AL JAZEERA

The Pentagon says none of the missiles filed by the US and its allies was deflected by Syrian air defences.

MORE ON MIDDLE EAST

• What media in Russia, Iran and Syria are saying on Syria strikestoday
• Five things to know about the US-led strikes in Syriatoday
• Analysis: Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara on the US-led Syria attackstoday
• Eastern Ghouta: What happened and whytoday

How can Trump leave Syria before addressing the Iran presence?

By Jonathan Schanzer, POLITICO

Donald Trump needs to stop prevaricating over Syria and take advantage of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Syria failures.

Putin, who unexpectedly thrust Russia into the Syria civil war in September 2015, initially claimed he was there on a counterterrorism mission to fight the Islamic State. Fast-forward two and a half years, and Putin is now in the unlikely position of trying to contain the outbreak of what could be the ugliest Middle East war of the 21st century between Iran and Israel.

It was all very predictable, the moment that Putin began to partner with Iran and its lethal proxy, Hezbollah. They shared intelligence, patrolled together and fought together against the Sunni jihadists and other rebels who were warring against the Assad regime.
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To Beat the Russians, Let Them Win

By Aaron Stein, FOREIGN AFFAIRS mAR 15/18

The United States’ interests in Syria lie in formalizing its battlefield gains with a negotiated settlement and then leaving the country. To achieve this goal, it will need to find common cause in the short term with its greatest geopolitical foe, Russia. Doing so will require Washington to acknowledge a painful but obvious truth: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has largely routed the anti-regime insurgency, consolidated power in much of the country’s west, and received open-ended support and security guarantees from Moscow and Tehran. Assad will govern most of Syria for the foreseeable future.

For the United States, the impetus (and legal justification) for its presence in Syria was the war against the Islamic State (or ISIS), waged to deny the group safe haven and, in so doing, prop up the government of Iraq and ensure that ISIS fighters could not plot and execute terrorist attacks in the West. The success of this war, however, has raised uncomfortable questions about what Washington should do next. Tensions with Moscow and Tehran have helped galvanize support among some U.S. policymakers for an open-ended presence in northeastern Syria, meant to prevent hard-fought U.S. gains from being turned over to hostile powers.

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DEBKA

In the first wave, the three allies targeted the Mezza military airport outside Damascus, Arzza and the Jamarya “research center” formerly struck by Israel, also two chemical sites near Homs.  President Donald Trump said he had approved US military precision strikes against Syria in collaboration with the UK and France in response to a chemical attack that killed more than 70 people. Trump spoke in a television statement early Saturday, April 14, as explosions were heard in Damascus.

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The Jordanian Option being discussed here, in Feb 2017, is the one where Jordan becomes the sovereign of Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria as opposed to my version where the Arabs of A and B are incentivized to move to Jordan.

Frisch points out that the creation of the PA resulted in $400 million of the aid which Jordan was getting ended up going to the PA and that’s just the American aid. The EU about the same. If the PA dies this aid will go back to Jordan for a time. Secondly Israel collects about $800 million in VAT. Jordan could earn this money. Finally, the money going to UNRWA could also be redirected to Jordan.

Also Palestinian industry in J&S is unable to sell to Jordan or the rest of the arab world. Jordanian businesses prevent it. They don’t want the competition. Finally the fact that 150,000 Palestinians work in Israel causes wages to go up to double what they are in Jordan.

In my version of the Jordanian Option, we incentivize the Palestinians to emmigrate to Jordan. This will be good for Jordanian businesses. It will also enable the Palestinian businesses to sell to Jordanians and the rest of the Arab world. Their wages would drop in half but living costs are much lower. Jordan would then collect the VAT. Lots to discuss here.

Netanyahu favours the status quo which incluedes keeping a lid on settlement expansion. He is opposed by Bennett who favours expansion.

Watch from 16:00 minutes to 27 minutes.

by Michael Totten, World Affairs Journal 
April 12, 2018

https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/the-case-for-bombing-assad

Editor’s note:  This article has been update to reflect the April 13 announcement by President Donald Trump on the commencement of American, British, and French attacks against Syria’s chemical weapons program.

Bombing Syria over President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Douma last week—as President Donald Trump announced this evening—is almost an absurdity. Nearly half a million people on all sides have been killed in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011, barely 100 of them by the regime’s most recent sarin attack. Assad can mass murder civilians by the hundreds of thousands with exploding barrel bombs packed with shrapnel, but he can’t gas 0.01 percent as many with a nerve agent? It barely even makes any sense and seems driven more by an emotional reaction to ghastly reports on television than anything else. And yet it makes sense. The use of any and all weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the world must remain taboo, and it can’t remain taboo if it isn’t punished.
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Most observers are pointing to corruption, political infighting and fear of a collapse of the Iranian nuclear deal as major factors in the rial’s fall.

By Sean Savage, JNS

(April 13, 2018 / JNS) With much of the world focused on the possibility of an impending military confrontation in Syria over that country’s use of chemical weapons, Iran’s economy took a major hit as its currency plunged to record low levels. The dive in the Iran’s currency, the rial, caused a panic among Iranians as the government sought to keep things under control.

However, the ongoing threat of a major war in Syria—where Iran is heavily involved in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad—coupled with the potential collapse of the Iranian nuclear deal next month could spell major instability ahead of Iran.

Since the beginning of the year, the rial has lost nearly one-third of value. When Rouhani came to power in 2013, $1 equaled 36,000 rials; now that figure stands near 60,000 rials to the dollar. However, the currency devaluation has been a trend since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when $1 equaled 70 rials.
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Are we uniquely subjected to hatred and persecution because we are Jews? Or is our Judaism a meaningless distinction that attracts no unique animus and violence?

Anne Frank in 1940, while at 6. Montessorischool, Niersstraat 41-43, Amsterdam. (photo credit: PUBLIC DOMAIN)

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the New Israel Fund announced it signed a partnership agreement with Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, established in 1963 to administer the profits from the sales of her diary.

Frank’s diary has sold more than 30 million copies in 60 languages since it was first published in 1947. Its sales and global reach make it the most famous book authored by a Jew aside from the Bible.

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THE TELEGRAPH

Planned airstrikes on Syria are being co-ordinated with Russia, it has emerged, as Theresa May reassured her Cabinet that any military response to last week’s chemical attack will not escalate into war.

The US has identified eight potential targets in Syria, it was reported on Thursday evening, as the Kremlin claimed a secure hotline for the US and Russia to communicate over their operations in Syria was “active” and being used by both sides.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expects allied forces to reveal the location of the targets in advance, to avoid bloodshed and restrict damage to legitimate military assets. According to reports in the US, the targets selected include two Syrian airfields, a research centre and a chemical weapons facility.

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T. Belman. I agree with Tobin. Now’s the time for the US to reassert itself and start dictating what’s going to happen. Russia will cave because all they really want is their foothold in Syria. They do not want to be responsible for the entire Syria and they are not about to attempt to remove the US from the lands it controls. Now is the time to cut a deal with Russia who would like to get off the hook. Give her the port and airbase in Alawite Syria and the Crimea and she will jump at the deal. She does not want to be dragged into the mire by Iran and Turkey is a perennial enemy.

The outcome of a looming confrontation may depend on how much Russia is willing to risk if the United States and Israel say enough is enough.

(April 12, 2018 / JNS) The key question about Syria this week is not why the various foreign powers involved in the civil war there are on the brink of hostilities. It’s how hostile forces with very different agendas co-existing in a relatively small country have been able to avoid a violent confrontation up until now.
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By Vic Rosenthal

What can or should be done in response to the continuing Syrian bloodbath? And who, if anyone, should do it?

In a NY Times column, Max Fisher has described “America’s Three Bad Options in Syria” (he leaves out the fourth bad one, which is doing nothing).

His argument is simple: 1) Limited, punitive strikes are ineffectual;  2) escalating aid to Assad’s enemies can easily be matched and exceeded by Iran and Russia; and 3) an intervention that actually collapsed Assad’s government would throw the region into chaos, costing even millions more lives, and risk a military confrontation with Russia.
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Clifford D. May, FDD, The Washington Times

Syria is a far-away land about which we know little. But we do know this: Over the past seven years, more than a half million people have been slaughtered there, with an estimated 150 murdered by chemical weapons just last weekend in a town outside Damascus.

We also know who’s committing these crimes: dictator Bashar al Assad and those who have propped him up for their own purposes, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s neo-tsar, and Ali Khamenei, “supreme leader” for life of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

When Mr. Assad used the nerve agent sarin to kill no fewer than 1,400 of his subjects in 2013. President Obama drew a red line — and then abruptly erased it, apparently in deference to the Iranian theocrats with whom he was negotiating a deal he intended to be his major foreign policy legacy.
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T. Belman. My take away is that people are happier and more prosperous when they live in a nation-state. Multiculturalism and diversity be damned.

The very existence of a Jewish state, whatever its flaws, is grounds for rejoicing.

By Evelyn Gordan

In January 2017, the Ipsos Mori research company published a shocking poll headlined “Six in ten around the world think their society is ‘broken.’ ” Out of 23 countries surveyed—13 Western democracies and 10 non-Western democracies, most with relatively strong economies—only in six did a majority of respondents disagree with that statement.

Moreover, almost four in 10 respondents agreed another troubling claim: “These days I feel like a stranger in my own country.” Though the proportion topped 50 percent in only two countries, it exceeded a third in all but three.
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T. Belman. Tucker makes the case against regime change in Syria. I agree with him but the US has more options than he acknowledges. I think that the US should solidify its hold on eastern Syria by building up the Kurdish ability to stabilize the area.

France has already joined the fray in defense of Manji which is part of what America controls. The US must hold on to their position in Syria both to be loyal to the Kurds who defeated ISIS and because it will give the US a seat at the table in determining the future of Syria. The Syria discussions ends at 16:20.

“Unconscionable” that the DOJ and State Department advocated for the PLO

By Sara Carter

A lawyer who represents American victims of terrorism has called on the U.S. Senate to hold hearings into the events that led Department of Justice Solicitor General Noel Francisco to file a brief with the United States Supreme Court siding with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority against American victims of terror.

A similar request to the U.S. House will be sent within the next week.

Shortly after Solicitor General Francisco filed his brief, the Supreme Court entered an Order declining to review a federal appeals court’s decision setting aside a $655.5 million judgment a jury had awarded the American victims of terror against the PLO and the Palestinian Authority for their role in multiple attacks in which Americans were killed and injured.  The lawyer, David Schoen, later joined by the Zionist Organization of America, had demanded immediate hearings into action taken in the case by the Solicitor General and the State Department and has asked Congress to set aside funds equivalent to the judgment originally obtained by the American victims from dollars earmarked for the Palestinian Authority, this reporter has learned.
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An open letter to Minister Naftali Bennett

By Aliza Bodner, JPOST

Last week, a committee appointed by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry which you head made public a report recommending that the government strengthen ties with a potential 60 million individuals worldwide who have some “affinity” to Judaism. According to the 152-page report, this includes individuals who “do not even see themselves as Jewish.”

Minister Bennett, why are you investing in a plan to seek out potential Jews when the government has still not upheld its previous rulings to bring the remaining 8,000 members of the Jewish community in Ethiopia to Israel, who have been waiting in some cases for over 20 years to receive approval from the Israeli government to immigrate to Israel and reunite with their loved ones.
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