Israel.
Colonel Abdullah al-Bashir, who commands the Supreme Military Council, a prominent western backed rebel element, was among the military personnel to be treated in Israel.
In addition to the direct contacts with the rebels, Israel is also in contact with local leaders across the border, with the intention of offering them inducements to refuse shelter and medical care to the jihadi fighters.
The Israeli contacts with the rebels are probably coordinated with the western backers of these forces. According to one report, there are Israeli representatives at the western and Jordanian command center coordinating support for the rebels in northern Jordan.
Israeli support for western-backed rebels in this arena is made yet more necessary by the fact that defeat for the rebellion in Deraa and Quneitra runs the risk of bringing not the status quo ante bellum, but rather Hizballah, to the border.
Fighters from the Shia Islamist movement are present among pro-regime forces battling in the south. In early March, IDF troops fired at what they said was a Hizballah team trying to place a bomb in the border area.
So is the southern border coming to resemble south Lebanon in the 1980s? Is Israel being sucked into another commitment across a northern border?
Precisely because the lesson of Lebanon is so deeply etched on the collective memory of the Israeli system, it is likely that the Israeli footprint in southern Syria will remain discernible, but light. There are no ideal options. Nusra, according to one source, is stronger than it appears, since it has allowed pro-western forces to take credit for a number of operations. It does this so as to keep western support flowing into the area, from which Nusra itself will then benefit. So any strengthening of the rebels in the south carries with it the risk of assisting precisely the enemy that it is supposed to thwart. But the alternative of passive acquiescence to either al-Qaeda or Hizballah assembling along the border is probably worse.
A complicated political and military eco-system has emerged in southern Syria, just across the ceasefire line in the Golan Heights. Israel will do its best to preserve its vital interests, while avoiding an overt presence in this arena. Maintaining the balance is not simple. As of now, it may be said that Israel is actively, if discreetly, engaged in southern Syria.
Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Related Topics: Israel & Zionism, Syria | Jonathan Spyer This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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LONDON: Notorious Islamic ghetto of Tower Hamlets posts sign warning people against walking their dogs there because Muslims hate dogs

Thanks to Bare Naked Islam for this one,,

LONDON: Notorious Islamic ghetto of Tower Hamlets posts sign warning people against walking their dogs there because Muslims hate dogs

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2014/05/31/london-notorious-islamic-ghetto-of-tower-hamlets-posts-sign-warning-people-against-walking-their-dogs-there-because-muslims-hate-dogs/

Ignoring the well-known fact that Muslims do hate dogs (see links below) and have often poisoned their neighbors’ dogs in Europe, a vile leftist MP tells police the sign might have been placed there by an anti-Islam group like the ‘far right’ English Defence League.

UK Standard A provocative sign declaring a London park an “Islamic area” and ordering dog walkers to stay away because “Muslims do not like dogs” is being investigated by police. The warning, in Bartlett Park, Poplar, said: “Do not walk your dog here! Muslims do not like dogs. This is an Islamic area now.”

It was today branded “unacceptable” and “provocative” by an MP who called in police after being alerted to the sign by a concerned dog walker.

Labour’s Jim Fitzpatrick called on police to find out if it was put up by “religious zealots” or a far-right group such as the English Defence League (EDL). “The question is whether it was put up to be provocative or by religious zealots to be racist,” the Poplar and Limehouse MP told the Standard.

Muslim torturing a dog

“It’s another facet of intolerance, or, because there’s no guarantee it was done by Islamists, it could be those in society who are trying to polarise and divide us.” He added: “Whichever side it was ought not to be able to get away with it and whoever’s responsible ought to pack it in.” Police have removed the signs and stepped up the presence of officers in the area after being alerted to them by Mr Fitzpatrick yesterday.

Tower Hamlets Borough Commander Dave Stringer said: “Bartlett Park does not have any history of community tension; however we are investigating the posting of these signs and conducting additional patrols to ensure that community reassurance and confidence are maintained in the area. At this time we retain an open mind concerning the motive behind the putting up of these signs.”

Meriam Ibrahim, Sudan Christian Woman Facing Execution. Family is American. Where is outrage?

This was posted May 31. Sudan has stated they will release her.

A woman is stoned. We politely look away

http://www.secularism.org.uk/blog/2014/05/a-woman-is-stoned-we-politely-look-away

Posted: Fri, 30 May 2014 11:10 by Matthew Syed

Our reluctance to fight 'small' battles – over forced marriage and the burka – merely emboldens the fundamentalists, argues Matthew Syed

I guess I should start by saying that I am half Pakistani. My dad grew up there, has dual citizenship (British and Pakistan) and many of my cousins still live there, including the lovely Zafar, who is based in Lahore.

I also have a couple of relatives who, while no longer living in Pakistan, are Islamic fundamentalists, the kind of people who will have read about the stoning to death of a pregnant woman outside a courtroom in Lahore on Monday and nodded approvingly. They will have done so not because they are lunatics — you would be surprised how rational and charming they appear in conversation — but because of their warped version of religion.

How do they get to such a curious and hateful place? The real problem, I think, is the way moderates both here and in Pakistan tolerate the "smaller" stuff. You know, the way that we turn a blind eye to young girls being "pushed" into marriages they don't really want; the way that "cultural differences" are invoked to legitimise the burka.

These little retreats may seem tolerant and enlightened, a way of embracing people who hold different views; a classic liberal fudge. But they are nothing of the sort. They embolden and shore up fundamentalism. They offer encouragement. And they culminate in the grotesque travesty of a silent minority in Pakistan looking the other way as women are buried up to their waists while members of their own family throw bricks at their heads.

My family has been guilty of it, too. We had one of our fundamentalist cousins to stay when I was in my late teens. My dad — who converted to Christianity as a student in London — took down signs of the cross and a cream-coloured plaque that read: "Christ is the Head of this House". He did so not because his Christianity is lukewarm (it really isn't), but because he did not want to offend Shabba.

To dad, it was the humane thing to do. Shabba would have been deeply affronted if he had learnt about my father's apostasy and would have been honour-bound to leave the house. Dad felt that it was magnanimous to pretend that he was still a Muslim for a couple of days. He felt that, in his compassion for our cousin's feelings, he was acting in a Christ-like way. But looking back, I can see that he wasn't. He — we — should have confronted it head-on. The small battles matter.

You want to know the true meaning of fundamentalism? The 2008 Iranian Penal Code mandated that the stones used to kill adulterers should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes — nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones". You see the point, here? Too big and the victim might die too quickly. Too small, and you might waste an entire day completing a capital punishment. Iran has recently claimed to have dropped its fetish for stoning, but it still goes on in enclaves around the world committed to Sharia.

Turn your mind away from the brutality of honour killings and focus, for a moment, on the psychology. Consider the corrupting power of a religious ideology that can animate a father to perpetrate the most intimate and barbaric of assaults on his own daughter, a brother on his own sister, an uncle on his own niece.

"I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it," the police investigator quoted the father of the murdered woman in Lahore as saying. Her crime, in case you were wondering, was to fall in love with the wrong man.

You cannot win against this kind of barbarism by being nice. You can't win by beating a strategic retreat, as Sotheby's plans to do by withdrawing nudes from arts sales because they are terrified of offending Middle Eastern clients. Fundamentalism is too fierce, too implacable, it takes too deep a hold on those who are infected by it, to reach any kind of compromise. Trying to find an accommodation with fanaticism is like trying to cuddle a virus.

A decade ago, the Metropolitan Police set up a task force to investigate "honour" killings after a series of incidents, including the murder of Rukhsana Naz, a 19-year-old who wanted to divorce her husband and marry her boyfriend. She was strangled by her brother with a piece of plastic flex while Shakeela, her mother, restrained her. Her body was then driven more than 100 miles to be dumped. Heshu Yones, a 16-year-old, was stabbed to death by her father because he disapproved of the way she dressed and of her Christian boyfriend.

Some estimates put the number of honour killings in the UK at 12 per year, but this does not reflect the true scale of honour-related crime. Nor does it encompass the countless women who dare not breach the restrictive codes laid down by their families out of sheer dread. This is the deeper story of repression that afflicts women around the world and which is too often hidden from view.

We have to recognise that we cannot compromise with fundamentalism. The middle road, with its dangerous euphemisms of tolerance and cultural respect, was only ever a dead-end. If we want to win the big battle, we have to win the small ones, too. That is the most valuable lesson to take from the tragedy of a 25-year-old, stoned to death in broad daylight for loving the wrong man.

Matthew Syed is a columnist and feature writer for the Times. This article was originally published by the Times and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.

Photo credit: Reuters

From shop assistant to the British Bin Laden: Former House of Fraser trainee is sadistic Al Qaeda killer fighting with Syrian civil war's most brutal gang - and he calls for violence in the UK on social media

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2644895/The-British-Bin-Laden-House-Fraser-trainee-unmasked-sadistic-Al-Qaeda-killer.html

Ismail Jabbar, 22, is waging bloody jihad with 'Unit Bin Laden' in Syria
He also incites fellow Muslims to murder soldiers and police back in UK
The ex-House of Fraser trainee disappeared from Britain nine months ago
Smuggled himself into war-torn country as Kalashnikov-wielding jihadist
MI5 and police are monitoring his movements via extreme online posts
Parents have begged him to return to UK - but he wants to die a 'martyr'

By Abul Taher and Amanda Perthen

Published: 21:16 GMT, 31 May 2014 | Updated: 10:43 GMT, 1 June 2014

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A young British Muslim who fled his suburban upbringing and travelled abroad to become a fanatical terrorist can today be unmasked by The Mail on Sunday.

London-born Ismail Jabbar, 22, is fighting for the ‘Unit Bin Laden’ of violent Islamic extremists in Syria, where he boasts of killing his enemies.

A former trainee with the House of Fraser store, he also incites fellow Muslims to murder soldiers, police officers and unbelievers back in Britain.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

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Face of evil: London-born Ismail Jabbar is fighting for the 'Unit Bin Laden' of violent Islamic extremists in Syria

He disappeared from the UK nine months ago and smuggled himself into the war-ravaged country as a Kalashnikov-wielding jihadist who revels in bloodshed and has used a series of aliases to hide his true identity.

He is the only known British extremist to give a full account of fighting in Syria.

More...

MI5 and the police have been monitoring his movements via the series of extreme online posts he has made on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Ask.fm.

The Mail on Sunday has been told that this self-proclaimed terrorist and murderer will be arrested if he ever returns to the UK for inciting extremism as well as travelling abroad to commit terrorist acts.

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A more innocent time: The ex-House of Fraser trainee also incites fellow Muslims to murder soldiers, police officers and unbelievers back in Britain. Above, Jabbar is pictured, left and right, as an ordinary London student

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Holy war: The 22-year-old tweeted this picture, accompanied by the message 'I testify', just two days ago

Evidence of his extremism, compiled by this newspaper, include:

Posting graphic images of ‘enemies’ he claims his group has killed, including a severed head and body parts, and one of himself apparently standing on a corpse in uniform.
Inciting fellow British Muslims to launch ‘lone-wolf’ style attacks like that on soldier Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death outside his barracks in Woolwich, South London.
Defending the two murderers of Rigby and urging followers to ‘clench a knife... and go stab a soldier’ or ‘chop couple pig heads in the streets of London’, believed to be a reference to the police.
Justifying attacks on UK civilians as well as urging bomb attacks on targets like petrol stations.
Fighting for a notorious Al Qaeda-linked group called Al-Nusra Front, and encouraging friends to leave the UK and join him for jihad.

To the horror of his parents – who are begging him to return to Britain – Jabbar has said that he wants to die in Syria as a ‘shaheed’ [martyr], while attempting to create an Islamic state with strict sharia law.

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A family source said: ‘It’s been very stressful. No father or mother should have to go through this. I pray for every mother and father who have lost their son like us. I pray for them to come back.’

After telling friends he was travelling to Syria as part of an aid convoy, Jabbar trained with terrorists and has now formed his own group, the Unit Bin Laden, amid the chaos of a bloody civil war that has already cost more than 150,000 lives.

Jabbar’s case has come to light as David Cameron prepares to tighten the law so that more British jihadis will face prosecution for committing terrorist acts overseas.

The law change – to be announced in the Queen’s Speech this week – is in response to fears that Britons becoming radicalised in countries such as Syria present the greatest threat to Britain’s national security.

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Highlighting the scale of the threat, just yesterday, two young men suspected of trying to aid Syrian rebels were arrested in separate incidents at Heathrow.

A 19-year-old was held by counter-terrorism officers at the airport on suspicion of preparing for acts of terrorism while a 20-year-old was seized over allegations of sending money overseas for the purposes of assisting terrorism in Syria.