Israel and Syria - Several news items that look towards Isaiah 17

[HisDaughter]

Explain this to me like I'm in Kindergarten.  Did Bush just try to make a deal with the devil?

[Soldier4Christ]

You got it right and it wasn't the first time. I don't know if this originated with him or if it was the idea of our very liberal Congress. I am beginning to think that it is both as Bush has been doing somethings recently that just astounds me.

[Shammu]

Syria-Hizbullah ties growing stronger
Oct. 26, 2008
Herb Keinon
THE JERUSALEM POST

If Israel's indirect talks with Syria were aimed at testing whether it might be possible to pull Damascus out of Iran and Hizbullah's orbits, then so far the test has failed, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin indicated in the cabinet Sunday.

Despite the talks, not only has Damascus not lessened its cooperation with Hizbullah, it has actually stepped up its relationship with the organization.

"[Syrian President Bashar] Assad currently trusts Hizbullah more than his own army," Yadlin said during a briefing. "Hizbullah operatives are working from within Syria. The Syrians are loosening all restraints, and [are irresponsibly giving] Hizbullah access to almost all of their strategic capabilities."

Assad "is continuing to open up his warehouses to Hizbullah," Yadlin continued, adding that Syria was "turning into the arms granary" for Hizbullah.

He also said that Iranian and Syrian involvement in Lebanon was a means of taking control of the country.

"Syria and Iran are buying the regime in Lebanon and are pouring substantial money into buying parliamentary representatives and into conducting dubious business deals," the MI chief said. "The Iranian offer to assist in the building of the Lebanese Army is a ruse to take control of Lebanon."

Yadlin discussed the terror attack last month in Damascus that killed 17 people, saying it was a result of Syria's involvement in world terrorism.

"Whoever sleeps with dogs should not be surprised to wake up with fleas," he said. Yadlin attributed the attack to World Jihad terrorists, saying that Damascus had in the past given them a free hand to pass into Iraq and Lebanon as long as they didn't attack the Syrian government. That unwritten agreement, Yadlin said, has now been violated.

Regarding the diplomatic process with Syria, Yadlin said Assad was interested in an agreement with Israel on Syria's terms, but wanted to wait until after the US elections and the establishment of a new administration before moving anything forward.

Yadlin said Hizbullah was still trying to avenge the assassination of its commander Imad Mughniyeh, but was concerned about a harsh Israeli response. As such, he said, Hizbullah was working through indirect channels, including attempts to carry out attacks through Gaza.

Yadlin said this was creating some tension between Hizbullah and Hamas, since Hamas had an interest in preserving the current calm in the Gaza Strip. He said Hamas had, in fact, recently arrested Hizbullah terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

Regarding the Iranian nuclear program, Yadlin said Teheran was exploiting the transition period and current political uncertainty both in Israel and the US to advance its nuclear program.

"The changing of the governments in the US and Israel, and the world economic crisis, are being exploited by the radical axis in order to improve its situation," Yadlin said. "Iran is exploiting the weakness in the international theater, in anticipation of the new government in the US, in order to move forward on its nuclear program and to soften the network of international opposition."

Syria-Hizbullah ties growing stronger

[Shammu]

Syria FM: US may face 'painful' response
Nov. 2, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said that his country may resort to more "painful" measures if the United States doesn't give an official explanation for a deadly cross-border raid.

Syria retaliated to the October 26 US raid that it says killed eight people by ordering the closure of an American school and cultural center in Damascus, but Moallem said that those measures were "introductory."

Speaking on Sunday in a TV interview with the Lebanese ANB satellite station, he warned Syria could escalate its response in the future, but did not elaborate.

Last Thursday, tens of thousands of Syrians poured out onto a Damascus square in a government-orchestrated rally to denounce the US raid.

A high ranking government official also challenged Washington to prove that US helicopters had targeted a top al-Qaida terrorist in the attack which Damascus says killed eight civilians.

Syria FM: US may face 'painful' response

[Shammu]

Thousands more Syrian troops deployed on Lebanon border
Nov. 2, 2008
Yaakov Lappin , THE JERUSALEM POST

Syria has mobilized some 3,000 troops and heavy equipment near its border with eastern Lebanon, Beirut's As-Safir newspaper reported over the weekend.

The troop movement is being carried out under the banner of a bid to stop illegal smuggling and cross-border criminal movement, but Middle East analysts are viewing it as a signal from Syria that it intends to return Lebanon to its sphere of influence.

The troop movement could also form part of a response by Syria to the threat posed by Lebanon-based jihadis, although this seems less likely in light of the widespread view that Syria has backed a number of jihadi groups in Lebanon.

In September, Damascus sent 10,000 additional troops and tanks to its border with northern Lebanon, and Syrian President Bashar Assad took part in a border drill held by the Syrian army.

As in the current deployment, the Syrian regime justified the September troop buildup as a response to drug dealing and criminal movements.

The Syrian troops were stationed near Lebanon's second-largest city, Tripoli, where al-Qaida has made a major effort to consolidate a base of support. Days later, a car bomb killed 17 people in Damascus, on the road to the country's international airport.

The Assad regime subsequently accused Islamic extremists and said Lebanon was making insufficient efforts to crack down on al-Qaida members in its territory.

Salafi (Sunni Islamist) groups tied to al-Qaida have sprung up in Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon in recent years, leading to a prolonged clash between Lebanese troops and the Fatah al-Islam group in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon last year.

The US has expressed growing concern over Syria's troop buildup around Lebanon, fearing that Damascus could exploit a perceived terrorist threat from Lebanon to reestablish the control over the country it lost when its troops withdrew in 2005. On October 8, the US promised to provide Lebanon with helicopters, military vehicles and other equipment worth millions of dollars, in addition to the estimated $400 million in American assistance provided to the Lebanese army since 2006.

But that aid is insufficient to keep Lebanon from falling under the influence of the Hizbullah-Syria-Iran axis, Syria expert Dr. Barry Rubin said on Sunday. Rubin dismissed the idea that Syria was responding to jihadis in Lebanon, "since Syria is sponsoring most of the jihadi groups" there.

The troop deployment "is, however, an escalation of Syrian pressure on Lebanon to ensure that the country moves steadily back under Syrian control. As a result of insufficient backing by the US and France, the [pro-Western] March 14 movement government had to make huge concessions to Syria and its Hizbullah client group.

"This is to ensure that this trend continues and that the rules for the next elections are to the liking of Syria and Hizbullah, [and Iran of course,] to ensure their victory. It is letting the Lebanese know that Syria is back," Rubin said, adding that he did not believe Syria was planning an invasion of Lebanon at this time.

In the meantime, unconfirmed reports by the private Syrian Satellite TV channel Dunia claimed that Damascus had ordered troops away from Syria's border with Iraq, in direct contradiction of the US's request to Syria to secure the border against al-Qaida fighters entering Iraq.

The alleged withdrawal is part of Syria's remonstration following the American special forces raid on the Syrian town of Sukkariya last week aimed at killing a senior al-Qaida member overseeing the smuggling of foreign gunmen into Iraq, Dunia TV said. But Syria has denied the reports, telling Al-Jazeera that no soldiers had been withdrawn from its border with Iraq.

Thousands more Syrian troops deployed on Lebanon border

[nChrist]

You got it right and it wasn't the first time. I don't know if this originated with him or if it was the idea of our very liberal Congress. I am beginning to think that it is both as Bush has been doing somethings recently that just astounds me.

Bush has done all kinds of things that astound me, and I'm very disappointed. This is a reminder that all Christians should pray for our leaders, regardless of how FAR we disagree with the things they are doing. In fact, I consider this to be a Christian duty - even for the horrible and Godless people in office trying to destroy the work of the LORD and removing Christian liberties we have enjoyed for so long. We don't have to like or agree with our leaders to pray for them. GOD is STILL in CHARGE and ALWAYS WILL BE! HIS Will be done, and it WILL BE!

Love In Christ,
Tom

[nChrist]

Syria FM: US may face 'painful' response
Nov. 2, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said that his country may resort to more "painful" measures if the United States doesn't give an official explanation for a deadly cross-border raid.

Syria retaliated to the October 26 US raid that it says killed eight people by ordering the closure of an American school and cultural center in Damascus, but Moallem said that those measures were "introductory."

Speaking on Sunday in a TV interview with the Lebanese ANB satellite station, he warned Syria could escalate its response in the future, but did not elaborate.

Last Thursday, tens of thousands of Syrians poured out onto a Damascus square in a government-orchestrated rally to denounce the US raid.

A high ranking government official also challenged Washington to prove that US helicopters had targeted a top al-Qaida terrorist in the attack which Damascus says killed eight civilians.

Syria FM: US may face 'painful' response

WOW! Christians who read the Bible should know what is definitely going to happen to Damascus. Damascus will cease to be anything but a smoldering heap of ruins one day soon. Those who want to know many other things that are going to happen soon can read all about it in the 100% ACCURATE WORD OF GOD! I'm not saying anything bad about Christians who feel led to serve GOD in Syria or anywhere else in the world. If GOD calls us, we are supposed to go - even to our deaths - AND MANY HAVE! The times are getting worse and worse for the persecution, beating, imprisonment, and killing of Christians around the world. Those times will eventually come to our part of the world. If we haven't been taken HOME yet, our part is simply to pray and obey GOD'S Will.

[Shammu]

Hezbollah: Large swaths of north Israel belong to Lebanon
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
04/11/2008

A senior Hezbollah official on Monday said the Lebanese militant organization believes that large swaths of northern Israel belong to Lebanon, far beyond the line Israel pulled back to in 2000.

"The Zionist terror organizations moved the border from that of 1920 to that of 1923, and Lebanon lost seven villages and twenty farms. One must be cautious before moving the border to the Blue Line, because then Lebanon will lose millions of square meters," said Nawaf Musawi, head of international relations for Hezbollah.

In referring to the Blue Line, Musawi was speaking of border demarcation the United Nations published in 2000 after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from southern Lebanon.

Musawi, who is known as the group's "foreign minister," made the comments at the close of a meeting with the Norwegian ambassador to Lebanon.

He branded Blue Line, which runs very close to the 1949 Israel-Lebanon border known as the Green Line, as merely a "withdrawal line."

The official's comments mean that Hezbollah has territorial demands beyond the disputed Shaba Farms in the Golan Heights and the divided northern village of Ghajar. While various Lebanese Shi'ite figures have made these demands in the past, Hezbollah has abstained from doing so in recent years.

Hezbollah: Large swaths of north Israel belong to Lebanon

[Shammu]

Hizbullah: We don't have to accept the Blue Line
Nov. 4, 2008
Brenda Gazzar
THE JERUSALEM POST

A Hizbullah official rejected the UN-demarcated Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel this week and laid claim to seven villages in northern Israel and "millions of square meters" that it says belongs to Lebanon.

Hizbullah's international relations official Nawaf Moussawi said Monday that "we don't have to accept the Blue Line" as the border, claiming that it only symbolized the "line of withdrawal" by the Israeli army from south Lebanon in 2000.

The senior Hizbullah official also warned against considering the Blue Line valid as "Lebanon would lose millions of square meters of her national soil."

The UN published the border demarcation known as the Blue Line in June 2000 to determine whether Israel had fully withdrawn from Lebanon.

Moussawi made the comments as he was receiving foreign ambassadors in Lebanon, according to the NOW Lebanon news site.

While similar claims have been made by senior Hizbullah officials in the past, experts say it's interesting the statements were made in an international rather than domestic context. In addition, Moussawi also said that "Zionist terrorist organizations moved the border line from the 1920 line to a new line in 1923, and Lebanon lost its seven villages and 20 farms."

Moussawi is referring to seven Shi'ite villages in the area of the Upper Galilee that were included within Mandatory Palestine in a border demarcation treaty signed by France and Britain in 1923. While the first stage of demarcation included the seven villages in Lebanon, the final agreement between the two colonial powers shifted the boundary and excluded these seven Shi'ite villages, as well as about 20 others.

In 1948, the inhabitants of these seven villages were deported and became refugees in Lebanon. In 1994, following pressure from Hizbullah, they received Lebanese citizenship.

The international community recognizes these villages as a part of Israel.

"What is interesting for me, is that it's an international audience and [Mussawi] may have wanted to get some message across to this sort of audience," says Asher Kaufman, an Israeli scholar and a history professor at the University of Notre Dame. "It needs to be seen within the context as the exchange of inflammatory statements between Israel and Hizbullah, which has been going on now for some time."

Hizbullah's comments demonstrate its desire to find new avenues and modes of confrontation to replenish its bargaining power and its political relevance inside Lebanon, other experts say.

"They are playing with petty issues that no one in mainstream Lebanon cares about," said Magnus Ranstorp, a Hizbullah expert at the Swedish National Defense College. "They are creating an issue that is relatively insignificant, even if Israel withdrew from the Shaba Farms area, there would be the seven villages... There is always something else that they would manufacture."

Hizbullah: We don't have to accept the Blue Line
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Same old story...give them an inch and they take a mile. I pray Israel would take a long hard look at their historical maps, and realize giving land now, means they'll want more later.

[nChrist]

Hizbullah: We don't have to accept the Blue Line
Nov. 4, 2008
Brenda Gazzar
THE JERUSALEM POST

A Hizbullah official rejected the UN-demarcated Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel this week and laid claim to seven villages in northern Israel and "millions of square meters" that it says belongs to Lebanon.

Hizbullah's international relations official Nawaf Moussawi said Monday that "we don't have to accept the Blue Line" as the border, claiming that it only symbolized the "line of withdrawal" by the Israeli army from south Lebanon in 2000.

The senior Hizbullah official also warned against considering the Blue Line valid as "Lebanon would lose millions of square meters of her national soil."

The UN published the border demarcation known as the Blue Line in June 2000 to determine whether Israel had fully withdrawn from Lebanon.

Moussawi made the comments as he was receiving foreign ambassadors in Lebanon, according to the NOW Lebanon news site.

While similar claims have been made by senior Hizbullah officials in the past, experts say it's interesting the statements were made in an international rather than domestic context. In addition, Moussawi also said that "Zionist terrorist organizations moved the border line from the 1920 line to a new line in 1923, and Lebanon lost its seven villages and 20 farms."

Moussawi is referring to seven Shi'ite villages in the area of the Upper Galilee that were included within Mandatory Palestine in a border demarcation treaty signed by France and Britain in 1923. While the first stage of demarcation included the seven villages in Lebanon, the final agreement between the two colonial powers shifted the boundary and excluded these seven Shi'ite villages, as well as about 20 others.

In 1948, the inhabitants of these seven villages were deported and became refugees in Lebanon. In 1994, following pressure from Hizbullah, they received Lebanese citizenship.

The international community recognizes these villages as a part of Israel.

"What is interesting for me, is that it's an international audience and [Mussawi] may have wanted to get some message across to this sort of audience," says Asher Kaufman, an Israeli scholar and a history professor at the University of Notre Dame. "It needs to be seen within the context as the exchange of inflammatory statements between Israel and Hizbullah, which has been going on now for some time."

Hizbullah's comments demonstrate its desire to find new avenues and modes of confrontation to replenish its bargaining power and its political relevance inside Lebanon, other experts say.

"They are playing with petty issues that no one in mainstream Lebanon cares about," said Magnus Ranstorp, a Hizbullah expert at the Swedish National Defense College. "They are creating an issue that is relatively insignificant, even if Israel withdrew from the Shaba Farms area, there would be the seven villages... There is always something else that they would manufacture."

Hizbullah: We don't have to accept the Blue Line
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Same old story...give them an inch and they take a mile. I pray Israel would take a long hard look at their historical maps, and realize giving land now, means they'll want more later.

GOD HIMSELF drew the lines in eternity past, and HIS Lines will be the only ones that matter. HE will take what is HIS soon, and that makes me happy. We are also HIS Possessions!

Love In Christ,
Tom

Psalms 51:10  Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

[Shammu]

IAEA finds uranium traces at Syrian site
Tue Nov 11, 2008 12:42am IST

By Mark Heinrich

 VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. investigators have found traces of uranium at a Syrian site Washington says was a secret nuclear reactor almost built before Israel bombed the target last year, diplomats said on Monday.

They said the minute uranium particles turned up in some environmental swipe samples U.N. inspectors took at the site in a visit last June. They said the finding was not enough to draw conclusions but raised concerns requiring further clarification.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and Syria had no immediate comment. However, word of the finding leaked hours after IAEA officials confirmed Director Mohamed ElBaradei was preparing a formal written report on Syria for the first time.

Moreover, Syria has been made an official agenda item at the year-end Nov. 27-28 meeting of the U.N. watchdog's 35-nation board of governors, unlike previously when IAEA officials said initial inquiries were inconclusive.

Syria denies U.S. intelligence alleging it was building a reactor with North Korean expertise meant to make plutonium, the main atomic bomb ingredient reprocessed from spent uranium fuel. If proven this would violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Damascus says the unverified intelligence was fabricated and Washington has no credibility in the field after using bogus evidence of an Iraqi doomsday arms programme to justify the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein and devastated the country.

ElBaradei told an IAEA board meeting in September that preliminary findings from test samples taken by inspectors granted a visit in June to the desert location hit by Israel bore no traces of atomic activity.

Diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog said a wider range of samples had now been analyzed and some showed contamination with minute amounts of a uranium compound.

"It isn't enough to conclude or prove what the Syrians were doing but the IAEA has concluded this requires further investigation," said one diplomat accredited to the IAEA.

"It was a man-made component, not natural (ore). There is no sign there was already nuclear fuel or (production) activity there," another diplomat told Reuters.

This diplomat noted that such traces could have been carried to the site inadvertently on the clothes of scientists or workers or on equipment brought in from elsewhere.

SYRIA BALKS AT WIDER IAEA CHECKS

Diplomats close to the IAEA have said Syria has ignored agency requests to check three military sites for equipment or other evidence possibly linked to the alleged reactor site.

"The agency clearly thinks it has something significant enough to report to put Syria on the (nuclear safeguards) agenda right after North Korea and Iran," said a senior diplomat with ties to the Vienna-based U.N. watchdog.

"It's been made clear to us that the samples raise further questions," said a fourth diplomat who like others asked for anonymity in exchange for discussing confidential information.

Syria's only declared nuclear site is a research reactor. It is an ally of Iran, whose secretive uranium enrichment programme is subject of a long-running investigation now stalled over IAEA demands for wider access. Iran says it is refining uranium only for electricity, not nuclear weapons as Western leaders suspect.

ElBaradei's Syria report, as well as his latest one on Iran, are expected to be issued next week ahead of the board meeting.

Given the allegations against Syria, the United States, Britain and France raised questions to IAEA officials last week about a Syrian bid for an IAEA "technical feasibility and site selection study" for a nuclear power plant, diplomats added.

"It is ludicrous that Syria is asking for such technical assistance at the same time it is under investigation for covert nuclear work," said the senior diplomat, suggesting the project would not win the required consensus approval by the board.

The IAEA has been probing Syria since May, shortly after Washington handed over intelligence about the site -- but months after Israel flattened it and Syria swept it clean.

ElBaradei criticised the delay in intelligence-sharing and a U.S. failure to alert the IAEA before the bombing, saying this would make it very difficult for the world's NPT guardian agency to establish the facts "because the corpse is gone".

Syria says all that was at the al-Kibar site was a disused military building. It told an IAEA assembly in September it was cooperating fully with the probe but would not go as far as opening up military sites as this would undermine its security.

IAEA finds uranium traces at Syrian site

[Shammu]

IAEA finds uranium traces at Syrian site

They said the minute uranium particles turned up in some environmental swipe samples U.N. inspectors took at the site in a visit last June. They said the finding was not enough to draw conclusions but raised concerns requiring further clarification.

'Not enough to draw conclusions'? What else do they want to find or see?? Maybe a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem?? The IAEA would STILL probably find some other excuse if that happened rather than state the obvious!!

[Shammu]

Obama's adviser favors Syria & Egypt over Israel

By John Perazzo
November 11, 2008

History will record that Barack Obama’s first act of diplomacy as America’s president-elect took place two days after his election victory, when he dispatched his senior foreign-policy adviser, Robert Malley, to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—to outline for them the forthcoming administration’s Mideast policy vis-à-vis those nations. An aide to Malley reports, “The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests” than has President Bush. The Bush administration, it should be noted, has rightly recognized Syria to be not only a chief supporter of the al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq, but also the headquarters of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the longtime sponsor of Hamas—the terrorist army whose founding charter is irrevocably committed to the annihilation of Israel. Yet unlike President Bush, Obama and Malley have called for Israel to engage in peace negotiations with Syria.

A Harvard-trained lawyer and Rhodes Scholar, Robert Malley is no newcomer to the Obama team. In 2007, Obama selected him as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. At the time, Malley was (and still is today) the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group (ICG), which receives funding from the Open Society Institute of George Soros (who, incidentally, serves on the ICG Executive Committee).

In his capacity with ICG, Malley directs a number of analysts who focus their attention most heavily on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the political and military developments in Iraq, and Islamist movements across the Middle East. Prior to joining ICG, Malley served as President Bill Clinton’s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs (1998-2001), and as National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s Executive Assistant (1996-1998).

Robert Malley was raised in France. His lineage is noteworthy. His father, Simon Malley (1923-2006), was a key figure in the Egyptian Communist Party. A passionate hater of Israel, the elder Malley was a close friend and confidante of the late PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat; an inveterate critic of “Western imperialism”; a supporter of various revolutionary “liberation movements,” particularly the Palestinian cause; a beneficiary of Soviet funding; and a supporter of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to American Thinker news editor Ed Lasky, Simon Malley “participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World [and] … wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations.”

In a July 2001 op-ed which Malley penned for the New York Times, he alleged that Israeli—not Palestinian—inflexibility had caused the previous year’s Camp David peace talks (brokered by Bill Clinton) to fall apart. This was one of several controversial articles Malley has written—some he co-authored with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Arafat—blaming Israel and exonerating Arafat (the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolph Hitler) for the failure of the peace process.

Malley’s identification of Israel as the cause of the Camp David impasse has been widely embraced by Palestinian and Arab activists around the world, by Holocaust deniers like Norman Finkelstein, and by anti-Israel publications such as Counterpunch. It should be noted that Malley’s account of the Camp David negotiations is entirely inconsistent with the recollections of the key figures who participated in those talks—specifically, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, and then-U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross (Clinton’s Middle East envoy).

Malley also has written numerous op-eds urging the U.S. to disengage from Israel to some degree, and recommending that America reach out to negotiate with its traditional Arab enemies such as Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah (a creature of Iran dedicated to the extermination of the Jews and death to America), and Muqtada al-Sadr (the Shiite terrorist leader in Iraq).

In addition, Malley has advised nations around the world to establish relationships with, and to send financial aid to, the Hamas-led Palestinian government in Gaza. In Malley’s calculus, the electoral victory that swept Hamas into power in January 2006 was a manifestation of legitimate Palestinian “anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat’s imprisonment, Israel’s incursions, [and] Western lecturing …”

Moreover, Malley contends that it is both unreasonable and unrealistic for Israel or Western nations to demand that Syria sever its ties with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Iran. Rather, he suggests that if Israel were to return the Golan Heights (which it captured in the 1967 Six Day War, and again in the 1973 Yom Kippur War—two conflicts sparked by Arab aggression which sought so permanently wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth) to Syrian control, Damascus would be inclined to pursue peace with Israel.

Malley has criticized the U.S. for allegedly remaining “on the sidelines” and being a “no-show” in the overall effort to bring peace to the nations of the Middle East. Exhorting the Bush administration to change its policy of refusing to engage diplomatically with terrorists and their sponsoring states, Malley wrote in July 2006: “Today the U.S. does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah…. The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”

This inclination to negotiate with any and all enemies of the U.S. and Israel—an impulse which Malley has outlined clearly and consistently—has had a powerful influence on Barack Obama.

It is notable that six months ago the Obama campaign and Malley hastily severed ties with one another after the Times of London reported that Malley had been meeting privately with Hamas leaders on a regular basis—something Obama had publicly pledged never to do. At the time, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt minimized the significance of this monumentally embarrassing revelation, saying: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”

But indeed, within hours after Obama’s election victory, Malley was back as a key player in the president-elect’s team of advisors—on his way to Syria. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, received a most friendly communication from Hamas, congratulating him on his “historic victory.”

Obama's adviser favors Syria & Egypt over Israel

[Shammu]

Prophecy is lining up so quickly here. It's no wonder Israel feels so threatened and without help.

Their spy networks are number 1 in the World. I believe Israel knows exactly how this will go down. No wonder they are talking and may strike at Iran soon to protect themselves.

[nChrist]

Prophecy is lining up so quickly here. It's no wonder Israel feels so threatened and without help.

Their spy networks are number 1 in the World. I believe Israel knows exactly how this will go down. No wonder they are talking and may strike at Iran soon to protect themselves.

I think that Israel has shown great patience.