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Bible Quotations For Today

I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he
"Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 08/21-24: "Again he said to them, ‘I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.’Then the Jews said, ‘Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, "Where I am going, you cannot come"?’He said to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he."

They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
"Letter to the Hebrews 11/11-16: "By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.’All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them."

Renzi Meets Salam, Says Europe Should Shift More Attention to Middle East
Naharnet/December 22/15/Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi paid an official visit to Lebanon on Tuesday by holding talks with Premier Tammam Salam and highlighting the Syrian refugee burden Lebanon is facing. He said after meeting Salam: “Europe should focus more of its attention on the Middle East.” He noted that Italy, of a population of 60 million, is harboring 150,000 refugees, while Lebanon, of a population of four million, has taken in over 1.5 million Syrians. He credited Lebanon's success in this area to the hospitality of its people and their perseverance. “We must work on resolving the migrant problem by tackling its cause,” stressed Renzi from the Grand Serail.For his part, Salam emphasized the “firm” ties Lebanon enjoys with Italy, adding that the European country has “not spared any effort in helping us in addressing our offshore oil and gas wealth file.”Prior to meeting with Salam, Renzi had paid a visit to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon troops in the South, highlighting the role of the Italian contingent in the peacekeeping mission.

Salam Meets Daryan, Calls for Confronting Terrorism and Supporting Moderation
Naharnet/December 22/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam reiterated on Tuesday the efforts to support moderation and to confront the acts of terrorism that are “harming the image of the Islam.”“We will continue to support moderation and confront terrorism that is tarnishing the image of Islam,” said Salam marking the Prophet's Birthday and after meeting Grand Mufti Abdul Latif Daryan at Dar al-Fatwa. “We hope that the efforts of the Grand Mufti continue to succeed in confronting everything that is hampering the path of Islam and Muslims,” he added. For his part, Daryan said: “We have to confront the damage that the extremists want to inflict on our religion.”He concluded by saying: “We will not back down on coexistence no matter what the conditions are because we are one nation with one fate.”

Asiri Meets al-Rahi: Urges Officials against Wasting Opportunities to Resolve Crises
Naharnet/December 22/15/Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri hoped that the country would be able to resolve the deadlock in the presidency and elect a new head of state. He said after holding talks with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi: “We urge all officials against wasting any effort to find solutions to pending crises.” “National unity is the golden rule for Lebanon's perseverance,” he added from Bkirki. The ambassador hoped that the election of a president would pave the way for tackling other constitutional affairs. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls. Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh emerged in recent months as a presidential nominee. Media reports on Tuesday said that Saudi Arabia has pushed for his candidacy. Asiri had frequently said that the kingdom does not interfere in Lebanon's internal affairs and that it will back efforts that enjoy the support of the majority.

Norwegian NGO Car Shot at in Bekaa Attempted Robbery
Naharnet/December 22/15/A vehicle belonging to a Norwegian humanitarian NGO came under fire Tuesday in the Bekaa region during an attempted robbery, state-run National News Agency reported. “Unknown individuals shot at a car for the Norwegian Refugee Council on Maqneh's road in northern Bekaa in an attempted robbery,” NNA said. “After it turned out that the car does not contain any valuables, the gunmen released the passengers,” the agency added. No casualties or material damage were reported, it said.

Change and Reform Slams 'Worse Than Sukleen' Garbage Exportation Plan
Naharnet/December 22/15/The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc on Tuesday slammed a garbage exportation plan adopted Monday by the cabinet as “worse than Sukleen,” the waste management firm whose contract with the Lebanese state expired in July. The resolution, described as “temporary” by Prime Minister Tammam Salam, was passed despite the objections of the bloc's ministers and their Kataeb Party colleagues. In a statement issued after its weekly meeting, Change and Reform noted that passing such a decision amid “the objections of two main components of the government” violates “the decision-taking mechanism that was agreed on” regarding the work of the cabinet amid a presidential vacuum. “The Lebanese must know that one ton of garbage will cost around $222,” the bloc noted. “What are the sources of funding? What are the exportation destinations? Did a call for tenders take place? Did we receive any proposals?” Change and Reform asked in its statement, which was recited by former labor minister Salim Jreissati. “The solution that replaced Sukleen is worse than Sukleen itself,” the bloc added, stressing that Sukleen must be “held accountable” over its handling of the waste management file in the past 20 years. Change and Reform also underlined that the municipalities' revenues from the mobile phone firms must not be used to fund the garbage exportation plan. As for accusations that the bloc is obstructing the work of the cabinet, the bloc emphasized that it is not putting hurdles bur rather “improving the mechanism of taking decisions amid a presidential vacuum.”Salam announced after the cabinet session on Monday that the pressing need to "end this nightmare" forced the government to resort to the garbage exportation option until a more lasting solution could be found. “This is a temporary and transitional solution and I hope it will be a lesson to everyone on the need to avoid political bickering … We are amidst organic, household and municipal waste, but we are also suffering from 'political garbage',” the PM said. The cabinet session was accompanied by a protest outside the Grand Serail by civil society activists.Denouncing the manner in which the government has handled the waste management file, the activists warned authorities against “approving the exportation of garbage or hiking gasoline prices.”“This would mean that corruption has not ended,” the activists noted. They had long called for an eco-friendly solution to the garbage crisis that involves more recycling and composting to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills and a bigger role for municipalities. Lebanon has been suffering from a waste management crisis since July when the Naameh landfill that receives the trash of Beirut and Mount Lebanon closed. The government's failure to find alternatives led to the piling up of garbage on the streets and in random locations, which raised health and environmental concerns and sparked unprecedented street protests against the entire political class.

Mustaqbal Condemns Quntar's Assassination, Urges Hizbullah to 'Return to Lebanon'
Naharnet/December 22/15/Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc strongly condemned Tuesday the assassination of senior Hizbullah operative Samir al-Quntar in an air raid blamed on Israel near the Syrian capital Damascus, as it urged the group to withdraw its fighters from the neighboring country. “The bloc condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli aggression in Syria as well as the cowardly and criminal assassination of the 'dean of prisoners in Israeli jails', the martyr Samir al-Quntar, on Syrian soil,” Mustaqbal said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting. “As it holds the international community and the global players in Syria responsible for these heinous crimes against the Syrian people, al-Mustaqbal bloc once again calls on all Arab peoples to be aware of the dangerous threats that are surrounding them, which include sectarian conflicts,” the bloc added. The 54-year-old Quntar was killed on Saturday night "when the Zionist enemy planes bombed the building where he lived in Jaramana," southeast of Damascus, Hizbullah said in a statement that followed the operation. Israel has welcomed news of Quntar's death without claiming responsibility for the air strike that killed him. Hizbullah played a key role in Quntar's release after he had spent 30 years in Israeli jails, becoming known as the longest-serving Arab prisoner. Quntar was still a teenager when he and three other members of the Palestine Liberation Front infiltrated the Israeli village of Nahariya by sea from Lebanon in 1979. According to Israel's judiciary, the militants killed three Israelis, including a four-year-old girl. Quntar had however denied responsibility for the girl's death, saying she was killed in the crossfire. Shortly after his release, Quntar joined Hizbullah. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said he became "head of the Syrian resistance for the liberation of the Golan," a group launched two years ago by Hizbullah in the region, most of which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. Separately, al-Mustaqbal called on Lebanese parties to evaluate the previous period and its “experiences and lessons, especially the experience of Hizbullah's involvement in the ongoing conflict in Syria, which has brought Lebanon a lot of problems.”“It has become necessary for Hizbullah to realize the importance of its return to Lebanon, so that it can spare the Lebanese youths that losses they are incurring and death for the sake of a cause that is not their cause,” the bloc said. It also warned that Hizbullah's military involvement in the neighboring country is “negatively affecting all Lebanese.” Turning to the recent initiative that was launched by al-Mustabqal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri to end the presidential vacuum, the bloc stressed the importance of “maintaining the spirit of communication that … Hariri is showing with all political parties in a bid to reach an end to the dangerous presidential void crisis.” Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls. Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh emerged in recent weeks as a presidential nominee, in the wake of a Paris meeting between him and Hariri. But the Hariri-Franjieh initiative ran aground in recent days after it was met by objections and reservations from the country's main Christian parties – the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party. Hizbullah is also reportedly clinging to the nomination of its ally MP Michel Aoun, the head of the Change and Reform bloc.

Jumblat: Not Every Sunni is a Terrorist, Syrian Crisis Won't End Soon
Naharnet/December 22/15/Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stressed Tuesday that “not every Sunni is a terrorist,” noting that “dialogue among us as Lebanese is essential and vital for preserving stability and Lebanon.”“Dialogue remains essential to safeguard coexistence, in addition to its role in alleviating the impact and repercussions of the Syrian crisis and the other problems in the region,” said Jumblat in Khalde, where he extended condolences to the Arab tribes there over the death of Rameh al-Daher. “We are all facing the issue of terrorism and the security agencies are confronting this problem. It is necessary to clarify here that not every Sunni is a terrorist,” he added. “There is no problem here in Khalde, but the issue is sensitive and critical in the North and Akkar. At the same time, the North and Akkar are regions that need development, services and care,” the Druze leader went on to say. Asked about the Syrian crisis, Jumblat noted that “international slyness is controlling the course of the Syrian situation.”“The U.N. Security Council has recently issued a resolution and there might be a transitional government and period … but the crisis will be very, very long,” Jumblat noted.

Man Convicted in 1996 Plane Hijacking Sent Back to Lebanon
Associated Press/Naharnet/December 22/15/A man convicted of hijacking a Spanish airliner in 1996 on its way from Madrid to Havana has been removed from the U.S. by federal immigration officials.U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said in a news release that officers took 47-year-old Saado Mohamed Ibrahim on Sunday from Jacksonville to Beirut, where he was handed over to officials. Ibrahim was convicted of air piracy and received a 20-year prison sentence in 1997. He was being held at a federal prison in central Florida. Prosecutors say he forced his way into the cockpit of Iberia Flight 6621 and threatened to detonate an explosive. The airplane was carrying 231 passengers. The aircraft landed in Miami, and Ibrahim surrendered to authorities peacefully.

Protests Have Died but Trash Disaster Continues
Associated Press/Naharnet/December 22/15/The country's trash collection crisis, which set off huge protests this summer, is entering its sixth month, but you would hardly know it in Beirut. Not only are the capital's streets kept relatively garbage-free, but the country's politicians have been in no hurry to resolve the catastrophe. Instead, trash is pushed to the periphery, piled in hills near the mouth of the city's river, attracting a fly infestation that has plagued Beirut's easternmost residents since early November. On the other side of the river, trash mounds along the bank reach the height of roadway overpasses.
"The situation is disastrous," said Rachid Rahme, a physician at Lebanon's Sacre Coeur Hospital. "I don't like to get involved in politics, but I'm sure they could find a way to deal with it rather than dealing with it in this way."The latest initiative to solve the crisis, a proposal to export the waste temporarily, was approved by the cabinet following a marathon six-hour meeting Monday evening, despite complaints by some ministers about its exorbitant cost. Prime Minister Tammam Salam emerged after the meeting, telling reporters that the pressing need to "end this nightmare" forced the government to resort to this option until a more lasting solution could be found. Still, it will likely be at least several weeks before implementation of the export plan starts. Frustration over the mounting garbage sparked a protest movement under the banner "You Stink," an epithet aimed at the government, which brought tens of thousands of demonstrators into Beirut's streets over the summer. The collection crisis erupted in July after authorities closed the primary landfill for Beirut and the surrounding coastal governorate without providing an alternative. The demonstrations were a catharsis of discontent directed at the political class, which has walled itself off from popular opinion and failed to provide other basic services such as water, electricity and drainage. But those protests have largely fizzled out, owing to a mix of canny political maneuvering and repressive crackdowns. In September, young men openly identifying themselves as supporters of Speaker Nabih Berri descended on the protesters, carrying knives and throwing punches and stones. The security forces withdrew. Every time demonstrators attempted to approach the parliament building, security forces fired their weapons into the air, sprayed tear gas and water cannons, and arrested dozens.
To a country still accustomed to spasms of violence, twenty-five years after the formal conclusion of its civil war, the threat of disorder scared protesters off. "The political authorities played it smart to defuse us," said Assad Thebian, one of the organizers behind the politically unaffiliated campaign. The state's fastidious efforts to keep the capital's streets clean also helped pacify the population. Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, one of the architects of the trash exporting plan, says the country has no choice but to export after a tortured national process to open new landfills collapsed. "There's no trust in the government, so the people refused to accept sanitary landfills. And until we restart government institutions and elect a president, we are stuck with the most expensive solution," he said. The country has not had parliamentary elections since 2009 and has failed to elect a president since 2014. With over one million war refugees entering Lebanon from neighboring Syria since 2011 and the country's parties openly allied with rival sides in that conflict, Lebanon's politicians say they have to move cautiously to preserve the fragile political balance. A few municipalities have launched their own recycling initiatives, but many others are simply burning their garbage, often in residential areas. Air contamination in these areas is now more than 400 times worse than pollution in the country's industrial areas, a recent study by the American University of Beirut revealed. Rahme said the consequences can be disastrous and already gastroenteritis cases are up 30 percent since last year."There are other diseases that can happen ... It can cause cancer in the long run and asthma in the short term," he warned.

Report: Aoun Open to All Sides Regarding Presidency
Naharnet/December 22/15/Head of the Change and Reform bloc MP Michel Aoun reiterated his determination to run for the presidency despite the nomination of fellow March 8 alliance member MP Suleiman Franjieh for the post, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday. Aoun's visitors told the daily: “He will remain a candidate who enjoys popular backing and he will be open to all sides because he believes that the presidency needs to regain its dignity.” “It needs to regain its role and influence in matters linked to constitutional institutions, starting with the legislative and executive authorities,” they added. Marada Movement leader Franjieh's nomination for the presidency has created tensions with Aoun, who is also a nominee. Franjieh had previously announced that he would not run for the country's top post as long as the Change and Reform bloc chief is still a candidate. He announced his candidacy last week, adding during a televised interview that his ties with Aoun are “abnormal.” The Christian blocs of the Kataeb Party and Lebanese Forces, both allies in the March 14 camp, have voiced reservations to Franjieh's nomination. LF chief Samir Geagea is also a presidential candidate.

Report: Saudi Arabia Pushed for Franjieh's Nomination
Naharnet/December 22/15/Contacts are ongoing between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the political deadlock in Lebanon, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday. A political source told the daily that Saudi Arabia has played a main role in the nomination of Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh as president. It is part of efforts to resolve regional crises, starting with Lebanon, it explained. Franjieh emerged as a candidate following talks with Mustaqbal Movement leader MP Saad Hariri a few weeks ago. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said that it does not meddle in Lebanon's internal affairs, but would support a candidate who enjoys the support of the majority of the political powers.

Cabinet Approves Garbage Exportation Plan amid FPM, Kataeb Objections
Naharnet/December 22/15/The cabinet on Monday approved a plan to send garbage abroad as a “temporary” solution to the waste disposal crisis, despite the objections of the ministers of the Free Patriotic Movement and the Kataeb Party. “We have overcome a huge burden that was pressuring Lebanon and the Lebanese,” Prime Minister Tammam Salam announced after the session. “The garbage exportation solution was reached amid procrastination and obstruction in the country and amid a tense political situation. It was reached after a lot of disputes and disagreements that led us to the current situation,” Salam added. “This is a temporary and transitional solution and I hope it will be a lesson to everyone on the need to avoid political bickering … We are amidst organic, household and municipal waste, but we are also suffering from 'political garbage',” the PM said. Noting that the country needs a “sustainable waste management solution,” Salam pointed out that Lebanon must “use garbage to produce electricity.”The resolution was passed despite the objections of the ministers Elias Bou Saab of the FPM and Sejaan Qazzi and Alain Hakim of Kataeb. Kataeb's minister Ramzi Jreij voiced reservations.
Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil of the FPM did not attend the session. “Bou Saab told Salam that passing such a decree despite the objections of two main parties must not become a rule that governs cabinet's work or a reason to change the current mechanism,” MTV said. According to Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, exportation will cost $212 per ton. “During the cabinet debate, Salam intervened several times, demanding decisiveness and criticizing the rejection of all solutions,” LBCI television said.Prior to the session, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil told reporters that he does not support “hiking gasoline prices” to fund the garbage exportation plan. Bou Saab for his part noted that he would raise “many questions about the funding sources, especially regarding public funds and the municipalities' revenues.” The session was accompanied by a protest outside the Grand Serail by civil society activists. Denouncing the manner in which the government has handled the waste management file, the activists warned authorities against “approving the exportation of garbage or hiking gasoline prices.” “This would mean that corruption has not ended,” the activists noted. They had long called for an eco-friendly solution to the garbage crisis that involves more recycling and composting to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills and a bigger role for municipalities. Lebanon has been suffering from a waste management crisis since July when the Naameh landfill that receives the trash of Beirut and Mount Lebanon closed. The government's failure to find alternatives led to the piling up of garbage on the streets and in random locations, which raised health and environmental concerns and sparked unprecedented street protests against the entire political class.

Assad Attends Damascus Mosque for Prophet Mohammed Birthday
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 22/15/Syrian President Bashar Assad, in one of his rare public appearances, attended the Muslim celebration of Mawlid marking the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in a Damascus mosque Tuesday, state media reported. The ceremony, broadcast on state television, was held in al-Akram mosque in the capital's western district of Mazzeh. Assad was shown next to Religious Affairs Minister Mohammed Abdel Sattar Sayyed and the mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badredin Hassoun. Last Friday, the president and his wife Asma also made a pre-Christmas visit to a church in an eastern suburb of Damascus often targeted by rebel artillery. Assad, a member of the Alawite sector of Shia Islam, presents himself as a protector of Syria's minorities. He says his secular regime is an example of tolerance, in contrast to the extremism of jihadists such as the Islamic State group which has seized large swathes of the war-torn country.

Over one million migrants reach Europe in 2015
AFP, Geneva Tuesday, 22 December 2015/More than one million migrants and refugees reached Europe this year, including over 970,000 who made the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday. The new figures, jointly released by the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), listed migrant arrivals in six European countries since January 1, with the vast majority of people -- 821,008 -- landing in Greece. A total of 3,692 migrants died or disappeared crossing the sea, IOM said. “The number of people displaced by war and conflict is the highest seen in Western and Central Europe since the 1990s,” the UNHCR said, referring to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia that decade. Half of those who made it to Europe this year were Syrians fleeing their country’s brutal civil war, the UNHCR said, underscoring the conflict’s dominant role in fueling Europe’s migrant crisis. Afghans made up 20 percent of the group, while seven percent of arrivals were Iraqis. After Greece, Italy received the second highest number of migrants, with 150,317 people reaching its territory this year, all by sea. This marked a slight declined from 2014, when 170,000 people landed in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa. Rounding out the group of European countries that saw migrant arrivals in 2015 was Bulgaria (29,959), Spain (3,845), Cyprus (269) and Malta (106). “We know migration is inevitable, it’s necessary and it’s desirable,” said IOM chief William Lacy Swing, “But it’s not enough to count the number of those arriving... We must also act,” he added, calling for “legal, safe and secure” migration for those forced to leave their home country. The total number of arrivals by sea in 2014 was about 219,000, according to the U.N. Reflecting on the last 12 months, the UNHCR criticized the “initial chaotic reaction” in parts of Europe to the flood of migrants, but applauded signs that a more coordinated response was now emerging. But a unified EU positon remains elusive, with Hungary and Slovakia having made threats of legal action against the bloc’s controversial plan to distribute 160,000 refugees across the bloc.

Eleven migrants drown after boat sinks off Turkey’s western coast
Reuters, Istanbul Tuesday, 22 December 2015/Eleven people drowned while seven others were rescued from the sea after a boat carrying migrants to Greece sank off Turkey's western coast, Turkish news agency Dogan reported on Tuesday. The Turkish coast guard was continuing search and rescue efforts with the help of helicopters where the boat sank off the coast of Kusadasi, a tourist resort area. It was not immediately clear how many migrants in total were on board. A record 500,000 refugees from the four-year-old civil war in Syria have travelled through Turkey, then risked their lives at sea to reach Greek islands this year, their first stop in the European Union before continuing to wealthier countries. Despite the winter conditions and rough seas, the exodus has continued, albeit at a slower pace. Hundreds have died this year on this sea route. The number of refugees and migrants arriving by land and sea in the European Union has passed 1 million this year, and a further 3,600 died or went missing, the U.N. refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday. Turkey struck a deal with the EU in November pledging to help stem the flow of migrants to Europe in return for 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) of financial aid for the 2.2 million Syrian refugees it is hosting, as well as renewed talks on joining the 28-nation bloc.

U.N.: People who reject Syrian refugees are allies of extremists
Reuters, United Nations Tuesday, 22 December 2015/People who reject Syrian refugees are the “best allies” of ISIS militants and other extremists, the United Nations refugee chief said on Monday after U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed an entry ban on foreign Muslims. More than 4.3 million Syrians have fled a nearly five-year civil war. U.N. High Commissioner for refugees Antonio Guterres told the Security Council they cannot be blamed for the terror they are risking their lives to escape. “Those that reject Syrian refugees, and especially if they are Muslim, are the best allies of the propaganda and the recruitment of extremist groups,” Guterres said in a swipe at Trump and some U.S. state governors and European leaders. Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that ISIS is using Trump’s rhetoric to enlist fighters. Trump rejected her claim and called her a “liar.” Amid the chaos of Syria’s war, ISIS has seized swathes of territory and proclaimed a caliphate. The group claimed responsibility for the deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris and also said a married couple who carried out a mass shooting in Southern California on Dec. 2 were its followers. The attacks sparked warnings from politicians in Europe and North America that countries could face big risks by admitting refugees without rigorously determining if any could be dangerous extremists. Several U.S. states said they would close the door to Syrian refugees, while Trump - currently the Republican Party’s front-runner for the November 2016 election - called for a ban on foreign Muslims entering the United States. “We must not forget that - despite the rhetoric we are hearing these days - refugees are the first victims of such terror, not its source,” Guterres said. “They cannot be blamed for a threat which they’re risking their lives to escape.”

Couple held in Paris over ‘fake bomb’ on Air France flight
AFP, Paris Monday, 21 December 2015/French police on Monday detained a couple who were passengers on an Air France flight which was forced to make an emergency landing after a fake bomb was found on board, a police source said. The couple were taken into custody by border police on their return to France, a day after their flight from Mauritius to Paris was forced to make an emergency landing in Kenya.

Putin: ‘We don’t want Soviet Union back, but no one believes us’
AFP, Moscow Monday, 21 December 2015/Russia is not trying to bring back the USSR, President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary aired Sunday, but the problem is that "nobody wants to believe it". Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, which saw pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych ousted by pro-European demonstrators, Moscow has accused the West of using "the politics of containment" in a Cold War throwback. "With Ukraine and other areas of the former USSR, I'm sure our Western partners aren't working in the interests of Ukraine, they are working to prevent the recreation of the USSR," he said in "World Order", a documentary broadcast on the public Rossiya 1 channel. "But nobody wants to believe us, nobody wants to believe that we're not trying to bring the Soviet Union back," he said. The president also used the documentary to take a familiar swipe at Western intervention in North Africa and the Middle East. "You can't just impose your version of democracy, of good and evil, onto people of other cultures, with other religions and traditions in this mechanic, automatic way," he said. "Apparently (the West) think they're infallible, but when the moment comes to take some responsibility, they disappear."

Belgian police raid home, make arrests in Paris attacks probe
AFP, Brussels Monday, 21 December 2015/Belgian police searched a home in the centre of Brussels on Sunday and made two arrests in connection with a probe into last month’s terror attacks in Paris, federal prosecutors said.
Special Forces and federal police were involved in a raid which lasted around five hours and took place close to the city’s popular tourist area, authorities said. “They have been taken in for questioning,” Eric Van Der Sypt, spokesman for the federal prosecutor, said of the men, but gave no further details about them. However he confirmed the detained suspects did not include fugitive Salah Abdeslam, who is one of Europe’s most wanted men over his alleged involvement in the November 13 attacks that left 130 dead in the French capital. Federal prosecutors will release a statement on Monday with further details on the arrests, the spokesman said. The search took place in a building on the outer limits of Molenbeek -- an area with a large immigrant population - and less than a kilometre away from Brussels’ central Grand Place square, one of the city’s most popular tourist sites.
Pedestrians were evacuated as the raid took place, from 6pm to 11pm local time (1700-2200 GMT). Belgian police are still actively looking for 26-year-old, Brussels-born Abdeslam, suspected of having played a key role in the Paris attacks and understood to have returned to the Belgian capital the day after the bloodshed. An international arrest warrant is out on Abdeslam, who lived in Molenbeek. A source close to the Belgian investigation told AFP earlier Sunday that Abdeslam made it past three police checks when friends drove him from Paris to Brussels in the hours after the coordinated gun and suicide attacks. Belgium has so far arrested eight people on suspicion of involvement in the terror assaults, which have been claimed by ISIS.

Russia confirms food embargo on Ukraine
AFP, Moscow Monday, 21 December 2015/Russia will introduce a food embargo against Ukraine next month over Kiev’s trade deal with the EU, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday, extending punitive measures already in place against Western countries.“These measures will be extended to Ukraine too,” Medvedev said at a government meeting. “I have just signed the relevant decree.” On the same day, Russia’s foreign ministry lashed out at the European Union for prolonging sanctions over the Ukraine crisis for another six months rather than choosing to cooperate over issues including the fight against terrorism. “It is necessary to point out that instead of building constructive cooperation to counter the key challenges of our times such as international terrorism the EU in Brussels prefers to continue its short-sighted game of sanctions,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. A free trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union is set to enter into force from January 1 as part of a broader agreement that helped sparked the current crisis between Kiev and the West on one side and Moscow on the other.
Russia has repeatedly expressed concern that Ukraine’s free trade agreement with Brussels may flood its market with European goods, and months of three-way talks with the EU to smooth the transition have yielded no results.
President Vladimir Putin last week ordered a suspension of Russia’s 2011 free trade agreement with Ukraine. The move will effectively raise customs tariffs for Ukrainian exporters to Russia by seven percent. “We must protect our market and our producers and to prevent import of products masked as Ukrainian that are from other countries,” Medvedev said. “There have been several rounds of talks. They did not bring any result,” he added. “Neither Ukraine nor the European Union are ready to sign a legally binding agreement which would take into account Russia’s interests.” Moscow’s slapped a ban on a large array of agricultural produce from the EU and other nations including the United States in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanction against Russia over its meddling in Ukraine. Medvedev’s announcement came as European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom was engaged in the latest attempt to reach common ground on the issue with Russia’s Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Brussels.

France, Russia to ‘strengthen’ intel exchange on ISIS
AFP, Moscow Monday, 21 December 2015/Moscow and Paris have agreed to up efforts to share intelligence relating to ISIS after the countries vowed to cooperate militarily on the issue. “We have agree to strengthen our exchange of military information, both on the strikes and the location of the different groups (in Syria),” French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said following talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu. “Our intelligence services will strengthen their already existing ties, which require increased cooperation.” Western nations have complained that Russia is primarily bombing rebels, including moderates, which threaten the regime of Bashar al-Assad, rather than targeting ISIS. But Le Drian said earlier he hoped France would also be able to cooperate with Russia in other areas. “There are many Russian speakers in Daesh which it would be useful for us to have information on, and likewise we could perhaps provide information on their French speakers,” the minister said. “Intelligence sharing requires giving on both sides,” he said. Le Drian and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu will also discuss ways to avoid any collisions between Russian and French aircraft in Syrian airspace. France recently deployed its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Gulf, with 26 bombers on board, for operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Other aircraft are also stationed in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The defence ministers’ talks follow a visit to Moscow last month by French President Francois Hollande, when he sought support from Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for increased action against ISIS in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris. The two leaders agreed to “intensify” and “coordinate” attacks, mainly by targeting the transportation of the oil products which finance the group and through the exchange of intelligence. Russian air strikes on ISIS have since increased but 80 percent of their attacks remain on Syrian rebels, according to French military sources. This is only the second bilateral meeting between Le Drian and Shoigu, as relations between the two ministers were suspended for two years after the annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014.

China appoints first anti-terror czar: state media
AFP, Beijing Monday, 21 December 2015/China has appointed its first counter-terrorism chief, state media said Monday, as it wages a controversial campaign to stamp out ethnic violence linked to the western Xinjiang region. Liu Yuejin was appointed the commissioner of counter-terrorism, the China Daily reported. He previously served as an assistant minister of public security and has worked on the country’s anti-narcotics efforts since the 1980s, the paper said. Xinjiang, the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, has been plagued by unrest in recent years, provoking China to launch a police crackdown on separatist “terrorists” it says are behind the violence. With the rise of ISIS, Beijing has increasingly attributed the attacks to foreign influence, while some experts see them as a reaction to discrimination and controls over the Uighurs’ culture and religion.Uighur attacks on civilians have claimed hundreds of lives and injured many more. A September knife attack at a colliery in Aksu left more than 50 people dead, according to reports by Radio Free Asia. But the government’s response has been equally brutal, according to critics. In April, AFP reported that police ruthlessly suppressed an anti-government protest in the Uighur town of Elishku, where villagers claim hundreds disappeared following the incident. State media labelled the incident a “terror attack”. China’s war on narcotics, too, has been criticized for its often heavy-handed approach to dealing with criminals which has done little to stem the rising tide of drug usage. In 2013, Liu told Chinese newspaper the Global Times that Beijing had considered carrying out a drone strike against a drug lord in Myanmar who had been linked to the 2011 murder of 13 Chinese sailors.

U.S. ends 30-year ban on blood donations by homosexual men
Toni Clarke, Reuters Monday, 21 December 2015/The United States government on Monday overturned its 30-year ban on blood donations by gay men, saying they can now donate 12 months after their last sexual contact with another man. The Food and Drug Administration said its decision to reverse the policy was based on an examination of the latest science which shows that an indefinite ban is not necessary to prevent transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “Ultimately, the 12-month deferral window is supported by the best available scientific evidence, at this point in time, relevant to the U.S. population,” Dr. Peter Marks, deputy director of the FDA’s biologics division, said in a statement. The move brings the United States in line with countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand which also have 12-month deferral periods. Gay rights advocates said the updated policy remains discriminatory. “It is ridiculous and counter to the public health that a married gay man in a monogamous relationship can’t give blood, but a promiscuous straight man who has had hundreds of opposite sex partners in the last year can,” said Jared Polis, a Democratic congressman and co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, a caucus of openly gay members of Congress. The FDA said it has worked with other government agencies and considered input from outside advisory bodies, and has “carefully examined the most recent available scientific evidence to support the current policy revision.”During Australia’s switch from an indefinite blood donor deferral policy on gay men, essentially a ban, to a 12-month deferral, studies evaluating more than 8 million units of donated blood were performed using a national blood surveillance system, the FDA said.
“These published studies document no change in risk to the blood supply with use of the 12-month deferral,” the agency said. “Similar data are not available for shorter deferral intervals.”Additionally, the agency said people with hemophilia and related blood clotting disorders will continue to be banned from donating blood due to potential harm they could suffer from large needles. Previously they were banned due to an increased risk of HIV transmission. The agency said it has put in place a safety monitoring system for the blood supply which it expects to provide “critical information” to help inform future FDA blood donor policies. The FDA said its policies have helped reduce HIV transmission rates from blood transfusions from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1.47 million. The FDA first proposed the changes in May. It received some 700 public comments. About half recommended keeping the ban in place.

Netanyahu, Putin discuss fight against terrorism after Kuntar assassination
Itamar Eichner, Roi Kais/Ynetnews/Published: 12.22.15
The prime minister and Russian president spoke on the phone and agreed to continue cooperation in the region, while claims arise in Arab media that Israel and Russia coordinated killing of Hezbollah leader in Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call on Tuesday to coordinate their two countries' actions to fight terrorism in the Middle East, only three days after Hezbollah leader Samir Kuntar was killed in an airstrike in Syria, which the Lebanese terror organization attributes to Israel. The two leaders discussed the Syrian crisis during their conversation.
"Vladimir Putin stressed that there is no alternative to the launch of intra-Syrian negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, as well as to the continued and uncompromising fight against Islamic State and other extremist groups acting in Syria," the Kremlin was quoted as saying. Russia has dived in head-first into the Syrian civil war, launching its military operations in the country on September 30 in support of President Bashar Assad. Israel and Russia have set up a communications channel to make sure their air forces do not clash with each other, though it was not known whether the alleged Israeli strike on Kuntar had been announced to the Russians ahead of time. When asked about the matter on Monday, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was unsure whether Israel had warned Russia about the strike. "There is a working mechanism of information exchanges between the general staffs. It is the military who should be addressed with this question and asked if there had been any prior notifications on that score," he said. Meanwhile, Arab media not affiliated with the Assad regime or Hezbollah asserted that Russia and Israel coordinated the attack against Kuntar, as Moscow did not make use of the S-400 air defense system it deployed in Syria to stop the airstrike. The conversation between Putin and Netanyahu was also held in the wake of agreements made between Turkey and Israel that could lead to reconciliation between the two countries. While Ankara is warming ties with Jerusalem, its relationship with Moscow remains strained after the Turkish military shot down a Russian fighter jet last month, leading to an exchange of accusations between Putin and Turkish President Erdogan. The phone conversation also comes on the heels of the visit of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Putin's bitter rival, to Israel. Poroshenko met with both Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday. "Although our stories are different we have many similarities, one of which is about building up a successful state against turbulent regional realities, and under continuous attack from terrorism," Poroshenko said at the President's Residence, possibly implying to Putin's military activities in Ukraine. In his meeting with Netanyahu, Poroshenko signed several bilateral cooperation agreements. Netanyahu and Putin met on the sidelines of the Global Climate summit in Paris in late November, stressing the importance of Israeli-Russian military cooperation to prevent "unnecessary accidents."In a recent interview on Israel radio, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that a Russian plane had mistakenly entered Israeli airspace, and was not shot down. Ya'alon said the plane entered about 1.5km into Israeli airspace by mistake and immediately turned around back to Syria when the Russians were notified.
**Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Looking for a better divorce settlement, Jordanian Christian men convert to Islam
Aaron Magid/Al-Monitor/December 22/15
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2015/12/22/aaron-magidal-monitor-looking-for-a-better-divorce-settlement-jordanian-christian-men-convert-to-islam/
AMMAN, Jordan — After years of marital disputes, Mary learned that her Christian husband, Michael, had filed for divorce. Mary was surprised when at the same time, he announced his conversion to Islam. It was a calculated decision. According to Article 172 of Jordan’s Personal Status Law, a Muslim father automatically gets custody of children ages seven and above when divorcing a Christian woman. Mary (not her real name) told Al-Monitor that her three children, ages 7, 14 and 16, currently live with her ex-husband and she cannot raise them because she is Christian.A Nov. 16 investigative article by veteran journalist Nadine Nimri for the online magazine 7iber triggered public debate in Jordan about the plight of Christian women whose husbands convert to Islam before divorcing them for the specific purpose of obtaining guardianship of their children and side-stepping church courts’ jurisdiction.
“The law should deal with all citizens as equals,” Nimri told Al-Monitor. “[The Jordanian courts] just assume that the best interests of the child are to be with his Muslim father. This is another form of discrimination.” Unlike Christian women, Muslim mothers are provided the option of guardianship of their children above the age of seven in cases of divorce. Approximately 180,000 Christians live in the Hashemite Kingdom, which is more than 95% Muslim. While a man who converts to Islam and divorces his wife is easily able to remarry, a Christian divorcee seldom has the same freedom. The Jordanian Catholic courts rarely recognize divorces conducted by Shariah court judges, in essence keeping Christian women chained in a marriage that no longer exists. Only when Mary switched from Catholicism to Greek Orthodoxy did a church judge finally grant her a divorce in 2015, two years after her husband divorced her in a Shariah court.
Some Jordanian analysts see the injustice of such situations as stemming from a much larger problem. On Nov. 21, Al-Ghad columnist Ibrahim Gharaibeh wrote, “The issue is simply caused by the lack of a civil law that applies to all citizens regardless of their religion, guaranteeing them their rights and freedoms promised by the constitution.”Christian women whose husbands convert to Islam face additional discrimination beyond child custody. Since only Muslims can receive financial inheritance from other Muslims, according to Article 281 of Jordan’s Personal Status Law, a Christian wife and children face challenging economic conditions after the death of a husband or father. All Christian family members are forbidden to inherit from Muslim relatives. Once the husband has converted to Islam, he is prohibited from returning to Christianity even if he regrets the decision. Sheikh Ashraf Omari, director of Mediation and Family Reconciliation at Jordan’s Shariah court, explained simply, “It is not acceptable to convert from Islam to Christianity. This is a recognized opinion among all Islamic religious intellectuals.”
The sheikh also said that a Muslim father has the right to overrule a Christian mother’s objection to changing the religion of their child from Christianity to Islam if the child is under age seven. When Al-Monitor asked why the Muslim father’s wishes held more weight than the Christian parent, Omari defended the policy, stating, “Islam believes in all of the previous prophets, including Jesus and Moses, but Christians don’t believe in the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.”
Exemplifying the extreme distrust between Christian and Muslim clerics, Father Ibrahim Dabbour of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jordan told Al-Monitor that the Shariah court judge was “lying” when he said a Muslim father can only change his children’s religion if they are under the age of seven. “After a man converts to Islam, the government here obliges his children under 18 to become Muslim,” Dabbour said. Similar to Mary’s situation, Sarah’s husband announced his conversion from Christianity to Islam in April 2015, when he filed for divorce. Sarah is most worried about the fate of her 3-year-old son. Her lawyer told her that her ex-husband will automatically gain custody of the boy when he turns 7 because Sarah is Christian. In an interview at Sarah’s home, she expressed her frustration to Al-Monitor: “I just want my child to stay with me [like they do with] Muslim women. They are mothers, and we Christians are not mothers? We are the same,” she said.
A divorced Christian woman who converts to Islam can gain custody rights over the children and also be eligible for an inheritance from her husband. The Christian women interviewed, however, emphasized that their religion was an integral part of their identity and culture. Mary and Sarah therefore feel it is unjust to force them to renounce their Christian faith to acquire basic rights, which should instead be guaranteed by the government for all citizens. Sarah added that as a woman, her personal safety would be at risk were she to leave the church. In a society where family honor is critical, Sarah said, relatives might threaten her life for abandoning the community. Jordanian leaders, including Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, repeatedly praise the Hashemite Kingdom’s “tolerance” toward Christians and religious freedoms in the country. Custody and inheritance laws that discriminate against Christian women and children make one wonder if Ensour’s comments are directed toward Western audiences rather than the 180,000 Christian citizens of Jordan.
**Aaron Magid is an Amman-based journalist. He graduated from Harvard University with an MA in Middle Eastern studies. His articles have appeared in Al-Monitor, the New Republic and the Daily Star (Lebanon).

Russia knew about Kuntar hit, says expert
By Gil Ronen/Arutz Sheva/December 21/15
Israel would not have struck Samir Kuntar inside area protected by S-400 without Russia's knowledge, says IMRA.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205210#.Vnlra7YrKU
Israel notified Russia that it intends to strike a target inside Damascus before the airstrike that killed Samir Kuntar, estimates Dr. Aaron Lerner, of Independent Media Review Analysis (IMRA). Lerner bases this conclusion on the fact that the strike took place at a time that the Russian S-400 system is in full operation. "Samir Kuntar is hardly such a critical target for Israel that it would employ techniques for engaging in operations within an active S-400 envelope," he explained. The reason: such a strike would necessarily use techniques for evading the S-400 – assuming these techniques exist – and Russia would then be able to study these, in order to improve the S-400. Therefore, regardless of whether the strike succeeded, a future repeat of the same technique against more important targets would be likely to fail. "The only conclusion that can be reached, therefore, is that the operation took place with the knowledge of Russia that jets would operate at specific locations within the S-400 envelope – and in this case in a route that passed through the area of Syria's capital," wrote Lerner. Syria and Hezbollah are aware of this fact, he added, and they also know that "the last thing a party would do is to deceive Russia regarding the purpose of a mission that involved entering the S-400 envelope." The S-400 anti-missile system, known to NATO as the SA-21 "Growler," was deployed in Syria in November. It is said to have a maximum range of 250 miles, and can bring down airplanes at up to 90,000 feet – more than double the altitude of a cruising commercial airliner. The range puts Israel squarely in the system's sights.

The United States and Islam: What Is Going On?
Amir Taheri/Gatestone Institute/December 22/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7092/united-states-islam
The irony is that no major power in recent history has gone out of its way as has the United States to help, respect, please and, yes, appease Islam. And, yet, no other nation has been a victim of vilification, demonization, and violence on the part of the Islamists as has the U.S.
The politically correct crowd has turned Islam into a new taboo. They brand any criticism of Islam as racist, ethnocentrist or simply vile, all crammed together in the new category of "Islamophobia." Is it Islamophobia to question a religion whose Middle East leaders often preach "Death to America" and hatred for Western values?
More prevalent than Islamophobia is Islamophilia, as leftists treat Muslims as children whose feathers should not be ruffled. The Islamophilia crowd invites Americans and Europeans to sacrifice part of their own freedom in atonement of largely imaginary sins against Muslims in the colonial and imperialist era.
Many Muslims resent the kind of flattery that takes them for idiots at a time that Islam and Muslims badly need to be criticized. The world needs to wake up and ask: What is going on?
With Americans still trying to absorb the shock of San Bernardino massacre, the perennial debate about "why do they hate us" is on with more intensity than ever since 9/11. The irony is that no major power in recent history has gone out of its way as has the United States to help, respect, please and, yes, appease Islam. And, yet, no other nation has been a victim of vilification, demonization, and violence on the part of the Islamists as has the U.S.
Both Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson tried to appease the Islamist pirates of North Africa in the hope of persuading them to cease their raids on U.S. commercial ships and stop capturing Americans and selling them as slaves in the Mediterranean. They sent peace missions laden with gifts and cash, and flattered the pirates, successors to Kheireddin, the Red Bearded One, in almost lyrical terms. In the end, however, they had to take military action to cut the head off the snake. However, the episode was soon forgotten, except in the U.S. Marine Corps, where it became part of its folklore, and the U.S., a nation built on the principle of religious freedom, resumed its benevolent attitude towards Islam.
I remember back in the 1980s, the diplomat then in charge of the United Sates counterterrorism program, Robert Oakley, insisted that the U.S. will never be targeted by homegrown Islamist terrorists because it was "their final destination, their last best hope."
That was the time when groups controlled by Ayatollah Khomeini kidnapped or killed Americans in the Middle East.
So what happened to make that "final destination" a stopover to paradise for martyrs?
Why do so many Muslims hate Americans to the point of wanting to massacre them in their offices as in 9/11 or at a Christmas Party at San Bernardino -- despite the fact that the United States is the only major power in modern times to offer Muslims a helping hand when they needed it?
Wasn't it President Woodrow Wilson who insisted at the end of the First World War that the main European imperial powers of the day, Great Britain and France, publicly commit to respecting the right of self-determination for nations freed from the Ottoman yoke? The Americans invented the idea of "mandates" under the League of Nations to prevent the European imperialist world-grabbers from turning their Muslim conquests in the Middle East into a new colonial galaxy. Without that, there would probably have been no independent Arab states in the Levant, at least for decades.
And wasn't it President Harry Truman who in 1946 used eyeball-to-eyeball diplomacy against Soviet despot Josef Stalin to force him to take Russian occupation troops out of Iran's northwestern provinces and forget about his plan of creating a Soviet Iranistan? (At the time the Soviets hadn't yet developed a nuclear arsenal and thought twice before provoking a clash with the U.S.)
It was President Truman again who prevented the British from sharing out mandatory Palestine among their Arab clients, having already taken a big chunk of it to create an emirate for their Hashemite protégés on the east bank of the Jordan.
And it was thanks to U.S. sending the Marines in the nick of time in 1958 that both Lebanon and Jordan managed to retain their independence and avoided becoming early versions of what is Syria today.
Then we had the 1956 crisis, when Britain and France invaded Egypt to prevent the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Wasn't it President Dwight Eisenhower who went against American's oldest allies to let the Egyptians assert their national sovereignty?
From 1961 onwards, President John F. Kennedy exerted immense pressure on France and used his charm on General De Gaulle to accelerate progress towards Algeria's independence. In 1997 Redha Malik, a former Prime Minister of Algeria and key negotiator with France, told me that throughout the Evian peace talks, the Algerian team knew it had "a strong friend in Washington."
In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, triggered by Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul-Nasser's quixotic attempt at imposing a blockade in the Strait of Tiran, the U.S. used its clout to persuade the Israelis to stop the war after only six days. In his memoirs, the long-standing Soviet apparatchik and future Prime Minister, Yevgeni Primakov, claims that the Israelis wanted to complete their destruction of Arab air forces by wiping out Nasser's heavy weapons on the ground as well. It was under American pressure that the Israelis agreed to temper their appetite for victory and accepted a ceasefire under the auspices of the United Nations.
The Nasserist regime could live to fight another day, which came in 1973. In the October 1973 war, too, U.S. intervention helped restrain the Israelis, who had built up an invasion force under General Ariel Sharon a stone's-throw from Cairo.
In the Camp David talks that led to peace between Egypt and Israel, intense pressure by President Jimmy Carter forced the Israelis to abandon plans to maintain "security enclaves" inside the Sinai Peninsula, thereby helping President Anwar Sadat recover all of Egypt's lost territory.
In 1982 a multinational force, led by the United States, intervened in Lebanon to stop the Israeli advance beyond the Litani River. That force also helped save the lives of Yasser Arafat and his close associates in the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) when, trapped in Beirut, they risked being captured or killed by the Israelis. President Ronald Reagan even arranged for Arafat and his entourage a safe passage to Tunisia, free of charge.
During the lengthy crisis that led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the U.S., having at first hesitated to intervene under President George H.W. Bush, assumed a leadership position under President Bill Clinton and helped save the lives of many Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where a Serbian ethnic cleansing master plan was in full application. Later, it was also U.S. military power that helped Kosovo's Albanian majority, overwhelmingly Muslim, achieve independence. Ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova told me in an interview that he had counted on "Europe's conscience to wake up" only to see that it was "the American cavalry" that in the end came to the rescue, while the Europeans "danced around the dying man."
The U.S. was the only major power to have no state-owned oil company and thus never used its military clout to obtain a share of the Middle East's energy resources.
Should Muslims hate Americans because they refused to disband their military bases on Islamic lands? Again, history shows that the U.S. was the only major power prepared to pack up and leave as soon as its hosts showed it the door.
In 1969, an astonished Col. Moammar Khadafy watched as the Americans closed one of their most important military bases in the Mediterranean, Wheelus, located on Libyan territory, as soon as his newly installed military government asked Washington to leave. A couple of years earlier, it had taken months of bloody battles and tens of thousands of lives before South Yemen was able to force Britain to close its base in Aden.
In 1979, the U.S. had 27,000 military personnel in Iran, operating "listening posts" set up as part of the strategic arms limitation accords to monitor Soviet missile tests. But when the new Islamic regime led by Khomeini asked the U.S. to close the listening posts, which had been approved by the Soviets as well, the Americans did no foot-dragging. The only Americans left behind were diplomats, soon to be seized as hostages by Khomeinist militants.
We witnessed a repeat of that in the 1990s on a grander scale, when the Americans simply packed up and left when the Saudis asked them to close their bases after driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, tangentially also saving Saudi Arabia from Iraqi occupation.
That the U.S. was a friend of Muslims and of Islam was again illustrated when American power helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and, later, liberate Afghans and Iraqis, a total of 50 million Muslims, from the vicious domination of Taliban and the Ba'ath Party.
In 2005, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Sharestani was publicly wondering why the Americans were not coming to "steal our oil," which anti-U.S. propaganda claimed had been Washington's key objective in toppling Saddam Hussein. We left there, too.
During the past six decades, the U.S. has been by far the largest donor of aid to more than 40 of the 57 Muslim-majority nations. In the 1940s and '50s, tens of millions of Muslims were saved from starvation and famine thanks to U.S. food aid. And the Point IV program, launched by President Truman, helped eradicate a number of endemic diseases, including smallpox and malaria, which killed large numbers of Muslims each year.
Many Muslims nations have been annually receiving large checks from the U.S. for decades, among them Egypt, which gets $2 billion, and Pakistan, the homeland of San Bernardino killer Syed Farook, which gets $1 billion.
After the San Bernardino massacre carried out by jihadists Syed Farook (right) and Tashfeen Malik (left), the perennial debate about "why do they hate us" is on with more intensity than ever since 9/11.
When the last Islamic Caliph was driven out of Turkey in 1924, he went into exile first to France and then to the United States, where his descendants lived in New York. In fact, the last pretender to the Islamic Caliphate, Ertugul Osman V, died in Manhattan in 2009.
An open society, the U.S. has always welcomed Islamic exiles of all kinds, including some of its own bitter enemies. The only time that the pan-Islamist Hezbollah movement, founded and led by Iran, has ever held an international conference outside Iran or Lebanon was in Austin Texas in 1986, when a number of Latin American branches of the movement were created. Hundreds of former high-ranking Khomeinist civilian and military officials and clerics have ended up in the U.S. as exiles, while many others have their children attending U.S. schools and universities.
Today, half of Islamic Republic President Hassan Rouhani's closest aides are holders of PhDs from U.S. universities, among them his Chief of Staff, Muhammad Nahavandian, a Green Card holder, and his Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif. (The other half consists of former holders of U.S. hostages in Tehran, among them Defense Minister Hussein Dehqan and Environmental director Masoumeh Ebtekar.)
Quite a few of Osama bin Laden's 50 or so siblings are either holders of U.S. passports or green cards, along with thousands of other Saudis.
Unlike Russia, which has a 200-year history of war against Muslims, having annexed Islamic land at the rate of one square kilometer a day during the 19th century, the U.S. never annexed any Muslim-majority nation. And unlike China, which is still holding its Muslim minority, the Uighurs, in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) surrounded by a ring of steel, the U.S. is not trying to stop a Muslim nation's aspiration after self-determination.
In the 1990s, when Saudi Arabia normalized ties with the People's Republic of China, it shut down the offices of the Uighur exiles in Jeddah. Where did the exiles transfer to? The answer is: Washington DC, since neither Muslim nations nor Europeans would agree to host them.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. has been host to more than five million Muslims from all over the world, many of them fleeing brutal Islamist regimes in their homelands. In a conversation in 2002, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis expressed the hope that Muslims in the United States and other Western democracies could become "beacons of enlightenment" projecting light back to their old counties. Many of us shared that hope.
Now, however, we see that the opposite is happening. Instead of exporting "light" back to the Muslim world, a growing number of Muslims in Western democracies have become importers of darkness in their new abodes.
Worse still, the politically correct crowd has turned Islam into a new taboo. They brand any criticism of Islam as racist, ethnocentrist or simply vile, all crammed together in the new category of "Islamophobia."
Is it Islamophobia to question a religion whose Middle East leaders often preach "Death to America" and hatred for Western values?
More prevalent than Islamophobia is Islamophilia, as leftists treat Muslims as children whose feathers should not be ruffled.
The Islamophilia crowd does great disservice to both Western democracies and to Islam itself.
They invite Americans and Europeans to sacrifice part of their own freedom in atonement of largely imaginary sins against Muslims in the colonial and imperialist era. They also invite Muslims in the West to learn how to pose as victims and demand the rewards of victimhood as is the fashion in Europe and America. To the Muslim world at large, the message of Islamophilia is that Muslims need no criticism, although their faith is being transformed into a number of conflicting ideologies dedicated to violence and terror.
Never mind if Islamic theology is all but dead. To say so would be a sign of Islamophobia.
Never mind that God makes only a cameo appearance in mosque sermons almost entirely obsessed with political issues.
All that Western intellectuals or leaders need to do is stop flattering Islam, as President Obama has been doing for the past seven years, claiming that virtually anything worthwhile under the sun has its origin in Islam.
Many Muslims resent that kind of flattery, which takes them for idiots at a time that Islam and Muslims badly need to be criticized. The world needs to wake from its slumber and ask: What is going on?
*This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in the New York Post.
*Amir Taheri was born in Iran and educated in Tehran, London and Paris. From 1972 until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, he was executive editor-in-chief of Iran's main daily newspaper, Kayhan. He is currently a contributor to the pan-Arab daily, Asharq al-Awsat, and serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
© 2015 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Rowhani’s chance to not become another Ahmadinejad
Dr. John C. Hulsman/Al Arabiya/December 22/15
Beyond the obvious geopolitical benefit of being bought in from the cold, the other major object of Iran’s nuclear deal with the West was to revitalize its moribund economic condition. Sanctions were absolutely killing the regime; the lifting of the strictures allows for the unfreezing of foreign Iranian assets amounting to $30-$50 billion. Even more importantly, Iran will regain access to international financing and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and the chance to import desperately needed sophisticated industrial technology to revamp its decrepit oil industry, the life-blood of the economy. Once this is in place, the next step will be to quickly ramp up oil exports, as the engine to once again make the Iranian economy go. The aim is to increase oil production from 3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2015 to 5 million by the end of the decade. This newfound wealth would go a long way toward restoring Iran’s position as a major economic power in the region, to go along with its geopolitical importance. Indeed, just after the deal was struck, The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, consoled himself by declaring that future estimated Iranian growth rates would be ratcheted up to 8% a year for the next five years (up from a present rate of 2.5% in 2014), a boom attained recently by only India and China. If only it were so easy. The coming political pressure on the pragmatic government of Hassan Rowhani revolves around his overselling of this economic fairy tale to adversaries such as the hard-line Revolutionary Guards, as well as to hesitant allies like the Supreme Leader. For getting rid of sanctions, while a necessary economic step for Iran on the road to its economic recovery, will not be sufficient in itself to turn the country around. By over-playing the real but limited benefits of the sanctions being lifted, Rowhani has made the next few years very dangerous for the cause of reform in Iran, as it will prove impossible for him to attain the rosy future he peddled as a way to gain elite support for the nuclear deal. Disillusion is bound to follow, imperilling his efforts at further reform.
Looking in the mirror
In an effort to move heaven and earth to have sanctions removed at the earliest possible date, Tehran has outdone itself in largely meeting the terms of its nuclear agreement with the West. As such, the U.S. may begin lifting sanctions as early as January 2016, even ahead of the coming critical elections in Iran for the Majlis (Iran’s parliament) and the Assembly of Experts, a crucial body that could well pick the next Supreme Leader (Khamenei is 76 and has had prostate cancer). This state of affairs bolsters the Rowhani government in the short run, as his supporters can point to this tangible outcome as definitive proof that the President has kept his primary election promise, in having global sanctions removed to spur on Iranian economic growth. Rowhani’s political viability will evaporate, as happened to his clueless predecessor, President Ahmadinejad
This political advance is vital, as at present Rowhani can only count on the sustained support of 50 lawmakers in the 290-seat parliament. In order for him to continue his process of instituting painful, necessary, economic reforms, he covets broad parliamentary support. While the February 2015 elections will doubtless see him build upon these dismal numbers, it also remains highly unlikely that the Iranian president is capable of gaining an outright majority in the Majlis. Barring that outcome, he will be more dependent than ever on the unstinting backing of the Supreme Leader.
And to quote Shakespeare, herein lies the rub. Khamenei has only half-heartedly backed Rowhani’s bold nuclear gamble as a necessary evil, if it brings with it quick and stunning economic results. This is very unlikely to happen because sanctions--damaging as they have been—are not all that ails the Iranian economy. Growth is set to amount to 3% in 2015, increasing to 5% next year, much better than under the previous economically illiterate Ahmadinejad government, but nowhere near what the Supreme Leader (and the Iranian public) has been led to believe is possible.
For following the ruinous Ahmadinejad presidency, where up to $700 billion of state assets were parcelled out to his loyalists (especially in the Revolutionary Guards), Iran remains economically fragile. While less dependent on the price of oil than other countries in the region, its proceeds still account for 42% of government revenue. The precipitous fall in the global price of energy has hit Tehran hard. Iran remains mired in corruption; Transparency International ranked Iran the 136th least corrupt nation on the planet (out of 175) in its 2014 index. Youth unemployment is increasing, even as living standards have decreased.
So removing global economic sanctions hardly amounts to waving a magic wand and doing away with Tehran’s other, endemic, economic ills. A plunging oil price, decades of government fiscal mismanagement, corruption, and bureaucratic red tape remain, all blotting out the economic landscape. If these intractable, long-term problems are not addressed, and quickly, by the Rowhani government, there is no chance that the economic boom he promised the Supreme Leader will come to pass. And without fulfilling his grandiose promises, Rowhani’s political viability will evaporate, as happened to his clueless predecessor, President Ahmadinejad. Ironically, for Rowhani, the hard work begins now that the nuclear deal has been struck.

Aramco TV and the beginning of awareness
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/December 22/15
I have enjoyed reading the book “Aramco TV” by Dr Abdullah al-Madni, which studies the first Arab TV channel in the Gulf. The Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) has left positive fingerprints on life in the region, its TV channel among them, even though many do not want to admit it.
Baghdad was the first to establish a TV channel in the Middle East, and Aramco was established in Saudi Arabia two months later, Madni writes. According to him, Aramco TV was launched in 1957 and covered eastern Saudi Arabia and most Arab Gulf states. It was considered one of the most important American institutions in the world, being the largest American oil-producing company outside the United States. Aramco used to finance Saudi Arabia with all its revenues from oil sales. For many, the company was a beacon of civilization, enlightening the region’s people and their neighbors via media such as Aramco TV and Al-Qafilah newspaper, which later became a magazine. Perhaps if Aramco TV at the time reached more Saudi cities, it would have led to great social and intellectual change. However, its broadcast was limited to the east of the country, and owning a TV at the time was almost impossible due to its high price and local poverty.
Cultural influence
I liked how Madni noted that the channel did not spread Western culture like some think, but was an important factor in spreading Arabic culture. Aramco TV used to broadcast Egyptian movies with political content that Madni said empowered patriotism and contributed to raising awareness about liberation from colonialism. He says Egyptian movies attracted more Arab viewers than American movies, to the point where many neighborhoods were named after movie titles. Madni says Aramco used to take local culture into consideration, and used to broadcast programs and movies after editing out socially or religiously unacceptable scenes. In 1962, the movie “The Empty Pillow,” starring the late singer and actor Abdulhalim Hafez, was played on Aramco TV without any censorship. It received high acclaim from viewers, so the station decided to decrease its strict censorship.
Aramco closed its channel in 1970, a year after the launch of Saudi TV. I think Aramco TV was suspended due to an official request by Riyadh, which decided not to leave such an influential tool in the hands of a foreign company. The book is worth reading, and I hope the author puts it in a digital library to facilitate access to it. We bid farewell to a colleague and prominent figure who has left this world. Omar al-Mudwahi left us way too soon. We have known him as a talented writer and brilliant journalist. We pray for mercy on his soul, and pray to God to grant his family patience and solace.

Christmas, Mawlid al-Nabi, and Arab uprisings
H.A. Hellyer/Al Arabiya/December 22/15
In a few days, Christians following the Gregorian calendar will greet Christmas Eve – the 24th of December. But on Christmas Eve this year, there is another, different date that will be marked – the day of the birth, according to many Muslim historians, of the seal of Prophets, Muhammad. For in 2015 of the Common Era, and 1437 of the Hijri calendar, the 24th of December and the 12th of Rabi’ al-‘Awwal – the ‘First Spring’. How much symbolism encapsulated in one convergence – and how much pain – and how much joy. Most Western Christians will be celebrating, those in the West as well as those following the Christian churches of the west – a number of Eastern Christian congregations and denominations follow other calendars to mark the birth of the Messiah, which will happen in January. As for Muslims, their calendar shifts every year, as it is a lunar calendar – and in any case, they tend not to mark the birth of the Prophet on the 12th of Rabi’ al-Awwal alone anyway. The celebrations, or remembrances dedicated to noting the birth of the Prophet happen all year round in traditional Muslim communities, from California to China, from Brunei to Bosnia, from Turkey to Tanzania. Despite the impact of purist Salafism, that disavows the established convention, most Muslim religious authorities continue to follow the canonical positions. Those positions allow or praise the celebration of is considered in Islamic thought as the ‘mercy to the worlds’.But ‘mercy’ is not generally what jumps to mind in contemporary parlance when the Islamic faith is mentioned. Yet, in this month of December, there are times in recent history that do provoke the mention of mercy.
Five years ago
Five years ago, something stirred within the Arab world – a call for freedom from tyranny, and the opportunity to build a future that was more just. Five years on, it has become en vogue to disavow those sentiments, due to chaos that followed it. It is a peculiar reaction, to be sure – for the uprisings were simply an inevitable response to tyranny. If the uprisings were something to be avoided, blame is upon those who could have removed the reasons for the uprisings in the first place – the leaders of these countries where the uprisings took place.This region remains the birthplace of Prophets; the heartlands of the great monotheists religious dispensations of the world; and, if one is a believer, the stuff of miracles. Five years ago, we already saw that counter-revolutionary forces were unwilling to give in. In this month when those who celebrate the birth of the Messiah, and the birth of the Prophet, Egyptians in 2011 were still reeling from the massacre at Maspero, where a largely Christian protest was set upon by state forces in Cairo. No accountability for those deaths has been actioned – nor for state-led killings before them, nor for those killings thereafter. The Christian leftist activist, Mina Daniel, was one of those who fell. He was 20 years old. 20. 20. 20. In the aftermath of those deaths, a man called Emad Effat, who was 52 years old, publicly agitated against the military council that ruled Egypt at the time. He warned Egyptians against falling into sectarianism, and allowing such a conflict, which was morally wrong, and would strategically extend military rule. On the 15th of December, four years ago last week, Shaykh Emad Effat himself was killed, as he protested against the military authorities. Effat was one of Egypt’s most noted religious authorities – and a unique one. He was cautious and reticent about the political instrumentalisation of religion for partisan ends, and warned against those who would do so from the pro-Brotherhood camp at the time. At the same time, even though he served as one of the muftis in Dar al-Ifta’ al-Misriyyah, one of the state’s main religious institutions, he was clear in his edicts against police brutality.
How rare such a man is, when it is considered that religion of Islam is now used to bolster support for both the partisans of Morsi and the Brotherhood, and the sycophants of the current ruling establishment in Egypt – claiming divine support for either side, as though religion is another political apparatchik.
Unity
A month from now, nevertheless, we will see the fifth anniversary of the 25th of January revolutionary uprising in Egypt. It is also in vogue to deny the extraordinary aspects of those eighteen days of uprising – but it was, indeed, a time of great respect for pluralism. Christians protecting Muslims at prayer, Muslims protecting Christians at prayer, and Muslims and Christians protecting each other from those who would drive them apart. Much of that spirit has been lost, in the chaos of the past few years – but that original disposition should not be cast into the dustbin of history, as though it never happened. It did. I was there. So were many others – and they do only themselves a disservice if they allow themselves to forget. The last time Mawlid al-Nabi, the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, and Christmas Eve came to be on the same day, was in 1852. Egypt was already becoming prey to foreign intervention, and not long thereafter later, British troops formally landed in Egypt, and remained there until 1952. The colonial heritage of that time in Egypt continues to impact the country today, as it does so much of the Arab world. But rather than harkening back to what is now distant, and often mythical past, the Arab world remains in need of looking forward – to root itself in the traditions that made those eighteen days of uprising, and the pluralism therein, possible. The alternative, alas, has already been seen in the black flags over the so much of the glorious countries of Syrian and Iraq, and the tyranny of rulers that made such instability all but inevitable. But this region remains the birthplace of Prophets; the heartlands of the great monotheists religious dispensations of the world; and, if one is a believer, the stuff of miracles. It may well be again – after all, miracles are hardly expected before they come.

Torture in Assad's prisons: Back to square one
Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/December 22/15
Detainees tortured in Syrian regime prisons slowly die and surrender their souls with their eyes half open. This is how Syrian teenager Ahmad al-Musalmani looked like according to a photo that documented his death and showed his thin tortured body lying on the ground with a number hanging above it. We didn’t know who Ahmad was when his photos first surfaced along with thousands of others nine months ago. We now know his name. Photos of him prior to his arrest, torture and death in prison showed him appearing calm. When peaceful protests erupted in 2011, Ahmad’s family sent him to Lebanon out of fear that he would be detained by the regime which was detaining many young men. However, Ahmad returned a year later to Syria for the funeral of his mother who died while telling his uncle that she was leaving her son under his guardianship. So Ahmad's mother died and Ahmad was detained on his way to attend her funeral. What was the charge against him? Ahmad was dragged into detention because security forces who searched passengers on board the bus which was taking him to Daraa found out that he had an anti-Assad song on his phone. They thus arrested Ahmad and he disappeared. His family did not know what happened to him until the so-called “Caesar photos” (taken by Caesar, the Syrian military photographer who smuggled shocking evidence of torture out of Assad's dungeons) surfaced in 2014.
An invented devil
These photos shook the world's conscience a little but everyone went back to being preoccupied with an invented devil called ISIS; thus ignoring the root of the problem, the Assad regime. After thorough investigations, Human Rights Watch narrated the stories of those victims we've seen in the photos. This report was carried out through investigative work that included a journalistic, humanitarian and legal approach as the organization had to go through the difficult journey of identifying the victims, understanding their stories and figuring out how they ended up in Assad's dungeons. These photos shook the world's conscience a little but everyone went back to being preoccupied with an invented devil called ISIS; thus ignoring the root of the problem, the Assad regime. The Syrian regime has destroyed and continues to destroy the lives of thousands of Syrians. This significant HRW report brought back media attention to the violations of the Assad regime. The regime's brutality and violence are primarily responsible for the situation in Syria today. ISIS is merely a chapter in the Syrian regime's book of death. Facts do not lie, and the facts clearly reveal that the brutality of the Syrian regime is the major cause behind the death of more than 200,000 Syrians. In the interviews which HRW investigators conducted, they reiterated what the entire world knows but ignores, and it's that 96% of the civilians killed in Syria were killed by Assad regime forces. The HRW report, which garnered global media attention, rectifies the discussion and reorganizes priorities. This is something we desperately need during this phase as the world lives through an era of ISIS hysteria, Islamophobia and fear of refugees. Eliminating real threats represented by ISIS and religious extremism will not happen, and rather, it's impossible without resolving the Syrian situation and coming up with a solution in which Bashar al-Assad is not part of the transnational phase, as it has been rumored that he may be part of it. Photos depicting torture in Syrian regime prisons and stories like those of Ahmad are only fresh documentation of some of the torture Syrians have been put through since their revolution erupted five years ago. Yes, it was a peaceful revolution; however the regime's brutality towards children, women, men and even animals is what turned Syria into what it is today. There's no doubt that we live in a harsh world and that we do not need evidence to know the origin of the problem; however, this is a moment when countries' interests and maliciousness intersect, and it's certainly a worrying unless we speak out and shift attention to the source of the problem. The HRW report presents a new opportunity to give momentum to the discussions about the root of the global crisis we're living through. There's no solution without addressing the origin of the problem and thus the solution is to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and his criminal regime.

Who killed Hezbollah’s Samir Qantar? Ask Syria
Raed Omari/Al Arabiya/December 22/15
Up until the time of writing, there has been no absolute statement from the Syrian government confirming that Lebanese militant leader Samir Qantar was killed in an Israeli aerial raid, as announced by Hezbollah. The Syrian government´s public explanation of the incident was expressed in remarks carried by the state-owned SANA news agency that lacked a clear-cut pointing-finger to Israel as being behind Qantar´s death. But let it be very clear from the very beginning that what is written here is not a conspiracy theory piece accusing the Syrian regime of killing Qantar, although there has always a big question mark hanging over the deaths of many militant leaders and allies in Syria. I was taken aback by the Syrian official statement on the killing of Qantar, a Druze, who was released by Israel in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Perhaps by pointing the finger at Israel, Hezbollah said what the Syrians were unable to say. In January this year, the two longtime allies´ statements on Israel´s killing of six Hezbollah members, including commander and son of the group´s leader Imad Mughniyah in Quneitra were identical, accusing the same enemy and pledging coordinated revenge. But this time it was different.
Remarkably enough, the Syrian account of the incident resembled to a greater degree that of Israel - no confirmation and no refuting. Hezbollah´s al-Manar TV aired an official statement by the Shiite militia affirming that Qantar was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential district of Damascus. Meanwhile, according to the Syria, as SANA announced, the Lebanese militant leader was killed in a ´´terrorist rocket attack.” From a purely discourse analysis point of view, the Syrian official statements appeared to want to contain the incident. SANA quoted Syria´s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi as describing Qantar´s killing as a ´´terrorist operation plotted beforehand´´ without accusing Israel or any party. In a statement, also carried by SANA, the Syrian People´s Assembly accused a combination of “Takfiri Zionist” forces ´´led by several countries topped by Israel´´ of killing Qantar – again, not directly accusing Israel.
Daring, but still not clear
Syria´s Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi’s statement was somehow a bit more daring, carrying some accusations against Israel but against other parties as well reading, as cited by SANA: ´´This attack will not prevent the Axis of Resistance from continuing its struggle against the Israeli enemy and confronting the terrorist war waged on Syria and the Arab nation.´´The three Syrian official statements issued so far were all loose, coy and full of diplomatic euphemisms, so to speak. None of the statements have made it clear that Qantar was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Damascus suburb, as announced by Hezbollah. Syria’s conventional sentence “Syria reserves the right to retaliate by all means at its disposal” was entirely absent in all the three official statements on Qantar’s death.
Remarkably enough, the Syrian account of the incident resembled to a greater degree that of Israel - no confirmation and no refuting.
‏But the Syrian statements on Qantar´s killing were worded with a heavy Russian military presence in the background and they were inseparable from new political developments on Syria and the new international coalitions in the making. It can´t be that the Israelis launched an airstrike on Syria now without coordination with their Russian allies who now control Syria´s airspace. And if the Syrians confirmed that Israeli jets killed Qantar, then they would appear as either having prior knowledge of the plan or have no sovereignty over their country.
Who actually killed the 54-year-old Qantar? In my opinion, Israel is a likely perpetrator but the question is how its jets flew over Syria now without being spotted by the Russian satellites and space power. The Russian silence on the incident is also worth-noting. In fact, the killing of Qantar is proof that Syria is no longer a safe place even for the Syrian regime’s allies and loyalists. All is relative amid the overlapping interests from the many parties embroiled in the Syrian war.

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